The love for Casey's Countdown Continues today in Forgotten Hits ...
CASEY KASEM / AMERICAN TOP 40
Thoroughly enjoyed your reminiscences about AT40. No one did it quite like Casey. The show just wasn’t the same after he left.
Rick O’Dell
Me-TV-Fm
Kent,
I listened to Paul Haney guesting on Ron Gerber's "Crap from the Past" show just now. Good show, especially the second half when they discussed a lot of Billboard and RR and AT40. Boy, Ron's show must REALLY be named correctly since it is already on "Internet Archives" site! Haha.
Anyway, I had never heard the Letterman Top 10 list that Casey did nor Survivor's biggest hit as Casey introduced it for the first time on AT40. The Letterman bit was HILARIOUS!
As to Billboard, Paul and the hosts did what I did about a decade earlier. Billboard was too expensive, and I, too, would write down the last week positions in the store and go home and fill in the songs from previous weeks. I still have those. Then, like those guys, it was in our library, but I had to actually FOLD the Hot 100 and put on copier that way to get all the songs onto 11” x 17" copy paper because that was the only way to do it without costing me a second dime! This was 70's and early 80s.
They played ads from AT40 on Ron's show, but at the end of the first AT40 year, the MGM label actually advertised their new releases on the show. I always thought it was a bit of payola in a way. I'd be taping the show and on comes a big announcer talking about the great new Bill Medley, Bob Summers and Bobby Bloom 45s and believe me, I eventually bought them because I really LIKED the songs, even tho only one was a minor hit. Maybe that is why MGM didn't do it for long(?) I still have those ads on tape on AT40. They were cool, but I always wondered about payola situation.
They talked about all the classic NON-45 tracks showing in one book and how they fudged on some extras. Hey, "Stairway To Heaven," "Pinball Wizard" "All My Love" deserved their place, but I also agreed with Paul on including "Gallow's Poll," "Isn’t She Lovely" and I agreed with the hosts with the GREAT "Love Is Like a Rock" (actually a 45) and Allan Clarke singing lead on Alan Parsons' "Breakdown." I would throw in "The Stranger" by Billy Joel and "Georgia" by Boz Scaggs, too. (Of course, I still say that "Michelle" would have been the biggest Beatles single to date in 65, had it been a Christmastime release.)
Anyway, cool show, guys!
Clark Besch
I finally had the chance to listen to the whole show on Friday and really enjoyed it … an interesting and stimulating conversation that made you want to jump in from time to time to make a point or raise a question.
American Top 40 and Joel Whitburn’s Record Research books are INSTITUTIONS for all us music and chart freaks … the fact that they both launched at the same time is pretty amazing, all by itself!
I agree … good show, guys. (Listen Link is posted again below.) kk
Hi there Kent,
Theoretically I could have heard that very first American Top Forty program on the July 4th weekend in 1970 on WMEX in Boston. If the first program had occurred in mid-June, I definitely would have heard it,
because I would have still been at the Perkins School for the blind in
Watertown just outside Boston. But by the July 4th weekend, I was home in Shelburne Vermont, just outside the state's largest city of Burlington.
I first heard an American Top Forty program during Valentine's day
weekend on WDRC AM and FM in Hartford Connecticut, and they promoted it heavily, ironically with the long introduction to Chicago's song Beginnings under WDRC Program Director Charlie Parker's voice. I can't swear to this, but I don't think this song was on the WDRC survey at the time, but I had never heard it until that first American Top Forty show I got to hear.
I heard the song 1900 Yesterday by Liz Damon's Orient Express for the first time ever on that AT-40 show. I remember thinking at the time, "This song belongs on an easy listening chart, but not a top forty chart," and yet just a couple of months previous, It's Impossible by Perry Como, which was definitely another easy listening song, had also made the top forty.
Anyway in September of 1970 I had changed schools, and was now attending the Oak Hill School for the blind in Hartford, Connecticut, and I listened to AT-40 quite regularly on WDRC.
During the Easter break from school, I ended up back in Vermont, and one Saturday afternoon, I discovered that American Top Forty was running on WKDR 1070 in Plattsburgh New York, right acruss Lake Champlain from Burlington, so that's the station that was running the program in the greater Burlington area. I remember hearing songs like If by Bread, Eighteen by Alice Cooper, Woodstock by Matthews' Southern Comfort and many more.
I also remember that he told one of his famous stories about a man that won a dance marathon contest back in the thirties, and his name was Frank LoVecchio … but you probbly know him better as Frankie Laine … and then he played Mule Train from 1949.
In the summer of 1971, we vacationed on Cape Cod, and there I could hear WMEX in Boston and one of Casey's American Top Forty shows. I am pretty sure it was the show for the week of July 25th and 26th, 1971. I think that Watermark was still distributing the shows on tape, and I don't know what the heck happened during this particular show, but there was an echo in the recording, that was especially noticeable during Marvin Gaye's first notes of Mercy Mercy Me, (The Ecology), which was number 15. Presumably, they dubbed these shows off on high speed duplicators, but it almost sounded like it was copied in real time, and then the pot for the output of the tape machine was left open, causing that echo.
By June of 1972, my Dad had been transferred to Columbus, Ohio, and in December, I discovered that American Top Forty was being heard on WNCI-FM in Columbus. I listened to the show quite religiously until 1975, when I stopped liking a lot of the top forty songs that were coming out, because disco was becoming big.
In 1975, I began an oldies show on ten-watt WFAC-FM in Columbus, and I got the bright idea to ask Casey if he'd be willing to record a couple of liners for my Sam Ward's Memory Lane Oldies Show. I even sent a five
inch reel of tape to him, and several months later I got it back, with a
note explaining that he couldn't do a liner for my show, because his voice was already being heard on another radio station in Columbus. But here's the rub ...
My name is Sam, but he addressed me as Dear Bill, and that kind of bummed me out that he didn't even address me by my proper name, especially knowing how careful Casey always was with things like that.
If anyone still has any of those old American Top 40 Airchecks cassettes that were produced during 1976, on one of the cassettes (and I just can't remember which one it was now, perhaps the one featuring Kansas City radio stations), there's a rather fascinating interview with Casey, in which he talked about being fired from WBNY in Buffalo for
insubordination. Casy had told them that you can't run a radio station in Buffalo from New York, because the two radio markets are very
different, and I guess the Program Director didn't like being told what to do by this young whipper snapper. Anyway, those are some of my
memories of Casey Kasem and American Top Forty.
Oh, I guess I've saved the best story for last.
In February of 1983, I went up to Berlin, New Hampshire, to a little radio station called WMOU, hoping that I might get a job there. On Sunday, October 8, 1972, I had heard Casey welcome WMOU to the American Top Forty family on WDRC-FM in Hartford, which I could still hear at Nathaniel Hawthorne College in Antrim, New Hampshire, that I was attending at the time.
Anyway, in February of 1983, I met Jeff Penney, the Program Director at WMOU, and the next day, we got together and drank a few beers, and he told me that he had eleven American Top Forty shows on record between October of 1972, and October of 1973. But he said he really didn't have room for them in his apartment so he was going to throw them out. I said, "Hey, if you're going to throw them out, I'll take them off your hands. Give them to me." Well, we continued drinking and I forgot about that conversation until three weeks later when this huge package arrived in Columbus, Ohio, and it was those eleven American Top Forty shows. Some of the records are near mint, but some of the later ones were missing inner sleeves and were in pretty rough shape. A friend of mine is planning to digitize them for me, but he has promised he'll do so many things for so many people that there are just not enough hours in the day to do everything he's promised people. He's a real procrastinator, unfortunately.
Anyway, I hope you folks have enjoyed my musings about Casey Kasem.
Sam Ward
I can’t remember what station American Top 40 aired on here in Chicago (my first guess was WBBM-FM … but I think it moved around a bit over the years) but I do remember that once or twice they aired the discs out of sequence (and obviously nobody at the station was paying attention because they stayed that way, counting down out of order and jumping around before finally getting to #1!)
Looking it up online, they show WDHF and WMET (which is what WDHF changed their call letters to in 1976), so that must be right. I just know that Chicago was a bit late to the party in airing this program … I absolutely remember listening to the program in late 1974 / early 1975 because I, too, used to write down the songs as Casey counted them down … and I clearly remember “Best Of My Love” by The Eagles reaching #1 … and “Boogie On Reggae Woman” hitting #3 … which more than likely would have been early ’75 because “Have You Never Been Mellow” was way up there on the chart that week, too. Just hard to believe that Chicago was four years behind the market in securing a piece of this monster franchise! (kk)
And then this …
Hi there Kent,
If you decide to add my rather lengthy musings about Casey Kasem to one of your posts, when I am talking about that American Airchecks magazine interview that Casey did in 1976, could you please add this link to my original post?
By the way Kent, that's not all I found.
I actually found a brief aircheck of Casey on WBNY in Buffalo, and it's hard to believe it's even him, he sounds so different.
He was wild back in those days at WJW in Cleveland and WBNY in Buffalo back in 1959 and '60. I also found an aircheck from 1962 when he was on KEWB in Oakland, and now he was starting to sound like the Casey we all know, and his style developed further on KRLA in Pasadena.
I also found part of that first American Top Forty program from July 4, 1970, but this was when they re-ran the show five years later, and it was aired on WPIX in New York. I also found the original moog American Top Forty Theme in stereo, and I've never heard it in stereo before. I just wish it was of somewhat better quality.
Obviously, there's a lot of cool Casey stuff out there.
Then of course, there are the out-takes.
Anyway, take care, and have a great weekend.
All the best,
Sam Ward
Casey’s radio career began at the dawn of the rock and roll era … so when you hear him in airchecks from the late ‘50’s and early ‘60’s, he’s just emulating all of the other fast-talking jocks that were on the radio at the time. Back then, everything was exciting and new … and to get and hold your listeners’ attention, the disc jockeys had to come up with clever gimmicks to sort of “trademark” their acts. Casey did the fast-talking that the other jocks were doing and also fit in character voices and comedy bits. (He even billed himself as “Casey At The Mike”!)
Years later, in 1962 when Casey was working at KEWB, after a production manager policy change-over, they basically told him (in no uncertain terms) STOP TALKING LIKE THAT!!!
So he did … which is when he began to develop the sound and style that we all know and love today. (A good part of that success was turning himself into the “informative jock” who told back stories about the songs and artists … a trait that would serve him well throughout his 18 year run at American Top 40 several years later.) It’s an interesting progression if you spot check his airchecks along the way. (kk)
>>>And we're just one tune away from the singer with the $10,000 gold hubcaps on his car! (from Casey Kasem’s first American Top 40 Broadcast)
>>>This was one of Casey's first " TEASES " on the first show. I got this right from the horse’s mouth … Mark Lindsay. The singer with “way too much money to spend” was Mark Lindsay, lead singer for Paul Revere & Raiders, who had a solo hit, "SILVER BIRD," on the first American Top 40 Chart. (FB)
Here's the rest of that story as told by Mark Lindsay in Rob Durkee’s book, “American Top 40: The Countdown Of The Century”:
“When Casey was giving his intro to the first American Top 40 show, he teased a story about a rock singer’s unique car. In the payoff story, Casey mentioned that Mark Lindsay, at number 39 with ‘Silver Bird,’ drives a Rolls Royce Phantom Five with gold-plated hubcaps. Lindsay was still a member of the group Paul Revere and the Raiders, but had begun a solo career in 1969. As the singer recalled, ‘George Barris, who did the Batmobile for the Batman show, told me, ‘Let me spiff it up for you’ … and he did. All the chrome and hubcaps were gold. I asked him, ‘What’s this gonna cost me, a million bucks?’ He told me, ‘Look, between you and me, I put a little bit of gold lacquer in the brass coating, so you can say it’s real gold.’ So there was gold … but I had probably had as much gold in my feelings.”
DIDJAKNOW?: When “American Top 40” was about to launch, Ron Jacobs flew to Dallas to have a jingles package done … you know, the stuff you hear EVERYWHERE these days … a chorus of girls singing “Number 23,” etc.
But he ALSO wanted to create some bumper lines to come in and out of local commercial breaks. (American Top 40 would eventually be airing on over 500 different radio stations in the US alone … and every week, Casey would salute three or four of them by saying something like “American Top 40 is heard every week from coast to coast and around the world on great radio stations like …” and then give out the call letters of some of the stations carrying the show … which was ALWAYS a HUGE boost in the ego department for those who were paying to air the program.
But because not all radio markets are created equally, not every station from coast to coast had enough “filler” or ads to fill these gaps …
So Jacobs came up with the idea of TWO jingle lines to appease this situation. (And I would be absolutely SHOCKED if ANY person out there reading this today cannot IMMEDIATELY sing along with the single line “Casey’s Coast To Coast” or “American Top 40.”
Jacobs was pretty proud of what he called his “split logo” …
If a station aired the “Casey’s Coast To Coast” jingle before going into a break (returning with the “American Top 40” logo), it would be interpreted as “Casey Is Coast To Coast” … but if the two jingles were run back to back (as they often were in many markets), the conjunction of Casey is / Casey’s became possessive … as in the NAME of the countdown … Casey’s Coast To Coat … American Top 40.”
Genius, right???
I’m not sure any of us listening were clever or smart enough to pick up on this at the time … but it really WAS a pretty creative idea! (kk)
Oh …
And we ALSO found the answer to THIS question, thanks to Rob Durkee’s book “American Top 40: The Countdown of the Century,” which we are currently re-reading …
>>>A song that NEVER hit Billboard’s Hot 100's Top 40 was "So Close" by Jake Holmes ... YET, here it is on AT40! Mistakes will happen? It was the December 19, 1970, show and listed at #39 on AT40 "after 11 weeks bubbling under" the Top 40 of Billboard. TRUE! It was in its 11th week, the week previous down at 57 after peaking two weeks BEFORE that at 49! The kicker is that "So Close" dropped off the Hot 100 completely the week Casey played it as a newcomer to the Top 40! (Clark Besch)
In his book, in a segment focusing on some of Casey’s “most collectible shows,” Rob tell us that there is an extensive list of “mistake-filled shows.” He says:
“The earliest notable goof came on the December 19, 1970 show, when ‘Love The One You’re With’ by Stephen Stills was supposed to debut at number 39. Instead, a song that had never even made the Top 40, ‘So Close’ by Jake Holmes, was identified as number 39.
“Billboard usually phoned in the new chart to an AT40 staffer, who’d write the new numbers in the margin of the previous week’s chart. On the previous week’s chart, Holmes was at number 57 and Stills was a number 67. It is believed that the staffer wrote “39” beside the song at position 57 instead of the one at position 67. Nobody caught the goof when the show was recorded but measures were taken to prevent a repeat of this error.
“Stew Hillner, an original AT40 staffer, recalled, ‘Yeah, we played a wrong song. And Don (Bustany) said, ‘As we’re assembling the program from now on, you must hear the lyric or the title of that song.’”
Durkee goes on to list several other mistakes made on the air over American Top 40’s history.
The most common problem was playing the B-Side of the hit record that was announced by Casey. (Apparently, recording deadlines were so tight, nobody ever bothered to go back and “proof-read” … or “proof-listen” the show.)
He documents FIVE times that this happened …
“I Ain’t Got Time Anymore” by The Glass Bottle debuted on the chart on September 18, 1971, and remained there for three weeks. However, the first TWO weeks, its B-Side “The First Time,” was mistakenly played on the show. By the third week (the record’s final week in The Top 40), it was finally corrected and the A-Side was played.
The B-Sides of “Angel” by Rod Stewart (1972), “You’re A Special Part Of Me” by Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye (1973), “Good Lovin’ Gone Bad” by Bad Company (1975) and “The Proud One” by The Osmonds (1975) all went thru a similar fate. Sadly, Rod Stewart’s hit “Angel” only spent one week in The Top 40 … so the A-Side was never heard on the program!!! (kk)
Rob Durkee’s book makes for fascinating reading … but is apparently long out of print. As such, copies are going for an exorbitant amount of money (assuming you can even find one.)
A word to the wise: If you ever see this book somewhere, grab it while you can. It’s well worth reading … and you can likely sell it and make a few bucks when you’re done reading it! (lol) kk
CALLING AMERICAN TOP 40 COLLECTORS:
A word to the wise: If you ever see this book somewhere, grab it while you can. It’s well worth reading … and you can likely sell it and make a few bucks when you’re done reading it! (lol) kk
CALLING AMERICAN TOP 40 COLLECTORS:
In reading Rob Durkee's book, I am coming across SO many classic moments that aired during Casey's reign as host of American Top 40.
One that I would LOVE to hear again was the 13-minute Beatles montage that aired over the weekend of October 6th and 7th in 1973. It features snippets of 107 Beatles songs, covering their entire career from start to finish. If ANYBODY out there has a copy, I would LOVE to receive an MP3 ... we'll even share it with our readers! Thanks! (kk)
One that I would LOVE to hear again was the 13-minute Beatles montage that aired over the weekend of October 6th and 7th in 1973. It features snippets of 107 Beatles songs, covering their entire career from start to finish. If ANYBODY out there has a copy, I would LOVE to receive an MP3 ... we'll even share it with our readers! Thanks! (kk)
