O/T The Music Thread

Hah, you're in there yourself my friend.  I learn a lot from your musical posts.  We're just older, that's all!  You would clean my clock for anything from the mid-80s onward.

I assume you know "Cousin Brucie" still does a show...or he had just a year or two ago. I remember he'd introduce any Wilson Pickett song with "Out of the thicket comes Wilson Pickett" (or something like that). Murray the K billed himself as "The 5th Beatle".

The format of this board will take some getting used to...

We were listening to the same stuff, Clipper.  I was one of those guys who bought Murray The K's "Gassers For Submarine Race Watchers" compilation albums.  It was heartbreaking when 1010 WINS went to an all-news format in 1965, the first 50,000 watt station in the US to do so.  Philly followed the next year with 1060 KYW.  The great Alan Freed was a jock at WINS, and Mel Allen hosted a musical program on there in the late 1940s.

I couldn't get WOR-FM in my neck of the woods, but whenever I wandered into North Jersey or NYC I could listen to Murray and Scottso.  Murray got into the progressive end of rock after he left WINS and I recall him pushing a very unusual baroque-rock song called "My World Fell Down" by Sagittarius who were in reality Glen Campbell, Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys and other LA sessions musicians.  You would never have known that was Campbell singing lead.  I jumped on that one and brought a copy back to Philly to be The First Kid On My Block (remember that designation?) to know about it.

WABC, despite its lousy playlist format, just sounded like the Big City with that echoing background and those time chimes.  Endless ads for Castro Convertibles and Palisades Park ("it's fun, so come on over.")  Between those ads and the Freddy Cannon song about it (written by Chuck Barris as I am sure you know) it became a must-see destination for me.  It was like gazing upon the Great Pyramids when I finally made it (five roller coasters!  The world's largest salt-water pool!) but it had a quick demise.

Philly had great radio.  WIBG 990 was the best, very eclectic.  Don't know if you remember jocks like Hy Lit and Joe Niagara.  They ruled the Philly rock scene until WFIL became a rock station in 1966, but I always favored Wibbage (as it was called.)  There were also two outstanding black music stations, WDAS (Georgie Woods, the guy with the goods) and WHAT (Lloyd Fat Man and The Geator with The Heater, Jerry Blavat) where I was able to get my minimum daily requirements of soul and R&B that the mainstream stations didn't play.  I felt like all the bases were covered, whether I wanted Jan and Dean or James Brown.  And they were good buddies, by the way.  Loved each other's music.  Musicians are way more open-minded about different types of music than the public in general.  There's a story about Charlie Parker going into a bar and listening to Hank Williams and remarking "now that is soul music."

Don't know if you hit the Jersey shore in your youth -- from where you lived it was probably Atlantic City up to Asbury Park, for me it was Atlantic City to Cape May -- but maybe you remember WMID 1450 in Atlantic City.  It was kind of a junior version of WABC, limited playlist just right for kids sitting on their beach blankets with the tinny transistors barely audible above the sound of the surf.  In Wildwood we had WCMC, only 1,000 watts but boy did it blast over about a 30 square-block area that included the hotel my grandparents had there, two blocks from the boardwalk.

At night you could get the big rock blowtorches like WKBW in Buffalo and WLS in Chicago and CKLW in Windsor, Ontario.  At times WBZ in Boston and WCFL in Chicago went to a rock format.  AM radio was so great in those days.  Much less electronic interference to contend with, plus every station had its own local formatting.  Not syndicated stuff like today, when you go down the AM dial at night and the only thing you can hear on station after station is "Coast To Coast." 

Hey Max - Last oldies show I saw was about 15-16 years ago in Glen Falls, NY. Featured acts were the late great Johnny (Mastrangelo) Maestro (Crests, Del-Satins, Brooklyn Bridge) and Lou (Luigi Sacco) Christie...still had that falsetto going. There was some iteration of The Belmonts (no Dion, of course), and also Santo & Johnny (Sleep Walk) minus either Santo or Johnny (don't remember which one...didn't really matter.

Man, I wish I had seen Fats when there was a chance.  One of my all-time favorites.  He can always lift your mood.

I did see Jerry Lee Lewis, on a double bill with Little Richard, at a July 4 concert at Bronx Community College in the early 2000s.  They were both well into their 60s by then, but they had only lost maybe a half-step.  Richard could still jump up on the piano to sing, and Killer could still get his feet on the keyboard.  Love the first generation rockers -- others I got to see were Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and The Everly Brothers.  I got to see Dion around 1958 when he was still with The Belmonts play at a place called The Lucky Club in Wildwood, NJ.  My underage Aunt snuck even more underage me into the place.  Never saw Elvis, and boy do I regret it because I could have.