Posted by Bob T. on August 17, 2008 at 13:43:06:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Oldies: The New Hot Thing posted by Fred Clemens on August 17, 2008 at 12:29:05:
Careful Fred.
Using all that circular motion in your argument is endangering a transition to butter. :-)
The argument for wider oldies lists, structured in logical layers, is a sound one. For a successful broad appeal format, you don't want to play "The Class" by Chubby Checker as often as "Runaround Sue," but you can play it to good advantage on occasion.
Radio playlists didn't begin to homogenize across the country until the mid-to-late sixties, passing through hundreds of songs that reached legitimate top 10 status in specific large markets without ever cracking high recognition on the nationwide charts, based in large part by local airplay.
CKLW was particularly a source of iconoclastic hits in the Detroit area, but even stations you'd think would toe the national line didn't always. WLS (at the time owned and op'd by ABC) has a litany of Chicagoland hits that few elsewhere ever heard, such as "Ruby Duby Du" by Tobin Mathews. While I visited relatives there, the song was locally #3. Of course, even then, no one knew the lyrics.
Also the timing of many late 50s songs especially was region to region, with legit hits like "So Tough" by the Casuals never getting their rightful due on the national charts because it hit different areas at different times, almost like a slow moving wave.
The New York charts in particular are rife with songs little heard in most of the rest of the country. "In The Still of the Night" may never have been a Number One record during its time as a current, but at least here it spent a good run just outside the Top 10.
And some markets were legendary for their unusual hits. Traveling through Pittsburgh one year, I caught "Wait A Minute" by the Coasters at #8 on KQV. Had I been listening there in the second half of 1959, I would have enjoyed both "There Goes My Love" by the Fantastics and "Island of Love" by the Shepards as local Top 10s.
It's one reason why the later airplay for "oldies" that made little impact on their first release makes some sense, as long as they are well received today. With as many as 200 singles flooding Top 40 stations weekly during the late 50s and early 60s, it's not surprising that illegitimate factors, such as payola, often helped determine the hits.
And conversely, it stands to reason that there were many potential hits missed because no one at the time ever heard them on the air.
Some of this somewhat long-winded post is "radio-oriented" to be sure, but it's the music itself that leads to the inclusion of formatting and other themes. After all, there was no Internet back then, and aside from the rare record store that would let you sample (there were a few), there was no other way to first hear music other than the radio.