I hope you caught the latest Chart Journey sent in by FH Reader Clark Besch (and published on the site last Sunday … scroll back if you happened to miss it)
I enjoy Clark Besch’s chart journeys as I, too, used to keep my own charts showing the biggest hits of the day.
As early as 1965 (I was 11 at the time), I remember being assigned the task of creating my own graph for school, showing the relationship of some personal poll or research that I was to do …
My decision was to take that week’s local surveys (Top Tunes of Greater Chicago and the WLS Silver Dollar Survey) and map out a list of what these charts showed as the hits – then add my own opinions as to my personal favorites – and then poll my classmates to find out what THEIR favorites were – to see how my research results compared to the charts that were out on the street in the City Of Chicago in early May of 1965.
Another side premise was the fact that “Ticket To Ride” had not yet made it to #1 here in Chicago … which I found to be unthinkable! So, as a bonus question, I asked my voters at the end of my survey of favorites: “Should ‘Ticket To Ride’ be a #1 record?” (It eventually DID top the Top Tunes chart … but stalled at #2 on The Big 89.)
Once WCFL came along, I would pick up BOTH charts every Friday on the way home from school and then re-rank Chicago’s biggest hits based on the consensus of this chart information … so essentially my idea of The Super Chart was actually born in 1966! It just took me forty years … and meeting Randy Price … to make them a reality! Lol)
Each week, I would type up my own Top 40 list based on the results of that ranking system … and, because it was done on a point system and the two charts varied enough from time to time, records that never made it to #1 on EITHER chart would top mine. (I wish I would have saved them … and I did for YEARS … but I outgrew the weekly ritual in 1968 when all of a sudden WCFL stop publishing their charts and only put up a poster on display in the record departments instead. When they resumed printing surveys for distribution in 1970, I started the process up again … only to have WLS stop printing THEIR charts in 1972!
Honestly, by then I was already out of high school and working a real job … and it just didn’t seem as important anymore. Who could have EVER have guessed that I’d still be talking about this some fifty years later!!! Or that so many others would be joining in on the conversation!!! (kk)
TICKET TO RIDE ...
at its Chicagoland peaks
While I no longer have my graph or my research results, here is what I DO remember ...
LJ Hauser Jr High in Riverside, IL, voted THESE songs as their favorites:
#1 - Silhouettes - Herman's Hermits
#2 - Ticket To Ride - The Beatles
#3 - Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter - Herman's Hermits
#4 - I Know A Place - Petula Clark
#5 - Go Now - The Moody Blues
Safe to say, The British Invasion was alive and well in May of 1965 in Chicago!
Oh and yes ... overwhelmingly students felt that "Ticket To Ride" deserved to be a #1 Record.
As a side note, I have to pay my respects to The Besch Boys for sharing their record collection and hobby of recording programs off the radio.
I was one of three brothers who also loved and collected music -
But you didn't DARE touch each other's stash!!!
And because once I accumulated enough 45's to do so, I used do my own pretend countdown show, I sometimes needed to "borrow" a song or two, just to keep things interesting. (They weren't around when I was living my radio fantasy anyway ... so no one was ever the wiser as I always put things back where I found them!!!)
And one thing that really helped ... especially toward the late '60's ... was the fact that we usually had drastically different tastes in music ... so while I may have been playing "Crystal Blue Persuasion," "Sugar, Sugar," "Tracy" and "Come Together" from my own collection, I also had access to some of the heavier tunes that were all over the airwaves at the time, like "White Room" by Cream, "You, I" by The Rugbys and "Polk Salad Annie" by Tony Joe White, all favorites of my brothers. (I also remember playing the heck out of their copies of "Medicine Man" by The Buchanan Brothers and "Israelites" by Desmond Dekker and the Aces, records I loved but didn't have to buy because they were already in the house in THEIR collections!) kk
