Today's Beatles Post comes from Clark Besch ...
Here's the new Beatles '64 documentary coming soon!
"It won't be long till the film comes home to you."
Click on the blue: BEATLES ’64 - watch the new trailer.
Bruce Spizer has a cool offer for his Beatles books too!
Beatles '64 and the 1964 Sale is Back!
Some of the fun things from the 64 year of Beatlemania!!!
Lots of ads.....
Boys Capitol Starline gets momentary stardom in fall when help! and Yesterday were both riding 45 charts.
That iconic April 4 (my 8th birthday) chat!
Tommy Roe opening for fabs' first Feb 11, 1964 concert in DC with the "Roemans" in front of stage!
AND 90 year old Ron Riley was right there for their Chicago appearance. He was such a Beatlemania fan of the day and did so much to promote as many DJs did.
Ron was not quite to WLS by the time that Biondi had become the first DJ in the nation to play a Beatles record ("Please, Please Me," listed as the "Beattles" on the 1963 Vee Jay 45 copies) on the air in February, 1963, but within three weeks of Ron's hiring to WLS, he would be playing their "From me To You" by Del Shannon as it climbed to #15 on the WLS Silver Dollar Survey. It would still not be until the first week of the new year, 1964, when he would be spinning a new record BY the actual Beatles (the survey still listing the group as "Beattles.")
"I Want to Hold Your Hand" took the country by storm and WLS
was right there in the thick of it. By
mid-February, the Beatles had #1 and #2 and a month later held numbers 1 thru 4
on the station's survey! That March 20th
chart showed #2 as the same song that WLS had nationally premiered just over a
year earlier, making it to a peak of #2 after reaching only #35 in a three week run
in March, 1963.
That mid-February Silver Dollar Survey would not include a
song by the band that garnered WLS a Billboard front page headline story the same
week. The Beatles had four 45s and three
albums already charting on the national record charts that week and their music
was all over the radio nationwide.
Beatlemania was late to the States, yet was finally here to stay in a big way. There were 38 songs available on the above
records and you heard most of them hourly on any Top 40 station around the
country. The band had just arrived in
the US from England and had been on Ed Sullivan and done their first US
concerts -- all on the east coast, but WLS got Chicago into the Beatlemania news,
too. The WLS February 21 survey was
rechristened the "Silver Beatle Survey" for one week. While holding down #1, #2 and #30 on it,
requests and airplay of LP cuts was now thru the roof at the station and that
week's survey had an additional treat.
The back side featured all seven WLS DJs sporting Beatles wigs, each
designated with their own individual Beatle nickname. "Ringo Ron Riley" was the evening
guy's name and the slogan got used much more over the years, than any of the others
would.
With 38 songs to play already, WLS managed a "scoop" the other radio stations in town by playing Beatle music that no one else seemed to have. It would be the first of many Beatles scoops over the coming years, which made WLS a "go to" for hearing Beatles "exclusives."
WLS started playing a really good 39th song that no one could buy! In fact, not even their new US Beatles record label (Capitol records) people seemed to know how they had it. Dealers scrambled about to find it. Altho today, their rendition of Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven" is well known, in February, 1964, that song was not available in the US in VERY early 1964 on any 45 or album! WLS was playing it from a then obscure late 1963 Canadian issued 45, which was at the time (in Canada) the big new followup of the Beatles' first Canadian national hit, "She Loves You." For some reason, USA Capitol Records had omitted the song from their "Meet the Beatles" album and it was now causing quite a stir. Suddenly, fans were clamoring for this rarity. In March, demand was so great that imported Canadian copies were flowing into the States and it actually was the U.S.' 5th charting Beatles single, altho none were being pressed in this country. It might have done well, had not "Can't Buy Me Love" been released as Capitol's followup to "I Want To Hold Your Hand" just a week later.
Ron Riley and Art Roberts were on the Beatles bandwagon quickly. For five days in February, Ron asked listeners to send in cards and win during a give away of 25 Beatles wigs and 45s. By week's end, he had 7,000 cards and more coming. Roberts told his listeners that if he got 10,000 cards, he would get a Beatle haircut. When the contest closed, there had been 9112 cards and Art was "saved." Both DJ's pushed a Beatles fan club, offering pictures of the fabs as well as one of either DJ. Capitol printed 25,000 Beatles photos initially for the station! It's a bit surprising that Ron never recorded a 45 to go with Beatlemania, as he would clap and sing along with their records on his show. In 1964, he would also get Beatles inside scoops by chatting with George Harrison's sister, Louise Caldwell, who lived in downstate Illinois then.
The above happened in just the first two months of
US 1964 Beatlemania. Ron was even playing the
German language version of "I Want To Hold Your Hand!" On the evening of April 16, 1964, Art and Ron
got their first of a few "live" interactions with the Beatles. Through a trans-Atlantic phone hook up, the
two Chicago DJs got the rare chance to speak to all four Beatles for 20+
minutes total, asking several questions of each group member. The fab four were actually in EMI recording
studios at the time, working on music for their first feature film, which was
mostly complete at that stage. As the historical
record of that day now proves, it turned out that just prior to that phone
conversation, the fabs had (just within the past hours) completed all nine takes of
the new film's title song. In another
WLS Beatles' "exclusive," it was revealed for the first time that the
film would be called "A Hard Day's Night." That fact would be revealed to the world the
next day, but WLS had the scoop first.
The song recorded just prior to the interview was indeed the title track
to the film, which would be in theaters three months later. In September, when the movie premiered in
Chicago, he and four lucky winning girls (selected at random from write ins)
of an "A Hard Day's Night" contest, got their pics in Billboard
magazine. Ron escorted the four to dinner,
the movie and each received a copy of the soundtrack album!
Ron would continue to play Beatles A and B sides as well as
new LP cuts as he received them, by hook or crook. WLS would play UK early LP cuts before they were available in the US. Ron really became locked in on his
Beatlemaniac teens and when one of his 13 year old fans in a cancer hospital in
Missouri wrote to him, he reciprocated by sending her a 6 1/2 foot tall picture
of her fave fab four: Ringo Starr!
Along with all of the Beatlemania, Ron was doing weekly sock hops. This was not a new phenomenon for WLS DJ stars, but with the Beatles' rise to fame, a whole crop of teen "combos" erupted in the Chicago area and WLS jocks now would do their hops and dances spinning records and alternating onstage together with or without bands. Ron and the others would take a box of records and head to dances where sometimes two or three bands played, lots of pictures and autographs would be given out, with up to six dance contests and tons of LPs given away and the mayhem of being celebrities ensued for all. Often, the exposure from these dances might cause the DJ's to send a local record label to come see the bands and possibly give them that big break these combos needed. It was not unlikely that the bands might play for that "exposure" for free, especially at fund raisers for charities. At the same time, often, Ron would find many local 45s good enough to get programmed on the air at WLS, so the hops were mutually beneficial. Ron would work with promotion men and group managers like his brother Jim Scully and Carl Bonafede among those.
One of the last puzzle pieces to be added to the WLS lineup
was when afternoon survey countdown guy, Bob Hale, was fired in April of '64,
just as Beatlemania was peaking. Ron got
to be his replacement, counting down to #1 for a week after Hale suddenly
departed. It just happened to be the
week of WLS' fourth anniversary as a Top
40 station (May 1), so the survey was 20 songs current and 20 deemed the
"best records of the station's first four years." Oldies were always a big thing for WLS, as
their "souvenir weekends" and special weeks to look back on the
origins of the Top 40 era were always big ratings grabbers throughout the 60's
and until the WLS format change in 1987.
The British music invasion helped make WLS the undisputed leader in Chicago teen radio in 1964. In the music trade Billboard magazine's
Halloween, 1964 issue, they printed Chicago's radio ratings. WLS took a huge 46% share of the pop 45s
audience crowd with six others grabbing the scraps (WIND second highest at 36%). WLS won every DJ time slot! Despite Art Roberts' 36% share for his time
slot (after moving into ratings leader Dick Biondi's spot at night a year
earlier), Ron Riley won the individual jock battle with a 40% share of the
listener audience at night. Later on in
June, 1965, an Esquire mag poll still rated Ron and Art #1-#2 in Chicago.
