WDSU Top 20? Doubt there was ever a published one that was circulated in the record shops. The station was never a fulltime top 40 station. It was first and foremost an NBC Radio network affiliate, programmed to adults, and from what I remember the top 20 show was just one 2-3 hour segment on a block-programmed station. If you saw the 1961 Hooper survey, I submitted that to the N.O. Radio facebook group. Are you familiar with the ARSA Airhead Radio Survey site? They have pics of a WJBW survey and a bunch of WNOE ones. As for originals? I have the originals of two WNOE Top 50s from 1959. Reprints of them are shown on the ARSA site. WJBW, by the way, got out of the top40 format around 1962, after running distant third behind WTIX and WNOE.
Argg...I'm only seeing this NOW, SIXTEEN MONTHS LATER...because I thought my settings sent me emails notifying me of new posts in subscribed threads. I'll have to check my settings! This is NOT GOOD...because this could have just as easily been you saying that you have something from WDSU.
I could say I was VERY surprised seeing a response from you here (with no idea if you'd found this site...or even did anything with computers), but saying that would be an understatement. Thank you for describing more about WDSU from me. All I've ever seen written about WDSU (and, no, I didn't buy the New Orleans radio book, just seen excerpts) left me with the idea that they were a VERY high-profile rock and roll station, only losing their rock and roll standing when WTIX majorly improved their signal AND allowed people to hear their better playlist.
And, I've thought all these years it was you (i. e. at the 1970 New Jersey NRC convention, I think) that I attributed to hearing that WDSU put out huge numbers of charts every week and sent them at least Baton Rouge to Pascagoula, and I always had the idea they were a very hot rock and roll station. OK, that wasn't you, so I'm wondering who told me. That's so long ago it might have even been somebody at WGSO (their later call letters). Heck, I won't even discount that it's possible it came to me in a DREAM.
Or an urban legend?
After all, because of dreams about 30-35 years ago, I had some belief that there was this big four-story house that was full of records, somewhere on Jewell Road less than two miles from where I lived in Michigan. I spent a couple years wondering where in the hell it was, until I had the same dream again...then I knew "WHERE" it was...in my robust imagination. (I also realized that the dream had attributes to that house which would be VERY highly unlikely to appear in any house in real life...)
WDSU would be my second-most-wanted, but pales in comparison with WHRV Ann Arbor, which gets into my own personal listening history! This may be an urban legend just as WDSU charts might be, and in fact they were - I guess from your description - a WDSU type station with rock and roll for three-and-a-half hours as night (and from there, directly into "elevator music" sponsored by a popular Italian restaurant which was gone before I got to college in Ann Arbor). Ollie McLaughlin told me in 1968 or 1969 that his WHRV show had a survey that was put into local record stores in AA and "ipsy" (Ypsilanti) with his picture on it, etc. - but nobody has turned up even the slightest evidence this ever existed. Another urban legend? I know WHRV was a network, I think Mutual but could have been NBC or ABC. NOT CBS because WJR had that covered...
Ollie McLaughlin "kicked himself UP the stairs" by leaving radio and producing music in Detroit. I mean Barbara Lewis, The Capitols - competing with Motown - and I think even some of Aretha Franklin's stuff.
I will say that about six years ago I found a survey on ebay that (for me) exceeded ANY of these. A Top 15, from 1958, from CMBC-690 in CUBA. Nothing from anywhere in the world can top that.
