Some Of Your Mid-Week Comments

Kent!

I thought I'd share that old, obscure Forgotten Hit, "Rockin' Goose," just for Fun, never thinking about the other Goose references it would bring up! 

Another Hit Song!  A Dee Jay!  A Baseball Player!  A Record Promoter?!  Who knew?!

Some I have heard of, a couple I hadn't!  

Anyway, now we all know, "The Bird's the Word!"

Buell!

We love goosin’ our audience! (lol)

Fact is, you just never know what you’re going to see … or hear … in Forgotten Hits!!!

(That’s what keeps it fun and exciting!)  kk

Kent,

Thanks for posting the Rivieras’ H.B. GOOSESTEP. I had forgotten all about that instrumental. Week-nighter Jim "Goose" Bowman would play that occasionally when he was going off the air.

This weekend during the football games I twice saw a commercial that I hadn't seen before. It was promoting Google I-Phone or something like that … but the background music was Nancy Sinatra's SUGAR TOWN. Always like this time of year when new commercials come out with background music from years gone by. Wonder who picks them. 

Larry

LOVE “Sugar Town!!!”  That and “Summer Wine” are probably my two favorite Nancy Sinatra songs.  Incredible to think that they each shared one side of the same 45!  (kk)

And then this …

Kent,

STOP THE PRESSES!!!

I just now saw another commercial that I don't believe I have seen before with backdrop music of days gone by. The commercial was for TARGET Department Stores with the song in the background NEVER ON SUNDAY by the Chordettes. I somewhat liked the instrumental version by Don Costa better.

Larry

Oh, that one’s been running for quite a while now … annoyingly so here in Chicago where they’ll sometimes run it twice during the same commercial break … allowing you to see (and hear it) up to six times during a single one hour television program!  (We actually heard it EIGHT times during last week's episode of 20/20 ... talk about burn out!)

I don’t get the connection to the store and the song … you’d think Sundays would be their biggest shopping days each week!  Why would you say “never on a Sunday”?!?!?  It’d be bad for business!

But I’ve always liked this tune.  According to Joel Whitburn’s Top Pop Singles book, it charted by three different artists during the 1960-1961 era.  The Chordettes had the biggest hit (#13 in 1961) while Don Costa’s instrumental peaked at #19 the year before.  It also went to #88 for Lale Anderson in 1961 as the foreign version titled “Ein Schiff Wird Kommen (A Ship Will Come)” … which has absolutely NOTHING to do with the song we know as “Never On Sunday” other than sharing its melody.  (Betcha didn’t know that!!!  Or that we’d feature it here in Forgotten Hits!!!!!)  kk

Kent, 

Talking about Dex Card's Wild Goose got me to working on a tape that was an audience recording 55 years old from Summer, 1970 when the Ides of March were even hotter than they are today!  Dex was just one of my very first fave jocks at the Big 89 and I miss listening to him and the other WLS DJs.  

This attached tape has Dex' emcee comments at the start of the gig as the band launches into their (attached) version of "Feelin' Alright" (one I dont think they ever recorded in studio?)  The quality is very suspect, but it is MUCH better than it was before I worked on it.  I just wanted to give kudos to three greats:  Dex Card and the Ides of March and THE WILD GOOSE! 

Clark Besch

 

Hi Kent,

I noticed that you’re advertising for The Video Beat, where I bought a number of DVDs in the past. Beat Club has had its own youtube channel for a while already : https://www.youtube.com/@beatclub

They also have videoclips from Beat Beat Beat on there.

Kind regards

Ben

Some GREAT vintage clips on here if you click on the ”videos” tab.  (Some are just short snippets but some are full-length live performances … gives you an idea as to what the show was all about.

I’m not necessarily “advertising for The Video Beat” … but I, too, have purchased a number of great videos from them in the past.  The fact that they are now offering heavily discounted collections of vintage television shows like “Shindig!,” “Hullabaloo” and “The Beat Club” is what caught my eye.  Just about anybody who was anybody appeared on these programs back in the day … so I’m just spreading the word that these programs are now available (some even with the original TV commercials!) in case anyone is interested.  (I wish I could buy the complete sets of all three programs but that’s beyond my budget right now!)  You should know that I don’t get any kind of commission or compensation for directing you to these programs … it’s purely a “common interest” sort of thing on my end to let you know that they exist … and are now available at a great rate.  (kk)

While Rush doesn’t figure into our normal topics of discussion, their reunion tour to honor recently deceased drummer Neil Peart WAS considered major news this past weekend as tickets are already going on sale.  (Rush DID place eight songs on our TOP 3333 MOST ESSENTIAL CLASSIC ROCK TRACKS list a couple of year ago … with five of them - “The Spirit Of The Radio” - #408, “Closer To The Heart” - #466, “Tom Sawyer” - #488, “Limelight” - #553 and “New World Man” - #819 - all making The Top 1000.)  Soldier on, guys!  (kk)

Well, you certainly know how to distract a guy for two or three hours!

That July '69 chart from WMAK is packed with gems we could talk about for hours and hours. 

 

The first thing that stands out is all the great music in the Top 20 that Oldies Radio has never touched - or has touched a time or two and then ignored. Not that there are really any Oldies stations remaining. Yeah, we may hear the biggest hits from time to time, but when have we heard Desmond Dekker or The Buchanan Brothers? Or Teresa Graves' cover of "A Time For Us"?

But since we're all about Forgotten Hits, a deep dive into the rest of that chart is well worth the effort - and that's why I'm writing this email. The next twenty tracks on that chart were played enough for them to be remembered by WMAK listeners. WMAK was a real Top 40 station that actually played all 40 tracks, so those rarities are still fresh in my memory. 

You may remember the genius of Curt Boettcher, but you might not be familiar with his awesome cover of "In My Room" as the group Sagittarius. 

Soul singer Johnny Adams' track "Reconsider Me" will make you keep listening if you give it twenty seconds. He wasn't intending to be a Tom Jones soundalike, but that's what you'll hear. 

Pop music fans will usually remember the tracks from The Rugbys, or the band Illusion, or Cat Mother. Bet you haven't heard them in ages. We all remember The Dells and their hit "There Is" - but it's not so likely that you'll remember their mashup of "Love Is Blue" and "Rainbow." You won't regret giving it a listen. Don't miss the tracks from Candi Staton or The Joe Jeffery Group. Or Unchained Minds/Mynds - a regional hit only heard in a few markets.

As a Nashville station, there's clearly a strong influence from Memphis, Nashville, and Muscle Shoals on this chart. But that's what happens when radio is local and music is added to playlists by local people who are friends with the artists and promoters - and willing to give them a chance.

David Lewis

There are some real gems on this list.  In addition to "Medicine Man" and "Israelites" (both of which we have featured before in Forgotten Hits and LONG campaigned for their well-deserved placement back into oldies playlists), we have also featured tracks like "Quentin's Theme," "Good Old Rock And Roll," "My Pledge Of Love," "Abergavenny" and "Let Me" by Paul Revere and the Raiders with Mark Lindsay's infamous scream at the end.  Roy Clark was hot at the time thanks to the hit TV show "Hee Haw" ... so his country hit "Yesterday When I Was Young" was getting a lot of airplay on the pop stations as well.

 

We did a whole feature on The Illusion's One Hit Wonder "Did You See Her Eyes" ... and "You, I" by The Rugbys was a big hit in Kentucky and Tennessee ... and also went to #7 here in Chicago, too.  (My brother Mark used to play the heck out of that record!)  And because of my love of the Sagittarius hit "My World Fell Down," I was also drawn to their version of The Beach Boys' tune "In My Room." There was a strong Beach Boys connection to this band.

 

"Reconsider Me" is a GREAT track that I discovered when I was trying to put together my own collection of National Top 40 Hits a few decades back ... and "We Can't Go On This Way" proved to be a very successful "local hit" for The Unchained Mynds.  This one never ever cracked The Hot 100 in Billboard ... and only climbed as high as #96 in Cash Box and Record World ... yet here it sits at #4 in The Country Music Capital Of The World!!!  (This group hailed from the Midwest, making it an even more unlikely hit in Tennessee.)  I think the only one that you mentioned that I'm not familiar with is the Teresa Graves tune "A Time For Us" ... but I dug that one out, too!!!

 

Our FH Buddy Scott Shannon had just joined the station ... and would soon be named The Disc Jockey Of The Year!  My family used to take summer vacation trips to Nashville (my mom was a big country music fan) so I would listen to WMAK every time we went.  (Finding a Top 40 Pop Station was a little difficult down there at the time ... but WMAK made radio exciting for 16-year-old me.)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOmV4MAcHN0

(you'll hear a snippets of a few of these tunes on this 1969 WMAK sound clip)  kk 

And a quick thank you before we go ...

We set a brand new Forgotten Hits record last month when just over 208,000 of you guys visited the website during the month of September.  Wow!!!  Not sure what spurred it, but at that rate we'd be receiving nearly 2.5 million viewers per year ... which I already know is never gonna happen ... we've only got about 7.3 million viewers overall at this point ... but to whatever we can attribute the surge, THANK YOU!!!  Just keep spreading the good word!!! (kk)