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Songs with Radio Station call letters at the intro

J

JoeLouis

Guest
1971 gave us Sooner or Later by the Grass Roots with radio station call letters at the intro of the song, other tunes followed, Got to be There by the Jackson 5, Precious and Few by Climax, to name a few, the only one I found recently was W-M-A-K "Sooner or Later" WKBW in Buffalo had a bunch of them.
 
Those were called Pop-Tops or Mingles...the actual artists had nothing to do with them.

They were the brainchild of Joey Reynolds, who was programming WFIL, Philadelphia at the time. He sold them to the RKO stations, which used them for about six weeks and dumped them---finding that a lot of listeners didn't want to hear a station jingle over the intro of their favorite record. However, WKBW and other stations (mostly East Coast) kept them going for years, even cutting them for records in the Gold library.

Here's the story and several dozen of the jingles. One note---the ones for the Pointer Sisters "Fire" weren't part of this but were actually cut by the Pointer Sisters for those stations and supplied by Planet Records.

Rock Radio Scrapbook: Pop-Tops/Mingles
 
anotherguyTN said:
I also remember WLS having a version of Jefferson Starship's We Built This City with their DJs in it.
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Promo copies of "We Built This City" had one side with Les Garland doing the rap and the other side without, so stations could do their own. Album rock stations frequently played that version but didn't fill---just left it as an instrumental break.
 
Growing up listening to KFI in the late 70s, I remember that they had a version of "Livin' it Up (Friday Night)" by Bell & James, which had the call letters inserted well into the first verse. "Turned on the music, to K F I, nobody's boogie"...

Billy Idol's "Hot In The City" had the "New York!" replaced in some markets. Growing up, I remember hearing "Phoenix!" and "San Diego!" versions. Obviously, that was a bit more easier to edit in.

But, yes, I remember the Pointer Sisters... "I'm driving in your car.. you turn on K F I.."
 
Michi said:
Growing up listening to KFI in the late 70s, I remember that they had a version of "Livin' it Up (Friday Night)" by Bell & James, which had the call letters inserted well into the first verse. "Turned on the music, to K F I, nobody's boogie"...

Billy Idol's "Hot In The City" had the "New York!" replaced in some markets. Growing up, I remember hearing "Phoenix!" and "San Diego!" versions. Obviously, that was a bit more easier to edit in.

But, yes, I remember the Pointer Sisters... "I'm driving in your car.. you turn on K F I.."
Click to expand...
The Pointers, being Bay Area natives, started doing custom versions for KFRC starting with "How Long (Betcha Got A Chick On The Side)" in 1975. The "betcha got a chick on the side, sure you got a chick, I know you got a chick on the side" chant was re-cut eight different ways, replacing "chick" with the name of a KFRC jock (Don, John, Rick, Chuck, Mark, Donn, Shana and Duke---for Dave Sholin).

Another one that got a lot of custom versions for stations was Reunion's "Life Is A Rock (But The Radio Rolled Me)"----"Life is a rock, but KHJ rolled me. Gotta turn it up louder, so (Charlie Van Dyke/Larry McKay/The Gunner/Billy Pearl/J.B. Stone) told me..."
 
Michi said:
In the 90s, JAM marketed Power INtros...
https://soundcloud.com/michelle-bradley-3%2Fjam-power-intros-demo
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That works in a way pop-tops didn't in that they aren't actually based on the music---they're essentially acapellas that are tempo-matched. Neat idea.

Back in '74, Century21 tried ChromaKey---jingles that match the keys of the records they played into or over the intro of (this is an updated demo from '76):

 
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Michi said:
Growing up listening to KFI in the late 70s, I remember that they had a version of "Livin' it Up (Friday Night)" by Bell & James, which had the call letters inserted well into the first verse. "Turned on the music, to K F I, nobody's boogie"...

Billy Idol's "Hot In The City" had the "New York!" replaced in some markets. Growing up, I remember hearing "Phoenix!" and "San Diego!" versions. Obviously, that was a bit more easier to edit in.

But, yes, I remember the Pointer Sisters... "I'm driving in your car.. you turn on K F I.."
Click to expand...
At WHBQ Memphis, it was "I'm ridin' in your car ... you turn on the radio ... W-H-B-Q." There was just enough time between "You turn on the radio" and "You're pullin' me close" for the call letters.

I also remember WKSS Hartford playing a customized version of Huey Lewis' "The Heart of Rock & Roll" that had Lewis adding a shouted "Hartford!" to the other cities in the fade. I assume this was done for other stations in other cities, too.
 
CTListener said:
At WHBQ Memphis, it was "I'm ridin' in your car ... you turn on the radio ... W-H-B-Q." There was just enough time between "You turn on the radio" and "You're pullin' me close" for the call letters.
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Yeah, that was a tricky one---"the radio" is four syllables, "WHBQ" is six, and so is "56HBQ".
 
CTListener said:
I also remember WKSS Hartford playing a customized version of Huey Lewis' "The Heart of Rock & Roll" that had Lewis adding a shouted "Hartford!" to the other cities in the fade. I assume this was done for other stations in other cities, too.
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I think he covers L.A. and San Francisco, so that was an automatic. I remember KFRC having a version of Afrika Bambataa's "Planet Rock" where the electronic voice at the end was altered to "Six-ten rocks the planet rock. Don't stop."
 
DavidEduardo said:
There was a version of "(Take a) Walk on the Wild Side" by Lou Reed that had a verse "arrived in Phoenix and went to KUPD".
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Lou Reed agreed to insert radio promos into that song? Wow! I always suspected that Lou was something of a poseur; this goes a long way toward confirming that.
 
CTListener said:
Lou Reed agreed to insert radio promos into that song? Wow! I always suspected that Lou was something of a poseur; this goes a long way toward confirming that.
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I don't know for a fact, but I'm willing to bet that this was an in-house customization that Lou had nothing to do with. Like KHJ substituting a touchtone version of its jingle in Sugarloaf's "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You", or several stations having a female voice whisper their call letters in place of "Son of a gun" in Carly Simon's "You're So Vain".
 
If you ever heard the "There Buddy" jingle package spoof done by drunk Ohio University students in the 70s at the expense of WMPO Middleport-Pomeroy, Ohio, they spoofed "pop tops" as "crop tops", with song intros over bad country songs.
(Consider There Buddy as the countrified version of NINE).
 
michael hagerty said:
I don't know for a fact, but I'm willing to bet that this was an in-house customization that Lou had nothing to do with. Like KHJ substituting a touchtone version of its jingle in Sugarloaf's "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You", or several stations having a female voice whisper their call letters in place of "Son of a gun" in Carly Simon's "You're So Vain".
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It definitely sounded like Lou and the mention is in "the middle" of the song. It matches the music track perfectly, too.
 
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