EARLY '70S RADIO: WMEX (Boston): Top 40

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

WMEX (Boston): Top 40

One of Boston radio history's fabled Top 40 stations is WMEX (1510 AM), whose star disk jockey Arnie "Woo Woo" Ginsburg held court noisily from 1957 to 1967. His departure brought in Dick Summer, a man with a psychology degree that matched him up well with a radio industry getting increasingly preoccupied with demographics and audience behavior. Pursuing his concept of the "human thing" in radio, Summer launched his "Lovin' Touch" program, in which he'd wax poetic in the manner of Ken "Word Jazz" Nordine. A 1972 Rolling Stone article wisecracked that Summer's sensitive shtick "would have made Rod McKuen look callous beside him." Summer's experiment, though, fell in line with radio trends such as Brother John Rydgren's syndicated "Love format" on ABC radio (from 1968 to 1970) and the forthcoming "feminine" formats.

In 1970, the station became a quintessential early seventies outlet with the arrival of music director John H. Garabedian, whose aggressive playlist-crafting and phone monitoring boosted the station's ratings, at one point, past WRKO, its higher-powered competitor. Among his winning programming strategies were a heavy reliance on album tracks and a willingness to test drive records before conducting any lengthy research. The above mentioned Rolling Stone article, "Boston Tests New Music and Flunks Out," by Timothy Crouse, mentions such songs as "Do You Know What I Mean" (Lee Michaels), "Maggie May" (Rod Stewart), "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" (Paul and Linda McCartney), "Sunshine" (Jonathan Edwards), and "Looking for a Love" (J. Geils Band) as being direct beneficiaries of Garabedian's attentions.

Although new ownership in late 1971 would send Garabedian and his "John H." show packing, WMEX—although never to be the ratings success it once was—maintained an album track-inflected approach and a sufficiently influential ability to "break" records. Disk jockey Jim "JC" Connors reportedly earned gold records for "My Ding a Ling" (Chuck Berry), "How Do You Do" (Mouth and MacNeal), "Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast" (Wayne Newton), and "Power of Love" (Joe Simon), among others, in gratitude for his perceived role in popularizing the tracks. (Connors was also the acknowledged inspiration for Harry Chapin's "WOLD.") In 1975, the station would switch formats to easy listening, bringing its distinctive early seventies Top 40 run to a close.

A 1972 promotional charity album exists for WMEX, which you can perhaps search for at Boston thrift stores. It was one of the many cookie cutter records manufactured by Variety Club of Indianapolis for use by radio stations all over the US. They all sported duplicate covers and track lists but made space for personalized images of a station's airstaff in the gatefold. Coincidentally, one of the songs on this Solid Gold compilation is the Irish Rovers' "Unicorn Song," which Garabedian happens to ridicule in a 1970 aircheck (at 13:25). The deejays in the photos are Bill Lawrence, Connors, J. Michael Wilson, King Arthur Knight, and Tom Allen. (I copied these images from an eBay seller, so I can't tell who's in the obscured one. It could possibly be Dan Donovan or Jerry Gordon, but it also appears to say "Program Director" at the bottom. I thought Connors was the PD at that time, so I'm stumped.)

Most radio surveys for WMEX between 1971 and 1974 (nothing for 1970) are available at the Airheads Radio Survey Guide. They reveal, after a scan-through, the following songs to be among the station's unique airplay additions that never charted nationally:

Mike D'Abo - "King Herod's Song"
McGuinness Flint - "Friends of Mine"
Lodi - "Happiness"
The Move - "Tonight"
Three Dog Night - "You"
Beach Boys - "Student Demonstration Time"
Grand Funk Railroad - "People Let's Stop the War"
Jake Jones - "Trippin' Down a Country Road"
Judee Sill - "Jesus Was a Crossmaker"
CCS - "Tap Turns on the Water"
Lighthouse - "Take It Slow"
The Rascals - "Lucky Day"
Poco - "Railroad Days"
Steve Martin (of the Left Banke) - "Two By Two"
Colin Blunstone - "Caroline Goodbye"
Newport News - "When the Bell Rings"
Tranquility - "Thank You"
Paul Williams - "My Love and I"
Robin and Jo - "Chapel of Love"
John Kongos - "Jubilee Cloud"
John Stewart - "Arkansas Breakout"
Sugar Bus - "Tramp"
The Eagles - "Train Leaves Here This Morning"
Michael Holm - "I Will Return"
Brewer and Shipley - "Yankee Lady"
Buckwheat - "Hey Little Girl"
Spyder's Gang - "Waiting in Line"
Sha Na Na - "Bounce in Your Buggy"
Tom Paxton - "Jesus Christ S.R.O."
The Lorelei - "S.T.O.P. (Stop)"
Peter Sarstedt - "You're a Lady"
Eric - "Wonder Where My Friend Could Be"
Barrabas - "Boogie Rock"
Livingston Taylor - "Over the Rainbow"

5 comments:

AnonymousMay 15, 2018 at 6:05 AM
Two Emerson College students programmed WMEX on a bet with Max Richmond. They talked him into making John H the program director and would have a music meeting every week (The four of them) to add new music. One of the two students ,Floyd Wright aka Charles Bukowski loved to flip records over that came into the the college station from record companies. It was HE who broke Maggie May on WMEX. The two students also had ratings with their Saturday night Oldies show which brought them to Mr. Richmond's attention because they used chopped up WMEX jingles. Another student, Gary Berkowitz, was brought in to consult on new jingles. He is still a radio "Insultant". I should know I was one of those students.
ReplyDelete
Replies
Max PowerSeptember 24, 2020 at 3:13 PM
Livington Taylor's "Get Out Of Bed" was a WMEX song. They played Bob Segers "Lookin' Back" as well. and let's not forget Marblehead Messenger's song(The title escapes me now but I have the survey with John H on the cover with one of the band members). Fabulous Summer of 71.
ReplyDelete
Replies
MaguidSeptember 30, 2022 at 8:27 PM
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

Good Words About Early '70s Radio

"Kim Simpson does a superb job analyzing the manifold factors that contributed to the radio format revolution while advancing the reader’s understanding of a transformative period in American culture. Ultimately, Simpson’s astute assessment of radio’s second heyday adds richly to the ever-growing canon of media studies. Early '70s Radio is must reading for anyone interested in the unique role specialized audio programming played in an era of historic social change."

–– Michael C. Keith, Author of The Radio Station

"All of the men and women, though the latter were few in music radio for many years, took radio programming seriously not only as a career, but also with passion for its viability. This included the disc jockey, the program director, and the general manager as more and more of them graduated from programming into management. Thus, I’m pleased to read this wonderful, compelling book by Kim Simpson. He treats with respect what all of us in the 60s and 70s took seriously. It was our life! And he employs penetrating wisdom and astonishing perception to correlate music with the cultural mores of our times and depict what really was and why. Great book!"

–– Claude Hall, B.J., M.Ed. Radio-TV Editor, Billboard, 1964-79, and Assistant Communications Professor, State University of New York at Brockport, 1983-89

"Too often we separate the agendas contained in business plans from the decisions of daily life. Kim Simpson’s Early ‘70s Radio reunites the items found on playlists with the passions and polemics that infused a complicated decade. His skilful scholarship and attention to detail clarify that what we listen to and how we lead our lives do not march to separate beats, for our actions and our aesthetic preferences bear subtle and significant harmonies."

–– David Sanjek, Professor of Music Director, Salford Music Research Centre University of Salford, U.K.

"Early '70s Radio is a fast-paced romp through the formatting revolution that changed the ways pop music continues to be sliced and diced. Surprises pop off every page. Examining everything from monster hits to obscure and often-hilarious novelty tunes, Kim Simpson shows how Top 40 splintered into middle of the road soft rock, album-oriented hard rock, crossover soul and disco, and country pop. Each format promised to serve up a distinct listening demographic to hungry advertisers. Yet Simpson uncovers fascinating commonalities across the dial—including the increasing desire of stations to attract women instead of men—that fundamentally changed the sound of pop music. And who knew there were so many songs featuring children in the era? If you ever wondered about the roots of the Miley Cyrus/Justin Beiber phenomenon or how Glee learned to appeal to parents and their kids at the same time, Early '70s Radio delivers. I’ll never listen to 'Yummy Yummy Yummy' or 'Rubber Duckie' the same way again."

–– Karl Hagstrom Miller, author of Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow

"Music historians are only now discovering what most everybody in the 1970s already knew: commercial radio formats really really mattered. Looking at the five key strands (Top 40, MOR, rock, R&B, and country), Kim Simpson surveys a moment when identity politics and counterculture were becoming niche marketing and new kinds of mainstreams. You can't explain what happened to American popular music after the 1960s without understanding these processes, and Simpson provides an able, accessible guide through a daunting range of sounds and contexts."

–– Eric Weisbard, University of Alabama and editor, Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music