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Double sided hits on 60s/70s radio

LKellerIII said:
Another B side gimmick I just recalled was putting the instrumental track from the A side onto the B side, without the vocals. Sometimes, it would be called "The Theme from_____." There were at least a few times that I found "The Theme From" superior to the A side hit. Not all vocals were great...hit or not.
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Prime example: Cliff Nobles & Co. "The Horse." #2 hit in 1968. Mr. Nobles sang on the A side, "Love is All Right." Many Jamaican artists used the instrumental only backing track to fill out the other side of 45s.
 
anotherguy said:
Along that line the full version of Don McLean's American Pie was split over 2 sides.
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The difference being that Top 40 radio generally played the full "American Pie," but the full "Sky Pilot" was seldom heard. The radio edit of "American Pie" was not merely the first half of the song, but the first few verses with a fade-out ending attached.
 
The Isley Brothers' "Shout" was also a two sided hit, no?
 
I can remember hearing an extended version of Rare Earth's Get Ready. Was that a two part single as well?
 
The commercial 45 of American Pie faded at the end of Part 1 and faded in for Part 2, but the promo 45 included a part in the beginning that was from an alternate take of the song, not the album version.
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CTListener said:
The difference being that Top 40 radio generally played the full "American Pie," but the full "Sky Pilot" was seldom heard. The radio edit of "American Pie" was not merely the first half of the song, but the first few verses with a fade-out ending attached.
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By the time American Pie was released, Top 40 stations had to compete with the so-called "album rock" stations, so they would play long versions whether they liked it or not. But when long songs first hit the airwaves in the late 60s, Top 40 stations would either play the studio's official "hit" version (Light My Fire, for example) or do their own edits when shorter studio versions weren't available. The Drake stations in particular (KHJ, KFRC, CKLW, etc.) would really slash-up songs horribly without much subtlety. I recall their cringingly edited versions of Those Were the Days, and MacArthur Park.
 
The one radio edit that never made sense to me was the Young Rascals' "I've Been Lonely Too Long." The full version barely hits 3:00. The one that SiriusXM plays now as an oldie, and most but not all stations played as a current, barely has begun before it ends, clocking in around 2:10. I do remember at least one station in the Boston area playing the "long" version in 1967, and WDRC-FM Hartford played it before being sold and flipping to classic rock. What was the story with that one? It wasn't progressive rock or jazzy noodling or a long, involved story-song. It was a tight bit of blue-eyed soul with three verses and three refrains that got chopped to two and two. Why?
 
The long version of Get Ready by Rare Earth took an entire album side and if evenly split for an A & B side of a 45 would have been longer in length than I know of any side of a 45 ever to have been. To hear the long version on radio would have been pretty cool back in the day. I think the single version was in the 2:40 to 2:50 range. You might say it was the mother of all bathroom songs for any DJ that could play it...almost an I'm running down to a restaurant to grab food sort of song!

On the two sided hits, at least sort of, the song Eres Tu by Mocedades was played where I lived (Dallas) yet the flip side I heard first, the English Version, Touch The Wind, ironically, on 730 AM, XEX in Mexico City that played an American top 40 format at the time. Why both or only the English version wasn't played in American radio is beyond me. It is true the lyrics 'flowed' better in Spanish, something you always run in to when you translate lyrics from one language to another.
 
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Another thing I remember on Top 40 stations of the 60s - when they did play the long-versions, generally in the evening when the commercial load was lower - the DJs would kind of brag about it ... "And now, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida - the LOOOOONG version...on the Casey Kasem Program..."
 
Waaaaaay back when I was a kid, a friend and I heard “High Blood Pressure” by Huey Piano Smith and the Clowns (1958). It was the “B” side of “Don't You Just Know It” played on the radio by mistake (which started the station’s practice of marking through the ‘B’ side record label so jocks in a hurry wouldn’t make the mistake again).

BTW, Huey Piano Smith and the Clowns’ other hit was “Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu - Part 1 (the ‘A’ side) and Part 2 (the ‘B’ side – which was, of course, the instrumental version of the same song).

Anyway, we really liked the ‘B’ side “High Blood Pressure”, but, of course, the station never played it again, so we got my friend’s dad to go to the record store (remember those?) and pick up a copy.

He came home laughing. He had asked the lady at the store if she had “High Blood Pressure”, and she said, “No, but I get a little arthritis sometimes when it rains.”

They finally found it filed in the “D’s” (“Don’t You Just Know It”). Seems another customer at the store had also heard “High Blood Pressure” and knew where to look.
 
trusty said:
Waaaaaay back when I was a kid, a friend and I heard “High Blood Pressure” by Huey Piano Smith and the Clowns (1958). It was the “B” side of “Don't You Just Know It” played on the radio by mistake (which started the station’s practice of marking through the ‘B’ side record label so jocks in a hurry wouldn’t make the mistake again).

BTW, Huey Piano Smith and the Clowns’ other hit was “Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu - Part 1 (the ‘A’ side) and Part 2 (the ‘B’ side – which was, of course, the instrumental version of the same song).

Anyway, we really liked the ‘B’ side “High Blood Pressure”, but, of course, the station never played it again, so we got my friend’s dad to go to the record store (remember those?) and pick up a copy.

He came home laughing. He had asked the lady at the store if she had “High Blood Pressure”, and she said, “No, but I get a little arthritis sometimes when it rains.”

They finally found it filed in the “D’s” (“Don’t You Just Know It”). Seems another customer at the store had also heard “High Blood Pressure” and knew where to look.
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Many years ago, I was in a local library, looking for a well known trade publication. I didn't see it and said to a young woman, "Excuse me, I'm looking for Variety.". I had it completely out of my mouth, before realizing what I had said!
 
semoochie said:
Many years ago, I was in a local library, looking for a well known trade publication. I didn't see it and said to a young woman, "Excuse me, I'm looking for Variety.". I had it completely out of my mouth, before realizing what I had said!
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If you'd said that in a San Francisco library, the librarian might have pointed you to the LGBTQ section....and if you needed one, the gender-neutral restrooms. :rolleyes:
 
LKellerIII said:
My memory is that they were treated separately. So, for example, the Beatles "Something..." might have been number one on the KHJ Boss 30, and the flip side, Come Together was number 2 or number 6. IIRC, chart placement was based on multiple factors, such as telephone requests; so it didn't rely totally on sales figures, which obviously would have been the same for both songs.

By the way - I've often wondered if this was part of the reported friction between John and Paul. As great as they both were, McCartney's songs tended to be more tuneful, more mainstream, and probably more popular than Lennon's, which were edgier. Although in this case, I believe Something was written by George Harrison.
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Llew: "Something" was, in fact, Harrison. And John referred to Paul's post-1966 compositions as "Paul's granny music."

By the way, KHJ actually listed two-sided hits together..."Something" and "Come Together" shared #1, and the other nine Beatles double-sided hits did the same, as did double-sided hits by other artists.
 
TheBigA said:
Seems to me the Monkees had a two-sided hit in their career. Any time there was a big star who gave radio two songs (the A & B side), that was more new music by a big star to play. Even today, it's not unusual for a big star to release an album, and have at least five songs chart in the first week after release.
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If we use KHJ as reference, they had three: "I'm A Believer"/"Steppin' Stone", "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You"/"The Girl I Knew Somewhere" and "Pleasant Valley Sunday"/"Words".
 
b-turner said:
On the two sided hits, at least sort of, the song Eres Tu by Mocedades was played where I lived (Dallas) yet the flip side I heard first, the English Version, Touch The Wind, ironically, on 730 AM, XEX in Mexico City that played an American top 40 format at the time. Why both or only the English version wasn't played in American radio is beyond me. It is true the lyrics 'flowed' better in Spanish, something you always run in to when you translate lyrics from one language to another.
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I used to have the record company gold record plaque for first US play of "Touch the Wind" on KRUX in Phoenix. We played the English version because it was what the record company brought us.

As Mocedades was an unknown group in the Americas at the time, there was no reason to think that the Spanish version would be the hit. However, when it became obvious that this was going to be one of the relatively few non-English Top 40 hits, we flipped to the better Spanish version which was what a lot of the stations in the Southwest did. IIRC, it got to the top 10 in Billboard and was heavily reported in Gavin (which is what we used for music data).
 
The hit from Spain was "Eres Tu", and then in America it was "Touch the Wind".
 
Silkie said:
The hit from Spain was "Eres Tu", and then in America it was "Touch the Wind".
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As David indicated, it all depended on where you were and what radio stations you were listening to. I was in Syracuse when the Mocedades song came out. Four stations were on it: WOLF, WNDR, WHEN and WFBL. IIRC, two played "Touch the Wind" and two played "Eres Tu."
 
Where I was, Dallas, Eres Tu was the only side played on all the top 40s. I noticed the oldies compilation CDs only include the Spanish language version of the song.
 
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