I was thumbing through my "Top Adult Contemporary" book when I noticed both the Beatles and Supremes did not have their first easy listening chart hits until the tail end of 1969. So that got me thinking of when MOR radio started playing "rock and roll" acts. Did they ever play soft songs by otherwise rocking acts? What MOR stations were quick on the bandwagon, and which held back?
What a strange coincidence .... yesterday I'd checked out the Whitburn Top AC book from a local library, and was astonished at some of the songs which charted on the "Easy Listening", "Middle of the Road", or whatever Billboard called it any given week. I, too, noticed The Beatles' absence through 1969, and thought, "Seriously?? So where is 'Yesterday'??"
But it led me to think about posting a question similar to yours. And my mind arrived at a theory of its own:
A decade before top-40 started breaking into splinter-size fragments, the MOR genre appeared to do much the same. I'm 51, and my parents - virtual kids - were 21 when I was born. They were the first rock 'n' roll generation, of course, and many of 'em "hit the wall", so to speak, when the British invasion turned contemporary music on its ear. Mom was more tolerant, though she felt The Beatles were - her words - "silly-looking." Dad pretty much gave up at that point, and, like many, went searching elsewhere. I don't think there was any coincidence between this and the breakout of so-called "countrypolitan" stations, putting country music -- which to then was saddled with "hillbilly" baggage and especially jocks which sounded just a step above the mountain man in Deliverance -- into a top-40 sort of presentation. Two stations come to mind: WYDE in Birmingham and Atlanta's WPLO. Both were rockers which flipped to cash in on those alienated by the British wave and big changes in music. My Dad as a result became a country music fan.
But what about those who didn't like country music, in any form or frame? Well, there was MOR. "Ohhhh, yeah, that stodgy station with all the network clutter, the one my squaresville parents listen to. Yuuuuuck, Patti Page, Sinatra, Jerry Vale ... and that beep-boop-beep monitor beacon thing on the weekend .... cringe ...."
And that's the beginning of when MOR effectively broke into three formats .... 1) those who still wanted to cater to the pre-rock crowd evolved into what I've heard termed "good music" stations. 2) Those who saw buckets of money to be made from those like my parents, born in the '40s, who wanted the more sedate parts of top-40 without a lot of amplified geetars. Thus evolved the "bright MOR" format (or, as it came to be called, "chicken rock"). A mix of the contemporary and enough 'traditional' without it sounding too much like "their parents' station." And 3) those who soldiered on as usual .... we'll call it, ohhhhh, "middle of the road", heh. ;-) The MOR evolution of the late '60s into the '70s has become a source of fascination. It wasn't just the music mix, it was also the personality factor. Some stations sounded like the jock was a holdover from doing station breaks during the OTR era, with the personality of drying Sherwin-Williams .... others had lively, upbeat personalities .... even some (WFLA/Tampa in the mid '60s) had the music in a top-40 framework, complete with PAMS jingles. Interesting stuff, at least to a geek like me.
So all that derived from my thumbing through the Whitburn AC book, while thinking of all the "Monitor" recordings I've heard (yeah, it's a guilty pleasure). Go to the Monitor Beacon tribute site, and start listening at, say, 1967 and go until its demise in January 1975. Notice the music mix, how it goes from purely MOR to a little contemporary-ish stuff creeping in, and by '73 the music on "Monitor" was almost entirely "adult contemporary."
Credit to some extent for "chicken rock" must also go to the Bill Drake/Gene Chenault team when they developed the "Hit Parade '68/'69/etc." automated format. But all this doesn't make my mind wrap itself around a song like The Doors' "Love Her Madly" being heard in the MOR column back in 1971. Eh, it's hardly the first time I've been baffled by something.....
--Russell
