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 6th: 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 30th chart at *KGB/San
Diego to #9, forging up to #2 before starting a downward slide.
December 17th
– 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 30th: 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!
Share on Twitter: @BlastFromPastBk
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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