Retiring Guy's favorite "Top 40" AM radio stations in the 1960s

Sunday, January 31. 2021 

Thanks to Sirius XM radio, I’ve been revisiting the days of “Top 40” radio countdowns. So let’s jump into the Wayback Machine and travel back in time to the heyday of this once ubiquitous format. Beware! It’s likely to be a bit of a ramble. 

In late 1962, I bought a pocket-size, AM transistor radio, something along the lines you see here, with money I earned on my paper route. With “Top 40” programming on WNAE limited to brief segments in the late afternoons and weekdays and Saturday’s morning 2-hour “Hi-Time” (which featured high school students serving as guest deejays), Warren was a music desert. Providing me with a wide choice of options, my little radio with its tinny speaker allowed me to reach out into the eastern half of the United States, tuning in 50,000-watt, clear channel stations up and down the dial. At night, I captured signals from as far away as New Orleans (WWL) 

Starting in early 1963 I tune my AM transistor to 1030 on the dial most evenings and listen to Bruce Bradley on Boston’s WBZ. The 50,000-watt station usually came in loud and clear after dark, as long as there wasn’t any lightning or other weather disturbances messing with the signal. On Tuesday evenings, Bradley unveiled the 15 songs on the station’s latest top 40 , which, like most local lists, varied a bit from the top songs on the Billboard Hot 100. In early 1963, for example, Lou Christie’s “The Gypsy Cried” reached the top 10 on WBZ but peaked at #24 on the Hot 100. 

It was one of my favorite song during the month of February, what would now be known as a ‘guilty pleasure’. Almost 60 years later, however, I cringe every time this song – or, more likely its follow-up and more popular “Two Faces Have I” (they’re pretty much the same song) – gets airplay on Sirius/XM’s 60s on 6. 

What was the appeal? I wonder. 

 As far as I’m concerned, Lou’s music hasn’t aged well. 

Old Top 40 stars never go away; they find a new home on Sirius XM. In Lou’s case, he’s even served as one of the guest celebrities on Siriusly Sinatra’s “Playing Favorites”. During this weekly, hour-long show, guests play their favorites songs by Frank, reminisce, talk about the influence he had on their own careers, and inevitably share a cover or two of their own renditions from the Great American songbook. 

As for Bruce Bradley, his career started to slide as soon as he left WBZ in 1968, a year after he was moved out of the coveted evening time slot. He died in relative obscurity in 2013, having ended up as a conservative talk show radio host on KMOX in St. Louis. WBZ, by the way, has been an all-news and talk station since 1985, although it doesn’t appear to have a political bent. 

The mid-1960s photo of the WBZ on-air staff look more like a group of Boston politicos than deejays. It’s also a clear illustration of how sexism and racism permeated every workplace, even Top 40 radio. Woman and people of color were not allowed to enter. During the summer of 1963, I regularly shelled out 50 cents a week to buy a copy of Billboard, the equivalent of $4.25 today. (Maybe I harbored a secret desire to be a deejay when I grew up.) And it wasn’t just for the charts; I dove into the entire magazine. Among the weekly columns by staff members was one that offered advice on musical programming on the radio. One of the ground rules at that time was never to play two records in a row by female artists. Even as a 13 year old, this directive struck me as strange. (The word ‘sexist’, of course, wasn’t in my vocabulary. In fact, according to Merriam-Webster, the first known use of ‘sexism’ occurred in 1963, probably brought into common use with the publication of Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” the same year.) 

I don’t remember if I became conscious about how records were played after this. Besides, this chauvinist advice probably didn’t need to be put into practice that much. Of the top 40 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week ending July 13, 1963, four are sung by a solo female artist (Barbara Lewis, Lesley Gore, Doris Troy, and Little Peggy March) and three by girl groups (the Chiffons, Crystals, and Shirelles). Then we get into a gray area with groups like Peter, Paul & Mary (two men and a woman) and Ruby & the Romantic (female lead and three male back-up singers). And what about Paul & Paula? I don’t recall that the columnist wandered this deep into the weeds. 

During the summer of 1963, the signal from WKBW in Buffalo often came in clear and static-free during daylight hours. This was the era of the odd-couple pairing of afternoon drive-time DJ Danny Neaverth, he of the calm, respectful demeanor, followed by Joey Reynolds, the screamer and rule-breaker. They recorded two jokey singles that summer — “Rats in my Room” and “Underwater Surfers” — both of which briefly charted on the station’s top 30.

 I’m sure the songs’ popularity was limited to WKBW listeners. Outside of these two anomalies, WKBW’s playlists and charts pretty much reflected what was popular according to Billboard’s Hot 100. Buffalo’s other clear channel, top 40 radio station, WGR (550 on the AM dial), tended to feature more adult contemporary and easy listening tunes on its playlist, its deejays sounding more laid-back and avuncular. 

Dan Neaverth went on to spend 40 years as a broadcaster in Buffalo, 25 of them at WKBW. In the process, he became one of the most visible and admired members of the greater Buffalo community. He remains active and in the public eye, earning a feature last month in “Buffalo Tales”, a blog focusing on local stories and personalities. 

As for Joey Reynolds, now considered a pioneer of ‘shock radio’, WKBW management fired him in 1966 during a contract dispute. For the next 30 years, he worked at 21 different radio stations – a year here, two years there, mostly in the East but with a couple of forays into California and Florida. He’s still living but doesn’t appear to be active in broadcasting anymore. 

By the fall of 1963, I increasingly had trouble tuning in WBZ. If was as if its wattage had been cut. But the radio dial was full of other choices, and I soon found a most acceptable replacement: Bruce Morrow (‘Cousin Brucie’) on WABC from New York City, the gold standard of AM top 40 disc jockeys in the 1960s. His initial success can be attributed to (1) his millions of teenage listeners along the densely populated Eastern seaboard, (2) targeting solidly middle-class white teens, and (3) keeping the playlist stocked with white artists. Not that Motown didn’t get lot of airplay, but Cousin Brucie was especially fond of the Four Seasons, Beach Boys, Lesley Gore, and the British Invasion bands. James Brown and Wilson Pickett, not so much. 

Morrow continued to find work after he left WABC in 1974. In fact, he never really went away, most recently coming full circle to host a weekly 3-hour show on WABC: “Cousin Brucie's Saturday Night Rock and Roll Party”, this latest gig following a successful run with Sirius XM. He sounds much the same as he did nearly 60 years ago – a mile-a-minute, high-octane chatter. A little raspier, perhaps. 

Around the time that WBZ started to fade, I also discovered WLS (890) in Chicago. Each weekday evening at 9:00, the evening deejay played the top 3 songs based on votes phoned in by listeners. This was back in the day when I had a paper route and went to bed at 9. I remember listening to this countdown in bed, a transistor radio placed against my ear. 

By 1966, Chicago’s WCFL started to compete for my attention. They won me over with the debut of Chickenman (“He’s everywhere! He’s everywhere!”), a spoof of comic book heroes inspired by the Batman TV series, which debuted in January 1966. Each episode ran for just a minute or two, not that much shorter than any of the songs on the station’s playlist. Eventually, the series was broadcast on more than 1,500 radio stations. I became so enamored of it I bought the ‘Best of’ album, long ago discarded now. (A copy recently sold for $10 on ebay.) 

Both Chicago stations had their own weekly top 40 charts, but I don’t recall anything special or different about them, or even if, outside of WLS’s listener-selected top 3, they had a regular countdown show. And I’d have to google the question to tell you the names of any of the deejays. 

Which brings me to my last and best extended involvement with top 40 radio – CKLW – which, by the start of my junior year in high school in the station, I tuned in most of the time, at home and in the car. The station is based in Windsor, Ontario, but has long been an integral part of Detroit’s, and America’s, Top 40 radio history.   (Or "Big 30", as in the case of the "Big 8".)  

CKLW didn’t just play the hits; sometimes they created them. And its playlist pushed beyond the standard format of the time. Top 40 radio typically cycled through a playlist of 40 to 75 current records a week, more likely at the lower end of the range. “Oldies” was a concept that had yet to come of age; it was rare in the 1960s for a deejay to insert one into the mix. According of historical accounts, CKLW expanded their playlist to upwards to 100 songs per week. The station’s more adventurous approach to music, its wider and deeper playlist, is what made me an avid listener. Moreover, thanks to the hiring of program director Rosalie Trombley (immortalized by Bob Seger’s “Rosalie” from his Back in ’72 album), CKLW became even less slavish to Billboard’s Hot 100. It wasn’t a rare occurrence for songs that didn’t chart on the Hot 100 to spend time on CKLW’s Top 30. Two examples from August 1968 include “Take Me the Way I Am” by the Detroit Emeralds (peaked at #8) and “Soul Clappin'” by the Buena Vistas (peaked #10). At the same time, the Who’s “Magic Bus” reached as high as #11 on CKLW but stalled out at #25 on the Hot 100. 

In a way, “Rosalie” is Seger’s love letter to CKLW’s program director, who must have believed in hit potential of “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” from the first time she heard it. It’s the title cut of the Bob Seger System debut album (January 1969), but was released as a single three months earlier. It debuted at #16 on the CKLW top 30 on October 22 and reached #1 three weeks later. By the time it debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at #84 on December 21, the song had finished its run on CKLW. “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” spent 3 weeks at #17 in late February/early March 1969, three months after conquering the CKLW top 30. Of course, Seger’s hometown boy status certainly helped to pave the way for his first big hit single. Years later, at a 2016 tribute to Rosalie, who was unable to attend due to health reasons, Seger acknowledged how important she was to his success. 

"I just wanna tell the world how much she meant to me, and how good she was for my career. I owe her a lot, and I think she sure earned it.”

 (The songs highlighted on the top 30 are ones that performed considerably better on CKLW’s top 30 than on the Billboard Hot 100.