WQXI (Atlanta): Top 40

With its nickname "the Quixie in Dixie," 790 WQXI launched itself as a Top 40 vehicle sometime in 1960, then shape-shifted according to subsequent eras' conceptions of the format until the mid-80s. In 1974, the station's FM signal became its mothership, billing itself as "94 QXI-FM," then becoming "94 Q" by 1977.

The rare Southern Gold promo LP images shown here (thanks to radio station vinyl resource Radio Use Only) come from 1973, during the station's final glory days as a classic AM entity that loomed large in reputation (if not wattage) throughout the Southern US. A typical umbrella format hodgepodge, the album does showcase a "New South" attitude with Charlie Daniels' "Uneasy Rider" and leads off with "Brother Louie," one of the era's quintessential black/white issue hits.

Among the disk jockeys who spun records for WQXI during the early seventies were longtime morning man Gary McKee, Dr. Don Rose (who left in 1972 and became a San Francisco institution), Scott Shannon, John Leader, and J.J. Jackson (who was neither the MTV personality nor the singer included on side 2 of the Southern Gold album). The station's long time general manager Jerry Blum became an inspiration for the character of Arthur Carlson on WKRP in Cincinnati, having once pulled, in real life, the turkey stunt that inspired the show's most famous episode.

I'm hoping that a clearer album image [see update below] of the jocks in front of the Peachtree Street sign eventually turns up. Clockwise from the top: Dave Smith, Dave Weiss, Ron Parker, Tomm Rivers, John Leader, Lee Logan, Barry Chaser, and Gary McKee. (You can hear a full Gary McKee morning show from 1972 at Airchexx.)

Update 8/21/18: My hopes for a clearer image were fulfilled by none other than Ron Parker (top right), the weekend man during WQXI's heyday, who currently does the afternoon show for WLS-FM in Chicago. I asked Ron about his radio adventures and I'm posting it here to energize radio hopefuls, radio vets, and radio historians alike:

"I started at WQXI when I was 20 years old and worked there for over 3 years while attending The University Of Georgia. WQXI was the WABC of the South!... Just one of those stations you wanted to work at while in High School. I was hired by Program Director John Leader [front row, second to rar right] and Corporate Program Director Bill Sherard. Yes, I picked a career in radio majoring in journalism - radio - TV.

"After programming changes at WQXI,  I moved over for awhile to Z 93 FM Atlanta which became the huge TOP 40 winner.  Upon graduation from college I landed afternoons at the legendary WLCY Tampa Bay. My career has taken me to great places: Miami, Houston, Phoenix, Dallas, San Francisco, New York City at WCBS FM, and currently I hold down the afternoon show at WLS FM Chicago.  I also have done work for SIRIUS XM for the past 10 years.

"Yep, I wanted to do radio and have done everything from Program Director, Mornings, Afternoons, and whatever with successful ratings.

"Trust me, this is something I've always wanted to do and would have never changed anything!"

Side 1:
Stories - "Brother Louie"
Climax - "Precious and Few"
Isley Brothers - "It's Your Thing"
Gallery - "Nice to Be with You"
Charlie Daniels Band - "Uneasy Rider"
Lobo - "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo"
Sylvia - "Pillow Talk"

Side 2:
Curtis Mayfield - "Superfly"
Melanie - "Brand New Key"
Freda Payne - "Band of Gold"
Focus - "Hocus Pocus"
J.J. Jackson - "But It's Alright"
Five Man Electrical Band - "Signs"
Sugarloaf - "Green Eyed Lady"

The Partridge Family - "I Think I Love You" (1971)

The Partridge Family - "I Think I Love You" (Billboard #1, entered 10/10/70; easy listening #8). Written by Tony Romeo. Produced by Wes Farrell. 45: "I Think I Love You"/"Somebody Wants to Love You" (Bell 1971). LP: The Partridge Family Album (Bell 1971).

"I Think I Love You" was the first of the Partridge Family's nine charting singles, and it laid out the formula for the group's adult-oriented sound. You read that right - in spite of their teen magazine appeal and kid-friendly TV show, the Partridge Family's music aimed squarely toward MOR formats. No other bubblegum group had such consistent success on the easy listening charts, and did you ever notice how, on the show, they usually did their lip-sync gigs for grown-ups in supper clubs?

A chart-topping hit, "I Think I Love You" was a schlager-esque number in the vein of Mary Hopkin's "Those Were the Days." Its composer, Tony Romeo, had also come up with "Indian Lake" (1968) for the Cowsills, the real-life family band that inspired The Partridge Family.

Radio man John Long, in his online memoir Puttin' on the Hits: A True Story About Top 40 Radio in 60's & 70's, reports having received a gold record from Bell for helping to "break" the record as a program director at KLWW in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He'd apparently gotten it into heavy rotation before the Partridge Family TV show had even made its September 1970 debut.

The Partridge Family - "I Think I Love You"

See also: A KMPC Playlist circa 1971

The Glass Bottle and the Dickie Goodman Connection

The "break-in" novelty record legend Dickie Goodman started The Glass Bottle as a marketing ploy for Manhattan public relations firm Benton & Bowles. They had hired Goodman to battle the burgeoning aluminum can and plastic bottle industries, and he'd developed a strategy to form a topical band, write their (non break-in) songs, and possibly make a fortune. He gathered together six young musicians from New Jersey, featuring the Johnny Maestro-esque lead vocals of Gary Criss, who'd released a number of teen idol disks on the Diamond label in the early sixties.

If the public would have responded favorably to Goodman's initial plan, we'd now recognize the Glass Bottle for songs he'd written with titles like "Glass," "Little Bottle Baby," and "Soda Pop Tonite." According to his son Jon, in his 2000 book The King of Novelty, Goodman eventually withdrew his own compositions from the hungry band's repertoire (which was fine by him because he was "still getting paid") and hooked them up with the AVCO Embassy label, for whom three of their recordings made the Hot 100, with "I Ain't Got Time Anymore" cracking the Top 40. Another non-charting single of theirs, "Mama Don't You Wait Up for Me (Wonderwheel)" appeared in the soundtrack for the well-regarded 1970 narcotics film The People Next Door. 

As for Goodman's ongoing commitment to Benton & Bowles, a captioned Billboard photo (above) that misspells Criss's last name refers to the group's "antilitter campaign," which suggests that they might have shifted their PR strategy from recording glass bottle industry-themed songs to merely speaking favorably about the easily recycled product during their appearances. (Aluminum and plastic recycling hadn't yet become so normalized at that point.)

All three of the group's charting records were MOR-suitable songs arranged by Goodman's business partner Bill Ramal, whose background in studio orchestration manifested itself clearly. The tracks also hearkened back to the teen idol ballad tradition Criss knew well and which many a music listener was feeling a nostalgic tolerance for during the troubled early seventies. The Glass Bottle's hit-making career didn't make it past the era, although Criss had some late-seventies traction with a disco album on the Salsoul label before he made his exit from the music business.

Below are the group's three charting singles:

"Love for Living" (1970)

The Glass Bottle

Written by Clare Torry * Produced by Bill Ramal and Dickie Goodman * 45: "Love for Living" / "The First Time" *
LP: The Glass Bottle * Label: AVCO Embassy * Billboard charts: Bubbling under (#109; peaked 1970-05-30)

Although the cover of the Glass Bottle's first LP displayed a kid-friendly band, the grooves inside contained a far more parent-friendly sound. This was a marketing page taken from the playbook of other acts like the Walker Brothers and Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, who also had lead singers with strong, disciplined voices. If "Love for Living" brings to mind some of the early Bee Gees ballads where Robin Gibb is given free emotive reign, you won't be surprised to learn that the original version of the song was a 1969 B-side for singer-songwriter Clare Torry, which lists the aforementioned Gibb brother as producer. Torry would later record the famous vocal segment for Pink Floyd's "The Great Gig in the Sky" in 1973. The credited songwriter for the flipside's ballad (and also for their "The Girl Who Loved Me When" below) is Dayton Callie. Is this the character actor from Sons of Anarchy and Deadwood?

Side A: "Love for Living"


Side B: "The First Time"

"I Ain't Got Time Anymore" (1971)

The Glass Bottle

Written by Mike Leander and Eddie Seago * Produced by Bill Ramal and Dickie Goodman * 45: "I Ain't Got Time Anymore" / "Things" * LP: I Ain't Got Time Anymore * Label: AVCO Embassy * Billboard charts: Hot 100 (#36; peaked 1971-09-25)

As they had done with their previous charting single, the Glass Bottle dipped into the British record bins for their lone Top 40 single. "I Ain't Got Time Anymore" revamped a 1970 UK hit (#21) for Cliff Richard, whose folk-rock delivery transformed itself into dramatic stage fare under the command of Gary Criss's larger vocals. The line where he sings, "used to take an interest in the state of the world, now I only know how much I'm missing that girl" rings with irony in context of the group's environmental origins. The single's B-side version of Bobby Darin's "Things" is, to the present day, available only on the original seven-inch vinyl. Composers Mike Leander and Eddie Seago would form the glam rock publishing company Rock Artistes Music Ltd. a few years after this.

"I Ain't Got Time Anymore"

"The Girl Who Loved Me When" (1971)

The Glass Bottle

Written by Neil Goldberg * Produced by Bill Ramal and Dickie Goodman * 45: "The Girl Who Loved Me When" / "Because She's Mine Again" * LP: I Ain't Got Time Anymore * Label: AVCO Embassy * Billboard charts: Hot 100 (#87; peaked 1971-12-11)

"The Girl Who Loved Me When" opened the Glass Bottle's I Ain't Got Time Anymore LP and served as their final single with its familiar quiet-then-loud mood swing approach. Around the time of this single, songwriter Neil Goldberg had also been keeping busy in Jeff Barry's cartoon music realm, contributing actively to the Archie's Funhouse TV show among others. A ballad by Dayton Callie (see "Love for Living" above) appears on the B side.

Side A: "The Girl Who Loved Me When"


Side B: "Because She's Mine Again"

KKUA (Honolulu): Top 40, 1967 - 1986

Honolulu's Top 40 powerhouse KKUA ("double K-U-A"), residing at 690 AM, called itself "The Big 69" (and its DJs the "The Big 69 Men"). By the late seventies, the station had distinguished itself as a commercial airwave venue especially friendly to local talent. Ron Jacobs (d. March 8, 2016), who was the program director at Los Angeles station KHJ during its storied "Boss Radio" years and who also created the syndicated American Top 40 institution, joined KKUA as an on-air personality in 1976. With his "Whodaguy" nickname, he launched the station's series of annual Homegrown albums that featured nothing but regional up-and-comers. Sometime in the very early eighties, KKUA would simulcast with KQMQ (93.1 FM) before surrendering its call letters later in the decade (if I've sorted the timeframe correctly) to a public radio station. What follows is a list of eight selected singles of local interest that racked up tons of airplay on KKUA between 1970 and 1974 (thanks to the year-end lists at the Hawaii Radio and Television Guide).

"1900 Yesterday" (1970)

Liz Damon's Orient Express

Written by Johnny Cameron * Produced by George J.D. Chun * 45: "1900 Yesterday" / "You're Falling in Love" * LP: Liz Damon's Orient Express * Label: Makaha/White Whale * Billboard charts: Hot 100 (#33), easy listening (#4) * Entered: 1970-12-26 (both charts) 

Written by soul songwriter and producer Johnny Cameron, "1900 Yesterday" first showed up as a B-side for Betty Everett's "Maybe" (not a cover of the Chantels classic) in 1969. This version by Liz Damon's Orient Express—a group featuring three female vocalists and six instrumentalists—first appeared on the Makaha label, after which White Whale picked it up once it caught fire. In a 1971 issue of Billboard, KKUA's Scott Edwards (who ran the "sunset sounds" shift from 6 to 9 p.m.) receives mention as the DJ who "broke" the record. It's a true wee-hours song, with its "smoke from a cigarette" catchphrase, ambiguous time-traveling lyrics, and disembodied vocals. It also has capering bone-marimba lines that may remind you of some of Morton Stevens's instrumental music on Hawaii Five-O.  Liz Damon and her troupe had another massive Hawaii-only hit in 1973 with their version of Bacharach and David's "Me Japanese Boy (I Love You)," which Damon, evoking Karen Carpenter, sings with a chorus of children's voices a la the Carpenters' "Sing."

"1900 Yesterday"

"Cheryl Moana Marie" (1970)

John Rowles

Written by Nat Kipner and John Rowles * Producer: Don Costa * 45: "Cheryl Moana Marie" / "The Love I Had with You" * LP: Cheryl Moana Marie * Label: Kapp * Billboard charts: Easy listening (#19), Hot 100 (#64) * Entered: 1970-11-21 (easy listening), 1971-01-02 (Hot 100)

The big voice of John Rowles, New Zealand's Engelbert Humperdinck, sailed with enough regularity on Hawaiian airwaves to give the impression of being local. "Cheryl Moana Marie" (a Don Costa production and arrangement) was Rowles' only single to reach the US charts, although "She's All I Got" and "Juanita Chiquita" were even bigger Rowles records in the islands.

"Cheryl Moana Marie"

"Chatto Matte Kudasai 

(Never Say Goodbye)" (1969)

Sam Kapu

Written by Jeanne Nakashima * Produced by Ed Brown and John De Marco * 45: "Chatto Matte Kudasai (Never Say Goodbye)" / "Huttin' in the Hall" (1969) * LP: Sam Kapu Again! (1969) * Label: Hana Ho * Billboard charts: Easy listening (#39) * Entered: 1971-09-11

Sam Kapu is perhaps best known as a Don Ho show biz cohort (who also appeared alongside him in a Brady Bunch segment). This single has a chorus reminiscent of Mac Davis's "I'll Paint You a Song." A big seller and airplay staple in Kapu's native Hawaii, it did make a brief showing on Billboard's easy listening chart in 1971, two years after its original release.

"Chatto Matte Kudasai (Never Say Goodbye)"

"Pipeline Sequence" (1972)

Honk

Written by Steve Wood, Richard Stekol, Craig Buhler, Tris Imbuden, and Will Brady * Produced by Honk and Terry Wright * 45: "Pipeline Sequence" / "Made My Statement (Love You Baby)" * LP: The Original Soundtrack from Five Summer Stories * Label: 20th Century *
Billboard charts: —

Honk was an eclectic Orange County band (reminiscent of the seventies version of the Grateful Dead), whose soundtrack for the popular 1972 surfing film Five Summer Stories, by Greg McGillivray and Jim Freeman, sold especially big in Hawaii where the film's first segment takes place. The sudden "surf band" identity baggage might have contributed toward Honk's 1975 unraveling, although they play the occasional reunion show to this day. (Quite a few Beach Boys tracks also appeared in the film but not on the album soundtrack.) If "Pipeline Sequence" reminds you of any sounds from the Boston-Styx-Kansas FM rock era, keep in mind that it predated many of those. A country song on the album called "High in the Middle" became another memorable musical highlight in the film, which seems incongruous until you consider the steel guitar's honored place in Hawaiian music history.

Side A: "Pipeline Sequence"


Side B: "Made My Statement (Love You Baby)"


Bonus: "High in the Middle"

"Stella's Candy Store" (1972)

The Sweet Marie

Written by Donald Bennett * Produced by Darby James and the Sweet Marie *
45: "Stella's Candy Store" / "Another Feelin'" * LP: Stuck in Paradise * Label: Yardbird * Billboard charts: Bubbling under (#123) * Entered: 1973-02-03

A California head-rock trio with a Hawaiian following, the Sweet Marie recorded their 1972 Stuck in Paradise album (their second) in Honolulu. Its leadoff single was a back-alley rocker called "Stella's Candy Store," which caught enough fire nationally to bubble under on Billboard in early '73. A moody, somewhat foreboding track from the album with crashing waves and someone sreaming "help!" at the end (with writing credits given to the three Sweet Marie members) provides contrast for the bender on side A.

Side A: "Stella's Candy Store"


Side B: "Another Feelin'"

"If That's the Way You Want It" (1973)

Diamond Head

Written and produced by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter * 45: "If That's the Way You Want It" / "What Do I Do on Sunday Morning" * Label: Dunhill * Billboard charts: Bubbling under (#106) * Entered: 1973-05-05

The Southern California quartet Diamond Head took its name from the famous volcanic ridge mark in Oahu, and although the Dennis Lambert-Brian Potter tune "If That's the Way You Want It" only reached #106 in Billboard, Hawaiian radio spun it like crazy. Info about this band is elusive, but a 1975 single of theirs on Capitol called "Proud to Be Your Slave," which was written by Steely Dan's Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, has turned up on YouTube. The UK heavy metal band called Diamond Head has no relation to this piña colada crew. (Side B is another Lambert-Potter tune.)


Side A: "If That's the Way that You Want It"


Side B: "What I Do on Sunday Morning"


Non-charting 1975 bonus: "Proud to Be Your Slave"

"Song for Anna" (1973)

Ohta-San

Written by Andre Popp * Produced by Newell Bohnett * 45: "Song for Anna (Chansons d'Anna)" / "Keeping You Company" * LP: Song for Anna * Label: A&M * Billboard charts: Easy listening (#26) * Entered: 1974-05-04

Herb Ohta is a Hawaiian ukulele virtuoso who is sometimes billed as "Ohta-San" (with "san" being a Japanese term of respect). The 45 of this song is subtitled according to its French title and billed to Ohta's Japanese name. The album cover, though, sticks with "Herb." Ohta charted only one more time in his long career, with the easy listening hit "One Day of Love" in 1975.

"Song for Anna (Chansons d'Anna)""

"99.8" (1974)

Society of Seven

Written by Ernie Freeman and Frances Kirk * Produced by Ernie Freeman * 45: "99.8" / "Charming Beau" * LP: 99.8 * Label: Silver Sword Audio * Billboard charts: —

A variety show band that's been doing its thing at Honolulu hotel lounges and beyond since the sixties, Society of Seven's 99.8 album featured the production and co-writing work of Ernie Freeman, best known for his late fifties hit version of Bill Justis's "Raunchy." Check out the boosted reverb on the lead vocal during the chorus.

"99.8"

Radio Memoirs: Superjock

Published in 1975, Larry Lujack's Superjock captures him freshly arrived at the top of Chicago's Top 40 airwaves. He was working the afternoon drive shift at WCFL ("The Voice of Labor") when this came out, a few years after the station, programmed by the brilliant John Rook, had managed to outpace the ratings of powerful WLS (where Lujack had previously worked until 1972). This would all come undone by 1976, though, when CFL switched formats to "The World's Most Beautiful Music," prompting Lujack, a few months later, to move back to WLS, where he'd stay until 1987.  (You can hear Lujack handling the 1976 format transition on YouTube, playing Reunion's "Life Is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)" and following it up with ocean sounds.)

Although music programming philosophy is the side of radio history that interests me most, I still gobble up books like these and wish that every notable radio jock would write one. Superjock alternates between memoir and zinger-filled on-air/off-mic dialogues between Lujack and his producer/engineer "Spacey Dave," who's got a thing for records by Rare Earth. Like Don Imus, Lujack was one of the best of the new breed of early '70s Top 40 DJs who came across as the over-caffeinated grouch, seemingly hungover from the exuberance of the "boss radio" years. He'd pepper the playlists with two-to-three minute "Animal Stories," "The Klunk Letter of the Day," "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" and other features, projecting a resigned sense of "can you believe this?" This crucial attitude accompanies the irreverent material in Superjock and makes it funny. The loudmouth approach to today's morning drive time radio, which mostly comes across as spiteful and is done at the expense of music airtime, is both an unfortunate legacy for Lujack (who passed away in December 2013) and a testament of his influence.

Some tidbits from the book:

"Any kid of mine who wanted to be a disk jockey, I'd kick his head in" (p. 22).

"A DJ's life is ... accurately portrayed by Harry Chapin in the song about radio staton 'WOLD,' a very depressing story about the rise and fall of a Top 40 jock: the drinkin', divorce, and driftin'. You mothers who don't want your infant son to waste his life by becoming a rock jock should...buy the kid a copy of that record and make him listen to it over and over" (p. 29).

"In the late sixties and early seventies, when objections were raised to songs on the radio with drug-oriented lyrics, the popular radio cop-out was 'Well, we're not endorsing the stuff, nor are we encouraging its use. We're simply playing the music that reflects what's happening in today's society, the music the public wants to hear.' What crap! By playing those songs we endorsed it; we made drugs seem 'in,' hip, sophisticated. We helped make martyrs of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. They weren't heroes, just ignorant people" (p. 33).

"A few years back there was a girl singer who reportedly made the rounds of all the big radio stations in the large markets offering her sexual favors to music directors and DJs in return for airplay of her first record. I say reportedly because I didn't happen to be there the day she dropped by the station I was working at then. But the story came from all over the country; so it must have been true. It worked. The record sold several million and established her as a major nightclub performer" (p. 61; I have my theories).

Lujack describes Janis Joplin as the "absolute snottiest person" he ever met (p. 79), Nancy Sinatra's behavior as being similar to a "pizza waitress," and the Monkees as juvenile, "silly little f*cks" (pp. 79-84). Tiny Tim, on the other hand, is described as a "very intelligent guy, one of the nicest people I've ever met in this business and really fun to talk to" (p. 84).

And this, from his real-life American Grafitti teenage years in Idaho:

"The biggest hood at Caldwell High School [Lujack's alma mater] was two years ahead of me. His first name was Revere. He was in a gang called the 'Nemows' (pronounced with a long 'e' and a long 'o': rhymes with Creamo). The derivation of the name? I'll give you a hint. It concerns something the gang was always in search of. You might as well give up; you'll never get it. Leave off the 's' and spell it backward.

"The Nemows were incredible idiots. At basketball games they would gather outside and wait till everyone was seated and the game had begun. Midway through the first quarter they would make their grand entrance. Twenty guys all wearing Levis and identical leather jackets would march single file all the way around the gym and then back out the door. They didn't give a sh*t about the game. They just wanted to make sure everybody saw them and noticed how cool they were.

"You'd look at Revere and think, 'No way is that sonofab*tch ever going to amount to anything. He'll end up doing either 20 years for armed robbery or life for murder.' So guess who the blond guy was who played piano for Paul  Revere and the Raiders, one of the biggest rock bands in the early and middle sixties?" (p. 98).

WPOP (Hartford): Top 40, 1958-1975

The lifespan of WPOP in Hartford, Connecticut, paralleled the golden years of AM Top 40. At only 5,000 watts, it managed to generate enough energy and excitement to keep it running from the late fifties all the way to the the mid-seventies with on air alumni like Joey Reynolds, Lee "Baby" Simms, Jack Armstrong, and Greaseman. You can hear Greaseman's 1975 goodbye show on the station's last day (he was the morning man during its final two years) via his website. One of the many Top 40 stations that used "The Good Guys" as its slogan, it adopted "The Music Revolution!" in later years, as seen in this 1974 logo I found at the Airheads Radio Survey Archive. A WPOP tribute site contains more info and memorabilia, including a forlorn photo of the abandoned transmitter station in Newington.

Sha Na Na's 2 Early '70s Charting Singles

Here's what I wrote about them in my book (p. 66): "Underneath the iconic [Woodstock] music festival's mud, grass, and layers of '60s hippy mythology, a quintessentially '70s seed flowered in the form of '50s revivalism when Sha Na Na, in pompadours and gold lamé, raved up on golden oldies like Danny and the Juniors' 'At the Hop.'"

And here's what their one time manager Ron Weisner wrote about them in his Listen Out Loud (pp. 66-67): "On more than one instance, they duked it out before they took the stage...I often had to break it up; what usually put the kibosh on the scuffle was me telling them, 'If you guys don't get your sh*t together, they'll cancel the show, and if they cancel the show, you won't get paid.' That always ended the fight...for the time being. Sometimes they waited until after the show to beat the sh*t out of each other."

A hard working band, nonetheless, New York City's Sha Na Na was among the most visible manifestations of the seventies' yearning for a simpler time. It's easy to forget, though, that before the band's TV variety show years, which ran between 1977 and 1981, they were comparatively confrontational. The full page ad above appeared on the back of the July 17, 1971, issue of Billboard and flashed their early '70s slogan: "Greased and Ready to Kick Ass."  In his Performing Glam Rock, Philip Auslander equates the group's implicitly violent disdain for the counterculture with that of Alice Cooper. He reports that the group "often taunted their audiences with such lines as 'We gots just one thing to say to you f*ckin' hippies and that is rock 'n' roll is here to stay!'" (pp. 33-34).

Interestingly, out of the three singles Sha Na Na charted with in Billboard, two of those happened in 1971. (Their third, a disco-tinged cover of "(Just Like) Romeo and Juliet," reached #55 in 1975.)  The first of these, "Only One Song," was a ballad no one today would peg as the product of a '50s revival, while "Top Forty," another song on the outer edges of the typical Sha Na Na sound, still managed to tap into nostalgia, radio format lingo, and the concurrent God rock trend while sending up the Statler Brothers. (Both of the 1971 A-sides were written by group keyboardist "Screamin'" Scott Simon.)

Sha Na Na - "Only One Song" (Billboard #110, entered 5/15/71). Written by Scott Simon. Produced by Eddie Kramer. 45: "Only One Song"/"Yakity Yak [sic]/Jailhouse Rock (Medley)" (Kama Sutra 1971). LP: Sha Na Na (Kama Sutra 1971).

Side B contains the more standard representation of the Sha Na Na sound.

Sha Na Na - "Top Forty" (Billboard #84, entered 8/7/71). Written by Scott Simon. Produced by Eddie Kramer. 45: "Top Forty"/"I Wonder Why" (Kama Sutra 1971). LP: Sha Na Na (Kama Sutra 1971).

The picture sleeve for this showed the song title as "Top Forty of the Lord" but with the label simply as "Top Forty." Side B, as with the previous single, delivered a truer rendering of the band's live sound, covering the Dion and the Belmonts classic.

WIXY (Cleveland): Top 40, 1965-1976

One of the nation's liveliest Top 40 stations in the late sixties, Cleveland's legendary WIXY 1260 (say the call letters like a word) made it all the way to 1976 before sputtering into a late seventies AC format shift (and the new call letters WMGC). As reported at the WIXY tribute page, the new station's advertisements invited listeners to "Get Your Rock Soft."

The last of WIXY's promo albums was a 1973 muscular dystrophy benefit vehicle called WIXY's Top Bananas. The track list showcases the seemingly genre-blind Top 40 hodgepodge typical of the era: "Brother Louie" (Stories), "Precious and Few" (Climax), "Hocus Pocus" (Focus), "Pillow Talk" (Sylvia), "Nice to Be with You" (Gallery), "It's Your Thing" (Isley Brothers), "Mississippi Queen" (Mountain), "Super Fly" (Curtis Mayfield), "One Bad Apple" (Osmonds), "Slippin' Into Darkness" (War), "Brand New Key" (Melanie), "Rock and Roll" (Gary Glitter- not the B-side, "Rock and Roll Part 2," that we're more familiar with today), "Day By Day" (Godspell), "Uneasy Rider" (Charlie Daniels Band).

Blue Haze's Reggae Pedigree

Blue Haze - "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" (Billboard #27, entered 11/11/72). Written by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach. Produced by Johnny Arthey and Phillip Swern. 45: "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"/"Anna Rosanna" (A&M 1972). LP: (no album appearance).

A classic from the Great American Songbook, Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach's “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” appeared for the first time in the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers film Roberta in 1933, after which jazz bandleader Paul Whiteman took it to the top of the Hit Parade the following year. The Platters would return it to #1 in 1959, but the song wouldn’t appear in the Top 40 again until Blue Haze, seemingly from out of the blue (sorry), resurrected it in 1972.

The group was a studio project led by British arranger Johnny Arthey and producer Phillip Swern, and their lone US Top 40 hit might strike listeners as a quick cash-in on both the nostalgia boom and the popular Caribbean sound. In fact, Swern and Arthey were already invested in reggae, which had been simmering to a boil in the UK throughout the late sixties. Arthey had done the British market string arrangements for Desmond Dekker's "You Can Get It If You Really Want," Bob and Marcia's "Young, Gifted and Black," and records by the Pioneers, among others. Along with Swern, he also produced and arranged Trojan singles by Teddy Brown, who sang lead on all of their Blue Haze output, including "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes."

Bonus:

The Seashells - "(The Best Part of) Breaking Up" (Billboard #115, entered 1/27/73). Written by Phil Spector, Pete Andreoli, and Vince Poncia. Produced by Johnny Arthey and Phillip Swern. 45: "(The Best Part of) Breakin' Up"/"Play That Song" (Columbia 1972). LP: (no album appearance).

Another single Arthey and Swern produced "bubbled under" in the US at #115 - a version of the Ronettes' 1964 hit "(The Best Part of) Breaking Up" that sounds, rather incredibly, like a lost vintage Abba track. The Liverpool girl group included Vicki Brown and Mary Partington, who were sisters, along with Laura Lee. Brown, who is now deceased, was the wife of UK musican Joe Brown and the mother of vocalist Sam Brown, who had a US charting hit called "Stop" in 1989.