Song question

[ChrisInMI]

My understanding is that on November 22, 1963, the day John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas, and through the weekend afterward, many radio stations - when they weren't providing news bulletins - dropped their regular programming and essentially went to temporary Beautiful Music formats, playing mostly if not totally instrumentals, high-energy Top 40 stations included.

I was just today listening to an aircheck of KILT-AM in Houston from that day, and as I described, the station stopped playing the hits and went to easy listening and jazz instrumentals (some actually uptempo) as the news bulletins became more serious. All of the selections on this aircheck were instrumental save one which was sung by a male vocal group, and I'm curious as to whether the BM/EZ experts on this board can ID the title and artist, because it sounds like a beautiful song.

A portion of the lyrics is something like, "Few are my reasons to live, all I own I would give..." and that's all of the song the aircheck features before the music was interrupted for another bulletin. In light of what was going on in Dallas at that time, the song - or what little the scoped aircheck features of it - sounds haunting.

 

[Chuck]

I remember the day quite well. I was in Mr. Quinn's Algebra II class in my high school when the news came over the loudspeaker system. Most stations were news only for the next day or so. When they ran out of things to say, they played classical music. Not exactly "light" classical either. Funeral dirges were the norm for the next few days.

I didn't hear anything that resembled jazz or standards. Perhaps KILT did, but that was not the case where I was. It was a very somber experience.

 

[Oldiecarl]

A portion of the lyrics is something like, "Few are my reasons to live, all I own I would give..." and that's all of the song the aircheck features before the music was interrupted for another bulletin. In light of what was going on in Dallas at that time, the song - or what little the scoped aircheck features of it - sounds haunting.

Could this be "Till" by the Vogues?

 

[Oldiecarl]

A portion of the lyrics is something like, "Few are my reasons to live, all I own I would give..." and that's all of the song the aircheck features before the music was interrupted for another bulletin. In light of what was going on in Dallas at that time, the song - or what little the scoped aircheck features of it - sounds haunting.

Could this be "Till" by the Vogues?

Updating...

I just found the aircheck http://vasthead.com/Radio/radio_works.html( WOW, does that bring back memories! ) ,and the song is definitly "Till", but NOT the Vogues' version, which didn't come out until 1968.

 

[BlueHen]

From the description, I thought it was a cover of The Angels' 1961 hit "'Til" by someone like The Lettermen. It was common for MOR artists to fill their albums with covers of pop hits of the day. (John Gary has a version). But listening to the aircheck, it almost sounds like a '50s act such as the Four Freshmen or the Ames Brothers. On the other hand, if beautiful music libraries were custom produced back then and not available to the public, it may have just been part of a package and, therefore, unidentifiable.

The original post mentions dropping regular programming for a special event. This reminds me of that Good Friday in 1985 when, supposedly, every station in the country played "We Are The World" at the same time. Where I live, I scanned the dial and did hear it on every station. It was kind of neat to hear it on an all-news station, a talk station, and a beautiful music station.

Getting back to that KILT aircheck, the way they kept breaking in with the news story was a little bit like the Orson Welles "War of the Worlds" broadcast. Thanks for posting the link.