 |
||||||||||||||
|
 |
|
|
|
[Home] [Music] |
|
|
|
The question needs to be asked: Did the music played on Boss Radio make the format so financially successful? Or, was it the other way around? In 1965, one radio station in one American city could more easily distinguish itself from all the rest compared to today. For one thing, in those days there were far fewer radio stations on the air than we have today. There were also many more corporate and mom-and-pop owners of radio stations in contrast to today’s megacorporation control of radio stations in most markets across the United States. As the song “Crocodile Rock” asks, “Do you remember when rock was young?” The year 1965 was that time. It was the first full year after The Beatles initially came to the United States, and the entire recorded music industry on both sides of the Atlantic was supercharded by a high energy competition between British and American rock and roll music artists. This made the mid-1960s a major turning point for rock and roll music, which became “big business” for major record labels thanks to the exploding audience interest. Boss Radio was launched in this social and economic context in Los Angeles, a nexus for the record labels. The Business Behind the Music One person whose fate was linked to Boss Radio in the 1960s was Jan Basham, the renowned music promoter from A&M, the now-legendary music company formed by Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss. I would see her energetic, smiling presence regularly when I worked in Hollywood at K100 in the 1970s. I was saddened when she died in 2004 of cancer. Jan Basham was unusually honest, candid, and forthright--especially when I compared her to other music promoters that I encountered in Los Angeles. Basham explained in clear terms how powerful KHJ was in selling music industry product in those days. The April 1975 A&M album, "Diamonds & Rust" from Joan Baez was on KHJ's album chart as a top 20 album for twenty-two weeks, Basham told me. But, "they never played the single," she admitted to me. "So, we moved about nine thousand singles [in Los Angeles] without KHJ, which is a phenomenal amount of singles. I'll give you the right figures. Most companies hype; I don't hype," Basham insisted. "That's approximately what we sold: nine thousand singles, which is a smash. If KHJ had gone with [the single from "Diamonds & Rust"], it would have [sold] over a hundred thousand." The Hits of the Late 1960s A dazzling choice of songs was available in 1965, the first year of Boss Radio. These are the number one songs in Los Angeles on KHJ, listed in the order in which they appeared on the charts: Satisfaction—The Rolling Stones By playing such intensely popular music, it would be difficult to fail financially--especially in Los Angeles. But, Boss Radio also went several steps further to capture and maintain the attention and loyalty of the radio audience. Boss Radio emphasized on-air personalities who were intentionally different from from the announcing style of the 1950s and early 1960s. On Boss Radio, the Boss Jocks did not talk for lengthy periods of time as most other radio announcers did in those days. And when the Boss Jocks did talk, it was only over music—rarely (if ever) did they talk without music being under. The Boss Jocks typically talked over the “intro” of a song, or as the song faded out to the end of music. The effect was to create a “tight” sound with little silence to mesmerize the listeners, allowing very little time for the listener to even think about switching to another station. The Real Don Steele referred to this as “getting the listener off.” Then there were the singing jingles produced especially for Boss Radio, which were also very different from how radio jingles sounded in those days. For one thing, on Boss Radio, the jingles initially were acapella (singing voices only). They also were much shorter than any other jingles. Eventually jazzy music beds and high-power drum intros became standard on the so-called “Drake jingles.” And then there was that great music of the era. In those days, the songs were very short compared to today. Most songs (until “Hey Jude” by The Beatles came along) were around three minutes maximum. This made it possible to play more music per quarter-hour than is possible today. The combination of shorter songs, short jingles, and Boss Jocks that only talked over music made Boss Radio sound very distinctive compared to anything else on the air in those days. Within six months, KHJ became the number one radio station in Los Angeles. And The Hits Just Keep On Coming Here are the number one songs played on 93/KHJ in the 1960s after the station had become LA’s most popular station but before FM radio became the dominant medium for rock and roll music in the 1970s. 1966 1967 1968 1969 |
|
|
|
Home | Audio | Author | Business | Culture | Music | Legal | Links | People | Sources | Technology |
|
|
|
You can contact the author if you modify this text to make it a working email address: |
|
|
|
...... |