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Where Oldies Music Still Lives

Each musical group tends to have its own sound, at least until they reinvent themselves (think early and late Beatles for example). The sounds of the groups compared with each other don't usually sound much the same (think Rick Nelson & The Stone Canyon Band vs Fats Domino).

The "sound alike" I referred to was between groups (example: every rap group you've ever heard).
 
b-turner said:
The station began as 'Town and Country' meaning the lighter side of top 40 with a country tune about every 15 minutes. In a short time, maybe 1968, the station became what would later be called an adult contemporary station.
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I'm curious to know what the difference was between "the lighter side of top 40" and "adult contemporary". The Charlotte Observer had an article last week about longtime WBT DJ Don Russell and what he's doing now, and it mentioned WBT's change from "Frank Sinatra music". I wasn't aware that's what they were doing since I didn't live in the area then, but I have read that when WBT changed to Top 40 in the early 70s Ty Boyd used language to his superiors (off the air, of course) that would embarrass a sailor. And yet sources I looked at called the station's music "adult contemporary" a few years after that. Now it was adult contemporary by the time I became a regular listener, but I'm not certain there was an actual change between when Ty Boyd and the station's former fans got so upset, and when the station was first described as "adult contemporary". What's really confusing is that one Charlotte Observer list of radio stations in the late 70s called WBT and "Big" WAYS Top 40 (when I know WBT wasn't), and another list another year called both stations adult contemporary, which I'm sure WAYS was not.
 
Shannon re-started the True Oldies Channel under a different syndication arrangement


DavidEduardo said:


I don't think that there are any consultants specializing in 50's and 60's music formats any longer. Even Scott Shannon was dropped from the syndicated True Oldies format, and he was likely the last consultant to deal with music of that era.
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gr8oldies said:
Shannon re-started the True Oldies Channel under a different syndication arrangement


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I did not know that. Does he have any station subscribers? Or is it just an online streaming station?
 
vchimpanzee said:
I'm curious to know what the difference was between "the lighter side of top 40" and "adult contemporary".
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From its inception in the mid-late 60s until the advent of "continuous soft hits" on FM, adult contemporary was Top 40 minus the six or seven hardest rock or R&B records. Maybe you played six or seven softer records the local Top 40 wasn't playing or maybe you just played six or seven fewer records than they did. Your jocks were a little more grown-up sounding (a surprising number of us AC jocks were as young as the Top 40 guys...and in some cases, younger) and your oldies went back 5 or 10 years farther than the local Top 40 (especially true in the 70s, when the Top 40s started only going back 5-7 years with their gold).
 
That is a great explanation of the way AC came about from my memories.

It seems as the MOR format died, a place something more gentle than AC popped up. It seemed to be designed more for what might have been the Beautiful Music listeners from a few years prior. The soft side of top 40 hits were played with a more liberal sprinkling of oldies played a few songs in a row with little DJ chatter appeared in some markets along side the various shades of AC. It seemed to really pick up stream in the mid-1970s. This seemed to coincide with the very soft top 40 hit era as Disco began fighting it out for chart numbers on top 40. This is where you heard the likes of "I Like Dreaming by Kenny Nolan nest to Yesterday by the Beatles, All By Myself from Eric Carmen along with Fire and Rain by James Taylor. Many called themselves Lite Rock or Soft Rock which I always thought was odd as the stations seemed to be after the non-rock crowd. Sometimes it was the longtime Beautiful Music station that morphed to this.
 
I was under the impression there was no such thing as "adult contemporary" until the early 70s. And yet I don't know what I was listening to. When I was about ten years old, there were two radio stations in the area I remember listening to. One was pop and the other was country, but I don't remember any loud music on the pop station. In fact, the only song I remember from that era is "Knock Three Times". Broadcasting Yearbook listed the station as "Contemp.", not Adult Contemporary or Top 40. There was what may have been a third station, but I don't remember which one, that played Sinatra's "High Hopes". I don't remember hearing an actual MOR station unless that's what that last one was. We moved to the Charlotte area shortly after that. We didn't have FM in the car until 1983, or in the house until the late 70s.
 
b-turner said:
That is a great explanation of the way AC came about from my memories.

It seems as the MOR format died, a place something more gentle than AC popped up. It seemed to be designed more for what might have been the Beautiful Music listeners from a few years prior. The soft side of top 40 hits were played with a more liberal sprinkling of oldies played a few songs in a row with little DJ chatter appeared in some markets along side the various shades of AC. It seemed to really pick up stream in the mid-1970s. This seemed to coincide with the very soft top 40 hit era as Disco began fighting it out for chart numbers on top 40. This is where you heard the likes of "I Like Dreaming by Kenny Nolan nest to Yesterday by the Beatles, All By Myself from Eric Carmen along with Fire and Rain by James Taylor. Many called themselves Lite Rock or Soft Rock which I always thought was odd as the stations seemed to be after the non-rock crowd. Sometimes it was the longtime Beautiful Music station that morphed to this.
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Those stations were inspired by KNX-FM in Los Angeles and its "Mellow Rock" format. KNX-FM took it further than its imitators, by playing only about 40% hits. The other 60 percent were album cuts, some from some fairly obscure artists. But KNX-FM was focused on an overall sound.
 
vchimpanzee said:
I was under the impression there was no such thing as "adult contemporary" until the early 70s. And yet I don't know what I was listening to. When I was about ten years old, there were two radio stations in the area I remember listening to. One was pop and the other was country, but I don't remember any loud music on the pop station. In fact, the only song I remember from that era is "Knock Three Times". Broadcasting Yearbook listed the station as "Contemp.", not Adult Contemporary or Top 40.
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The label "adult contemporary" caught on in the early 70s. But the format can be traced back to '65 or so, as stations began to look for a middle ground between Top 40 and MOR.
 
semoochie said:
They called it "Progressive MOR" for awhile.
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WEZE (1260) Boston tried a REAL progressive MOR format briefly, calling itself "Album 1260." It featured deeper tracks from the big soft-rock acts of the day -- Jim Croce, Carly Simon, James Taylor, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, etc. For some reason, I still remember being in a taxi with a driver who was listening to WEZE and hearing Atlanta Rhythm Section's "All Night Rain" and Jim Croce's "Lover's Cross." I don't imagine it did much ratings-wise, and besides, the station was up for sale throughout and was eventually sold to Salem, which kicked out the music and went all-preaching before the ink on the deal was dry.
 
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semoochie said:
They called it "Progressive MOR" for awhile.
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Often called "chicken rock" in the late 60s, although obviously not by the stations themselves. Some stations called themselves "easy listening" before that term was taken by beautiful music stations.
 
I recall what you describe as Progressive MOR and if memory is correct, it was similar to KNX FM back in the middle to late 1970s.

For me, I recall the format called "Mellow Rock". It was what I liked to call the more acoustic side of album rock but the long playlists, album tract centered format with atypical Album Rock Radio's soft speaking jocks back announcing long sets of music, centered on those very artists mentioned as Progressive MOR. In fact, In Dallas, it was 102.9 that went to the format in the mid-1970s after KDTX sold. I was hoping Mellow Rock would hit Dallas after a trip to Orange County, California where what was KORJ FM, K-Orange, was mellow rock and KNX FM was going strong.

I really enjoyed the short time the McKinney, Texas station was Mellow Rock. It seems they had abandoned their Beautiful Music format for the Mellow Rock sound. They were automated but played some great stuff. You heard plenty of early Fogelberg, things like Let It Grow by Clapton, CSN&Y, James Taylor, etc. They were all 'deep' tracks with a well known song about every 15 minutes. It didn't last too long as the station sold and went all hit top 40. I doubt they had too many listeners given their coverage and the fact that Dallas had yet to expand out to Plano, much less what was a farm town of 10,000 back then, McKinney, miles of open country from the northern reaches of metro Dallas. I lived in Mesquite then and it was hard to catch very clearly there.
 
JRH said:
Often called "chicken rock" in the late 60s, although obviously not by the stations themselves.
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In actuality, within the music industry the cover versions of hits (think the Ray Conniff Singers) were what was called "chicken rock". The term was misappropriated by the owners of so-called "good music" stations to deride the early AC and contemp MOR competition when selling their "ADULT" audience to potential advertisers ... "you don't want to advertise on those 'chicken rock' stations".

Ironically, it was the good music stations who played the most of those cover versions. Even the beautiful music stations were playing original versions by softer artists.

I worked for a station which signed on in the early 1970s with a "good music" format, only to be steamrolled by a similar sounding station almost right next to them on the dial. The owner also used the "chicken rock" label in sales correspondence as defined above, until he was advised by someone at Columbia Records what the real definition was. He promptly dropped all such music and eased into a contemporary MOR format himself (which he ended up liking better than his original format).
 
CTListener said:
WEZE (1260) Boston tried a REAL progressive MOR format briefly, calling itself "Album 1260." It featured deeper tracks from the big soft-rock acts of the day -- Jim Croce, Carly Simon, James Taylor, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, etc. For some reason, I still remember being in a taxi with a driver who was listening to WEZE and hearing Atlanta Rhythm Section's "All Night Rain" and Jim Croce's "Lover's Cross." I don't imagine it did much ratings-wise, and besides, the station was up for sale throughout and was eventually sold to Salem, which kicked out the music and went all-preaching before the ink on the deal was dry.
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Seemed like a great station! That seems like a conservative version of the Eclectic Oriented Rock format some stations, like metro-Baltimore's WGRX (100.7) tried to do in the mid-1980s. It makes me wonder if something like that could be revitalized and work today? I know I'd listen, but don't know how many others would....
 
klutch00 said:
Seemed like a great station! That seems like a conservative version of the Eclectic Oriented Rock format some stations, like metro-Baltimore's WGRX (100.7) tried to do in the mid-1980s. It makes me wonder if something like that could be revitalized and work today? I know I'd listen, but don't know how many others would....
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It'd probably be a 55-plus format, even with more contemporary artists. "Mellow" equals "downer" to today's in-demo adults. Beyond one or two slow songs an hour....and they need to be huge, like Adele's "Hello", you're not happy enough.
 
michael hagerty said:
It'd probably be a 55-plus format, even with more contemporary artists. "Mellow" equals "downer" to today's in-demo adults. Beyond one or two slow songs an hour....and they need to be huge, like Adele's "Hello", you're not happy enough.
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Such a station in today's day and age would have to be either partially or completely supported by listeners, I'll likely admit; that is unless someone knows how to draw enough income from advertising to make it work.
 
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