FORGOTTEN HITS

Thursday, November 21, 2024

Thursday This And That

Love the new AI images and concept …

And I for one am looking forward to tonight's Premier!

Can't Wait!!

Buell!

It has been suggested that I might be the perfect candidate to feature in a recurring role on the brand new “Suits” reboot launching in January. (Now if I only REALLY looked like that!!!) kk

Hi Kent,

Another "wiper" song is "Drivin' My Life Away" by Eddie Rabbitt, which contains the line "Those windshield wipers slappin' out a tempo..."

Paul Haney

Oh man, I LOVE that song!!! Great suggestion Paul! (kk)

(I actually used to sing that one back in the day!)

(Yep ... just like that!!!) lol (kk)

I know of two other songs with windshield wipers in the lyrics.

The well-known song is Me And Bobby McGee ("windshield wipers slappin' time, I was holdin' Bobby's hand in mine.") The more obscure song is one of R. Dean Taylor's unsuccessful follow-ups to Indiana Wants Me, a song called Gotta See Jane ("windshield wipers splishing splashing, calling out her name, just gotta see Jane.")

Doug

Damn! “Me And Bobby McGee” is a GREAT idea! (kk)

And somebody else remembered R. Dean Taylor’s 1971 hit, too …

Following up on Friday's post, "Gotta See Jane" by R. Dean Taylor has a line about windshield wipers "splishin' and a splashin’."

David Cousins

It’s not an AWFUL song … it just never really made it. (Again, a rather wide discrepancy as to just how popular it really was … Cash Box pegged it at #48 while Record World showed it ten points lower at #58 … and then Billboard dropped it nearly another ten spots down to #67. (kk)

Hi Kent,

Just thought of another one this morning ...

"Getting Closer" by Wings has the line "Watching my wind screen wipers..."

Paul Haney

Kent,

Glad you posted I WANNA MEET YOU by the Cryan’ Shames. One of my all time favorites by them. For the week of November 24, 1966, it made its initial appearance on our weekly top 40 radio survey at position #49. Two weeks later it peaked at #27 before it fell off the survey. Should have been a bigger hit than what it was.

Larry

kk …

Remember the old Leave It To Beaver TV Show?

Wild Wayne Just Played Two Songs By The Beaver.

1962 = "DON'T YOU CRY" / Jerry Mathers

1966 = "HAPPYNESS IS HAVIN'" / Beaver & The Trappers

I Didn't Know That He Did Any Recordings!

MANY years ago we did a piece on Jerry Mathers’ brief recording career and featured a couple of tunes from him …

I scoured the archives trying to find them but had no success …

It would have been cool to see if they were the same two tunes!!!

(By the way, I LOVED the old “Leave It To Beaver” series … but can easily live without the dozens of reboots they’ve done since!) kk

Sad to learn of Colin Petersen's passing. Amazingly, Colin drummed for the Bee Gees until mid-1969, thus playing on many hits. He passed away today.

Hard to believe but true, Bee Gees drummer Dennis Bryon died just four days ago! He was the band's drummer, 1974-80, during the disco years. He and Ringo are the only two drummers to play on all five Top Five Hot 100 hits in one week. He had been in Amen Corner in the 60s.

Geoff Bridgford might be worried? He was the last non-Gibb OFFICIAL member of the Bee Gees for one year after replacing Colin. However, Geoff's group Tin Tin had a hit and he was off. Stigwood wanted him to stay on with Bee Gees, but he didn't want to work with the brothers anymore due to their drinking. Geoff still is alive!

Sad to learn of Shel Talmy passing, too. Shel, of course, produced all those amazing British 1964/65/66 hits and misses from the Kinks to the Who to the Easybeats and many, many more.

And now we’ve lost Vic, too, after Shel Talmy? Is this another of THOSE weeks? ABC news actually on the ball and had nice tribute on evening news!

Clark Besch

Oh no - I hadn’t heard about Vic …

He was a good friend to Forgotten Hits, even tho we haven’t spoken for several years.

A couple of times we were going to meet up in Las Vegas – once with Billy Hinsche - but that never happened either … and now they’re both gone.

Looks like he passed away on the 14^th.

This is very sad news. (kk)

I just did a quick search on the Forgotten Hits site to see what might pop up for Vic Flick ...

Looks like this was a conversation we shared (WAY back in 2009!) after the passing of Gordon Waller of Peter and Gordon ...

Along with a few other fun and insightful comments ...

http://forgottenhits60s.blogspot.com/search?q=Vic+Flick&updated-max=2012-09-29T20:18:00-07:00&max-results=20&start=6&by-date=false

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

BEATLE TALK: Beatlemania, 60 Years Later

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.

Here's a segment of that Beatlemania period I took out of a paper I wrote for the new upcoming "Riley" documentary. This is the 1964 year at WLS, basically.

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.

"Beethoven" never got an official U.S. 45 release then, but by the end of March, a semi-local band, the Princeton 5, had their 45 version released and on the WLS chart, thanks in large part to Ron's brother, Jim Scully's promotional actions on the local record. Jim often helped Ron at record hops and was already a very prominent record promo man in the Chicago area and, by decade's end, would rise to a high executive position in the Columbia Records' Chicago branch. Ron did his fair share of promoting the Princeton 5's new Beatles cover record when he held a record hop with the band on April 10th at the school of which he was a graduate over a decade earlier: Antioch High School, which was celebrating its 50th anniversary that year (and by chance, Ron Riley's 30th birthday year, too)! On occasion, Jim and Ron both appeared together at high school events as co-masters of ceremony.

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.

WCFL would switch to top 40 in 1965, but for the magical year of 1964, WLS ruled much of the midwest as well as the Windy City.

Can't wait for the new documentary to see the light of day!

Ya get all of that George?

Here's me with my 1964 original "She Loves You" first ever 45 bought in early 64.

Despite the tattered edges of the sleeve from being thumb tacked to my pegboard wall hanging, AND (if you look closely), you can see that despite what the record label says, "Don't Drop Out", the 45 shows 2" below the bottom of the sleeve because ifthe sleeve splits any more, it WILL drop out!

I still cant part with it!

And lastly, something that wont show up in the documentary would be when the Besch brothers played Willroad's Gardens (believe it or not, a Dodge City, Kansas "suburb")!

FORGOTTEN HITS

Thursday, November 21, 2024

Thursday This And That

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

BEATLE TALK: Beatlemania, 60 Years Later

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