1953: Frank Sinatra begins working with his new arranger, Nelson Riddle.
1955: Perez Prado’s “Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White” hits No. 1 on the charts.
1962: The Orlons records “Wah-Watusi” in the Parkway Records studio.
1965: Bob Dylan begins the tour immortalized in the documentary Don’t Look Back, performing at the City Hall in Sheffield, England.
1965: Herman’s Hermits make their U.S. stage debut, with the Zombies as the opening act.
Well, Twiggs looks happy he got away with that one…. (1975 photo).
1966: The Young Rascals hits No. 1 on the national charts with their single, “Good Lovin’.”
1968: Organist Al Kooper announces that he’s leaving Blood, Sweat and Tears.
1968: The Cilla Black Show, featuring the theme song “Step Inside Love” written by Paul McCartney, debuts on the BBC, making Cilla the first English woman with her own TV show.
1969: “Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In” by the Fifth Dimension is certified gold.
1970: Allman Brothers tour manager Twiggs Lyndon is arrested for stabbing a club manager over a contract dispute. Incredibly, in a strange turn of justice, Lyndon gets off by pleading temporary insanity caused by being the tour manager for the Allman Brothers. At one point Lyndon’s lawyers declared that touring with the Allman Brothers alone would have been enough to drive anyone insane. (Twiggs died nine years later in a freak sky-diving accident).
1976: Bruce Springsteen, fresh from a Memphis concert, attempts to vault a fence at Graceland to see his idol, Elvis Presley, but was unsuccessful and was escorted away by security.
1976: The Who’s Keith Moon pays $100.00 to nine different New York City cab drivers to completely block off a city street end-to-end, allowing the drummer to throw all his furniture through the hotel room high-rise window while watching them literally smash below onto the street.
Led Zeppelin jamming before 77,000 fans at the Pontiac Silverdome in 1977. (Click on image for larger view).
1977: Led Zeppelin break the single-act attendance record for a concert when 76,229 fans pay to see them perform at the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan, breaking the previous record set by the Who, who also had performed at the Silverdome as well.
1983: To celebrate the 25th anniversary of London’s legendary Marquee Club, Manfred Mann reforms in their original sixties incarnation to play the venue they (they and so many others) started in.
Michael Jackson is booked on child molestation charges in 2003. (Click on image for larger view).
1988: For the first time since since its release 11 years earlier, Pink Floyd’s landmark LP Dark Side Of The Moon leaves the Billboard Charts, only to return a few months later.
2003: Sixties blues man and soul-icon Earl King is buried in his hometown of New Orleans with an authentic jazz funeral. Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton send their condolence.
2004: Michael Jackson is arraigned on his child molestation charges, pleading not guilty to ten different counts, also including extortion and false imprisonment.
2004: Ray Charles appears at his Los Angeles recording studio to attend a ceremony marking it as an historic landmark.It will be the last public appearance he will ever make.
And that’s just a few of the events which took place in pop music history, on this day….
Folk Swinging Wave On – Courtesy of Rock Groups and Artists
Hollywood –With Bob Dylan as the stimulus and the Byrds as the disciples, a wave of folk rock is developing in contemporary pop music.
The Byrds in New York City in 1965(click on image for larger view)
British groups, such as the Animals and the Nashville Teens, have on occasions used pure country-folk materials. But their identity has been really in the Beatles vein. The Byrds, on the other hand, with a similar driving sound, are the first American rock group to obtain the majority of its material from the folk field and make a success out of it. Their Columbia single release, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” is the No. 6 record in the “Hot 100” survey this week.
The five folk singers switched over to rock and roll when the Beatles made it fashionable to wear long hair and play amplified guitars.
Since the Byrds single was released, with San Francisco and Los Angeles were the first two markets accepting the Dylan-authored song, a host of other rock groups have caught the message. And the race is on the get on the folk-rock bandwagon.
Such acts as Billy J. Kramer, Jackie DeShannon and Sonny and Cher have all begun using folk-oriented materials on their singles. A new group, the Rising Sons, displayed a folk-rock style at their Ash Grove bow in Los Angeles recently. Joe and Eddie, Crescendo Records top folk artists, are now reportedly switching over to blend of folk-rock. An act billing itself as the Lovin’ Spoonful, reportedly is working in the New York area with a folk-rock sound.
Byrds’ Gene Clark and Bob Dylan at Ciros in Los Angeles, 1965(click on image for larger view)
When the Byrds played their first engagement at Ciros in Los Angeles, many folk artists attended. The boys rubbed elbows with Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary and, with Bob Dylan as well, who attended the Byrds’ L. A. venue. It was reported that several disk-men brought portable tape recorders to the club to catch their sound. The Byrds’ sound combines falsetto voicing with blaring guitar chords along with a rock bottom drum beat, songs already applicable for dancing with the current pop scene.
Their repertoire is heavily Dylan influenced, espousing his causes just above their din of their own playing. Their new album has four Dylan tunes and one by Pete Seeger. For some, the blending of folk lyrics with a rock beat becomes a natural extension for the current new folk sound. For the Byrds, this sound has become their key to their success.
They have already played dates with Britain’s own Rolling Stones, and a tie-in with the Beatles on their planned forthcoming United States tour has been mentioned. For the Byrds, TV appearances have already been in the making, giving more exposure to the new folk-rock sound.
If the folk-rock movement takes hold, a song’s lyrical contents could become as influential as the dominating beat that has always been the pride of rock and roll at best. With the Beatles in the mainstream as one from the old rock-and-roll-school, and the Rolling Stones along with the Righteous Brothers, with their white R&B acts infused with euphoric soul, the Byrds are in flight towards a new plateau, combining the imagery of folk lyrics along with the wave the group is now riding with their newly-acclaimed sound. END
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(Information and news source: Billboard; June 12, 1965)
BILLBOARD HOT 100 JUNE 12, 1965
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Rock, Folk, and Protest Equals An Erupting New Sound
New York — Call it folk-rock, urban folk, protest music or rock with a message. It’s so new the trade lexicographers haven’t yet agreed on a name. But whatever it’s called, the new sound is selling — and selling big.
Here’s what’s happening. The traditional folk music and the folk-oriented pop product are still selling, but not nearly as much as a few years ago. The hard rock product is still the core of the singles market, but again, it’s not selling as well as it did a year ago. And the sound is not quite as hard today as it has been in recent past.
Fresh Urban Lyric
A hybrid, combining the best and instrumentation of rock music with the folk lyric — usually a fresh urban lyric, and combined with a lyric of protestation — is selling across the board.
Sonny and Cher with Bob Dylan in 1965 (click on image for larger view)
Among the leading exponents of this new form of music are Sonny and Cher, whose Atco record, “I Got You Babe,” hit the top of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for the second week in a row. “All I Really Want To Do,” another single in the same vein, is on the charts with versions by Cher on Imperial and by the Byrds on Columbia. Two weeks ago, Sonny and Cher’s “Look At Us” album was released on Atco Records.
Also released were singles by Sonny on Atco, and Cher on Reprise. Bob Dylan, the Columbia artist influential in spearheading the “new” folk-rock sound, is also back on the charts with his latest single, “Like A Rolling Stone.”
Elektra, a traditional folk label, announced last week that its fall program would include a heavy dose of the rocking urban-folk product. This Week, Verve-Folkways, another traditional folk label, said it would branch into the folk-rock field this coming fall.
Sound And Message
Barry McGuire folk-rocked the charts with “Eve Of Destruction” in 1965
With many notable exceptions, folk music has been more concerned with the message and narration with the new sound. And rock music has been more concerned with the sound than the message.
The latest development has been is to take the rock sound and instrumentation and use folk-oriented lyrics. The singer or group has something to say. Until recently, the message would be delivered with a guitar with a plaintive voice. Now it’s delivered, often by a group, by hard rock instrumentation behind their lyrics, what they seem in trying to convey of their message.
A case in point is Barry McGuire’s “Eve Of Destruction,” released last week on Dunhill Records. The beat is solid, but the lyrics, aimed at teenagers (are adults listening?), deals with social disarrays at the present, such as the possibility of dropping a nuclear bomb somewhere on the planet, maybe during this lifetime.
Capitol Records recording artist Jody Miller circa 1964
Jody Miller’s “Home Of The Brave” on Capitol, which defends the rights of youngsters to dress as they see fit, is another of the protest genre that is served up with a rock-influenced beat.
Donovan, the British artist on Hickory Records with his current release on the charts, “Colours,” falls in that same category, along with a message of protestation.
The reconstituted Highwaymen, making their first ABC-Paramount album, have come out with a Bob Crewe produced rock sound, but the message remain in the traditional folk idiom.
The songs are plain enough. Traditional folk, while it will continue to serve it’s specialized market, and what has come to be considered rock music, is being influenced to a major degree by the wave of the new folk sound, evidently heard in lyric and in message with today’s ever-expanding music scene. END
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(Information and news source: Billboard; August 21, 1965)
WKNR, WJR Hitting Pay Dirt in Detroit, Thanks to Two Air Personalities
DETROIT — Two deejays — one in the Top 40 field and the other from a ‘middle-of-the-road’ easy music station, are basically responsible for the tremendous success of radio stations WKNR and WJR here in influencing the sales of records…. and may be largely responsible for the success of their respective radio stations in reaching a large audience.
J. P. McCarthy WJR circa 1965
WJR station manager James H. Quello, said that his good music station was proud of J. P. McCarthy. “He’s the number one radio personality in town. Everybody knows him and he’s in good part responsible… a major factor… in influencing the sale of LP’s in Detroit.”
According to Billboard’s Radio Response Rating Survey last week of the Detroit radio market — ranked the country’s fifth radio market — McCarthy was rated No. 1 in influencing radio listeners to purchase popular LPs. The station was rated first in the same category, but what makes it a unique situation is that the station gained strength to capture the top position since a similar Billboard survey of May 16, 1964, had placed WJR in second-place behind WCAR.
And the reason, according to Quello, is the power of McCarthy. McCarthy had been with the station at one time, then left WJR in Detroit to work for another radio station in San Francisco. He returned back to Detroit since the last Billboard survey. He’s so effective that WJR placed him on mornings in their 6:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. time-frame, and he returns for the 3:15 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. drive time. “After all, this is the motor city of the world… a big car place,” Quello went on to say. McCarthy features mostly MOR records, Quello said, “but we’re programming more contemporary music now, anything short of rock and roll.”
In influencing the sale of popular LP recordings, the major stations, in order, are WJR, WCAR, WWJ, and WJBK. WJR and WCAR has most of the power; in fact, WJR’s McCarthy had 52 per cent of the total points in Billboard’s survey, followed by WCAR deejay Joe Bacarella with 36 per cent overall.
WJR, incidentally, tied for second-place with WWJ in influencing the sale of conservative type records, was No. 1 in influencing the sale of classical records, and showed up fairly well as a power in influencing the sale of folk records as well.
Both Gain
Bob Green WKNR circa 1965
The top position in the sale of popular record singles was again captured by radio station WKNR and its popular disk-jockey, Bob Green. In fact, both station and deejay gained in strength. WKNR radio was rated at 33 per cent in May 16, 1964, but increased its influence to 44 per cent as of last week. Green increased two points to 30 per cent.
WKNR radio station manager Walter Patterson said the Top 40 station isn’t doing anything different, “but we are fortunate in accumulating listeners.” A recent Pulse study showed that the 24-hour Detroit station as reaching 292,900 separate households during a given day.
“We’re not cocky, but we watch our position closely and never let up,” Patterson said. While the station does believe in strong air-personalities, — “some are and some are not” — it also practices “playing more music and keeping talk to a minimum.” The station’s “sound” is very important,” Patterson said.
WKMH the former, now WKNR, featured a “middle-of-the-road” music format until November 1, 1963, when it went Top 40. “We’ve pulled the fastest turnaround of any station in the country,” Patterson said. “What’s happening is the more we go, the more we get.” The station plays the top 31 records and distributes 99,000 copies of the station’s own survey guide of featured songs and hits. Patterson also said the station has a “refrigerator full” of promotions and uses them as the need arises.
Also in the Top 40 market, radio station CKLW has increased its power in influencing the sales of records since the last Billboard survey. The market saw WJBK change format from Top 40, where it ranked No. 2 last May, to good music. In May 1964, it was No. 4; now it ranks second. Dave Shafer and Tom Shannon of CKLW now rank second and third behind WKNR’s Bob Green.
John Gordon, the program director of CKLW, received the Billboard nod as most co-operative in exposing new records.
Close in R&B Field
In the R&B field in the Detroit market, it was a close race, but WCHB radio came out on top in influencing record sales. WCHB had 49 per cent, WJLB had 44 per cent and FM station WGPR had 7 per cent. WJLB ranked first last May.
Ernie Durham WCHB
Bill Williams, program director at WCHB, attributed the station’s increase in influence to a “much tighter format that was launched in January.” The station also went 24-hours in April. Williams said deejays on WCHB are now faster with delivery than before. “We play 35 of the top-selling R&B records, interspersed with every third record with one we think is a good prospect for a potential hit-maker to climb-up the chart.” This has made the station very important in getting listeners to go out and buy more into the R&B product,” Williams said.
“This is a good R&B market, its the home of the Motown sound,” he said, adding that he liked to think of his market as the entire population of Detroit. WJLB, however, scored with the top disc-jockey — Ernie Durham — in the power of influencing record sales. In fact, Durham almost captured the whole thing with a 44 per cent influence in the Detroit R&B market. The second-place honors goes out to Le Baron Taylor of WCHB, who held the No. 2 spot at 27 per cent.
Interesting to note is that an FM station, WBRB-FM is now showing muscles in influencing the sales of country music records. The field is still dominated by country powerhouse WEXL, which still came up with 86 per cent of the total points, but it’s no longer a one-station field. WBRB showed up with a 14 per cent; it’s a new station since the last Billboard survey. Bill Samples, of WEXL, is still the No. 1 deejay in the motor town getting country music records sold. END
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(Information and news source: Billboard; July 24, 1965)
1956: Capitol Records signs Gene Vincent, intending to market him as the next Elvis.
1957: Elvis makes his second and last appearance outside the United States, wearing his classic gold lame suit for the last time as he plays Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.
1963: Little Peggy March’s “I Will Follow Him” hits No. 1 on the charts.
1963: Martha Reeves and The Vandellas’ “Come And Get These Memories” enters the charts.
1964: John Lennon’s first book of prose and poetry, In His Own Write, is published in the United States.
1969: Joe Cocker makes his television debut, singing “Feelin’ Alright” on tonight’s CBS-TV’s the Ed Sullivan Show.
Glen Campbell and Jose Feliciano perform together on the 1969 NBC-TV special, “Very Special.”
1969: Jose Feliciano’s TV special, Very Special, guest starring Glen Campbell and Dionne Warwick, airs on NBC-TV.
1970: John Lennon’s explicit “Bag One” are returned to the London Arts Gallery exhibition after a high courts judge ruled them “Unlikely to deprave or corrupt.”
1975: 511 audience members are in custody in Los Angeles for smoking marijuana during Pink Floyd’s recent five nights at the arena.
1979: At a Duke Ellington concert held at UCLA, Stevie Wonder makes a surprise appearance to sing his hit tribute, “Sir Duke” and also Ellington’s own “C-Jam Blues.”
Studio 54 co-owners Ian Schrager (center) and Steve Rubell (right) reads on raid by Feds. Lawyer Roy Cohen on left. (Click on image for larger view).
1980: The legendary New York disco of discos, Studio 54, closes it’s doors after exactly three years and a day due to violations of city liquor licenses.
1981: Ringo Starr marries his second wife, actress Barbara Bach, a former “Bond girl” and model he met when filming the flop comedy Caveman. The two are married at the Marylbone Registrar’s Office in London with the other two surviving Beatles attending.
1990: David Bowie plays his 1970s’ hits for the last time as he begins his latest American tour, “Sound Plus Vision.”
2003: Iggy Pop reunites with the Stooges for the first time in three decades at the close of this year’s Coachellas Festival.
2004: Elton John publicly responds to American Idol’s snub of Jennifer Hudson by declaring the call-in voters “incredibly racists.”
Richards, released from a Fuji hospital on May 11, 2006, stated to the press, “I hope I wasn’t too much of a pain in the arse. After all, it was my head they fixed. Thanks, Kiwis.”
2006: 63 year-old Keith Richards falls from a palm tree while vacationing in Fiji, landing on his head and causing a hemorrhage that required doctors to drain his skull. He makes a full recovery.
And that’s just a few of the events which took place in pop music history, on this day….
WKNR SIGNED OFF INTO HISTORY TODAY, APRIL 25, FORTY-YEARS AGO
DETROIT (April 25, 2012) — WKNR-AM, once the dominate radio station in Detroit during the 1960s, signed-off the 1310 AM frequency for the last time on this day, April 25, 1972.
The WKNR AM and FM studio facility at 15001 Michigan Ave., Dearborn, in the 1960s. (Photo courtesy Keener13.com)
Formerly WKMH-AM, the station made the switch to “the new Radio 13” on October 31, 1963.By early 1964, WKNR was by then the most popular radio station in Detroit and remained No. 1 in the market, still holding that status throughout the first six months through 1967.
WKNR, affectionately known as “Keener 13,” began it’s eventual slide from Detroit radio dominance in April, 1967. It was during this timeWKNR saw their challenge met head-onby their other rival located across the Detroit river, CKLW.
WKNR No. 1 in 1965, according to this published trade article. (Click on image for larger view).
CKLW, during that time, was totally being restructured into a formidable radio powerhouse the Canadian station would become by year’s end.
RKO radio consultant Bill Drake and Paul Drew were the two people responsible for the major changes at the “Big 8.” Paul Drew, the newly-appointed program director at CKLW, patterned the same “Boss Radio” format Bill Drake and Ron Jacobs had programmed on 93 KHJ in Los Angeles. By 1965’s end, Jacob’s KHJ was by then the No. 1 radio station in L.A.
But WKNR would not easily go down without a fight. While going against the “Big 8” giant, the legendary Detroit radio station’s ratings were found inside a downward decline, all the while battling against two major fronts.
CKLW officially became the No. 1 radio station in Detroit by November, 1967, according to a Radio Response Survey published inBillboard on November 4.
CKLW, with it’s massive 50,000-watts of transmitted radio power covered 3 Canadian provinces and at times, their night-time signal spanned across 28 States. In contrast, after sundown, WKNR’s 5,000-watt signal was commonly known to be absent from the radio dial in areas east of Detroit and, more so, deficient in night-time coverage and strength.
By now, major changes had begun at WKNR both in the management and personnel level. In January of 1968, J. Michael Wilson was by then doing mornings on Keener. Dick Purtan had left WKNR for Baltimore. By the first week of April 1968, WKNR radio greats Bob Green, Jerry Goodwin, Ted Clark and Scott Regen were no longer there. Sean Conrad, Edward Alan Busch, Tony Randolph, Ron Sherwood, and Dan Henderson were to be the new voices on Keener 13.
WKNR survey guide from February 07, 1972. (Click image for larger view).
Despite the many changes in the Detroit radio market scene at the time, WKNR’s battle for survival against CKLW and FM’s “free-form” radio would drag on for five years.
Near the end of 1971, according to a Detroit Arbitron radio rating for the period Oct./Nov., WKNR-AM had a 6:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m. cume of 377,300 in total listenership during a given broadcast day. For WKNR, those numbers represented a reduction down to a 15 to 12 total market share. In comparison, WABX-FM ranked just under in total rank, with a cume of 330,000 during those same hours.
WKNR, who by then revamped its playlist to include some album-oriented tracks, also made much of their attempt to pull away from the “same as” CKLW all-pop music format. No longer were the top 31 songs part of the playlist rotation. Slashed in half, WKNR’s new playlist focused primarily on the top 15 hits instead, while “previewing” the other 16 songs or so for the week.
By late 1971 and early 1972, WKNR now was promoting itself as the new “American Rock and Roll” radio station. An obvious affront towards the dominance that was CKLW located in Windsor, Ontario.
On the 100.3 FM side, the album rock-oriented ‘underground” format that was WKNR-FM was dropped after an unsuccessful run against WABX-FM. In it’s place, Stereo Island, an easy-listening music format, now found it’s place competing against WLDM-FM in Detroit.
MCRFB jingle audio: WKNR “Stereo Island” 1970
But the changes were not enough, and ultimately, it was not to be.
In the end, WKNR became the former on a brisk, chilly but sunny morning that was Tuesday, April 25, 1972. Just before 8:00 a.m., WKNR deejay John McCrae’s voice breaks but regains composure as he announced the inevitable —
MCRFB aircheck audio: John McCraeLast Moments of Keener 13 April 25, 1972
(This original audio source is property, courtesy of Scott Westerman andkeener13.com)
“…This is John McCrae, I’d like to take it upon my, myself to speak on behalf of all the people who made Keener what it, was and is. You know, Pete Seeger, with a little help from his cosmic friend, wrote it much better than I could, and the Byrds sing it, much better than I, could ever say it. So this time Detroit, we’d like to thank you, for making nearly a decade — a Keener season.”
Signing-off, the last WKNR Keener 13 Top 30 hit WKNR would ever play — before the 8:00 hour on the morning of April 25, 1972.
As the last few bars of the Byrd’s “Turn, Turn, Turn” began to fade, the magic that was once WKNR faded away with the song. But the memories, the events, the music, the great names, the faces and voices who crafted the Keener legacy a long time ago, remain in many a hearts and minds yet even still, to this day.
In 2002, thirty years since WKNR was last on the air, Scott Westerman and Steve Schram decided it was time someone gave WKNR it’s long due, with honors. Working together they packaged an incredibly amazing WKNR tribute site, aptly named,keener13.com.
This coming June, 2012, will mark a decade since the website’s creation. And the phenomenal story about this greatDetroit radio legacyis still being told, remembered, and celebrated there on the world-wide web.
WKNR ‘Together’ logo from 1970 – 1971.(Click image for larger view).
“Keener” was a radio station that went on to impact nearly a decade the many lives of a community it once served.It knew its listeners. And if only but for a short time, WKNR also was the station that, in all essence,knew the city of Detroit wellby way of its prestigious award-winning news department informing and staying “on top of the news” during the station’s Top 40 reign here during the the 1960s and early-1970s.
As Bob Green previously commentedto Scott Westerman on keener13.com, quote, “The WKNR experience provided some of my happiest radio memories.”
We agree.
As to a generation who grew up listening to top 40 radio in Detroit during the 1960s, one may actually say many of those “happiest radio memories” we recall having heard on Keener 13 — belongs to many of us today just the same.
WKNR. Those call letters would come to embody one sensational story. A story of a Detroit radio station’s historic top 40 run to number one status (in short-order all within 9 weeks) after having signed on in October 1963.
And it is a story still remembered to this day. Forty years after signing-off into Detroit radio history one April morning, on this day, in 1972.
A MCRFB NOTE: For a more comprehensive search in our MCRFB archives on WKNR to date, you may GO HERE.
From the MCRFB music calendar:
