More Chart Talk

CHART TALK 

(or should that be CHART CHAT???)

 

Kent,

In reference to your comments on my charts and your upbringing, I thought about this.  You had the idea of making your own Super Charts and I was making my chart by points for my all-time charters before Joel came out with his books as well as points for each artist typed on our old teletype.  I still have them.  I will say that I just thought "Yes It Is" was just the greatest then ... "Ticket To Ride" the lesser.  Today, it's a tossup, because I am enthralled by Ringo's drums on "Ride." 

WLS was still somewhat new to my listening as KOMA in OKC and other "locals" were easier to get during my grade school day times.  I’d never seen or heard of the "Top Tunes of Chicago" charts, but I love them.  I have a 1" stack of those.  I could have fit right in at your school, as I owned 1,2 and 4 of the Top 5 that you listed. 

Aah, the collecting with brothers. 

We all overlapped buying 45s once in a while, but not often.  My oldest brother had the great set up in basement and a great rocking chair I was allowed to rock in sometimes as he spun his bigger 45 collection.  My next oldest brother had his own bedroom upstairs and had lots of 45s and overtook my brother after the older went off to college. 

Early on, he would tape his name to 45s, I think more to let friends borrow and get back than keeping from his brothers.  HE was great at borrowing 45s and LPs to tape off.  I did so with his "borrowed" at times, too.  He allowed me to start keeping my records with his in his bedroom by the later 60s and when he was not home, would let me play records in his room.  Today, he and I still have a mostly shared collection.

My younger brother and I fought a lot and our records stayed together for a while, but we each broke records of the other in small fits of rage.  We all went on to collect huge amounts of records and other than my younger, the other three Besch Boys fought over use of reel to reel in 60s --  the olders often using it after I went to bed tho.  We all shared the joy of DXing AM top 40s. 

Of course, dad was a HAM and had his own radio thing, so he enjoyed us boys from a radio stand point.  Mom stood in record stores endlessly on vacations and at home while her younger kids begged to look for a few more minutes.  Mom and dad were terrific!

Clark

I was the oldest so I sort of led the way when it came to buying music.

My allowance money allowed me to ride my bike up to the 8-Corners shopping area in Brookfield, IL, every Saturday, hit the Rexall Drug Store to buy my latest comic (ALWAYS a hard choice as had they had so many to choose from), stop at their ice cream counter for a Cherry Coke or a Root Beer Float and then walk down the street about six or seven stores, check out that week’s WLS Silver Dollar Survey, and buy ONE 45 per week … another EXTREMELY tough choice as I’d usually make up my mind as to what I wanted during the bike ride down there … and then change my mind half a dozen times once I got there and reviewed the latest chart!

At one 45 per week, I didn’t build much of a 45’s collection at that early an age.  However, I had a next door neighbor named Sharon Kolar, who was quite a bit older than me … but when she saw how much I was into this music, she would give me some of her old 45’s that she didn’t play anymore!!!  So I built a bigger collection that way, often with songs I wasn’t necessarily familiar with, but soon grew to love.  (It was such an exciting time in music, what wasn’t to love?!?)

I remember “Yes It Is” sounding very “haunting” upon first hearing it, thanks to George’s use of the volume pedal at the beginning and throughout the song.  It definitely had a unique and different sound … and the harmonies were their best since “This Boy,” which is still one of my all-time early Beatles favorites.

My Mom bought records, too, but her tastes were usually quite different than mine.  Still, they exposed me to the likes of Roger Miller and 1960’s Johnny Cash music ... she loved Dean Martin, too ... all of which I took in right alongside everything else.  It’s really funny how those memories don’t fade … I guess music was just THAT important to me at the time. 

And like you said, who KNEW there were this many other fanatics out there doing the same things WE were doing.  (I remember writing a piece once, some twenty years ago, where I mentioned listening to my AM transistor radio under my pillow at night when I was supposed to be sleeping … and you wouldn’t BELIEVE how many emails I received from people who had done the exact same thing!!!)  Always trying to put one over the parents while still diggin’ our tunes until we drifted off to sleep!   (kk)

 

I also have to jump in on the childhood chart selections. 

Although my friends and I did not keep our top picks written down, we were quite verbal about our personal favorites and how inaccurate we thought the official charts were. 

I had decided that my spending money each week would go to the #1 45 record that WKBW (Buffalo) announced. That lasted two or three weeks before I said, "Uh Uh! I don't want that record. I want ......"

Shelley

Yeah, when you knew you could only buy one, you suddenly became MUCH more selective in your process!  (lol)  kk

 

Kent,

I, too, was a survey collector from around 1964 - 1969. I was fortunate in the fact that in my home town, there were four Top-40 type stations, depending on the year, of course. I only collected one station's surveys and they had a trimmed down list of 30 hits, called "The Boss 30."  Although the other three stations gave free surveys out, I didn't pay any attention to theirs ... but decades later, I began hording those as well.

I now have quite a archive of top-40 surveys from not only Los Angeles, but many other cities across our great nation, as well.

One funny story:

When The Stones song "Honky Tonk Women" was just out in July of '69, it took five weeks for it to achieve the No. 1 spot on the KHJ/AM Boss 30 survey, which was, like everywhere else in the country, updated weekly. OK, that's fine, there were many hot songs out during this period of pop music. But what I couldn't fathom was that after a mere single week, the song fell out of the No. 1 slot and never regained its rightful place on the chart. 

I mean like, earlier the same year, "Love Theme From ‘Romeo And Juliet’" by Henry Mancini was No. 1 for TWO weeks straight! COME ON!

I was outraged, so a friend, Michael Gaines, and I decided to take action.

We wrote up a petition and, armed with a clipboard and a couple of pens, we took the bus to the infamous corner of Sunset and Vine, and planted ourselves in front of the premiere record store for all of the greater L.A. area, Wallich's Music City. 

Wallich's at left of picture ~

 

Located in the heart of Hollywood, not far from the station KHJ/AM, we requested signatures from all interested persons passing by in the middle of that hot afternoon, to sign a protest in regards to the station, KHJ, having the gall to say that this fantastic song was only No. 1 for a single week. We got as many signatures as we did odd looks, sometimes by the same people. It was all in fun, but also very sincere.

After a couple hundred signatures, we mailed the forms and a brief but direct explanation to "93, KHJ" on Melrose Ave. In hindsight, we should have just simply hand carried the forms directly into the KHJ offices, because we never got any satisfaction nor a mention on the air, as far as we knew. (Hey, we were tired. We wanted to smoke a doob.)

Timmy

 

I enjoyed seeing all the songs on your charts from the '60's.  Some of the songs on Clark's charts I had never heard before.

I didn't use to care about charts as such. I just listened for songs I liked and went out and got them.  Nowadays, I want them all. Today we can just put these songs on a playlist on our mp3 player and listen to them count down whenever we want.  I've been putting together my own top forty countdown playlists. 

Since we're celebrating 1964 this year, here's my Top Forty of 1964.  It's based on WLS and Top Tunes of Greater Chicago charts from that year, except for "You Really Got Me," which made the countdown because of its very high placement on your Classic Rock list.

The Beatles have 11 of the Top 40 and 7 of the Top 10, but "Pretty Woman" gets the top spot for its incredible eight week run at #1 on the Top Tunes chart.  The Chicago music scene was so competitive in the '60's that only one other song managed to do that ...

Percy Faith's "Theme From A Summer Place" spent nine weeks at #1 at the beginning of 1960.

 

Let the countdown begin:

 

1	Roy Orbison	Pretty Woman
2	Beatles	Love Me Do
3	Beatles	I Want To Hold Your Hand
4	Billy J Kramer	Little Children
5	Beatles	I Feel Fine
6	Beatles	She's A Woman
7	Beatles	P.S. I Love You
8	Beatles	Twist And Shout
9	Hermans Hermits	I'm Into Something Good
10	Beatles	She Loves You
11	Terry Stafford	Suspicion
12	Supremes	Where Did Our Love Go
13	Dean Martin	Everybody Loves Somebody
14	Four Seasons	Rag Doll
15	Beatles	A Hard Day’s Night
16	Zombies	She's Not There
17	Beach Boys	I Get Around
18	Shangri Las	Leader Of The Pack
19	Beatles	I Should Have Known Better
20	Kinks	You Really Got Me
21	Dave Clark	Glad All Over
22	Trashmen	Surfin' Bird
23	Jan & Dean	Dead Man's Curve
24	Lorne Greene	Ringo
25	Lesley Gore	You Don't Own Me
26	Animals	House Of The Rising Sun
27	Jan & Dean	The New Girl In School
28	Dave Clark	Can't You See That She's Mine
29	Jan & Dean	Drag City
30	Serendipity Singers	Don't Let The Rain Come Down
31	Honeycombs	Have I The Right?
32	Peter & Gordon	A World Without Love
33	Billy J Kramer	Bad To Me
34	Dixie Cups	Chapel Of Love
35	Manfred Mann	Do Wah Diddy Diddy
36	J Frank Wilson & The Cavaliers	Last Kiss
37	Dusty Springfield	Wishin' And Hopin'
38	Beatles	Please Please Me
39	Beatles	Can't Buy Me Love
40	Dave Clark	Because

 

I think it was Les Paul who said that it's not good to live in the past, but it's fun to visit from time to time.

Ed Erxleben

 

Hi Kent,

I read with great interest both Clark Besch's and your own "Chart Journey" stories recently and you both inspired me to share my own.

The year was 1974 and I was eight years-old at the time.  I had two older twin brothers (born in 1960), so they were teenagers and constantly listening to the local Top 40 radio stations in the Twin Cities area (mainly KDWB-AM.)  KDWB started airing American Top 40 in early 1974 and by August, me and my brother Kevin started to write down the Top 40 each week.  We were also buying 45s with our allowance money (my first 45 was "Earache My Eye" by Cheech & Chong) and we would sometimes do our own "Top 10" countdowns, though we weren't very consistent with that little game.  My brother eventually lost interest, but I continued to listen to AT40 and kept my own stats on peak position, weeks charted, etc.  I would sometimes pick up the local radio station surveys, but my main interest was always the national charts and AT40.

In the summer of 1979, I was looking at books at my local Target store and I spied a copy of the one and only American Top 40 Yearbook.  In the introduction, they mentioned the work of Joel Whitburn's Record Research, the very first time I ever saw that name.  In the summer of 1980 (at the age of 14), I took the bus to the big library in downtown Minneapolis, where I saw my first actual Record Research books and I was really hooked.  However, the books were too expensive to actually purchase, so I had to be content with copying the info that I wanted into a spiral notebook.  It wasn't until Joel published his first Top 40 Hits book, that I could actually afford to own a Record Research book.  In 1982, I decided to make my own weekly Top 10 chart and I talked a couple of buddies into doing one, too.  I would then combine those personal charts into one, another early spin on the Super Charts!  That went on for a few years until it finally fizzled out.

I attended college from 1984-88 and got heavily involved with the campus radio station.  All the while I was buying the Whitburn books and keeping up with the charts, even sending in corrections to Record Research from time-to-time.  After graduation, I got a full-time radio job at KDWA-AM in Hastings, MN, where I hosted the morning show and eventually became the Program Director.  I thought that radio would be my career, but my real passion was always music and the charts.  In the fall of 1991, KDWA was sold and the new owner brought in his own staff, so I was suddenly out of work.  After a few months of sending out tapes and resumes, I decided to write to Record Research with the slim hope that maybe I could work for them.  Lo and behold, they actually were looking to hire and by March of 1992, I had landed my "dream job" of working on the books that I had loved for so many years.

Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine that the little kid who kept track of the Top 40 each week would someday work side-by-side with the world's foremost chart authority and not only become a valued employee, but also a dear friend.  And many years later, even have the honor of delivering his eulogy. 

Thanks to the internet, us "chart geeks" can now get together and share our interests.  I'm sure many of us felt like we were the only ones into this stuff when we were younger.

Paul Haney

Record Research

I discovered my first Record Research chart book at the Rosary College Library one day during my lunch hour.  It was the very first book Joel had ever done, containing chart information thru 1969 with an “addendum” that listed all of the records that charted in 1970.  I was blown away, seeing SO many songs I had forgotten all about but recognized IMMEDIATELY the minute I saw the title and artist.  (The idea of Forgotten Hits was probably born in that instant!)

And, like you, I started copying all of these songs into a spiral notebook … and then looking them up to see how these same records performed here in Chicago.  (It also created my first “want lists” for record shows that were now happening monthly in our area.  I brought my check list with me every time, trying to find the records I wanted for my personal collection.)

When Joel’s first paperback edition came out ... (the one with the goldenrod cover) ...

 

... virtually EVERYBODY you saw at the show was carrying their copy with them (most rubberbanded together because the pages had come loose from the spine after so much use!)

It became the bible for record collecting at the time ... and proved IMMEDIATELY that these books were not just for radio stations and disc jockeys!  There was a whole world of music fans that would add these books ... and their subsequent updates ... to their libraries as well!

Yes, we geeks have our own unique set of memories … but it’s amazing how many of them overlap!  (kk)

 

Kent ...

Like you, I compiled my own weekly charts based on the surveys of local radio stations (in this case, WABC and WMCA in New York City.)  After listening to WABC on Tuesdays (Dan Ingram in the afternoon, then Cousin Brucie, who counted down the new Top 20, Tuesday evenings); then WMCA on Wednesdays (when Dan Daniel counted down the new Top 25, interspersing up-and-coming records from below the Top 25), I compiled my "Survey Top 60," which I subsequently typed up on two pages. 

 

Here's an example:

 

- Randy

 

Funnily enough, MY fake charts were called The Sound 60 Survey … and listed a total of sixty titles as well, for my fake radio station, WONE … Radio One, Chicago!  Man, I wish I had even a single copy to share … but I threw them away decades ago.  (I will say that I became quite the typist, working up these charts every week … the summer before I started high school, I took a typing class, thinking it would help me when it came time to write up reports and term papers.  I ended up acing the class and scored the fastest speed and accuracy amongst all students … they even gave me a trophy! … and I was the ONLY one there who wasn’t even officially a freshman yet … everyone else in the class was either a junior or senior.)  Of course, I don’t have that trophy anymore either! (lol)

It was all uphill from there once these soft-touch computer keyboards came out … back in MY day we were still using MANUAL computers … not even electric! Suffice to say I've been typing chart information in some fashion ever since! (kk)