In '67, what song(s) off Sgt. Peppers got heavy radio rotation?

In Los Angeles the summer of 1967 AM Radio played Lovely Rita, A Day In The Life, Lucy In The Sky, With a Little Help From My Friends constantly really saturated is the word.

 

I was only 9 years old and I certainly remember hearing "With A Little Help From My Friends" on the radio. I also remember the easy listening station my grandparents listened to playing "When I'm 64".

 

I completely agree with you. I was addressing the fact that, regardless of whether it was or was not a concept album, many pop concept albums existed before it.

 

Right, and AM stations played the hell out of 'Headquarters'. Mostly 'Shades of Gray', 'Forget That Girl', 'Randy Scouse Git', and 'You Just May Be The One'. There is an aircheck of WKLO from 5-67 where the announcer is touting YJMBTO as the next 45 rpm single, "available in record stores next week!". I wonder if RCA pressed up some acetates?

 

"A Day In The Life" may have gotten the lion's share of airplay, as it appears there was a 'leaked' acetate (with a 'cold' intro) from EMI that made the rounds.
Mr. Hoffman weighed in on this in 11/2015:

I once read about the "leaked" A DAY IN THE LIFE" with the cold opening and how it made its way across America, one dub at a time. Can't remember much except that it was an "EMI DISK" (acetate dub) that was duplicated onto 7 1/2 ips tape.

 

Offshore radio trip 1967 part 2


Big L Radio London Final Days Audio Compilation Aug 1967

 

This KJR chart shows 4 of the Sgt. Pepper cuts charting:
: T40
KJR - CHANNEL 95 - SEATTLE/TACOMA
FABULOUS FIFTY
JUNE 16, 1967

1. Windy – Association 7
2. San Francisco – Scott McKenzie 10
3. Come On Down To My Boat – Every Mother’s Son 1
4. Little Bit O’ Soul – Music Explosion 2
5. Let’s Live For Today – Grass Roots 4
6. A Day In The Life – Beatles LP 11
7. Groovin’ – Young Rascals 3
8. She’d Rather Be With Me – Turtles 8
9. Mirage – Tommy James And Shondells 16
10. I Think We’re Alone Now – Tommy James And The Shondells 5
11. Tracks Of My Tears – Johnny Rivers 23
12. Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead – Fifth Estate 22
13. Don’t Sleep In The Subway – Petula Clark 21
14. I’ll Spend My Life With You – Monkees LP 15
15. Somebody To Love – Jefferson Airplane 6
16. Up, Up And Away – Fifth Dimension 24
17. Sounds Of Love – Five Americans 25
18. My World Fell Down – Sagitarius 27
19. Hip Hug Her – Booker T And M.G.’S 9
20. New York Mining Disaster-1941 – The Bee Gees 14
21. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – Beatles --
22. Come To The Sunshine – Harpers Bazaar 30
23. White Rabbit – Jefferson Airplane 47
24. I Got Rhythm – Happenings 17
25. Do It Again A Little Bit Slower – Jon And Robin 18
26. Him Or Me-What’s It Gonna Be – Paul Revere & Raiders 19
27. Here We Go Again – Ray Charles 28
28. Girl, You’ll Be A Woman – Neil Diamond 12
29. Sunday Will Never Be The Same – Spanky And Our Gang 26
30. Can’t Take My Eyes Off You – Frankie Valli 32
31. Release Me – Englebert Humperdinck 13
32. She’s Leaving Home – Beatles LP 31
33. Respect – Aretha Franklin 20
34. Light My Fire – The Doors 46
35. When I’m 64 – Beatles LP 41
36. Carrie Anne – Hollies --
37. Look Of Love – Dusty Springfield --
38. Come On, Marianne – The Four Seasons 39
39. Don’t Blame It On The Children – Sammy Davis Jr. 29
40. Jackson – Nancy Sinatra 50
41. Day Light Savings Time – Keith 40
42. I Take It Back – Sandy Posey --
43. The River Is Wide – The Forum 33
44. Bowling Green – Everly Brothers 35
45. A Whiter Shade Of Pale – Procol Harum 43
46. Alfie – Dionne Warwick 49
47. Lonely Drifter – Pieces Of Eight 34
48. Society’s Child – Janis Ian --
49. Back Sheep – Sam The Sham 36
50. Step Out Of Your Mind – American Breed --

PICK ALBUM
The Motown Sound: A Collection Of Hits

 

NO 45 singles serviced in that period! LP! Take it or leave it. Want to play something off it, album cut. NO singles from the LP until "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band/With A Little Help From My Friends" in 1978. Facts!!!

 

Not reality! NO 45 RPM singles. No Jukebox 7" 33 1/3 EP released. How could the jukebox play Sgt. Pepper's?. The closest thing to a coin operated jukebox which could would have been a Seeburg Home Console which used the Select-O-Matic mechanism which played 33 1/3 RPM normal LP discs, one side at a time. Some restaurants, night clubs, and some adult establishments did use them.

 

Just now jumped into this thread, and allow me to make this observation:

It is folly to make a universal statement with utter confidence as to "what Top 40 stations did" when Sgt. Pepper came out based on one's own personal experience in June of 1967. That's because one's experience of "what Top 40 stations did" will be limited to what the stations in one's own market did, possibly supplemented by a very small sample of a few additional clear channel Top 40 stations one could pull in late at night.

Beyond this, no listener in 1967 would have been able to accurately give a broad answer to this question, since no listener would have been able to listen to a large enough sample of stations to do so.

That being said, it is a reality that the vast majority of Top 40 stations in the US played singles, and it was rare for them to play album cuts.

A few stations might have featured one album cut on their airwaves each week (you can find some surveys that reference this).

A few others might have taken an educated guess as to what an artist's next single from an album might be, and try to get a jump on the competition by playing it early. (For example, a Top 40 station I listened to played The Mamas and Papas' "Creeque Alley" — the album version — well in advance of it being released as a single. Therefore, when the song was remixed for the single with added horns, etc., it came as a great surprise to hear it, as we had been used to hearing the LP cut.)

But I believe these were likely exceptions to the rule.

So all I can do is to state what the Top 40 stations *I* listened to the most did. One of them played the Sgt. Pepper album in its entirety, I believe most likely on the first Sunday evening after it was released. I know this because I wrote down the title of each track as it was played on an index card, which I still have to this day. (I entered the last track on side one as "Beamed for the Benefit of Mr. Kite"!)

After this, I never heard this station play another cut from Sgt. Pepper. And I never heard the other Top 40 station I listened to play a track from the LP — not once.

 

As far as my memory serves A.M. radio played no songs from Pepper because there weren't any singles taken from the LP...

Underground radio on the other hand played it all....continuously

Pepper was the album that everybody owned & I do mean everybody....

Not unlike Pink Floyd DSOTM in the 1970s...

Ashes to ashes...

 

I'm certain that James Hendricks was engaging in a bit of wishful thinking/misremembering/hyperbole when he wrote that line in "Summer Rain."

However, I'm also fairly certain that many years ago I did see a 7" Jukebox LP version of the Sgt. Pepper album (not in real life, but online). I cannot find any reference to such an animal now, but I don't think I made it up either.

Still, as you imply and others have stated (including myself, in the form of a trivia question that asks what impossible event is described in the lyrics of "Summer Rain"), the likelihood that anyone spent any time in 1967 "groovin' in the sand" to the strains of Sgt. Pepper emanating from a jukebox is extremely small.

 

Your lack of understanding is correct.

 

No heavy rotation of any Pepper tracks in the UK at the time. Occasionally one heard Lucy In The Sky, With A Little Help, She's Leaving Home or A Day In The Life but not on the regular pop chart programmes.

 

Yes Agree. Mainstream radio concentrated on the singles market. Wasn't Lucy in the Sky banned by the BBC anyway. When I'm 64 was played a lot but not much in '67 I doubt. Just can't remember what Radio Caroline or Luxembourg was playing.

 

The radio stations were spinning nearly everything that is on the MMT album (which grouped all the 1967 singles). Later, the "Yellow Submarine" movie brought more attention to Pepper tracks that were featured.

 

What we seem to have established so far in this thread:

(1) The top 40 stations that some people could hear at the time played all or most of Sgt pepper in moderate to heavy rotation.
(2) The top 40 stations that other people listened to did not.
(3) There has been a sufficient number of replies from members geographically scattered to conclude that many tracks from the album WERE played in many places.
(4) Sgt Pepper's was groundbreaking, if only because of point (3), but was a themed album rather than a concept album. (We knew this already didn't we?)
(5) "Summer Rain", written by James Hendricks and sung by Johnny Rivers, mentions a jukebox playing the album. When we have finally figured out the significance of this seemingly impossible event (I think there is no significance at all, just a bit of writer's licence, but let it pass), we can return to dissecting the deep meaning behind "Jet" by Paul McCartney, and perhaps get started on "Bip Bop".

 

And don't forget how Elvis Double Trouble soundtrack took away from some of the initial buzz from Sgt. Pepper LOL

 

within a certain very specific demographic, possibly.

I never heard of this album; I didn't think Elvis was recording anything at that early stage. Unless you are referring to the other Elvis.

 

I’m curious to hear how the DJs back in the day transitioned to the Sgt. Pepper’s album. After all, most stations were designed to play 45 RPM singles so I can only imagine how they were able to play tracks from an album that was 33 1/3 not to mention which songs to choose when there was no word from EMI how to do so.

 

Again, this illustrates the differences in radio between different countries, and possibly different places within countries. In Australia it was not particularly unusual for a DJ to play the occasional album track, though I think Sgt Pepper made it become a lot more common. I can't imagine it being too much of a technological challenge to set the station up for playing 33 RPM.

 

As a 9 year old kid in the UK, I couldn't afford the album (break out the violins!) so listening to the radio was my only window to hearing the album.

I recall that the only songs I'd quite often hear, were She's Leaving Home (probably more than any other), and also With A Little Help and When I'm 64.

When I finally purchased the album, somewhere around 1972, most of the other songs (apart from Lucy and Sgt Pepper, which I'd heard in the Yellow Sub film) were unfamiliar to me.