EVERY Billboard #1 hit discussion thread 1958-Present

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by alphanguy, Jan 29, 2016.

  1. thecdguy

    thecdguy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Philadelphia, Pa.
    I don't know if/where it ran in Philly in the 70's, but I know from at least '83-onwards it was on 106.1 FM. For a brief time, about 1987 I think, it was on both 98.1 on Saturday Mornings and 106.1 on Sunday Mornings.
     
  2. HGN2001

    HGN2001 Mystery picture member

    Thinking back, in the early 70s it may have been on a rather awful signal, WIFI 92.1. They were running some syndicated "Hit Parade '70" programming and AT40 would have fit right in. I probably didn't listen because that station sounded awful on my stereo, fading in and out with a noisy signal. It was where their transmitter was in relation to my house.
     
  3. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!


    I discovered AT40 in the late fall of 1975. I first heard it when I started listening to KBBC-FM in Phoenix, AZ after my local station stopped doing top 40 music. From then on, I was a consistent listener every Sunday morning. Some stations carried it Sunday night. As stations stopped carrying it, I would seek out other stations that did. I stopped listening to it for good in early 1984.

    AT40 wasn't the only station I listened to in the mid-late 70s, though. My local station went to automated top 40 programming with a syndication company out of California. I also listened to Black/Urban stations whenever I travelled to a major city because back in the 70s, there wasn't any in the southwest that I was aware of until the 80s. I also listened to album-oriented rock stations on occasion. there was no classic rock yet, as we know it today, and there really wasn't any oldies radio format out here until the late 80s or early 90s. By 1983, music video became another way to hear music.

    On TV, we watched American Bandstand, Soul Train, and The Real Don Steele Show.

    Of course, music was still somewhat regional. There are still things one missed because of that. Fortunately, the population out here grew more diverse.
     
  4. Manapua

    Manapua Forum Resident

    Location:
    Honolulu
    I pretty much stopped seeking out AT40 when MTV and the like appeared in the early 80s. At first I wasn't fond of attaching songs to a video but the fact I could hear stuff the radio was ignoring changed my mind pretty quickly.
     
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  5. Mylene

    Mylene Senior Member

    In Australia we didn't get American Top 40 until about 1973. One week the local chart was full of T. Rex, Slade and David Bowie the next The Chi lites, The O' Jays and The Stylistics.
     
  6. tim_neely

    tim_neely Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Central VA
    As a point of reference, AT40 didn't exist in the 1960s; it first aired the weekend of July 4, 1970, counting down the top 40 songs from the July 11, 1970 Hot 100.

    Two effects that the popularity of AT40 had on radio and the Hot 100 in the 1970s:

    1. It helped to end the regional hit song. Some places still had them, but they were much fewer in the 1970s than in the 1960s.

    2. Starting in May 1968, the top 50 of the Hot 100 was entirely sales-based, which also may explain why some songs weren't on the radio in certain markets. Thus, when AT40 started to air, many of the top 40 songs sold very well, but didn't always get a proportional amount of airplay. By 1972, this came to a head, as several hits made the top 10 with sporadic airplay at best. The most notable was "My Ding-a-Ling" by Chuck Berry, which got all the way to #1 because it sold a ton of copies. Though most stations did play it somewhat, at least one station that aired AT40 flatly refused to play it and skipped it every week it was on. By the spring of 1973, Billboard had reformulated the Hot 100 to restore airplay as an important part of the top half of the chart.
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2017
  7. tim_neely

    tim_neely Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Central VA
    I was in the Philadelphia area in the 1970s. My understanding is that WIFI 92 aired it during part of the 70s, but I never once heard it. The first time I heard AT40 was late in 1976, when I was DXing on my AM radio one Sunday night and picked it up on WTIC from Hartford, Conn. Once I realized what I was listening to, my dial didn't move until the show was over. By early 1977, I had found AT40 on WKAP in Allentown, Pa. In late 1977, AT40 finally returned to Philadelphia on a station called Wizard 100, WZZD, which was the former WIBG. The station used to play AT40 straight through without commercial interruption, and it lasted 2 1/2 hours instead of 3 hours as a result.
     
  8. Manapua

    Manapua Forum Resident

    Location:
    Honolulu
    Thanks! I didn't know the history or lack of it of AT40 prior to 1970. Since we were in the era where our TV shows were still on a week delay broadcast, I just assumed we never got the radio show until late that summer.
     
  9. Victor/Victrola

    Victor/Victrola Makng shure its write

    I was a loyal AT40 listener after discovering the program in either 71 or 72. A local AM station that didn't air the program had their own weekly top 30 sheet that was distributed at all the record stores in town. I collected these and compared them to what I heard on AT40. Our local music was often right in line with AT40, except we had a lot more country hits cross-over locally.
     
  10. alphanguy

    alphanguy Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Missouri
    Next is "Love Child" by The Supremes, #1 from November 30 - December 13, 1968.
     
  11. alphanguy

    alphanguy Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Missouri
    Years later, the group Sweet Sensation would take the song to #13 on the charts in 1990.

     
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  12. thecdguy

    thecdguy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Philadelphia, Pa.
    Was just listening to "Love Child" several times yesterday. Great song that was very different for them at the time. It should also be mentioned that Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong aren't on this song. I think Mary talked about this in her "Dreamgirls" book.
     
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  13. alphanguy

    alphanguy Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Missouri
    Ok you guys.... I will not have internet access for the next 3 days due to the floors in my house being refinished, so could someone please introduce the next song on Monday, please? I'll be back after that to continue.
     
  14. Joey Self

    Joey Self Red Forman's Sensitivity Guru

    Even without the years of study that proves a child born out of wedlock is much more likely to be raised in poverty and more likely to be incarcerated, the writer of this song knew it. I think the lyrics are a bit too busy on it, but I still like "Love Child."

    JcS
     
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  15. thecdguy

    thecdguy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Philadelphia, Pa.
    I liked the Sweet Sensation cover, I just wished they would have tried to do the intro on their version the same way as the intro on The Supremes' version.
     
  16. thecdguy

    thecdguy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Philadelphia, Pa.
    Back to AT40 for a minute, I was late to the AT40 party as I didn't know it existed until December 1983, when I happened to be going through the radio one day and heard Casey Kasem's voice."Say Say Say" was the #1 song that week. His TV show, "America's Top 10" had already been on a few years I think by that time on one of our local stations. From that week on, I listened to it religiously every week. I even continued to listen to it for a few years after Shadoe Stevens became the host in 1988. They lost me though, after they started using the airplay chart instead of the Hot 100 in late '91.
     
  17. John B Good

    John B Good Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    NS, Canada
    It's hard to remember that the attitudes towards love children were so harsh then.
     
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  18. tmoore

    tmoore Forum Resident

    Location:
    Olney, MD
    In 1977-1978, in Philadelphia AT40 ran on WZZD 990 in Philadelphia (I was in northern Delaware at that time). I later found out that WZZD 990 was the old WIBG station which was big in the '60s.

    EDIT - I now see others have already responded similarly re: WZZD (Wizard 990). I was unaware it was on WIFI 92 before that; thanks for the info.

    I think WZZD went religious around the end of 1978 or early 1979. This happens to be one of the stations I was referring to in my earlier post when I said I lost AT40 for awhile (there was no easy way to find stations that carried AT40 back then besides just searching for it on the radio dial; no Internet search engines then!). I finally found AT40 regularly on WNBC 660 out of New York City which is where I listened to it until about 1983.

    Around 1983, as mentioned by others, stations started dropping it, and I couldn't find it again. I also began to dislike what I was hearing musically around that time as well ("Total Eclipse of the Heart" - ugh!). So I gave up on pop radio then. Moved to FM rock stations at that point.
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2017
  19. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    I won't bore you all by repeating the story of how the recording was mixed, but it's quite a fun read by R. Dean Taylor if you care to track it down.

    This song was Motown's attempt to become more topical, socially aware at a time when they were being criticized for ignoring the changing world. Teen pregnancy was a real problem in the urban areas, and this was a way for Motown to show how hip they were to the Black "community". So, berry Gordy literally locked several writers in a motel room until they came up with a song about this issue, and "Love Child" was the result. Besides, Diana Ross & The Supremes needed a major hit, as they hadn't had one for about a year at that point.

    There isn't too much of a difference between the stereo and mono mix except for the intro, where the mono mix has slam.
     
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  20. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    But, there are other factors involved. Simply having a child out of wedlock alone does not increase chances of poverty or incarceration. For reasons we cannot discuss on this forum, those studies are basically bunk from groups with an agenda.
     
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  21. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!


    For me, the classic era for AT40 was between 1975-1977, and my opinion is because that's when I feel the music was the most interesting and diverse. The other time was in 1983, when the music business picked back up again after a long lull.
     
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  22. Victor/Victrola

    Victor/Victrola Makng shure its write

    Love Child is an amazing track, great arrangement, the recording sounds fresh and the subject matter is more than a "baby let's swing" kind of thing. 1968 was a tumultuous year, so this track fit right in.
     
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  23. Manapua

    Manapua Forum Resident

    Location:
    Honolulu
    As has been pointed out, Love Child was a much needed hit for the group who went into a slump around this time frame. The two previous singles - Forever Came Today (which I love) and Some Things You Never Get Used To - barely cracked the top 30 and 3 singles in '69 either suffered the same fate or missed the top 40 entirely. The similarly themed I'm Livin' In Shame did give them another Top 10 hit as did one of 3 duets with the Temptations - a remake of Madeline Bell's I'm Gonna Make You Love Me which peaked at #2 for 2 weeks. I liked these duets, particularly the next one I'll Try Something New which barely made the top 30.
    Here's a mind boggling, inappropriate performance of Love Child from The Hollywood Palace. Whoever thought it was a good idea to have a bunch of kids on stage dancing to a song about the out of wedlock experience must have been high.

     
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  24. SITKOL'76

    SITKOL'76 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Colombia, SC
    'Love Child' is an amazing song and according to Billboard, the biggest hit by Diana Ross & The Supremes. And it was very much a departure from their previous material which has quite literally always been about love and heartbreak.

    Their second to last #1 hit before Diana left for solo.
     
  25. Joey Self

    Joey Self Red Forman's Sensitivity Guru

    Not bunk, just uncomfortable facts. But you're right, we can't go into it here.
     
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