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Songs That Were Much More Popular On WLS And WCFL Than On The Billboard Hot 100

So Gehron must have thought it was a sure hit? I agree, without the controversy, it probably would have been Top 10 Hot 100. The chart performance was bimodal, peaking, falling, and peaking again. It kind of reminds me of "Chevy Van", which reached #5 Hot 100.

This bimodal graph describes the sales vs. time.

220px-Bimodal_geological.PNG
 
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From Top40Weekly.

Ariel Chart positions vs. Week. Week 2 is not available from the data. Week 3 is from Week 4 Previous Position.

86-_-59-47-42-37-32-29-27-27-26-47-41-37-33-33-32-56
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
So Gehron must have thought it was a sure hit?
Click to expand...

The song came from the same team behind Jim Croce. So if you thought Croce had hits, you might be convinced that his team could deliver more in that vein. But if you're Gehron and your boss isn't playing this song on his station, you might think twice.
 
I wonder if MeTV FM plays it.

A lot of songs that were popular on WLS and WCFL caught on over the pond in Northern and Western Michigan and even Eastern Michigan where there were few good local AMs available at Night. I would suspect that the songs that were big on WLAV and WGRD are now played on WGVU and WGVS from Grand Valley State University. But 1977 is a little past where FM really took over. Call them up and ask, they probably have a board op student at least.

www.wgvu.org

Real Oldies 1480

West Michigans favorite AM Oldies station
www.wgvu.org www.wgvu.org

(616) 331-6666
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
So Gehron must have thought it was a sure hit? I agree, without the controversy, it probably would have been Top 10 Hot 100. The chart performance was bimodal, peaking, falling, and peaking again. It kind of reminds me of "Chevy Van", which reached #5 Hot 100.
Click to expand...
We have to keep in mind that, by that time, radio was not even using sales as a primary factor in programming. It had moved on in the major markets to call out. And as far as data sources, Billboard, Cash Box and Record World had lost any relevance to radio long before that... in the 70's we started by using Gavin, FMQB, Hamilton and others and then added sources like R&R to our list.

The first uses of call-out came around 1975, and were implemented by larger market stations like KCBQ, Y-100 and others where there were very forward looking PDs.
 
TheBigA said:
How much gold airplay does it get now?
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I'm not sure if that is relevant... there are plenty of #1 songs from that era that get no current gold airplay simply because they turned negative due to "sounding old", burn, changes in taste, and all the other reasons why we don't like songs today we loved in the past.

As embarassing as it may be, I liked "Honey" and "Blue Velvet" when they were currents and I was playing the heck out of them on my Top 40 station. But I don't want to hear either of them today...
 
DavidEduardo said:
I'm not sure if that is relevant... there are plenty of #1 songs from that era that get no current gold airplay
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Based on that, current gold airplay is more relevant than original chart position.

We're talking about a song that peaked at #26 nationally. To me, that's a stiff, no matter how long it was on the chart. Therefore likely gets no gold airplay, even on these "Breeze" stations that play 70s soft rock. I wouldn't play it. The label its on went out of business over 30 years ago.
 
I was just looking through the WGVU/WGVS Oldies Catalog, and although it goes into the late 1970s, some songs and groups are notably absent. Those are ones that were Disco or labelled Disco. "Staying Alive" is there, "Nights On Broadway" is not. I think that is kind of arbitrary. What? Did Steve Dahl help them with their catalog?

Very heavy with the more obscure Chicago Area and Michigan "Garage" Band tracks.
 
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I’ve always been interested in huge hits that top 40 stations didn’t play.

Except for the John Rook, late 60s/very early 1970s era, WLS was very slow on R and B crossovers. Very “white” compared to WABC and KHJ. I know Clark Weber did not like R and B records, but mid 1970s WLS was also very slow to add black artists. Which is odd considering the diverse demographics of Chicago.

WLS never played or charted 1975 record Walking In Rhythm which peaked at 6 in Billboard. Marvin Gaye’s #1 classic Got To Give It Up only made 20 on the WLS printed survey. I believe after 1975, only songs that made the top 15 on the printed survey actually got airplay.

I grew up listening to stations like WHBQ in Memphis and WLAC in Nashville (top 40 era) and WTIX in New Orleans which played almost half soul records so that era WLS can seem very vanilla.
 
briancraig said:
WLS was also very slow to add black artists. Which is odd considering the diverse demographics of Chicago.
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At the same time, Chicago was a place where there was black music available on the radio 24/7 on WVON ("The Voice of the Negro") The Chess brothers bought the station in 1963 and it became the pre-eminent station for black music. Leonard & Phil Chess owned Chess Records. One of the few times the owners of a record label owned a radio station. Of course in the 60s, ABC owned a record label too.
 
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TheBigA said:
At the same time, Chicago was a place where there was black music available on the radio 24/7 on WVON ("The Voice of the Negro") The Chess brothers bought the station in 1963 and it became the pre-eminent station for black music. Leonard & Phil Chess owned Chess Records. One of the few times the owners of a record label owned a radio station. Of course in the 60s, ABC owned a record label too.
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There was also WGRT/WJPC 950 starting in (IIRC) 1965 or thereabouts, as well as a couple of south-suburban AM daytimers in that era.
 
But that was also true in the markets I mentioned whose top 40 stations played lots of black music. Memphis had WDIA and WLOK, Nashville had WVOL and New Orleans had WYLD and WBOK.
 
briancraig said:
But that was also true in the markets I mentioned whose top 40 stations played lots of black music. Memphis had WDIA and WLOK, Nashville had WVOL and New Orleans had WYLD and WBOK.
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Sure but a lot of the music the black stations played wasn't watered down for white radio airplay. That's what distinguished Motown or Stax. They made music that was meant to be heard on mass appeal white radio.
 
I don't know how WVON 1450 could have had very good ratings at Night with 250 watts. Even the Day signal wasn't that good.

John Landecker, Kris Erik Stevens, and Jim Hampton listened to WLS and WCFL when they were growing up in Michigan. John mentioned listening to WLAC for R & B, and said in an interview that in the mid to late 1960s, he preferred WCFL to WLS.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
I was just looking through the WGVU/WGVS Oldies Catalog, and although it goes into the late 1970s, some songs and groups are notably absent. Those are ones that were Disco or labelled Disco. "Staying Alive" is there, "Nights On Broadway" is not. I think that is kind of arbitrary. What? Did Steve Dahl help them with their catalog?

Very heavy with the more obscure Chicago Area and Michigan "Garage" Band tracks.
Click to expand...

Some of the latest songs I see on there:
"Baby Hold On" - Eddie Money (1978; oddly, the Money Man's other hit from that same album, "Two Tickets to Paradise", isn't listed)
"Billie Jean" and "Thriller" - Michael Jackson (1983; oddly, nothing from his 1979 album "Off the Wall" is listed)
"Does Your Mother Know" - ABBA (1979; their only single with lead vocal by Bjorn Ulvaeus)
"Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" - Meat Loaf (1978)
"We Don't Talk Anymore" - Cliff Richard (1979)
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
I don't know how WVON 1450 could have had very good ratings at Night with 250 watts. Even the Day signal wasn't that good.

John Landecker, Kris Erik Stevens, and Jim Hampton listened to WLS and WCFL when they were growing up in Michigan. John mentioned listening to WLAC for R & B, and said in an interview that in the mid to late 1960s, he preferred WCFL to WLS.
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Regarding WVON, they had excellent ratings in the city especially in the south and west side. Besides that they played music that WCFL and especially WLS wouldn't touch. I lived in the Northern suburbs where the signal wasn't great especially at night as you said, but I loved the music and I couldn't hear much of it anywhere else. Also they had Herb Kent who was a wonderful host.
 
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