Long before the Disco era’s song by John Paul Young ("Love is in the Air"), we were filling our Rock Radio music charts with Love. Along with love, guitar riffs heated up our radio speakers, as hot as the summer sun, 50 Years Ago This Month ... let’s Rock!
♪ Then & Now Rockin’ News & Views
JULY 1972 created “Oldies” ... oh, and so did Paul McCartney! Radio
would never be the same, we proved, Rock & Roll will never dieeeeeee ...
> JULY
1972 Rockin’ News Then …
July 7th: Wouldn’t ya
know it. New York City, which loves to be biggest, best and first for
everything, apparently became host to one of the nation’s first
full-time radio stations to Rock an Oldies format, on this date 50 Years
Ago. Iconic WCBS-FM
(101.1 FM) began their “classic hits” with Dion’s “Runaround Sue” from 1961.
Now owned by Audacy, Inc.—yay!—it’s still host to the Oldies with Scott
Shannon in the Morning Show.
McCartney spent ten years as frontman for The Beatles, before Wings. Last month, June 18, 2022, to be exact, Sir Paul McCartney celebrated his 80th birthday by performing a taxing-at-any-age concert with Jersey mega-stars (also from yesteryear), Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen. Sir Paul gives new meaning to the term, “Oldies” Rock! I think he’s outplayed the Energizer Bunny ...
> JULY
2022 Rockin’ News Now …
Well, Boomers, here’s a news headline we don’t see often ...
um ever ... anymore ... “Manufacturers struggle to
keep pace with vinyl record demand.“ It blared from the AP
(Associated Press) newsline late last month. An interesting and welcome state
of affairs that took 50 Years to re-manifest! Like everything else these days,
the industry struggles from various shortages that present a frustrating
manufacturing dilemma. Perhaps what is available will give a needed boost to pandemic-stressed
small businesses for ...
Independent
Retailer Month! Shopaholics unite! Gone are the past
decades’ mega record stores like Tower Records and Sam Goody. There are,
however, still many small business owners of vinyl record shops, offline and online,
that sell vintage and more recently, new vinyl records. The once-ubiquitous shiny black, grooved
disks, now come in a rainbow of colors, and sales have grown back into favor.
We can thank some visionary
recording artists and producers who realize that for all our technology,
nothing surpasses the quality sound of a well-made vinyl recording.
IndieRetailerMonth.com encourages consumers to shop local and celebrate indie
retailers of all products. Let’s start with Rock
& Roll music!
And if you think the “Star Spangled Banner” is old, stodgy, stale and stupid, you obviously never heard it wailing out of a guitar solo in slow-mo by Jimi Hendrix (Woodstock, 1969). Stay to the end and hear his proud response to late night show host, Dick Cavett, who assumed Jimi would receive hate mail for his rendition of the then-revered national anthem (like Diana Ross sang it, 1982).
For some of us, it’s fun to observe, for others, it’s a way of life. Either way, let’s not allow vintage car collecting to disappear into a soulless mist of bureaucratic prohibitions. Fun fact: do you know a contender (among many) for the very first Rock & Roll song (slash/R&B) is about a car? (Circa 1951) ... ♪ Let me introduce you to my Rocket ’88 ... ♪
July 31st: Besides being smack-dab in the middle of summer, this is National #LOVE Day! And how appropriate for those of us who love Oldies Rock & Roll Radio DJs. The day was created by radio DJ Rick McNeely. His fun site proclaims “#LOVE” as the most-used hashtag in social media. Long before hashtags were anything but a symbol for a number, we “numbered” our Love tunes on radio charts. Check out our Monthly Song of Note for the word’s prolific use in Oldies music titles ... but the question remains ... why this day and not, oh say, Valentine’s Day? I Love a good mystery.
JULY 1972 WING, 1430 on your radio dial in Dayton, Ohio, makes our Featured Radio Survey this month. Good thing they weren’t up for a Great Survey of the Year contest, they would have had the judges scratching their heads as to how to rate them.
On one hand, WING gets flying colors for ‘70s art graphics. Their downfall, was trying to put it all on one 3” x 7” (folded) chart. Song titles and artist names are a little crowded, pushing and shoving each other on the paper. Some titles were chopped off, others simply ran into their artist names.
“Little Woman Love”/“Flip” by McCartney & McCartney is downright laughable, running into all kinds of aesthetic trouble at #25. However, we gave it a little love in the Monthly Song of Note below.
WING’s DJ Mike Duff is apparently another DJ lost in the winds of time ... or at least not an Internet celeb, and if he used his real name. Extensive research turned up nothing about the smiling jock on the phone, gracing the survey cover.
So scouring the ‘Net for July 1972, I found afternoon DJ dude, Chuck Brady in the driver’s seat of WKLO/Louisville’s Boogie Line choo-choo (07/19/72 survey). Meanwhile, Tom George in upstate Rochester, New York, at WBBF, tamed the late-night crowd with top tunes on the stack (07/12/72), urging fans to jump in the pool for a summer splash.
Monthly
Song of Note
♪
Speaking of National LOVE Day, long before social media was a “thing,” we find
the word in two of WING’s top ten tune titles #50YearsAgo this Month!
Flack & Hathaway (Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway) ask “Where is the Love”
at the #7 spot, while the Carpenters found it and let it go in “Goodbye to
Love” at #9. But for your Song of Note, I chose “Little Woman Love”/”Flip” McCartney & McCartney. Far and away the most
interesting of the three.
This simple song was obviously a
tribute to Linda. When the Beatles split, Paul began including her on many of
his song credits, thus the lengthy “McCartney & McCartney” artist listing.
However, it took me a few days of pondering to figure out WING’s listing of
“Flip” printed with the Love song title. Hovering at #25 this week, WING’s
survey didn’t have room for the dual-released “flip side,” even though it was considered
Side A: “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Yep, the McCartneys’ new
take on an age-old kids’ ditty wasn’t as beloved in the US. Both songs were
pretty much history by the end of the month. ... ♪ You know I’ll always love | My little woman love
... ♪
Quirky Band Names
We can’t really count Godspell as a musical band or artist—more of a stage full of cast members who graced us with “Day By Day” to scamper up the WING chart to #2 the previous week, and starting back down to #6 by end of July. The popular folk Rock ballad spun out of the 1971 off-Broadway musical of the same name. Lead singer, Robin Lamont, was uncredited. That’s practically sacrilegious ...
Which brings us to those who seek, and ye shall find ... the New Seekers! Their original claim to fame came the previous year with “Never Ending Song of Love” and shortly after, an ad jingle-turned-popular-pop-song, “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony).” Trading on that blockbuster, their “Circles” started up the charts this month from the same titled album that would release in September. Why are they the New Seekers? Because Keith Potger created them from his former band, the Seekers. And now you know.
JULY 30, 1972 ~ WING/Dayton, Ohio, “14/WING Thirty Heavy Hits” list may have been a bit crowded, but their cool scrolling artwork makes up for lack of space. DJ Mike Duff is busy talking to fans on the cover, while inside, a brooding Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) gives us a piercing stare of the Hitbound and Albums lists … 50 Years Ago this Month in Rock & Roll Radio! Where were you that groovy day when your radio played …
Let’s Celebrate JULY 1972 and … Rock On! ♪
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LinDee Rochelle is a writer and editor by trade, and author by way of Rock & Roll. Two books (of three) are published 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!
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