Hard to certify how widespread the airplay was if it didn't chart. Then there's the issue of which version to play.
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I Heard It Through the Grapevine
- Thread starter vchimpanzee
- Start date
Hard to certify how widespread the airplay was if it didn't chart. Then there's the issue of which version to play.
So far, we're seeing a lot of anecdotal evidence from people who were listening to their local Top 40 stations in 1970 and remember hearing this song. I can't say for sure that I was, because I was listening to both Top 40 WRKO and progressive WBCN in Boston in 1970. While CCR's "Grapevine" is very familiar, which station I heard it on -- and I very well could have heard it on both, unlike the Gaye and Knight versions, which were strictly Top 40 and R&B hits -- is lost in the mists of time. I wonder how many other "I was there" contributors to this discussion can say for sure that it was their local hit music stations that were playing it.
Good Time Oldies played it again. My car's clock said 9:26 when it started and 9:30 when it ended.
That is the single version, released in 1975. Not the original unedited album version released in 1970.
It's pretty simple. Before the single edit version was officially issued, some stations made their own edits. Some jocks just faded the album version out around the 4 minute mark. The song got airplay no matter what the charts say.
The Beach Boys "God Only Knows" was a #2 hit in England. In America it only reached #39. That's absurd. It's considered one of the greatest tracks of all time. Charts don't dictate playlists alone...
Which stations? How many? And how do you know that to be true? As others have said throughout this thread, the album version got some airplay on album rock stations. That is something we know. We don't have factual information about station edits on Top 40 stations, other than some people drawing on their memories from 50 years ago. The only factual information we have has to do with the single version from 1975. If an oldies station is playing the song now, it's the official single version from 1975.
As for God Only Knows, it was not released in the US as a single. However it was in the UK. That accounts for the difference.
Stations in Northern California that I listened to played it regularly. As I said, some made custom edits or just sloppily faded it out early. These stations were Top 40 and AOR. "Oldies and Classic Rock" formats did not exist back then...
AOR technically didn't exist under that name in 1970. It came later. Stations playing album cuts had no need to edit or fade longer versions of songs. They played the longer version of Light My Fire by The Doors or In a Gadda Da Vida by Iron Butterfly. Top 40 stations playing the song would have to report it to Billboard, Cash Box or one of the other charts. We're talking about documented airplay, not fuzzy 50 year old memories.
Jocks were known to go rogue sometimes and deviate from the playlist. That may seem like a foreign concept to you, but it happened back then. I was there...
I'm just asking for documentation. Not too much to ask.
The early album rock stations tended to give considerable latitude to the airstaff in music selection. The libraries were large in those first rock stations back in the earliest days of the rock format... 1966, 1967 when many FMs were forced to end simulcasting and "put a bunch of hippies in the back room with some albums... and don't breath too deep in the studio!"
When Abrams developed his AOR concept in North Carolina, the format was tightened, rotations were put into effect and jocks could not play at will But before that... and on a number of "album rock" stations that continued, the jocks could pick songs and the flavor of each show was very personal.
This was not rogue behavior. This was the nature of the format. However, what Abrams proved was that a tighter list of proven songs would smash those free-form stations.
"God Only Knows" was the flipside of "Wouldn't It Be Nice?". Paul McCartney said it was the best song ever written!
Of course, David twists this into "corporate" is better than creative Radio. Early Album Rock stations had passionate audiences and it obviously became a "gold mine". Advertisers wanted to reach those Woodstock generation people.
The point was simply that CCR was a band that had a big following in Northern California. Local Top 40 stations played "Grapevine", even though it wasn't a single or a Top 40 track. Jocks went off the playlist or the PD was cool with it. Big A can't wrap his mind around that...
Still waiting for documentation. Unless you're talking about college radio, it should exist. KYA didn't "go off the playlist."
Of course not. Radio advertisers are interested in what today's listener wants to hear, not what listeners from the '60s liked back then. That audience aged out of their demo.
Radio advertisers could care less what listeners want to hear. They just want to reach the demos they are targeting.
This thread wasn't about that anyway. Any station that is still playing CCR in 2020 is likely "Oldies" or "Classic Rock". The part of my comment you quoted was a reference to Album Rock stations long ago. They didn't just play "hits"...
I mentioned "Good Time Oldies". Not in the original post, though that station goes back as far as the 50s and even with the 80s, "oldies" still fits.
I want to know where Fogerty got his pronunciation of "heard".
From Curly Howard (of the Three Stooges) or perhaps Bugs Bunny.
Both of which had Brooklyn accents.
Definitely Brooklyn.
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