Rock Radio DECEMBER 1969 True or Falsetto?

Rockin’ through Christmas into the New Year ~ New Decade!  

50 Years Ago this Month we faced a not-so-different New Year and New Decade. Our country struggled with the beginning of the first military draft “peacetime” lottery since 1942, and today, the wars still wage. Hardly a traditional Holiday for the countdown to Christmas. All the while, the music plays on.

No different than other industries, radio stations revel in change before the New Year, with format flips and staff severances. December can be a lot of fun or a lot of heartache. That choice is up to you. Every change is opportunity! My choice? Let’s keep Rockin’ …

Your Tinny Transistor Radio News ~ DECEMBER 1969          

December 6^th: With a lead singer still of middle school age, The Jackson 5 released their debut album on this date, bolstered by the incomparable Diana Ross. From Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5, “I Want You Back” shot up the December 30^th chart at *KGB/San Diego to #9, forging up to #2 before starting a downward slide.

December 17^th – In the early 1960s, falsetto singing could be heard from beach to shining beach; although now waning, one musical anomaly showed it wasn’t dead yet. After a dainty “Tiptoe Through The Tulips” in 1968, on this date in 1969, peculiarly falsetto, Tiny Tim (Herbert Butros Khaury), was flanked by yellow tulips for for his marriage to “Miss Vicki” (twenty years his junior) on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show.

December 30^th: While it didn’t make a huge chart splash, The Archies’ “Jingle Jangle” made it to *KGB/San Diego’s “Boss 30” (barely, at #27). Filmation Associates produced The Archie Show animated television series on which the title-named fictional band’s antics delighted fans. BFYP DJ, Norm Prescott, a Filmation co-founder, had transitioned away from the DJ mic and into animated TV in the early 1960s, but his heart was never far away from popular music’s tinny transistor radios.

Rockin’ Retro Radio

December 1969, Blast from Your Past Rockin’ DJs were scattered across the country. Mitch Michael, aka Ron Terrell / Terrell Metheny, spent the mid-Sixties at WOKY/Milwaukee, then grabbed his buddy, Lee Gray, and skipped over to WMCA/New York in 1968, to become a popular program director.

            In BFYP’s The Swinging Sixties, by December ‘69 “Mitch” finally switched to his real name, Terrell, and had this to say about WMCA: We switched from DJs playing Rock & Roll to half Rock & Roll and half talk. Some sort of nightmare that the owner had … it was such a horrible nightmare.

            Of course, switching formats willy-nilly and literally overnight, was/is common for stations, but often a career disappointment at best, for DJs and staff, and job loss, at worst. The only constant is change.

*Featured Radio Survey: KGB/San Diego, California, Boss Jocks were all the rage in ’69 and at KGB they were giving away up to $15,000 per day! "The good ol' days." Poke your memory as you reminisce over their "Boss 30" Issue No. 166, December 30, 1969, heading into the 1970s ... ♪ Well, I’m your Venus ♪ … 50 Years Ago this Month in Rock & Roll Radio! Where were you that groovy day when …

Celebrate DECEMBER 1969 and … Rock On!

Blast from Your Past Gifts

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LinDee Rochelle is a writer and editor by trade, and author by way of Rock & Roll. She has published two books (of three) in her Blast from Your Past series, available on Amazon (eBook and print): Book 1 – Rock & Roll Radio DJs: The First Five Years 1954-1959; and Book 2 – Rock & Roll Radio DJs: The Swinging Sixties. Coming soon … The Psychedelic Seventies!

Note: FYI – All links in the BFYP site are personally visited, verified, and vetted. Most are linked to commonly accessed sites of reputable note. However, as with everything cyber-security, use at your own discretion. 

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50 Years Ago this Month – December 1966

50 Plus 10 = 1956 

Wow—how did we get here?! Not only another year gone, but … 50 Years Ago this Month!!

Searching for December 1966 radio and music news and views, turned up a rather placid time in Rock Radio.

The top five songs on KFRC/San Francisco’s “Big 30” (12/14/66) for example, glorified and vilified love—nothing new there.

Hearts on a string, we were singing along with the top three pop tunes: 1) “I’m a Believer” (Monkees); 2) “Winchester Cathedral” (New Vaudeville Band); and 3) “Tell It Like It Is” (Aaron Neville). A-vo-dee-oh-doe!!

But every December, here at Blast from Your Past, we choose to celebrate the birthing day of Alan Freed (December 15, 1921)—the “father of Rock & Roll Radio DJs.”

This month, we add ten years to our 50 Years Ago this Month writings to venerate Mr. Freed. We owe our fifty years-plus-ten mantra to the man who first thundered, “Let’s Rock & Roll!!”?

1955’s Blackboard Jungle film, which featured Bill Haley & His Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock, inspired tons of teens to dance in the theater aisles.

Hot off its success, Mr. Freed appeared in two iconic Rock & Roll films the following year, Rock Around the Clock (March), and Rock, Rock, Rock (December).

As it’s said on Wiki, “In the 1956 film Rock, Rock, Rock, Freed tells the audience that ‘Rock and Roll is a river of music that has absorbed many streams: rhythm and blues, jazz, rag time, cowboy songs, country songs, folk songs. All have contributed to the big beat.’"

And the beat goes on* … Thank you, Mr. Freed.

Featured Radio Survey: The closest KFRC’s December 1966 chart came to offering a 1956 Rockin’ song sound-alike was at #5, Mitch Ryder’s “Devil with the Blue Dress On.” The rest of the chart lineup went like this …

Celebrate DECEMBER 50 Years Ago … and Rock On!

 

Blast from Your Past Gifts

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* Sonny and Cher hit the January 1967 charts with “The Beat Goes On.” See ya 50 Years Ago 2017!

 Grab some Old "Time" Rock & Roll for yourself and your Rockin' friends on Santa's list, at Blast from Your Past Gifts! Fun stuff for everyone ... Rock On!

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