What was music radio like back in the day?

I'm referring more to the stations that differed from those that played the standard Top 40 stations that played only the hit singles, of course. The whole rise and fall of progressive rock radio and it's gradual morphing into AOR radio.

 

My example would be WMMS in Cleveland. It became in AOR giant in the 70s (helping to break "Born to Run" by playing it well in advance, among other things). But not everyone remembers that it started out as a true "underground" station ca. 1968-1969.

I have an aircheck of the great Billy Bass from around that era, and it's wonderful in its eclecticism. A true mixture of styles, from hard rock to folk (I recall Joni Mitchell's "Cactus Tree" being one of the selections) and from well-known artists to unknowns ("Lower Lemon" by Linn County, anyone?) — all in the course of a 20-minute sweep.

Billy's announcing approach was laid-back without being too unctuously hip, as some jocks of that era tended to be. You could tell he was into what he was doing. It was great, because you never knew what was coming, or when.

Going back even a little before that, I can recall more than once hearing The Velvet Underground's "Heroin" in the morning while I was getting ready for school! Imagine that.

A few years later, when I was a junior and senior in college, I found myself doing the same thing, playing what was then still called underground or "progressive rock" on a five-hour/six nights a week radio show on the commercial radio station that served the university community. I always say that, despite the low pay, it was the best radio job I ever had.

In those days, management had no clue about the music, so they left it entirely to the jocks. I knew, of course, that I had to make some concessions to the popular taste of the day, even if it was stuff I didn't care for. But I had ample opportunity to indulge my love of obscurities of every sort. I never got any complaints, so I figured the listenership was with me.

Definitely a different era, before consultants or any of that crap ruined everything and homogenized mass taste.

 

My recollection of progressive radio was that the truly 'cutting edge', 'truly progressive' format, was pretty short-lived. It was pretty much over for the most part by 1975. At least in NYC it was. Sure there were some DJs who still had some wiggle room, and to the casual listener it was still kinda 'free-form' on the surface. But the cracks were already beginning to be readily visible by 1975.
WNEW-FM was the biggie in FM 'progressive rock' radio in those days, starting in 1967. But little by little, if you were paying close attention anyway, you could tell that the suits and the money and the corporations had pretty much 100% completely taken over big commercial radio in NYC by 1980.

 

Did the station's playlist become more narrow and less eclectic at a certain point? What about the popular R&B acts of the 70's - did they get airplay, too?

 

To give an idea of what a shocking experience progressively oriented FM rock radio could be, as late (re. rise/decline) as in the fall of 1977... Imagine yourself pumping gas to pay for college, in the middle of a gloomy and cold Saturday, then hearing over the attendant's little radio set, Frank Zappa dropping by CHOM-FM in Montreal to play one complete side (non-stop) of his own test pressing of "Läther": the heaviest one, featuring "Music For Guitar & Low-Budget Orchestra", "Punky' s Whips", etc... I guess ol' Frank knew things would soon never revert back to days like that...

 

Working man by Rush broke on Cleveland radio and people called in for that latest zep tune

Detroit had a great deep tracks station that gradually gave it up to the programable rock list

Lansing mcihigan had a great station, it changed management. One of the leaving jocks played the Doors the End 8 hours straight

 

Top 40 / singles music was heard on the AM band (rock, soul/r&b, pop etc.), while album oriented rock was primarily heard on the FM band. I know its called AOR nowadays but in the late 60's early 70's this AOR concept was very 'free form' meaning DJ's had a lot of discretion as to what they wanted to play; everything from the blues of Mississippi John Hurt to The Mothers/Frank Zappa and all points in between: Jethro Tull, John Mayall, Canned Heat, CS&N, Spooky Tooth, J.Geils Band, King Crimson/ELP/Yes, and tons of obscure acts. What was cool about early FM is that there were very few commercials and those heard weren't the hyperactive / action-action / alpha male types so prevalent today. Typically you'd hear 5 or 6 songs in a row, from full fade in to fade out without crossover, then the DJ would state the songs and artists and often the album titles of what you heard, then play the next set uninterrupted. While there the few jocks that aired their 'personality' a lot of it was very professional and low key. Another thing; there was significant cross over between AM top 40 and FM up through the early 70's. On either format you might hear tracks by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Steely Dan, Grand Funk, or David Bowie. Nights were great because thats when DJs would often stretch out and play what was then pretty esoteric stuff.

As mentioned above it was around 1975 that the format started to become overtly commercial. First thing noticeable was that certain album cuts started to be repeated on a regular basis. For example as late as 1973 you might hear a variety of cuts off the Joe Walsh period James Gang LPs and his three solo albums; deep album cuts like Ashes The Rain & I, Fred, or Birdcall Morning. By the 1975-76 it had settled down to the oft requested songs Funk #48 and #49, Walk Away, and Rocky Mountain Way. Every now and then the odd cut might still be heard late at night or 2am, but those four had become the James Gang/Joe Walsh de-facto 'hits.' Then came the personality jocks who blathered on or spent 15 minutes of every hour airing various 'zippity-do-dah' on-air charades and games, while a few others morphed into proto shock jocks. The FM format turned into pretty much the AM format with its own basic set of hits on regular rotation. The atmosphere changed, like if you & friends used to meet in a cool old pub and eventually gave it up and started meeting in some guys man cave. To sum it up: the heads got replaced by sports jocks.

Another thing was that, at least in the western US, the great distances affected what you heard. When I'd leave Seattle the two good FM stations quickly faded away into static, leaving the major pop AM stations (which were cool) but those faded too 40 or so miles later, then....silence. Broken by that distinct lo-fi sound of rural / small town AM stations...very much rock & roll free I might add. Lots of country and religious stations, the odd classical station or talk radio, and so on. You weren't in Kansas any longer. Actually..... you were.

 

In NY, WNEW was THE station to listen to if you wanted Album Rock. They would play stuff you just didn't hear anywhere else.

On Long Island, it was WLIR.

Those were the days.

 

Rauchnroll summed up the scene beautifully! It was basically the same here with the AM band as well as with CHOM-FM, in the early 70s. But a distinct glamrock orientation sort of took over at CHOM at some point, bizarelly in parallel with lots of airing of French Canadian prog-folk (Harmonium, Robert Charlebois, etc.). I hated glamrock a lot then and preferred when they played Gentle Giant, Frank Zappa or the Mahavishnu Orchestra! I would feel differently about glamrock today though.

 

Yes, for sure. Can't give you the full story because I was away from the market after 1969, but I think the true "underground" nature of the station was gone within a couple of years, and they reinvented themselves as AOR at least by 1974. As Raunchnroll said, before too long AOR was just about as formulaic as AM Top 40 had been.

Not much room for R&B on the underground stations I knew of.

 

Music radio in the past for me was mainly BBC radio.
You could say that I was 'raised' on John Peel musicwise.

Here's one of his shows (in lower-fi AM quality I'm afraid).
https://soundcloud.com/dannygriff/sets/dave-clarke-on-john-peels-show

John's extreme, eclectic taste has always been a major inspiration when developing my own interests in music.
The link here above has Peel playing 60's soul, Billy Bragg, Techno and some of the famous Peel Sessions. Watch out for a typical JP joke during his announcement around 5:20.

I still miss him a lot.

 

Man you're bringing back memories of my youth in Montreal. The Prog-rock scene was so big in Montreal if I remember correctly and loved the whole album-side format they used.

 

In Columbus Ohio it was WCOL-FM.

Believe it or not, they used to play religious programming during the day and they switched to what was then called progressive underground rock in the evening. This was in the early to mid 70's.

The DJs all had that laid back cool , slightly stoned vocal style that you would expect more from a jazz station.

Lots of deep album cuts with most of it programmed by the DJ's themselves. There were always cuts from the newest rock albums out there coupled with pretty much whatever the jocks wanted to play. And man, you could tell these guys were all seriously into rock music and they all had good taste.

I used to listen with a notepad so I could write down artists and tracks that I wanted to explore further. I called many times to ask about specific tracks and for the most parts the DJs were pretty cool about talking music between cue ups and commercial breaks .

I was thrilled when they eventually went 24 hour.

But like all good things, it was eventually replaced by a much tighter hit oriented format when the industry began to change for the worse, changing it's name to 92 X and becoming pretty much instantly forgettable. I think it was around 1977 when that happened so they managed to hang on for awhile.

I remember that the writing was on the wall when a rival station became WLVQ-FM and started pushing the brand spanking new AOR rock format. People flocked to them like lemmings.

They eventually changed their name back to WCOL-FM with a "Modern Pop Country " format which is where they currently are music wise.

Ugh.

But that station was a very important start of my music education when I was a teenage rocker and I still remember them very fondly.

 

In the late sixties In Toronto it was top forty on AM and
all album cuts on CHUM FM.
CHUM FM was terrific.
and they had the coolest jocks and played only album cuts.
You would hear complete albums sometimes.One DJ in particular was the overnight guy.
He called himself Phil In.
Sometime in the early seventies it all changed-and got more commercial.
Glen

 

I can offer another angle, can be interesting for some people. My childhood/teens was during the '70s and '80s in Bulgaria. There were just 2 national radio stations, and the music they broadcasted was very limited, but at the same time quite diverse. Both stations were universal - offering news, sport broadcasts, programs for children, radio plays, different other programs, and of course music. The music played covered all possible genres, of course in very limited quantities - classical, folklore, jazz, all kind of western and eastern pop/rock music plus local Bulgarian pop/rock (by law they were obliged to play at least 20 pct local music). The interesting thing was that among the most popular US and UK hits, many then recent European hits were on the radio (Italian, French, German etc.) and also many oldies.
Today there are countless specialized music radio stations, most of them play only what is in the US and (not so often) UK charts. There are also few oldies stations, constantly offering the same 20 songs that no one wants to hear anymore. Also there are stations for local music. But strangely, there's no even one station to play any music from continental Europe.

 

Radio Luxemburg (if you could stand the fading in and out).
Then things looked up with the "off shore pirate stations". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_radio_in_the_United_Kingdom
Then it all went downhill with the advent of BBC Radio One in 1967.

 

early 70's philadelphia.......post AM radio where WFIL and WIBG got us through the british invasion-motown-and american rock......leading up to WMMR and WXPN(university of pennnsylvania) these two stations brought the underground music scene alive the disc jockey's on 'mmr were stars in their own right....introducing music and making legends....any thing went back then! long blocks of music playing new records in their entirety......quite an education!

 

Great shows on Radio Luxemburg 208 AM.
I remember Kid Jensen doing a 2 hour shift every night.
I listened to that quite a bit.

 

They were the reason I fell in love with Gentle Giant, forever! The very first time I ever heard them was with an English-language (maybe bilingual?) spot that ran on CHOM, for their upcoming March '73 concert in Montreal. I remember it distinctly - maybe you do too? - as using "River" from the recently released "Octopus" album. First came the opening guitar and vibes arpeggios, over which the announcer said "The sweet sound of Gentle Giant!", then the main theme of the song crashed in... Snapped my tickets in a jiffy!

 

Aside from our Bulgarian friend, look up at what you see there: Cleveland. New York. Montreal. Seattle. What's missing is what the rest of the country was getting: Peoria. Poughkeepsie. Muncie. Any number of towns named Springfield.
In other words, I'm betting a lot of people away from the larger urban areas who didn't get the Progressive element in their radio programming, never grew up with the curiosity and hunger for music on the edge...and never got to the point
where visiting or contributing to a board like this was part of their world.

I grew up in Terre Haute IN, 70 miles (and a decade or so) outside of Indianapolis. We had one station who was gospel until 6, then some freak came in and played "those records over there". When that part of the audience responded,
the gospel went away entirely. The station was quite laid-back, the jocks has their cliches, such as referring to "high school" as, "hahhhhh school", but kept their personalities in-check (putting the jock before the music was what "boss radio"
stood for in our neck of the woods). Occasionally you would hear the jock say, "hang on a second", and he'd roll his squeaky chair back to the shelves, say from across the room, "hold on, this's gonna be good", and come back and cue up
another album. Our AOR charts were constantly peppered with deep cuts and unfamiliar artists whom you could tell, nobody told these guys to play. It sounded as good as the rock kids were getting in Indanapolis or Louisville had, only
maybe a bit sloppier. You would hear some jazz and funk artists, and plenty of granola-fed country-rock: essentially whatever they guessed high-school-aged kids were into, I guess.

In a medium-to-small market, there weren't as many stations to divide up the audience, but that also meant maybe not enough of an audience for one specific format to flourish. So, lots of these markets didn't lose their Progressive
Rock to AOR, they often swung to AC or Country. But yes, every bigger town had one rock station, as long as the adults and Country fans were taken care of. And as Top 40 morphed into the more-targeted "CHR", you tended to find
those stations more in the larger cities, because the conservative smalltown sales people (and their stodgy clients) couldn't get behind the notion of selling to the same aged kids who would come into their stores and steal stuff.

And, although most of these small towns usually had one station called "Magic" (where you could get your Carly Simon fix AND stereo mixes of oldies)...we heard little "magic" on our dials.




Now playing on Ariel Stream: AO Music - Drops & Sparks

 

Preceding WMMR in the late 1960s was WDAS FM, strangely headed by the late Hy Lit, who had started out as a fast-talking jock on WIBG in the early and mid-1960s...WDAS included great head/jocks, among them Holiday (aka Harvey Holiday) who went on to spark the Philly radio soul renaissance in the early 70s----

 

right you are 'das was also in the mix!!!!

 

I couldn't stand Radio Luxemburg. They played about one minute of each song, then went on to the next one.

 

In the SF Bay Area we had KSAN and to these young ears it seemed like they were playing one fresh exiting track after another. Around 1978 I recall the evening guy Richard Gossett saying "I'm getting calls asking me why I'm playing this new music from England. Because it's what's happening, that's why." Who decides what's happening now? I know they are sitting in a boardroom and not a studio.

And I can't leave out the Friday Drug Report where you would send in your drugs and a lab would reveal what was in them.

 

Read these books:

The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The History of Top 40 Radio by Ben Fong-Torres

FM: The Rise and Fall of Rock Radio by Richard Neer

Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution That Shaped a Generation by Marc Fisher

The Fong-Torres book is by far the most entertaining, but all three have something to say about how radio changed between the 1960s and the 1970s, particularly in Tom Donahue's work programming KSAN-FM in San Francisco, helping to popularize free-form album rock as a format.