A Look Behind The Microphone

Today lets take a look behind the scenes: Did you ever wonder how music directors picked what songs should be on the air? In the 60's and 70's during my time a a Music Director or Program director we would receive 50 to 100 records in an average week. Of course you could not play all of them, so each of us developed our own methods. The first thing I did was separate them be record company. The hot labels such as Warner, Liberty, Motown, ABC Dunhill, etc would get first look. Any known artists from the major labels I would “play” first. In my case the play amounted to listening to the opening, "dropping the needle" in the middle of the record to see how it progressed and then checking the end. A dirty little secret, many Music Directors looked with extra favor on records with LONG intros, yes D.J.'s loved to talk over them. After that I pared the stack to possibilities and sent them aside to look for any new artists that might have been reviewed in the trade publications. Once they had been “played”, I would try to pick between 10 and 15 records to add to the play list. If the song was on the national charts and showed potential to be a hit I would add it. The rest of the music, well they went in a box on the shelf just in case I was wrong.

Back in the 50's-60's and even into the 70's it was not highly uncommon to have regular visits from record promoters. They came in all shapes and sizes but probably the one I got to know the best was the rep for ABC-Dunhill, a fellow by the name of Matty Singer. In the business he got to be known as Matty “Humdinger' Singer, I suspect because he used to put stickers on the records he was promoting that said “this record is a humdinger.” I can remember going round and round with him if I didn't get decent record service. Often I would be forced to go to the local record store and buy a popular record because we did not get a promotional copy. That was something the owner of the radio station didn't like. He felt, and rightfully so, that we should not have to buy the record to promote the song. As much as I tried I could never get regular service from Matty, so I devised a plan to hopefully solve the problem once and for all. In those days it was very common for radio stations to produce a local top 40 list, the station I worked for was no exception. Each week we would call the local record stores for a sales report, coupled with telephone requests we would then develop our own music chart, which we would use on the air and furnish to the record stores. We also would send the charts to the record distributors so they would have an idea how well their songs were doing in our market. It came to me that I should make up a chart without any of the artists from Matty's labels; I did and sent it to him and waited. As expected I got a phone call from a very unhappy promoter. To make a long story short, I made my point and after that we received excellent service.

Also during those days it was not unusual for the artist to drop into the local radio station, if they were playing in that town or nearby, to promote their latest record. Of course we would interview them on the air. Today this still happens once in a while, but mostly with regional country music acts hoping to get airplay for their songs. Today many radio stations use programming services and a lot of good music NEVER gets played on a national level. I sometimes wonder how many artists that we love would have survived the test groups they use today and would they have gone on to become hits.

Trivia Question. I asked, “What was Ricky Nelson's real name”, well for your storehouse of useless musical knowledge his real name was Eric Hilliard Nelson. His middle name Hilliard was his mother Harriett's maiden name. By the way did you know that Harriet was a singer in the big band era?