Your Family Car AM Radio

"The Israelites" didn't hit the Billboard Top 40 charts until early June 1969. It entered the British charts in mid-March of that year. So you couldn't have heard it in the summer of 1968.

Maybe you have the year of your trip wrong?

 

I remember American Pie by Don McLean and a few years later 50 ways to leave your lover by Paul simon. They made an impression on my young ears. Grew up in Detroit and my parents were probably listening to CKLW out of Windsor.

 

There would be 100's of songs to remember from my parents car as I was an AM car radio freak. We travelled a lot being a Methodist preachers family and that opened up a lot of radio time. Plus, whenever my dad made his faithful weekly rounds visiting folks in the hospital or in their homes I'd go along for the ride. Sometimes I'd go in with him and other times he'd give me the keys and leave me alone in the car at a home, hospital or funeral home parking lot, etc. and I'd crank the AM. That wouldn't go over well today. Yeah, so, I recall hearing Sloop John B. for the first time in a funeral home lot. I think the car was a crappy Rambler wagon. This past Sat. my wife and I were driving a stretch of 322 between Port Matilda and Phillipsburg,PA and I told her of the first time I heard Knocking On Heavens Door on that stretch of hi-way. We had gone to State College to get school clothes and heading up the mountain back home out of Port, Mr. Bob came on and I was blown away in the Ford Galaxie 500.

 

Thanks for this! Yes this is "proof" that that trip happened in '69 instead of '68... Two specific family vacation trips I interchanged. Thanks to music and your data, old memories are straight now!

 

Summer of 1965 family vacation.
Like A Rolling Stone, Help, You Were On My Mind, California Girls, Houston (Dean Martin) were in heavy AM radio rotation.

 

The old man controlled the radio until I was able to drive in 1974. <insert old person cliché>
So the songs I heard were at best from Adult contemporary Radio (before there was such a cliché), like the Association's Windy or the 5th Dimension's Up Up and Away.

 

I played the song on the radio when it was current, but I always thought Smith's voice could be mistaken for Carol Channing's.

 

My grandparents had an Airstream trailer, and I took extensive vacations with them in the summers of 1964, 1966 and 1967. They were fairly generous with letting me listen to the car radio, so I have a few specific memories from those trips:

1964 – Hearing Dan Ingram play "The Ferris Wheel" by The Everly Brothers on WABC (not a big hit, but proof it got some airplay). Unfortunately, I misheard his outro and somehow thought he said it was by The Beatles. For a couple of years afterwards, I was obsessed with locating this mysterious "Beatles" song I had heard only once — to the point that when my grandparents went to London in the summer of 1965, I asked my grandmother to stop in a record shop and inquire about it. Of course, they were baffled. Needless to say, in those days you didn't have the resources to look things up, so I carried that mistaken notion about that song around for several years before I discovered it was actually by The Everly Brothers!

1966 – Listening to a Canadian station in Sudbury, Ontario and hearing "Clock on the Wall" by The Guess Who, which never made it down here. But I really loved that song, and was thrilled when I finally found it a few years later on a cash-in LP of earlier material released after they hit it big on RCA. The other song that seemed to be played once an hour that summer was "Little Red Riding Hood" by Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs.

1966 – Listening to WPTR in Albany. At the time, "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Ha!" was #1 on the charts (I still have WPTR's chart to prove it). I don't know to what extent Jerry Samuels did this for other stations, but WPTR had a custom breaker he made to the backing track of his hit on which he said "On WPTR, ha ha!!" Naturally, they played this quite a bit. Their evening DJ was a guy name Roger Scott who spoke with a British accent, but I wasn't convinced that he was for real…sounded as if he could be putting it on.

1967 – Somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Indiana, hearing for perhaps the only time in history on Top 40 radio a new single by The Left Banke that I was absolutely enchanted by. But I didn't catch the title, and having heard it only once, I wasn't able to fix the melody in my head. So all I could remember is what a great song it was. It wasn't until two or three years later when I got their debut LP as a cutout that I realized it must have been "She May Call You Up Tonight," which was released as a single. Such a great song; should have made it, but didn't.

1967 – As we preceded westward, hearing "All You Need Is Love" but being much more interested when the radio played "Baby You're a Rich Man," which I loved. Also heard a fair amount of "Heroes and Villains" that summer.

 

"Stuck In The Middle With You", while sitting in the back seat between my brother and sister.

It must have been on the charts while we were traveling from California to Illinois and back.

 

Weirdly enough, getting into traffic jams on Long Island trying to get to Jones Beach in the early '70s. Robert John's remake of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and the Carpenters' "Yesterday Once More" in particular.

 

Driving west out of the Bay Area on Highway 50 past golden hills dotted with oak trees to Lake Tahoe, no AC, hot summer of '67, and "Ode to Billie Joe" playing, the whole nuclear family in a trance.

 

We had a trailer and our summer trips started in 1967.
BUT
As I mentioned above - no radio at all (that I remember) much less radio controlled by me (in the back of our station wagon).

 

I remember arguing with my sister in the car during family vacations over which station to play that would start to get heated and then my father would get annoyed and with a very loud CLUNK, he would turn off the radio and we would listen to nothing. The loud clunk/off is the key to this memory---new cars with silent switches and touch screens cannot give you the same experience. Those old cars had metal touching metal; it provided a very satisfying feel.

As for specific songs.....I remember hearing "Midnight At The Oasis" by Maria Mulduar a lot during those trips.

 

In April 1984 I rented a Chevette for $100 for a week with unlimited mileage and drove a round trip to Florida with only an AM Radio. I am guessing that the #1 song was Against The Odds by Phil Collins. By about 12 hours into the drive I completely despised that song. I will never voluntarily subject myself to it again.

 

I remember hearing Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way" on the AM radio through the dashboard speaker with the treble cut knob all the way down and the volume all the way up, the song playing so loud that the dashboard and the steering wheel were vibrating. That end jam on that song is a fuzz-tone masterpiece. It out-fuzzed Blue Cheer.

 

For me, Lay Lady Lay. We were on a ski trip to Tahoe (1970) from San Diego in my dad's green Merc Cougar. Anyone remember HWY 395? My dad was not a fan of the song and called it "crap". So long ago, everyone in that car is no longer here. Good times

Loved the old AM, had a transistor that mounted to my Schwinn handlebars tuned to KCBQ, thought I was the cat's meow.

 

Yep 610 KFRC Dr. Don Rose!!
Iirc we were getting it going all the way north to Ukiah and Chico back in the late 70’s

Long Tall Glasses
Two Tickets to Paradise
On Broadway


And in the 80’s
Jump...Van Halen and The Pointer Sisters
Etc

 

I have a very distinct memory of hearing "Time of the Season" whilst laying in the back of someone else's station wagon on the way to play hockey, somewhere crosstown in Saskatoon '68/69. CKOM?

 

We were driving through West Virginia when I heard "Country Roads" for the first time (it had just been released); I listened to the lyrics while looking out the window in wonder. "American Pie" was pretty recent when I heard it for the first time on our way home from the Mayfest celebration in Fort Worth, Texas; I thought, "Dang, this is a long song." When we got home, I walked down to the levee (of the Trinity River) and thought, "This one is dry," then wondered what Don Maclean was talking about.

 

Run Joey Run
Chevy Van
Only Women Bleed
Killer Queen

 

I lived in San Diego for a while (1971-1972) and used to listen to KCBQ myself...If I recall correctly, it was one of the two big AM stations in town...the other one was KGB.

 

Take It Easy (Eagles) is a great car radio song...

 

I wasn't even a big Beach Boys fan at the time but somehow I remember hearing "Fun, Fun, Fun" on my 1958 Chevy Biscayne while driving down the road in Chapel Hill, NC sometime in the mid 1960s. I have a vivid image of the road and I believe I could drive to it today without referring to a map even though I don't remember the street name.

I think "Fun, Fun, Fun" just might be the quintessential AM car radio song.

 

ahem. that direction would be East.