Early ’70s Radio: The American Format Revolution 9781628927917, 9781441157584, 9780826461339

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List of Illustration Sources While every effort has been made to find the copyright holders, the publisher would be grateful to hear from anyone not here acknowledged. Page 8: Page 10: Page 18: Page 19: Page 21: Page 22: Page 22: Page 22: Page 23: Page 26: Page 27: Page 28: Page 29: Page 31: Page 33: Page 35: Page 36: Page 40: Page 41: Page 41: Page 46: Page 49: Page 52: Page 57:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Philco_radio_model_ PT44_front.jpg. Poster image by James Axelrod © 1942 Music Industries War Council. Screenshot. Sesame Street Old School, Vol. I (1969-1974) (Sesame Street, 2006), DVD. Mead advertisement; http://www.flickr.com/photos/25152449@ N06/3235874260/. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vietnam_War_Protest_ in_DC,_1967.gif. Screenshot. From public domain film Columbia University Protests of 1968. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sterling_Hall_bombing_ after_explosion_1.jpg. Screenshot. Chicago 10 (Paramount, 2007), DVD. As cited. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cymbalism.jpg. Screenshot. Help! (Capitol, 2008), DVD. Photograph by Lisa Ross. Screenshot. Zoom: Back to the 70s (PBS, 2007), DVD. TV Guide Magazine Cover courtesy of TV Guide Magazine, LLC © 1970. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BenjaminSpock1968.jpg. Advertisement, Billboard (February 8, 1969), 27. American Top 40 logo and Casey Kasem image courtesy of Clear Channel Communications, Inc. Advertisement, Billboard (August 21, 1971), 43. Screenshot. The Osmonds Live (Radio Bremen/EV Classics, 2006), DVD. Reprinted courtesy of Westbound Records. Photograph by author. Photograph by author. Screenshot. Good Luck Charlie (Disney, 2010). Photograph by author. vi

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Photograph by author. Thanks to Rush Evans. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elvis-nixon.jpg. Photograph by author. As cited. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_McGovern,_ c_1972.jpg. Photograph by author. Thanks to Rush Evans. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mystique.jpg. Screenshot. The Stepford Wives (Paramount, 2004), DVD. Screenshot. Stand Up and Be Counted (Columbia, 1972). Screenshot. Legendary Performances: Tammy Wynette (Shout Factory, 2008), DVD. Screenshot. Accomplished Women (National Archives and Records Administration, 1974). Screenshot. Radical Harmonies (Wolfe Video, 2004), DVD. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joni_mitchell_1974.jpg. Photograph by Paul C. Babin. Photograph by author. Photograph courtesy of CrabbyGolightly.com. Screenshot. M*A*S*H: Season One (Twentieth Century Fox), DVD. Screenshot. Inside Deep Throat (Universal Studios Home Entertainment, 2005), DVD. As cited. Cover art from Dr. Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex reprinted courtesy of Hachette Book Group, Inc. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:DrLauraSchlessingerByPhil Konstantin.jpg. Screenshot. The Midnight Special: Million Sellers (Video Service Corp.), DVD. Screenshot. http://www.carlysimon.com/ai/ai.shtml. As cited. Screenshot. Easy Rider (Sony Pictures, 2004), DVD. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Crime_Suspenstories_22.jpg. Cover of Crime SuspenStories 22 (Apr/May 1954 EC Comics). Art by Johnny Craig. Screenshot. Rebel Without a Cause (Warner Bros. Pictures, 1999), DVD. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elvis_presley.jpg Cat on a Hot Thin Groove copyright © 2003 Gene Deitch; courtesy of Fantagraphics Books As cited. Photo courtesy of Rachael Donahue Photograph by author. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fass_Bernie_Samuels.jpg Photograph by author. As cited. As cited. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robert-Plant.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alice_Cooper_on_ tour_for_million_dollar_babies.jpg Page 119: http://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elton_John_on_stage.jpg

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Photograph by author. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Virginia_Minstrels,_1843.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FourTops1967.jpg Screenshot. James Brown Live at the Apollo ’68 (Shout Factory, 2008), DVD. As cited. Screenshot. The Concert for Bangladesh (Rhino, 2005), DVD. Photograph by author. Screenshot. The Mack (New Line, 2002), DVD. Screenshot. Cleopatra Jones (Warner Home Video, 1999), DVD. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Curtis_Mayfield.png. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Isaac_hayes_1973.jpg. As cited. http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/3887093651/in/ set-72157622329537002/. Photograph by Tom Hubbard. Screenshot. The History of Rock ’n’ Roll (Time Life Video, 2004), DVD. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NIXONcampaigns.jpg. Photograph by Ollie Atkins. Screenshot. Funkadelic, “Cosmic Slop” (Westbound Records promo clip). Photograph by author. As cited. As cited. As cited. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elvis_mugshot.jpg. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ray-Charles_ September_1971.jpg. Photograph by Heinrich Klaffs. As cited. As cited. Cover art from Country Music U.S.A. reprinted by permission of the American Folklore Society. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JohnnyCash1969.jpg. Credit: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Look Magazine Photograph Collection, card number lmc1998005787/PP. Cover art from Rednecks and Bluenecks: The Politics of Country Music: Photo of Dixie Chicks Copyright © Corbis; Photo of Willie Nelson and Toby Keith Copyright © Getty Images. Reprinted by permission of The New Press. www.thenewpress.com Photograph by author. TV Guide Magazine Cover courtesy of TV Guide Magazine, LLC © 1973 As cited. Hick Flicks reprinted courtesy of McFarland & Company, Inc. Courtesy of Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum. Photograph by author. Michael Murphey, Geronimo’s Cadillac (A&M, 1972). Photograph by author. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Commander_ Cody_%26_His_Lost_Planet_Airmen.jpg. Photograph by David Gans. Photograph by author Eaton’s Christmas 1973, p. 332. Radios by Panasonic. Thanks to Michael Jack for consultation.

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Introduction

American Pie Slicing Up Radio Consumers in the Early ’70s I started working at my dad’s small market recording studio when I turned 13 in the early ’80s. My duties were almost entirely janitorial. I pulled weeds outside, cleaned bathrooms, emptied ashtrays and wastebaskets, and vacuumed the offices. Things got more interesting when I was given the responsibility of dusting and maintaining the recording equipment and tidying up the control room between sessions. I used to enjoy sneaking in and watching tracks get laid down for jingles I’d later hear on radio and TV, and rubbing shoulders with the musicians who were continually coming and going. This really should have been the start of a studio apprenticeship that would have led me to a now well-established career in record production. Being me, though, the times I cherished most were the ones I spent stocking, cleaning out, or reorganizing the back storeroom. Here I had the freedom to sort through crates of records, boxes of reel-to-reel tape, and stacks upon stacks of music industry trade papers. Many of these trades went way back to the early ’70s, when my dad opened the studio. The weekly publications — Billboard, Record World, and Cash Box — contained all of the important charts ranking the most popular records for a given week, the news and trends, and commentary from industry insiders. Whenever I finished the day’s work or decided it was time for a break, I usually ended up back in the storeroom leafing through those stacks. One feature of the trades that always caught my eye was the radio section, which announced new stations and “formats,” where lists in small type revealed the call letters and corresponding data for radio stations across the nation, and where editorialists speculated on the viability of many of those very same stations and formats. This is where I learned that radio programmers chose songs according to the audiences they were trying to attract. I learned that a radio station that many people loved might turn into something completely different overnight, and that a good number of stations, including the local FM 1

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album-rock stations I liked to listen to back then were actually preprogrammed by “radio doctors.” Could the disc jockeys I knew by name really be nothing more than button-pushers? What fascinated me most, though, were the record sales and airplay charts. I’d scour the entries of both album and singles charts for every genre and radio format, listen for the playback of a given song in my head and wonder what qualities made the songs and performers so popular. I thought about people I knew who preferred other genres and formats than the ones I did and speculated on the reason why. What made them compatible? I also wondered the same things about myself and my friends, who all had the same tastes in FM rock that I did. The world around me had never seemed as neatly categorized as it did when I discovered the trades. What I had actually discovered was the phenomenon of radio “formatting,” the hallmark of a newly transformed radio industry in the early 1970s. With this book, I build on that youthful discovery. More specifically, I aim to demonstrate how the early ’70s emergence of hit radio formats — the distinct bodies of musical selections that characterize the output of a given commercial music station — provide a unique and useful means for examing and understanding the period. Radio historians, having recognized the early ’70s as a watershed in the medium’s history, refer to the era as the “format explosion,”1 the “crossover explosion”2 or the “FM revolution,”3 among other similar descriptions. These all fit the bill — if commercial radio’s format offerings numbered in the single digits at the beginning of the decade, they had multiplied, according to a Broadcasting magazine tally, to an industry-wide cornucopia of 133 formats by the end of the decade, all but six of which could be classified as “popular music” in one sense or another.4 Business expediency in the rapidly developing radio industry had plenty to do with the arrival of the formatting era. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, due in large part to the surge in popularity and availability of FM stations, radio had begun backing away from the established “Top 40” programming approach — which aimed for wide-ranging listener segments — in favor of narrower, more specific ones whose consumer habits were easier to predict. Audience measurement surveys, as well as radio researchers and consultants, frequently armed with advanced degrees in psychology, played a substantial role in transforming radio into the heavily segmented medium we recognize today. Industry professionals, more than they ever had before, attempted to understand and articulate the nature of American radio audiences by dividing them into categories such as teenagers, preteens, the so-called “housewife” market, African Americans, and rural Americans. The resulting proliferation of formats in the early ’70s represented an industry move that became a blueprint for subsequent market segmentation. Industry, though, is subject to its cultural environment, and the radio business’s formatting efforts were a cultural phenomenon that mirrored the identity issues with which the nation, as a whole, had been grappling. It was no mere

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coincidence that this change in the radio landscape toward audience segmentation occurred in a period rife with heated politics, identity anxiety, and social fragmentation amid a steady stream of large-scale disappointments and chronically insoluble social problems (Vietnam, OPEC, inflation, and Watergate, to name just a few). In this light, commercial music radio formats, however industry driven, served two cultural functions, both of which appear as recurring themes throughout this book: (1) they provided a means whereby radio listeners could reimagine and renegotiate identity — be it their own or another’s; and (2) the formats acted as coping mechanisms. For example, they could serve as escape hatches through which radio listeners might opt out of the social turmoil and anxieties of the day, while functioning for others as well-defined identity headquarters that offered meaning and resolve in equal measure to their corresponding demographics. I was born in 1969, so perhaps there’s some sort of inner self-discovery urge at work here, calling me back to reexplore, in any way I know how, my first few years of life as a musically curious but otherwise bewildered baby. Bewilderment, actually, describes the effect early ’70s hit music, with its hodgepodge of styles and seemingly “willful” goofiness, as Don and Jeff Breithaupt put it, has on those who attempt to explain it. The Breithaupt brothers, who are Canadian, took up the challenge with their entertaining Precious and Few: Pop Music in the Early ’70s (1996), which stands as the very first book to fill a “void of critical writings” on the subject. With tongues often in cheek, the Breithaupts approach their subject according to the “dozens of genres and sub-genres . . . from heavy metal to bubblegum” that might have poured out of a single Top 40 station in the days of radio’s “unformatted innocence.”5 “Unformatted innocence” is a forgiveable impression one gets of radio during this time, but in truth, commercial music radio formatting practices, according to different philosophies, had been in full swing for at least two decades. The seemingly incongruous mixes one heard on the radio during the period had more to do with aggressive and concerted demographic experimentation than it did with any lack of careful programming practices. The early ’70s were a massive remodeling era for radio and pop music, so pardon their dust. My motivations in writing Early ’70s Radio actually do go beyond my admitted desire to make sense of the world I was born into. It’s an effort, first of all, to shine the spotlight on the early ’70s format explosion as a subject that calls for closer consideration from radio historians, pop music scholars, and cultural analysts. It also makes a case for the treatment of formatting practices in radio and other media, in a variety of eras, as wellsprings of cultural information. And, finally, it scratches a nagging personal itch to make a contribution to pop music scholarship and media studies that relies heavily on the dusty old trades I’d unearthed as a teenager. The story of early ’70s radio formatting can scarcely be told without the lively editorials and interviews these contain, and they fascinate me now as much as they did when I discovered them. For this book, I rely primarily on the three most widely circulated trade

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Cultural Overviews of the 1970s: A Reading List Peter N. Carroll, It Seemed Like Nothing Happened: The Tragedy and Promise of America in the 1970s (1982): A thoughtful inventory of the nation’s cultural and political touchstones concluding that although the “seventies rest uneasily on the national conscience,” the decade nonetheless precipitated a useful “dialogue between established values” and “emerging alternatives.”6 J. David Hoeveler, Jr., The Postmodernist Turn: American Thought and Culture in the 1970s (1996): Examines American intellectual movements during the period, demonstrating that although the decade lies in the American memory as a “nondescript interlude,” it still made a “significant turn and not merely a transitional one.”7 David Frum, How We Got Here: The 70s — The Decade That Brought You Modern Life (For Better or Worse) (2000): A conservative critique of the 1970s as a time when the “puritanical, self-confident” Americans of the 1950s mutated into an “individualist, permissive, emotional, enterprising, garrulous, rebellious, hedonistic, and guilt-ridden” breed.8 Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (2001): Assesses the decade’s presidential politics and national policy side by side with social and cultural issues. Schulman sees the shift toward the American South in “political power, economic dynamism, and cultural authority” as one of the decade’s significant characteristics.9 Beth Bailey and David Farber, editors, America in the Seventies (2004): A collection of essays gravitating primarily around the decade’s “cultural uncertainty” and its struggles over race, gender, and sexuality.10 Edward D. Berkowitz, Something Happened: A Political and Cultural Overview of the Seventies (2007): Framing the decade between the years 1973 and 1981, Berkowitz characterizes the ’70s as “significant in their own right” and places the greater emphasis on “politics, political economy and public policy.”11 Thomas Hine, The Great Funk: Styles of the Shaggy, Sexy, Shameless 1970s (2007): “Call it a slum of a decade, and people will smile and nod knowingly,” writes Hine in this colorful aesthetic and cultural overview. The ’70s were also a time, he says, “when many people felt free to invent or reinvent themselves, or to feel good about who they were.”12

magazines of the early ’70s — Billboard, Record World, and Cash Box.13 All three of these pricey, “insider only” publications contained music sales and airplay charts as well as coverage of key radio industry events, along with interviews and editorials by radio insiders, artists, and label personnel. Billboard, as the oldest and most reputable of these three magazines — the only one currently active without pause — has always presented itself as the original, incorruptible bastion of fair music business reporting, featuring sophisticated record sales

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and airplay charts that incorporated outside consultants, statistical surveys, and market research.14 Their chart rankings were by no means infallible — Billboard’s adoption of SoundScan in 1991 in order to improve tracking for album sales illustrated this dramatically when country artist Garth Brooks raced to the top of the album charts thanks to the apparently unbiased revelations of this new technology.15 Rumors of chart-fixing have also called into question, somewhat, their charts’ historical respectability.16 Nonetheless, the magazine’s well-established reputation and comparatively generous coverage of radio ensured that the magazine appeared without fail in program director office inboxes across the country. Between 1968 and 1972, Billboard especially stood out, thanks to the valiant efforts of radio editor Claude Hall, for its in-depth reporting of the Annual Radio Programming Forums, which the magazine had begun sponsoring in 1968. These provide a prolonged look at the nail-biting, confusion, and choppy water that the radio industry traveled on during the period, and illustrates just how crucial radio programming matters had become to the entire music industry. Cash Box began publishing in the late 1930s, while Record World surfaced in the early ’60s after its editors, Bob Allston and Sid Parnes, left Cash Box.17 What distinguished the radio coverage in Record World from Cash Box was its inclusion of columns by tip sheet writers Kal Rudman and, for a short while in the early ’70s, Bob Hamilton. “Tip sheets” were the invention of Bill Gavin, a former disc jockey who began mailing out weekly mimeographed sheets of radio picks based on his thorough knowledge of the business and his proven track record for picking hits. Known for his unfailing integrity, his Gavin Report became the most widely distributed of what he preferred to call “radio newsletters” in order to avoid the underhanded horserace connotations associated with the term “tip sheet.”18 Kal Rudman’s own tip sheet, the Friday Morning Quarterback, debuted in 1968 and has since evolved into a glossy radio trade publication under new management. In comparison with Gavin, however, Rudman’s credibility as an unbiased playlist consultant falters under the weight of his double life as a record promoter.19 That being said, I cite Rudman’s commentary as published in Record World for historical purposes in my discussions on general trends wafting through the radio and record industries. Other trades I draw from in this book include Broadcasting (which launched in the ’30s and is still active under the name Broadcasting and Cable), Radio and Records (1973–2009), and, for my chapter on the country format, Music City News, a powerful country industry trade paper that ran from the mid-’60s to the late ’90s. Drawing from such official material, I present a top-down overview of one of commercial radio’s more unstable eras — the early ’70s, when the survival of any given format was far from guaranteed. This approach, for a subject so tailormade for bottom-up social history, in which audience involvement qualifies as a defining feature, may seem out of step. But I do it for the following three reasons: the trades have been, and continue to be, a conspicuous nonpresence in pop

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music historiography; the trades, during this time in particular, provide a vivid look at radio programmers’ formatting rationales, as well as their hand-wringing over audience and genre definitions; and they provide a useful opportunity to map out one angle, at least, of the rather messy business of cultural change. The story of radio formatting in the early ’70s is ultimately a story of cultural change, and the official source material for that particular story may as well have its moment. Early ’70s Radio is a cultural contextualization of one brief but very consequential segment in radio history, undertaken from the perspective of a cultural historian with that ilk’s nose for issues of identity, agency, politics, gender, and race. I have organized the book according to each of the five commercial music radio formats that ruled hit radio in the early 1970s: Top 40, MOR (middle of the road), “progressive rock,” soul, and country. While these do not encompass the entirety of commercial music radio during the period, nor do they account for every possible audience, they do represent the most prominent, financially successful, and listened-to formats in America having the power to “break” new music. These received virtually all of the radio coverage in the music industry trades, and I consider them to be the most important ones in relation to contemporary commercial radio and pop music history. I present each chapter as an individual case study, examing the radio industry’s development of a given format, the cultural work that format was involved in, and the cultural environment that fostered it. Chapter 1 focuses on Top 40 — the radio format most endangered by the early ’70s onset of audience segmentation — as well as its early ’70s incarnation as a shared listening experience between adults and preteens. As teenagers emigrated to album rock formats and MOR stations absorbed added helpings of contemporary rock into their playlists, Top 40 and MOR evolved into virtually indistinguishable hybrid formats. Many of the songs that dominated the playlists of these stations fit four different categories: ballads and love songs, sexual double entendre, topical novelty songs, and songs celebrating children. Each of these were categories that reflected prevailing concerns and changing attitudes regarding preteens and children at the time. I explore these hybrid formats as public spaces wherein adults and children could negotiate a mutual understanding of sorts. Chapter 2 discusses MOR formats — the forerunners to adult contemporary that one programmer defined aptly as “grown-up Top 40” — which aimed toward middle-aged audiences and, more specifically, the highly prized “housewife demographic.”20 Radio programmers considered the housewife market to be key to a station’s success, and the consistently high ratings of MOR stations throughout the ’70s supported this. Four specific musical trends of the early ’70s spoke to the MOR format’s development: the rise of soft rock, the confessional sounds of singer-songwriters, the conspicuous use of soft rock in politics, and the popularity of sexual call-in talk shows for women. While these trends

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represented a potentially profitable “feminization” of pop music, MOR formats also functioned as testing grounds, in the midst of the women’s liberation movement, for traditional and less traditional notions of femininity. The “progressive rock” format was the precursor to album rock and is not to be confused with the ambitious classical-tinged rock subgenre that arose concurrently. This format, which is the subject of Chapter 3, catered to white male teenagers and the radio industry’s conception of who that audience was. Progressive rock listeners were a problem demographic in that they provided “street credibility” for radio stations and record labels alike, but had musical tastes that repelled the more profitable housewives and middle-aged listeners, not to mention the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which had grown particularly sensitive to drug references during President Richard M. Nixon’s “War on Drugs.” In this chapter, I contextualize the evolution of progressive rock formats with the twentieth-century notions of adolescence and juvenile delinquency, and also with the emergence of the traditionally masculine realms of FM technology, rock music, and underground radio. Progressive rock “contained” white male teenagers and their music from other formats and audiences, but also experimented with fixed notions of masculinity, much like the MOR format had been doing with femininity. The early ’70s were a golden age for soul “crossover” — a music industry term referring to recordings intended for specific audiences that also become successful with others. I frame this era in Chapter 4 as the “assimilation” of soul radio, because programming decisions played a significant role in transforming soul from its status as a minority genre (undergoing, at the time, a perceived “backlash”) into a genre more widely accepted by general audiences. In context with some of the major events in twentieth-century African American history such as the civil rights movement and Black Power, these formats tested the boundaries of identity formation for African American audiences when the more politically oriented playlists of the late ’60s and early ’70s gave way to softer, more seemingly sanitized fare. Country, the subject of Chapter 5, underwent a similar process as soul. By the early ’70s, the genre had stood apart from the mainstream for several reasons — the industry’s adverse reaction to rock ’n’ roll, negative opinions of the southern US during the civil rights movement, and the country industry’s perceived boosterism of the ever-controversial Vietnam War. Country formats, however, experimented with fixed ideas of rural American identity and authenticity in a manner that eased the corresponding marginalized demographic into the mainstream. My conclusion, finally, looks further at the significance of early ’70s formatting in light of commercial music radio today and makes a case for their worthiness as vehicles of cultural study — not merely as fixed categories, but as categorizational processes. What follows are some introductory and elaborative words concerning three concepts that appear frequently in this book:

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“FORMAT” AND “FORMATTING” “Format” is a term familiar to radio since the 1920s, when it referred to a station’s program schedule, which was usually filled in a patchwork manner, hour by hour. A “hillbilly” program, for example, might have appeared directly after a classical music program. With the advent of Top 40 in the early ’50s, the “format” came to mean the structure of the entire output of a station’s broadcast day. The heavy usage of the term as a verb is peculiar to radio in the early ’70s, when programmers worked overtime in devising new ways to attract ever more specific audiences. Radio historian Philip Eberly characterizes the early ’70s as a time when formats seemed suddenly to be available “like cereal brands on the grocery shelf.”21 Because the era’s heavy formatting activity took its cues from industry efforts in audience research, radio professionals tended to view formatting as progress. “Of course radio reflects the world around it,” wrote Steve Millard, associate editor of Broadcasting magazine. “But if that were all it did, there would be no genuine innovation, no real life, in the medium.” In other words, if radio reflected the increasingly fragmented nature of American culture, it also had something to do with creating the fissures. After all, “people do not know ‘what they want,’” according to Millard, “until somebody invents it and offers it to them.”22 Surprisingly enough, almost a full decade had passed before other radio stations — most notably country stations — began to differentiate themselves according to genre-specific formats after Top 40 debuted in the early 1950s.

The patchwork nature of daily radio programming in the ’20s had an influence on the popular WSM Barn Dance radio program’s better-known nickname. The program followed NBC’s Musical Appreciation Hour, and one evening in 1927, Barn Dance announcer George D. Hay said, “For the past hour we have been listening to music taken largely from Grand Opera, but from now on, we will present The Grand Ole Opry.”23

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Even so, radio was the first mass medium to fully exploit the myriad ways American audiences could be divided. Although the arrival of television posed an initial threat to the radio industry, its limited number of channels and stations contrasted mightily with the thousands of commercial outlets available to radio.24 The early ’70s, a few decades later, represented the moment when radio attempted to take full advantage.

RECORD CHARTS The emergence of record sales and popularity charts in the early twentieth century played a powerful role in determining what sort of music one could hear on the radio during its days as an unformatted, unfractured whole. One such chart appeared intermittently in various trades throughout the first few decades of the twentieth century. In 1934, Billboard presented its first radio airplay and sales charts as though it were providing a comprehensive overview of American tastes by listing the nation’s favorite songs.25 The chart seemed to have tapped into the American collective psyche, immediately inspiring the creation of one of America’s most successful radio programs, Your Hit Parade, which projected a notion of song charts as cultural roadmaps. A familiarity with the pop charts, it seemed, could reveal secrets to average Americans about the national zeitgeist, not to mention their teenage children.26 Musicologist Grover Sales expressed such a viewpoint years later when he wrote that “the best of American music, jazz — and even the worst of Top Forty and disco — tells us who we are, where we came from and where we’re going.” If we “knew everything that went into the making of such miracles of brevity and everything that leaked out of them into the mainstream of our culture,” he continues, we would “arrive at a clearer understanding of contemporary America” than we’d get from “any number of sociology courses.”27 America’s oldest surviving trade weekly for the entertainment industry — or “amusement industry” as it was then called — debuted as The Billboard in 1894, although it did not include music charts until 1913 when it began listing sheet music sales. Other record charts did exist elsewhere. After Thomas Edison introduced the motorized phonograph in 1877, popular record listings appeared in the leading record publication Phonogram as early as the 1890s. The Phonoscope, following its lead, printed monthly lists of top popular recordings although neither magazine presented them in any particular rank or chart form. The Billboard’s sales charts of 1913 were short-lived, and no authoritative chart served the music industry until 1929 when Variety started listing monthly rankings of the best-selling records for each of the top labels.28 In 1934, though, The Billboard introduced its first “radio airplay” chart, and by 1935, Your Hit Parade had effectively turned record charts into a national pastime of sorts.29 The nation’s first countdown show, Your Hit Parade, was an instant success. As André Baruch announced before every program, its ranking

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methods incorporated a tally of the “the songs most played on the air, played on jukeboxes, and sales of sheet music throughout the country.”30 The songs were the focus on Your Hit Parade — not the artists — and this had to do largely with the reality of multiple versions of songs regularly charting at the same time. In 1950, for example, seven separate versions of “Mona Lisa” made the Top 30 in Billboard. That being the case, a regular cast of live studio singers performed the program’s featured songs.31 This proved to be a troublesome setup for the show by the late 1950s, though, when Elvis Presley and rock ’n’ roll shifted the focus of popular music back to the artist. The youth appeal, too, of novelty songs such as “Dinner with Drac” and “Witch Doctor” proved hard, apparently, for the studio singers to relate to. “Most of the Hit Parade cast wanted to quit,” said the show’s historian, Bruce Elrod.32 With its adult-leaning, middle-of-the-road origins, Your Hit Parade proved unable to survive, airing its final show in 1959, after which Billboard reclaimed its role as the American people’s most authoritative chart. But Billboard had never really lost any of its authority over the American music industry. In 1940 it established the chart for which it became famous — the first “fairly accurate tabulation” of popular music sales ranked from numbers 1 to 100. Since then this has been the major chart sponsored by the industry, indicating sales in the largest recorded music market in the world, and taking radio airplay into account.33

Song charts in the ’30s hearkened to a documentarian spirit running through Depression America which saw a rising interest in “national character studies” and the emergence of Gallup polling. Also during this period, Franklin D. Roosevelt announced a plan to fund, record, and compile American music through the Federal Music Project (FMP) as part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Not only would the FMP serve to aid musicians and enrich communities, it would also carry the aura of a unified body of American music in all of its diversity.34

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The pop charts get most of their authority from the notion that they reflect democratic consensus and basic economics — that is, consumer choices determine the success and popularity of a product. In the music industry, writes Martin Parker, a British pop music scholar, the charts represent this “mythology of the market,” which conceals the fact that the “agenda of consumer choices” is set in the first place by an “oligopoly of transnational entertainment corporations” based on a “logic of profit.”35 David Brackett, an American pop music scholar, characterizes the pop charts as being “profoundly ideological” in that they represent music popularity in “hierarchies, categories, and divisions of style and taste,” shrouding in mystery the “factors that determine their rankings.”36 Such criticisms, however, do not entirely cloud the medium’s democratic appeal. “We fight our way through the massed and leveled collective safe taste of the Top 40, just looking for a little something we can call our own,” writes music journalist Greil Marcus in his myth-symbol treatment of American music, Mystery Train. “But when we find it and jam the radio to hear it again it isn’t just ours — it is a link to thousands of others who are sharing it with us.”37

TOP 40 While Your Hit Parade’s “charts” existed for popular consumption, Billboard (minus “The” by the early ’60s) existed primarily for the music industry. Billboard’s connection with the general public came through its service as the provider of the foundational chart for Top 40 radio. The birth of Top 40 as a fully-formed radio programming philosophy happened in an Omaha bar circa 1955, where Todd Storz, operator of daytime AM station KOWH, sat with his program director Bill Stewart, discussing what they might do to improve their station’s ratings. As Stewart told Claude Hall in a 1973 issue of Billboard, the two men continued talking past closing time, and were stunned when the waitress, after all of the other customers had gone, not only played the same record they had been hearing all night long on the jukebox, but did it “three times in a row.”38 Irritation gave way to inspiration as the the two hatched an idea of creating a rotating playlist based on no more than 30 or 40 songs, similar to a jukebox.39 Stewart thus went back to the station and developed, according to plan, a “closed music list” of unprecedented stricture. Up to this point, radio stations divided up their days with programs featuring dramas, alternating musical genres, and news.40 At KOWH, though, Storz raised the stakes of this jukebox-inspired experiment by also discontinuing the station’s classical and country programs for the sake of the hits. Suddenly the station, which had been slipping, transformed itself into the top-rated station in its market – a remarkable feat for a daytime outlet that catered primarily to homemakers. By 1956, Storz had collected stations in New Orleans, Kansas City, Minneapolis, and Miami.41

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Because Top 40 programmers developed a popular perception of forming their playlists strictly according to what was already popular, Storz and his stations gained instant immunity during the “payola” scandals of 1959, which cost well-known disc jockeys like Alan Freed — accused of taking bribes for airplay — their jobs and credibility.42 The actual music, after all, seemed even less of a factor in the success of Top 40 stations than were high-energy promotions (which spawned manic disc jockeys like Murray the K and Cousin Brucie during Top 40’s heyday) and the concept of the “tight playlist.” Regardless of Bill Stewart’s claim that Top 40 stations would play “Chinese gong music” if that were what people wanted to hear, the crucial characteristic of Top 40 had to do with the transference of power from disc jockeys to program directors in deciding which records received airplay.43 It was “formula radio,” and no one understood this better than programmer Bill Drake, who had fine-tuned the formula still further by 1964. Drake’s contribution to the development of the format consisted of a simple series of confinements, the most important of which were: (1) to rein in the patter of disc jockeys to strict time limits; and (2) to tighten playlists to no more than 30 songs. The Drake formula worked so well that it almost seemed as though the lower the personality of a station, the higher the ratings. Drake, in fact, went on to establish himself as radio’s first “programming consultant,” or in industry lingo, “radio doctor.”44 Next to radio inventor Guglielmo Marconi himself, Drake may well be the most influential man in radio history. In spite of Storz’s initial hope of reaching the housewife demographic through his format (those same housewives still preferred listening to talk shows by the end of the ’50s, it turned out), and regardless of the Drake-inspired standardization of the format, rock ’n’ roll was young and teenagers were wild about it. A 1959 survey published in Broadcasting magazine even indicated that while most teenagers loved the music, those over 21 pretty much detested it.45 Therefore, as long as rock ’n’ roll associated itself with Top 40, then Top 40 would become the domain of the American teenager. This was a natural development at a time when stations that attracted adults through orchestras and crooners far outnumbered those that played any variation of rock ’n’ roll, even though teenagers were not only legion, but also avid record buyers.46 By the late ’60s, Top 40 appeared to have run its course, and its survival looked dim for three reasons. The first of these was the growing popularity and availability of FM stations. FM (frequency modulation), which is less affected by noise-producing signals like thunderstorms and has a much wider channel width than AM (amplitude modulation), naturally features the clearer sound of the two. FM was nothing new in the late 1960s — E. Howard Armstrong had actually invented it back in the 1930s.47 Having gathered momentum until the mid-’40s, it suffered a setback when the FCC, clearing space for television, reallocated FM to a different megahertz slot, which instantly made all prewar transmitters and receivers obsolete. Although FM progressively picked up steam in the ’50s, it positively boomed in the ’60s — a development the FCC also

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Commercial Music Radio Studies 101: A Reading List Claude and Barbara Hall, This Business of Radio Programming (1977): Claude Hall oversaw Billboard’s excellent radio coverage during the ’60s and ’70s and published this collaboration with his wife Barbara shortly after the formatting revolution dust had settled. This Business reprints a number of Hall’s interviews with legendary “radio men” from Billboard and serves as a near-definitive history of format radio up to that point. Peter Fornatale and Joshua E. Mills, Radio in the Television Age (1980): Fornatale, a veteran FM DJ, and historian Mills offer up riches of radio and rock history in one easily digestible volume. Philip K. Eberly, Music in the Air: America’s Changing Tastes in Popular Music, 1920–1980 (1982): An exhaustive pop music history from a radio historian’s perspective. Eberly’s account of the 1970s formatting revolution rings with a sense of immediacy. Ben Fong-Torres, The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The History of Top 40 Radio (1998): Fong-Torres’s book is full of heart and the best place to get up to speed with Top 40 history, its legendary personalities and format philosophy. Susan J. Douglas, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination (1999): A sweeping and immensely readable overview of radio as a formidable twentiethcentury cultural force. Marc Fisher, Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution That Shaped a Generation (2007): Washington Post columnist Fisher tells a congenial version of American radio history, paying special attention to personalities like Todd Storz, Jean Shepherd, and Bob Fass. Michael C. Keith, editor, Radio Cultures: The Sound Medium in American Life (2008): Michael C. Keith, one of radio history’s most active caretakers, has shaped a potentially unwieldly subject into a cohesive whole with this collection of important writings on the subject.

played a part in. Since the ’40s, many of the FM and AM stations that shared owners also shared the exact same programming. Fearing a scarcity in frequency space, the FCC issued a “nonduplication ruling” in May 1964, which stated that no two stations under the same ownership could share more than 50 percent of the same programming, effective January 1967. The FCC also resolved to “promote more aggressive commercial exploitation of the FM band.”48 The FCC’s ruling jibed well with the spirit of the times and appeared to encourage, above all, experimentation. This was another problem for “formula radio.” Between 1964 and 1967, 500 new commercial FM stations and 60 educational stations had emerged. Programming methods were up for grabs, which is exactly why FM radio became the ideal medium for experimental disc jockeys like San Francisco’s Tom Donahue, who developed “free-form” approaches to

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programming in which the disc jockey “played it by ear” and made all the playlist decisions.49 Donahue and other like-minded FM DJs popularized an eclectic model for FM formatting that immediately threatened AM’s viability. They also demonstrated to an industry with a two-pronged view of radio as “either Top 40 or MOR” that alternatives were not only possible but potentially profitable.50 A third key factor contributing to the demise of the Top 40 era was the rise of Arbitron in 1965, which became (and still is) the leading audience research company. Arbitron relied on listening diaries that the company distributed to 2 million participants per year after which the results were entered into a database. From there, station representatives could manipulate the data as they wished, grouping the respondents by age, sex, time of day they listen, and so forth. Even though the success of Top 40 showcased radio’s enduring qualities and ensured its survival during the ’50s and early ’60s, it was Arbitron’s advances in audience research that caused advertisers to turn their heads. “Demographics” became the industry buzzword as national advertising agencies started looking into “how well stations could deliver 25–34 females, 18–49 upwardly mobile adults, and so on.”51 The American format revolution was officially underway. Researching this topic was a challenge because so much of it depended on stuff that gets thrown out. One senses that researching (1) the recent past, (2) an academically downgraded subject like popular music, and (3) a not-so-glorified era like the early ’70s requires a substantial amount of trash-bin diving to get anything done. I was fortunate to have had a full run of the Billboard issues I needed at the University of Texas Fine Arts Library, back before they all became readily available online. Staff members at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. helped me rummage through issues of Record World, Tina Murdock at the Dallas Public Library helped me get my hands on Cash Box, and Tim Davis and John Rumble got me the issues of Music City News I needed at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Among my highest hopes for this project is that it can demonstrate the usefulness of these increasingly hard-to-find sources and that preservation, digitalization, and accessibility can ever prevail. The subject of early ’70s formatting has gnawed at me through a number of incarnations — as a smaller book draft, as a dissertation, and now this. I have certain people to thank for coaxing me along in getting it to this point. My parents, Ron and Maisa Simpson, must have come to terms with the fact that they had a record junkie on their hands very early on. They never discouraged me from exploring the pop music wilderness and have been supportive from day one. Thanks to Dad for hanging on to those trades at least until the mid’80s, and for music biz wisdom that has come in handy far more than a time or two. Thanks go to my brother Kendall for always having my back and sister Kristen for, among other things, helping me get this book in motion by bribing me with records. A number of allies at the University of Texas were absolutely crucial to this project. I am especially grateful for the guidance of Janet Davis,

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who read through numerous drafts, asked hard questions, and always knew how to keep spirits up. Jeff Meikle, Tom Schatz, Julia Mickenberg, Jim Buhler, and Elizabeth Bergman also read drafts and provided invaluable insights from a variety of angles. I benefited from conversations with — and the camaraderie of — numerous exceptionally insightful fellow students at grad school. A special thanks to Kyle Barnett and Benita Heiskanen for always being there to reach out a hand. Thanks to the University of Texas for financial assistance along the way, to Jared Allen, and to Louise Weinberg for advocacy and employment. I am very grateful to my editor, Katie Galloff and to the folks at Continuum for taking on this project with such generosity, professionalism, and grace. Thanks also to Graeme Holbrook, Camille Lowe and the folks at Pindar for the same. Michael Hicks had an early view of my ambitions in pop music scholarship and has been a long time inspiration and mentor. A word of gratitude goes to Claude Hall, whose tireless coverage of radio at Billboard during the ’60s and ’70s, and whose close participation in real radio history have made the topography for researchers like myself all the more navigable. Other people I would specifically like to thank for this project include Michael C. Keith, Larry Shannon, Ben Fong-Torres, Ron Fell, David Sanjek, Peter Voegel, Karl Hagstrom Miller, Eric Weisbard, and David Leaf (for good timin’). My wife Amy is extraordinarily patient and supportive — I dedicate this book, with love, to her and my two remarkable boys, Quinn and Asa.

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Chapter 1

Watching Scotty Grow The New Top 40 and the Merging Spheres of Adults and Preteens A glance at the record collection of a typical preteen in the early 1970s may well have revealed the following trio of hit singles: “Rubber Duckie” by the Sesame Street muppet Ernie, replete with splashes and squeaks, Johnny Cash’s “What Is Truth,” a thoughtful, spoken-word rumination on the Vietnam War and youth culture, and Donny Osmond’s “Sweet and Innocent,” in which the prepubescent singer warns a virtuous young girl to beware of the carnal and corrupted likes of him.1 These three records were ideal candidates for airplay on Top 40 and “middle-of-the-road” (MOR) hybrid formats during those years. Sometimes referred to by radio programmers at the time as “blended play,” the formats reflected a decided merger between the spheres of the preteen and adult, who were the primary audiences for Top 40 and MOR respectively.2 Thus arose a peculiar early ’70s radio soundscape in which gentle love songs — many of them by teen idols — aired side by side with playful sexual double entendre, topical novelty songs, and a plethora of recordings featuring adults celebrating the world of children. With these interweaving characteristics, blended play formats of the early ’70s served as a locus of dialogue between the formats’ two target audiences — adults and preteens. The music emanating from those stations, furthermore, can best be understood as an active reassessment and renegotiation of identity between those same two audiences. Would the new generation of teenagers prove to be as radical — and potentially violent, as in the case of notorious fringe groups like the Weather Underground Organization— as teenagers in the ’60s? In an era when divorce rates were exploding and single parenthood was becoming increasingly common, how might children be affected in the long run by this movement away from traditional family structures? What sort of person was the modern-day parent and how permissive should this parent be? Should media have tightened or, in fact, loosened its restrictions on content for childrens’ sake? 17

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The Sesame Street muppet Ernie peaked at no. 16 on Billboard’s Hot 100 with his “Rubber Duckie” single, perched alongside the Carpenters’ “(They Long to Be) Close to You” on September 26, 1970. Promo ads by Columbia Records touted the record’s release by “popular demand” from the “same people who want Dylan, Chicago and BS&T [Blood, Sweat & Tears].”3

To what extent, and how early, should children have been privy to the concerns of adults both in terms of the immediate family and also on a larger-scale political level? In the wake of the turbulent, youth-oriented 1960s, Americans were asking all of these questions and more, while hit radio stations made for a particularly active on-air forum for these same issues.

THE TEEN AND PRETEEN SCHISM When social critic Theodor Adorno weighed in on popular “radio music” circa 1945, he dealt the sort of low blow that would inspire more than a few similarly minded critics for years to come: he called it children’s music. “We have developed a larger framework of concepts such as atomistic listening and quotation listening,” he wrote, “which lead us to the hypothesis that something like a musical children’s language is taking shape.”4 Columbia Records’ Mitch Miller echoed this sentiment somewhat in 1958 when he stood before a convention of Top 40 disc jockeys during the golden age of rock ’n’ roll radio and memorably chided them for catering to the “eight- to fourteen-year-olds, the pre-shave crowd that makes up 12% of the population and zero percent of its buying power, once you eliminate the ponytail ribbons, Popsicles and peanut brittle.”5 But this same audience, in alliance with the older teenage segment, was actively turning Top 40 into a profitable American cultural phenomenon.6 In 1957, the year before Miller’s speech, teenagers had received approximately $9 billion in allowances, and they were spending a sizeable portion of this on records.7 By the end of the decade, sales of 45 rpm records, marketed primarily to teens, raked in $200 million.8

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The preteen market became especially pronounced in the early ’70s with the emergence of young idols such as Donny Osmond and David Cassidy (of the Partridge Family). Both of them dominated the covers of teen magazines like Tiger Beat and 16, even while their record labels worked on “opening the door,” as Billboard wrote of Osmond’s 1972 Too Young LP, to “MOR and adult audiences.”9

By the early 1970s, though, as hit radio fragmented into formats, the future of Top 40 grew increasingly uncertain. At this juncture, the radio industry approached the preteen audience — roughly ages 6 to 13 — as a prospect entirely different from their older siblings. (“Preteen” and, especially, “tween” are more recent terms regarding a demographic often referred to simply as “children” in ’70s trade papers. My usage of the term “preteen,” thus, can be read interchangeably with the term “children.”)10 There were unavoidable reasons for this difference. Foremost among these was that a good portion of the advertising aimed toward older teenagers for products such as automobiles, auto accessories, sound systems, and beauty products was hardly likely to have had much of an immediate impact on the preteen demographic.11 Also, because preteens had less cash at their disposal, they tended to purchase 45 rpm singles as opposed to the long-playing albums favored by older teens and the new FM album-oriented radio stations they had begun listening to.12 The most significant factor in the emergence of the preteen radio audience, though, was its own enthusiastic response to the influx of new musical product that came into existence exclusively with them in mind. Top 40 sensations such as the Archies, the Partridge Family and the Osmonds demonstrated how profitable the preteen market could be even when isolated from the older teenage market. Top 40 actually survived this new era by merging together with MOR, or the “middle-of-the-road” format. Developed for the more financially reliable adult audience, MOR filled a gap that existed between youth-oriented formats (Top 40 and progressive), and adult-oriented formats (easy listening), which

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usually featured vocalists like Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, and Eydie Gorme, and had the highest share of listeners over 30.13 Eschewing any harder-edged rock, soul, or country hits, regardless of chart position, MOR generated a laid-back, introspective, “soft rock” sound, typified by such performers as the Carpenters, James Taylor, and Bread. Throughout the early ’70s, however, the MOR format consistently incorporated playlists that appealed to preteen audiences, with liberal doses of bubblegum and novelty tunes added in, thus preserving what appeared to be a more democratic, all-ages-included Top 40 approach. In truth, most radio stations lacked faith in the preteen audience as a profitable target audience on its own, so they found in MOR an even more lucrative safe haven for the still-valuable preteens.14 There were cultural implications in this development. The format provided musical proof, for one, that the borders between childhood and adulthood, as a number of cultural critics would be warning about adamantly by the end of the decade, were indeed crumbling. The education professor Neil Postman, for one, criticized a “tendency toward the merging of child and adult perspectives,” which can be “observed in their tastes in entertainment.” In America, he elaborated, radio has become merely an “adjunct of the music industry,” and as a consequence, “sustained articulate and mature speech is almost entirely absent from the airwaves.”15 In terms of radio, the situation Postman described seemed to present a contradiction: children were encouraged by hit radio to grow up too fast through frequent exposure to adult-oriented musical themes and marketing tactics, while adults were similarly encouraged to accept child-oriented music, such as “Rubber Duckie,” as a substantial part of their daily radio listening diet. Following a decade where the generation gap between parents and teenagers had grown considerably wide and ominous, such programming seemed to foster a refreshing sense of intergenerational harmony.

THE “YOUNGER GENERATION” IN THE ’60s When Time magazine chose “the man — and woman — of 25 and under,” as its 1966 “man of the year,” the magazine saw in this figure the prognosis of an extraordinary new generation blessed with “ever-lengthening adolescence” ready to “infuse the future with a new sense of morality” and a “transcendent and contemporary ethic” that could change American society for the better. The 1950s, after all, cultivated William Whyte’s “organization man,” David Riesman’s “lonely crowd,” Paul Goodman’s “empty society,” as well as the “white collar man,” whom C. Wright Mills personified as a “small creature who is acted upon but who does not act, who works along unnoticed in somebody’s office or store, never talking loud, never talking back, never taking a stand.”16 The youth of the ’60s, on the other hand, reacted to this with marked assertiveness, and music, Time declared, was this generation’s “basic medium,” reflecting not only its “skepticism and hedonism,” but also its “lyrical view of the world.”17 Indeed,

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Time magazine chose “the man — and woman — of 25 and under” as its 1966 “Man of the Year,” for whom music was its “basic medium,” reflecting not only its “skepticism and hedonism,” but also its “lyrical view of the world.”

the young people Time saluted would wield a tremendous degree of cultural influence over the rest of the decade, at least. The sociological tempest of the late ’60s, then, became this generation’s legacy. By the summer of 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson committed 50,000 troops to Vietnam, student protests — with the polite title of “teach-ins” — had already become familiar American university events. As fighting intensified in Southeast Asia between the years 1966 and 1967, so too did the protests. At Cornell University, Secretary of State Dean Rusk gave a speech to a sea of faces wearing skeleton masks, and at Indiana, the boos and catcalls made it impossible for him to speak at all. Students at Howard University burned an effigy of Selective Service director Lewis Hershey, while a mob of Harvard students surrounded Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s car, forcing him to address them from his car’s hood amid a hailstorm of verbal taunts.18 Although the demonstrations during these years, including one at the Pentagon in October 1967, which drew over 100,000 activists, became more frequent and confrontational. The steady arrival of dead soldiers from overseas, as well as the specter of Selective Service, continued to haunt young Americans well into the ’70s as the fighting dragged on.19 The war fanned the flames of a thriving youth counterculture. One of the earlier, high-profile manifestations of this was the “Human Be-In,” organized by Allen Cohen, editor of a San Francisco underground newspaper called The Oracle, and artist Michael Bowen. Held in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in January 1967, the event featured San Francisco groups like the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service, as well as speeches by such notables as poet Allen Ginsberg and ex-Harvard professor/LSD advocate Timothy Leary, who uttered his famous countercultural mantra, “tune in, turn on, drop out.”20 A new

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Media coverage of student unrest in the late ’60s and early ’70s presented a seemingly steady onslaught of unsettling images depicting youth gone wild. Left to right: Columbia University in 1968; The University of Wisconsin’s Sterling Hall in 1970 (bombed by four students for housing an Army-funded research center); The Democratic National Convention in Chicago 1968.21

phase in America’s youth culture was officially underway, one that endorsed a casual approach to recreational drugs like cannabis and psychedelics like LSD, while conventional mores gave way to a more experimental, promiscuous approach to sexual relationships. Events like the Human Be-In, which attracted over 20,000 revelers, and the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969, during which teens and young adults indulged in this new behavior en masse under a heavy blanket of live rock music, emblemized ’60s youth culture in the American collective consciousness. So, too, did the free Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway (near San Francisco, California) in December 1969, at which a group of Hell’s Angels were captured on film assaulting and killing a young black audience member.22 When Business Week magazine reported at the end of the decade that “middle America has come to view festivals as harbingers of dope, debauchery, and destruction,” it highlighted the extent to which the young generation had became synonymous with many of the negative aspects of the era’s social and political climate.23 In the early 1960s, for example, student activism brought forth the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). With “participatory democracy” as its rallying cry, SDS sought to improve race relations through civil rights activism, fought poverty through community organizing in the urban North, and spoke out against American foreign policy through antiwar demonstrations. Although it became one of the largest and most influential “New Left” organizations of the 1960s, SDS began sowing the seeds of its own demise as the decade progressed. In 1968, an SDS-sponsored student strike at Columbia University garnered serious levels of media attention. Some of the attention actually leaned in the students’ favor due to their fairly brutal treatment by New York City police (200 students were injured, while 700 were arrested).24 But the violent antiwar riots at the Democratic National Convention that same year painted an alternate picture. As student protesters clashed with police amid clouds of tear gas, TV news cameras captured, for many Americans, a disturbing image of youth gone wild. Unable to hold together due to heated factions within the organization,

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SDS had collapsed by 1969. A splinter group called the Weathermen, nonetheless, did little in the way of improving the organization’s reputation, pursuing its regimen of bombing governmental buildings and other non-human targets into the following decade.25 In the midst of all this, the worlds of adults and youth never seemed so far removed from each other as they had become in the 1960s. If the image of the mischievous American “teenager” side by side with the menacing “juvenile delinquent” came to fruition in the 1950s, teenagers in the 1960s developed a popular image — as that Time magazine cover story demonstrated — of being outright revolutionaries. Directly questioning the legitimacy of the authority to which they were subject, both in real political situations such as the Free Speech and antiwar movements and also more symbolically through lifestyle choices, the teenagers of the 1960s flourished at a time when the term “generation gap” became a defining characteristic.26 Exasperated with the apparent lawlessness and disrepect of modern youth, prominent voices among the older generation lashed out. “I’m tired of the tyranny of spoiled brats,” wrote the historian K. Ross Toole in a 1970 issue of Reader’s Digest. “We are in trouble with this younger generation,” he continued, “because we have failed to keep that generation in its place.”27 According to Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, they proved themselves incapable “to do the job of helping America,” because “all they can do is lay down in the park and sleep or kick policemen.”28 Perhaps the most glaring manifestation of the generation gap on hit radio during this period was a 1967 single called “An Open Letter to My Teenage Son.” Recorded by Victor Lundberg, a news reader at WMAX in Grand Rapids, Michigan, it was a stern, spoken-word piece drenched in otherworldly echo

No record articulated the late ’60s generation gap more vividly than Victor Lundberg’s 1967 “An Open Letter to My Teenage Son.”

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and backed up by a swelling instrumental rendition of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Going through a checklist of the objectionable traits of the younger generation, Lundberg expresses a sense of reluctant tolerance for each of them. Long hair is acceptable, Lundberg tells his son, only as long as it reminds him of notable longhairs such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Regarding drugs, he concedes that “not all teenagers are drunken dope addicts or glue sniffers.” Toward the end, he approaches the crux of the matter, saying that “your mother will love you no matter what you do, because she is a woman,” and that “while most wars are wrong, they are necessary.” Lundberg closes the piece, finally, as the “Battle Hymn” reaches its climax, by declaring that “if you decide to burn your draft card, then burn your birth certificate at the same time.” The record struck a nerve, climbing as high as #10 on the pop charts.29

UNDERGROUND RADIO AND THE TEENAGE EXODUS Most teenagers, however — particularly those old enough to be drafted and who engaged in the types of behavior Lundberg addressed in his single — were now less likely to be listening to Top 40 radio at all. The late ’60s heralded the golden age of “free-form,” or “underground” radio, which thrived on the not yet fully commercialized FM band. Consequently, FM became an ideal medium through which experimental disc jockeys like San Francisco’s Tom Donahue, a Top 40 escapee, could develop an album-oriented format in which the disc jockey made all the playlist decisions. Donahue, in fact, was one of Top 40’s most outspoken critics. “Top 40 radio, as we know it today and have known it for the last ten years, is dead, and its rotting corpse is stinking up the airways,” he declared in Rolling Stone magazine in 1967. While music has matured, Donahue contested, “radio has apparently proven to be a retarded child. Where once Top 40 radio reflected the taste of its audience, today it attempts to dictate it, and in the process has alienated its once loyal army of listeners.” If the LP was now the premier medium of contemporary music, then that would require a degree of independent decision-making which reflected “taste and a good ear — attributes that are sadly lacking in most radio programmers and station managements.”30 At San Francisco’s KSAN and KMPX, Donahue established an eclectic model for FM formatting that immediately threatened the Top 40 format’s viability and caught fire across the nation, providing the on-air soundtrack for ’60s youth culture. This development, naturally, went hand in hand with the rise in popularity of the album, or long-playing (LP) record. Although the record industry, since its late nineteenth-century beginnings, had always experimented with music packaging formats (and still does), the 45 rpm (rotations per minute) single debuted in 1949 and became the most purchased recorded music format throughout the ’50s and ’60s. Seven inches in diameter, it served as a convenient alternative to the heavier 78s and even the 12-inch 33 ⅓ rpm LPs. The glory days of the 45 ran concurrent with the heyday of both the jukebox and portable

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record player. Standard practice in the popular record industry was to release all songs with radio potential on 45s, while LPs generally served as hastily made companion pieces for the 45.31 The Beatles, who promoted their albums and singles as distinct, albeit equally important entities, played a major role in turning the LP into a pop music art form in its own right. By the time their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band — the quintessential 1960s “concept album” — came out in 1967, singles were on their way out.32 FM radio all but ignored 45s, and many Top 40 stations, under pressure, spiced up their own rigid playlists with the occasional album track.33 Because hit radio, the singles-oriented pop charts, and the jukebox industry were all intertwined, the increasing popularity of the LP hinted at impending chaos. “Save our singles!” read a 1969 Billboard editorial.34 The preteen market, it turns out, was working hard to do just that, sending singles by such “bubblebum” groups as the Ohio Express and 1910 Fruitgum Company (two groups consisting of many of the same studio musicians) to the higher regions of the charts.

THE BUBBLEGUM ARMY As a consciously named genre, “bubblegum” music was the mastermind of Neil Bogart, a promo man who chose the monicker for its childhood connotations. Bogart correctly sensed that preteens were being alienated by rock, with its increasingly serious lyrical overtones and its emphasis on albums over lessexpensive singles. Having launched his own label, Buddah Records, in 1968, he marketed singles with song titles such as “Simon Says,” “Yummy Yummy Yummy,” “1,2,3 Red Light,” and “Captain Groovy and His Bubblegum Army” directly for the preteen market.35 The formula for this genre, as devised by Bogart and his two producers, Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz, was fairly simple: configure a variety of colorfully named groups out of a stable of sufficiently attractive teenage garage rockers, write songs with unforgettable hooks, give the songs childlike, nursery-rhyme titles, and sell them to preteens in the form of 45 rpm singles.36 This bubblegum formula worked quite a few wonders in the late ’60s, racking up five Top 10 singles for the label, including the Lemon Pipers’ #1 hit, “My Green Tambourine,” prompting Time magazine to spotlight Bogart in 1968 as the “King of Bubblegum.”37 Billboard contributer Nancy Ehrlich pinpointed the Beatles’ arrival in the US in 1964 as the key event that forced the American business world to “recognize the existence of an enormous and potentially fanatical (read: extravagant) buying power.” That buying power happened to be the “youngest massive group of people buying records.”38 Teenagers started buying records in droves, actually, in the mid-’50s. Between 1954 and 1959, record sales skyrocketed from $213 million to $613 million.39 A 1956 survey by the Scholastic Magazines’ Institute of Student Opinion found that teenagers had over $7 billion a year at their disposal from after-school jobs and allowances, and on average were buying two records

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Neil Bogart’s Five Biggest Bubblegum Hits

The 1910 Fruitgum Co. 1 2 3 4 5

“Green Tambourine,” by the Lemon Pipers (1967) (peak position: #1) “Yummy Yummy Yummy,” by Ohio Express (1968) (peak position: #4) “Simon Says,” by the 1910 Fruitgum Co. (1968) (peak position: #5) “1,2,3 Red Light,” by the 1910 Fruitgum Co. (1968) (peak position: #5) “Indian Giver,” by the 1910 Fruitgum Co. (1969) (peak position: #5)

a month.40 The most active buyers, the survey found, were teenage girls, while another survey conducted ten years later found that the teenager most likely to be listening to the radio was a 13-year-old girl.41 By 1975, teenagers were buying 60 percent of all singles sold. For good reason, Ehrlich declared it “financially wise for the product offered” by record labels and radio stations to appeal “to even the youngest potential buyer.”42 Pioneers that they were, the Beatles actually helped set in motion the emergence of late ’60s/early ’70s bubblegum in 1965 when they launched a Saturday morning program featuring cartoon incarnations of themselves.43 When The Monkees debuted as a TV situation comedy in 1966, aiming to capitalize on the Beatles’ success as both cartoon characters and live action movie stars,44 they introduced a finely tuned concept of “pop Pygmalions” who were chosen and molded carefully to fulfill predetermined roles as both television characters and popular musicians.45 Although the Monkees’ group members proved unable to persist for more than a few years as prefabricated caricatures without rebelling, the show’s essential formula proved successful once again for at least one other early ’70s live-action bubblegum creation called The Partridge Family.46 This situation comedy centered around a touring pop music-playing family of five kids and

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The Beatles’ first two movies, the comedies A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help (1965), set the mold for the “pop star as TV/movie personality” (and vice versa) approach so commonly associated with preteen marketing from that point on. Enormously successful both at the box office and as artistic works, the films, directed by Richard Lester, relied heavily on the group’s innate charisma and ability to improvise.

their single mother. Based on real-life pop music family the Cowsills — a mother, five sons, and a daughter — who scored three Top 10 hits in the late ’60s, the concept bore fruit.47 A tremendous component of the show’s success, though, was David Cassidy, who played the family’s oldest son, and became an instant cover model for the magazines Tiger Beat and 16. These celebrity fact-and-photo magazines geared toward preteen girls hit their stride with saturation coverage of the Monkees in the late ’60s, but positively flourished in the teen idol-oriented early ’70s when Cassidy, Donny Osmond, and Bobby Sherman, another pop singer/television star (Here Come the Brides), dominated their pages. One of the biggest selling singles of 1969 was credited to the Archies, a TV cartoon music group relying on the studio prowess of real-life musicians.48 Based on the popular Archie comic strip, The Archies Show was the brainchild of Monkees creator Don Kirshner, who must have found the prospect of forming a group of cartoon characters appealing after having just been abandoned by his previous creation. Targeting his show to the Saturday morning cartoon audience worked, and the Archies racked up six charting hits, including “Sugar Sugar,” which hit #1. After the Archies came the deluge as virtually every Saturday morning cartoon character in the late ’60s and early ’70s seemed attached to a guitar, drumsticks, or a tambourine: Josie and the Pussycats, the Groovie Goolies, the Brady Kids, even a cartoon rock band version of the Hardy Boys. By the early ’70s, real-life groups like the Jackson 5 and the Osmonds would follow the Beatles’ example by transforming themselves into cartoons. Over a decade before MTV, these shows demonstrated television’s value as an effective music marketing tool for kids. Notwithstanding bubblegum’s initial success both on television and the pop charts, the genre had trouble getting consistent airplay on hit radio. One reason

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The Saturday Morning Cartoon Band Invasion of the Late ’60s and Early ’70s: A Sampler

The Beatles (1965–69) The Beagles (1966–67) The Archie Show (1968)* The Jackson 5 (1971–73) The Groovie Goolies (1970–72) Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (1972–85) The Brady Kids (1972–74) Josie and the Pussycats (1970–72) The Hardy Boys (1969–71) The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan (1972) The Partridge Family 2200 A.D. (1974–75) * Archie cartoons ran under varying titles, such as Archie’s Funhouse and US of Archie until 1977.

for this was that many radio programmers held firm in the belief that children primarily watched television and only started listening to radio at 13 or 14 when they were ready, as media consultant George Burns told Billboard’s radio editor Claude Hall, for a more “lifestyle”-defining medium.49 No real evidence supported this common point of view. One in-depth 1972 study, in fact, found no significant decrease in adolescent radio listenership from its early pre-television days to the present. According to the study, 50 percent of the first graders and 80 percent of the sixth graders reported listening to radio on the preceding day.50 A 1990 study, incidentally, confirmed the results of the 1972 study, showing that the popularity of radio among adolescents had been holding steady for most of the century.51

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Another plausible reason for radio’s initial reluctance to embrace bubblegum had to do with the fact that the genre, with its TV-oriented groups like the Archies and Monkees, provoked the ire of musicians, writers, and fans within the rock establishment who characterized them as “schlock rock” and “canned music.” “That’s shit, the Archies,” said legendary producer Phil Spector shortly after the cartoon group’s debut. “When I see and hear stuff like that I want to throw up.” Albert Grossman, Bob Dylan’s high-profile manager, referred to the genre as a “total lack of nutrition.”52 Cultural critic David Pichaske provided a particularly vivid summation. “It is difficult for true children of the sixties to deal calmly with bubblegum music,” he writes. “It’s like mentioning Richard Nixon — they start foaming at the mouth, flinging out irrational and often wildly outrageous accusations that are often only half-truths but that together present a very accurate picture.”53 Powerful radio executives such as Bill Drake at KHJ in Los Angeles and Rick Sklar at WABC in New York, it turned out, doubted the long-term financial clout of the demographic that the genre attracted. Drake, the influential radio consultant, initially encouraged his station to air the Monkees’ debut single, “Last Train to Clarksville” (1966), in an attempt to attract a strong teen listenership. But the resulting experience of having diluted his Top 40 “Boss Radio” audience with preteens at a time when so many older teens were already defecting to underground radio scared him enough to actively squelch the addition of any future Monkees singles throughout the rest of the ’60s.54 Also off limits was anything geared too blatantly toward the preteen audience, such as the entire output of Bogart’s Buddah label or its sister label, Super K. “In trying to project a younger demographic,” said Drake to Billboard, “what you see at that point is a mass exodus of listeners.”55 The ultimate nightmare for AM Top 40 stations, it seemed, as Gene Sculatti wrote in Bubblegum Is the Naked Truth, a recent book of essays about the bubblegum genre, was “to be left alone with a constituency of noisy 10-year-olds.”56

PRETEENS IN CONTEXT The new decade brought changes, though, and by 1970, radio programmers grew more accustomed to their very young listenership. That noisy 10-year-old audience was finding an increasingly comfortable space as an acknowledged demographic in a formatting-happy medium. Who were these new kids? For one, they were, as radio consultants like Burns suspected, heavily influenced by television, even if not necessarily at the expense of radio. According to several studies, they watched on average around 2 hours of television a day and considered the medium to have the strongest impact on their lives.57 Public television took on a good portion of children’s programming during the early ’70s, airing fast-paced educational programs in the daytime, such as Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and Zoom (featuring an all-preteen cast), as well as the

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Debuting on PBS in 1972, Zoom featured an all-preteen cast that rotated regularly in order to reflect the reality of change. The kids presented short skits, games, recipes, and other submissions sent in by viewers, and performed at least one musical number — usually a contemporary pop or familiar folk song — during each episode.

slower-paced Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Commercial networks found success with Saturday morning shows like Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, and Super Friends, while reserving two prime-time programs specifically for preteens: The Partridge Family and The Brady Bunch.58 Depicting the blended family of a single woman with three daughters and a single man with three sons, The Brady Bunch (as did The Partridge Family) gently touched upon a prevailing cultural reality of the early ’70s, which was the acknowledged vulnerability of the traditional nuclear family.59 Although divorce wouldn’t become the central premise of a television situation comedy until 1977s One Day at a Time, early ’70s television provided a bevy of unusual family scenarios in shows like Mary Tyler Moore, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Maude, and All in the Family.60 Featuring the intact but highly dysfunctional Bunkers, who argued regularly about sensitive current topics such as Vietnam and Watergate, All in the Family was the highest rated television show from 1971 to 1976. At a time when the number of American divorces crept up to half the number of marriages, when the birthrate dropped to its lowest level in over 60 years, and one-third of all college students believed marriage to be an outdated institution, the show hardly stood as an ideal model for family togetherness, so much as a reflection of the times.61 Watching the ’70s unfold, Tom Wolfe dubbed the era the “me decade,” while Christopher Lasch called it the “culture of narcissism.”62 Early ’70s books like The Courage to Divorce, The Future of Marriage, and Open Marriage: A New Life Style for Couples (in which the authors asserted that if it “comes down to

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Popular TV shows like The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family gently touched upon a prevailing cultural reality of the early ’70s — the acknowledged vulnerability of the traditional nuclear family.

your marriage or your identity, we think your identity is more important”), indicated that the all-persavive self-interest Wolfe and Lasch had commented on was happening at the expense of social and familial responsibility.63 A study by Columbia sociology professor Sheila Kamerman found that children of single parents were going through up to “three, four, or more kinds of care in a week” and that the television set was frequently filling in for babysitters.64 This made for a scenario in which youngsters could easily view television programs containing adult content, such as All in the Family, or violent cop dramas along the lines of Hawaii Five-O and The Streets of San Francisco.65 In a TV-watching society such as early ’70s America, it seems safe to assume that children were likely to view any given number of programs not geared specifically for them. They were likely to know more, for example, on a visual basis, about all manner of current events than any previous generation. In the early ’70s, children could witness the bloody reality of the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal as it unfolded, and any number of other current news items, however disturbing, simply by watching the evening news.66 The effects

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of violence on children became the subject of a well-funded report conducted by the Surgeon General’s Committee, which concluded unremarkably in 1972 that a “causal relation between viewing violence on television and aggressive behavior” operates only “on some children.”67 In spite of the report’s inconclusiveness, many adults remained troubled by children’s frequent exposure to adult programming, and they were equally concerned with the violent content in children’s shows. The 1970s thus spawned a variety of vocal citizens’ action groups, among the most vocal being Action for Children’s Television. Formed by a group of Boston-area mothers, ACT spoke out against on-air violence and excessive advertising aimed toward children. In alliance with other groups, ACT helped arouse public opinion to the extent that the television industry and the FCC finally took action. The networks agreed to a suggestion from CBS president Arthur Taylor that, starting in 1975, primetime network programming, except for news, would be reserved exclusively for “family viewing” with limits on the depiction of violence until 9 p.m. In addition, networks agreed to monitor violence in children’s morning and weekend network programming.68 The characterization of parents in the ’70s, though, as having rejected social and familial responsibilities for selfish reasons tends to overlook a certain fact. By the end of the decade, half of all married mothers of children under six worked for wages, and while this reflected a new willingness of women to merge motherhood with careers, it also revealed, as Peter N. Carroll puts it, “not only a shift of values, but also a new urgency to earn a living.” By 1976, after all, only 40 percent of the nation’s jobs provided enough income to support a family.69 Hence a new proliferation of “latchkey” children — children who came home from school to empty houses. This was a natural result in a new society where so many more parents needed to work. The World War II era, with the demands it put on fathers and mothers to both serve in the military and join the American workforce, also spawned a high number of latchkey kids, although the Lanham Act of 1942 provided child care facilities for some mothers in the labor force. The act’s postwar repeal, however, made way for a skyrocketing number of new latchkey kids by the early ’70s. The responsibility handed over to so many children in the ’70s to fend for themselves daily until their parents came home jibed with an emerging parental philosophy that best-selling popular psychologist Wayne Dyer pounded home in 1976: “Only by treating yourself as the most important person and not always sacrificing yourself for your children will you teach them to have their own self-confidence in themselves.”70 The assumption that many latchkey kids were learning such new lessons in self-confidence through watching television and listening to the radio is a safe one. Several early ’70s studies reported a boom in television viewing among early adolescents, although children between 9 and 17 years of age, perhaps in search of new ways to “identify with their peers,” tempered their television viewing with other media, especially radio listening.71 The rise of parental permissiveness as a conscious parenting technique

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Dr. Benjamin Spock’s baby-boom advocacy of parental “instinct” in his widely read Baby and Child Care (1946) — as well as his later sympathies with the New Left — prompted critics like Vice President Spiro Agnew to refer to late ’60s youth as the “Spock-marked generation.”72

had steadily picked up steam since the publication of Dr. Benjamin Spock’s influential Baby and Child Care in the 1940s. “What good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is usually best,” he wrote. “Trust yourself.”73 Spock often drew the blame for the waywardness of ’60s youth, a charge his own presence at antiwar demonstrations and his 1972 campaign for US president hardly discouraged. Spock did not advocate an outright laissez-faire approach to child rearing, so much as something historian William Graebner referred to as the reconception of the family as a group built on democratic decision-making methods.74 Still, the general notion of permissiveness he had become associated with only picked up steam in the ’70s, bolstered up by parenting books such as Fitzhugh Dodson’s How to Parent (1970) and Lee Salk and Rita Kramer’s How to Raise a Human Being (1969), which further excoriated the authoritarian approach to child-rearing.75 “If we hurry children to grow up too fast today,” wrote child psychologist Daniel Elkind in 1981, surveying the high volume of child-rearing self-help books on the market, “it is certainly not done out of ignorance.”76 In this new environment where more children were expected to fend for themselves, a new sense of realism permeated youth media. Children’s television shows like Sesame Street presented a true-to-life view (not counting the muppets) of American urban diversity, while children’s books such as Ezra Jack Keats’s “Peter” series (1962–72), including Whistle for Willie and The Snowy Day, depicted inner-city life, while Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen (1970) featured the adventures of a fully detailed naked boy. The preteen audience received a dose of realism in 1972, when a new television program called The ABC Afterschool Special aired for the first time. Usually featuring preteen protagonists in fairly hard-hitting predicaments such as the divorce of parents,

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drug abuse, sexual confusion, and so on, the show filled what appeared to be an emerging need for straight talk in troubled times. “We can’t protect our children anymore from all we would like to spare them,” said Charlotte Zolotow, editor of Harper Junior Books. “All we can do is to help children to see it all, to form their own judgment and defenses and to be honest in the books we write for them about alcohol, drugs, or immorality.”77 This development in children’s media, of course echoed with similar changes in the movie industry. In 1968, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) developed a new ratings system that distinguished adult films from children’s films, thus affording a new influx of frank sexuality and violence along with the sobering social commentary of films like Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy. In this new post-1960s climate, an all-pervasive media in the early ’70s, it seemed, aimed to provide for audiences a useful measure of worldly education, thereby promoting an openness in communication. Hit radio was no exception — the Top 40 and MOR formats fostered an environment where parents and children could quite possibly build bridges across the gaping generation gap of the ’60s and make their way together into the new decade.

“BLENDED PLAY” The reinstatement of preteens as an acceptable radio demographic in the early ’70s had to do with a few key developments. For one, a feeling was running through the American media that the national culture was going through a sort of mood swing. A Life magazine cover story referred to this as “the mellowing of America.”78 Such diagnoses overlooked the fact that some of the most radical movements of the era, such as gay and lesbian liberation, Black Power, and the women’s liberation movement were in full bloom in the early ’70s. But the gentle sound of early ’70s pop music led many within the music business to wonder if youth culture in America was proving to be a bit less reactionary politically and less formidable as a tastemaking force than it had once been. In a 1970 interview that made Billboard’s front page, GRT Records president Len Levy confirmed that, yes, “the music one heard on the airwaves clearly indicated that the youth of America was not as radical as it had once promised to be.”79 If pop music were indeed a leading indicator of a given demographic’s radicalism, Levy had a point: three of the biggest hits of 1970 — the Carpenters’ “Close to You,” Bread’s “Make it with You,” and James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” — introduced a laid-back, introspective sound that would have a profound influence on popular music throughout the entire decade. As for preteens, the bubblegum they had once listened to was a thing of the past, with Neil Bogart’s assembly-line Buddah label unable to come up with any artists that had long-term staying power. He had also come up with a few fairly disastrous promotional ideas, such as a Carnegie Hall concert featuring all 40 of the Buddah/Super K musicians on stage at once, and a series of teaser

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Buddah records chose the dubious tactic of promoting a 1969 compilation album called Bubblegum Is the Naked Truth with the promise of “six naked bodies” on the cover that turned out to be toddlers. A 2001 book devoted to bubblegum in all of its incarnations — the most thorough to date — memorialized the fiasco by using the very same title.

ads in trade magazines for an upcoming album that would reportedly display six nude bodies expressing the “new attitude toward living” on its cover. The album ended up being an anthology of bubblegum hits, and the bodies on the cover were those of six happy toddlers, and it flopped.80 Preteens, in any case, had found a new brand of bubblegum in the form of cheerful family groups like the Osmonds, the Jackson 5, and the Partridge Family, whose proven ability to play soft rock earned them the airplay that eluded most of their late ’60s bubblegum forbears. The biggest reason, though, for radio stations’ newfound acceptance of preteens was the onset of hit radio formatting and audience segmentation. With hipper teenage audiences effectively isolated by progressive rock or album rock formats, MOR stations were better able to zero in on the lucrative adult demographic without fear of driving any of them away with the harder-edged sounds of teenage-oriented rock.81 Left to its own devices, Top 40, then, had no choice but to attempt to attract adults as well. Thus arose the two-headed, MOR/ Top 40 gentle giant, sometimes referred to in the trade papers as the “blended play” format (also, somewhat derisively, as “chicken rock,” being too “chicken,” apparently, to air harder-edged rock), which targeted adults and children

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alike.82 Luckily for program directors and their adult listeners, their children’s unthreatening taste in music fit in rather snugly with their own. One surprising manifestation of this was the willingness of a KHJ disc jockey to play Donny Osmond’s “Puppy Love” for an hour straight (KHJ being the same Los Angeles station that refused to play the Monkees in the late ’60s).83 If anything promoted the eventual survival of Top 40 radio with its generous helpings of juvenile musical flavors — and also preserved the notion of a diverse and democratic playlist in this new environment — it was the radio program American Top 40, which debuted on a Sunday morning in 1970 on KGB in San Diego.84 Featuring seasoned radio personality Casey Kasem, who had made a name for himself at powerful Top 40 station KRLA in Los Angeles, the 3-hour weekly Sunday morning show took the 40 top songs from the Billboard Hot 100, and beginning with song number 40, played each song in succession going all the way up to number one. Probably not on purpose, the show tapped into something David Riesman had observed in 1950 regarding the listening habits of young 14-and-under teenagers who seemed to approach music as “an opportunity for competitiveness in judging which tunes will become hits, coupled with a lack of concern for how hits are actually made.” Were the interviewer to have “cards with the hits listed on them,” Riesman wrote further, “they would doubtless enjoy ranking the cards and then explaining their rankings.”85 Not surprisingly, Billboard chart compiler Joel Whitburn has related his own love affair with compiling pop chart data as a hobby that grew in proportion to his “sizable collection of early Topps and Bowman baseball cards.”86 Perhaps the clearest proof that American Top 40 had become something preteens were ready to call their own, though, came shortly after the program’s debut when Ron Jacobs, co-creator of the show and program director at KGB, reported in a

American Top 40, Casey Kasem’s long-running weeky radio show which debuted in the summer of 1970, has now spawned at least two publications: Rob Durkee’s American Top 40 (1999), which provides an overview of the show’s entire run; and Pete Battistini’s American Top 40 with Casey Kasem (The 1970s), which takes an in-depth look at its first decade.87

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Billboard interview that the 10- to 13-year-old audience positively dominated their Sunday morning AM hours, “for some reason.”88 The dark side of this “blended play” phenomenon was the fact that children were being absorbed into the domain of adults. In Nancy Erlich’s bubblegum state-of-the-union address for Billboard (bubblegum had since become a catch-all phrase for preteen-oriented music), she made a few sobering points. “Bubblegum,” she wrote, “is built upon the natural tendency of children to imitate adults and on the tendency of parents to find that imitativeness cute and appealing.” The one major difference between the bubblegum market as a buying power and any other consumer population, she continues, is “freedom of choice.” Bubblegum-aged kids are “simply too young to know what . . . they really like,” she concluded, “particularly when they are effectively being told what to like.”89 This is arguable. Children were certainly able — then as now — to flatly reject en masse any manner of products being peddled to them. One ought not to underestimate, on the other hand, the influence of parental approval on preteen popular tastes. Why were the radio tastes of adults and children so effectively shared in the early ’70s, then? There are at least two ways to look at this situation, and one stems from the critique of mass media as a creator of predetermined niche markets meant to attract the widest possible market share and, as a result, advertising money.90 The merging of MOR and Top 40 formats, according to this critique, happened because of the financial advantages inherent in combining two demographics that marched obediently in step. An equally plausible explanation for the merger has to do with the notion that the output of a given medium, like hit radio, reflects specific social needs of its audience. These needs were discernible, in the case of radio, by plain, old-fashioned listener response via telephone or letter, ratings results, or record sales. These factors, thus, could enable program directors and disc jockeys to anticipate what it was their listeners might have needed — or simply wanted — to hear, resulting in a sort of open listener’s forum using songs as messages and radio stations as facilitators. In 1967, for example, a single called “Little Becky’s Christmas Wish,” credited to Little Becky Lamb, which told the story of a 5-year-old whose brother was killed in Vietnam, immediately received heavy airplay in Detroit, Milwaukee, and Chicago due to the high number of positive telephone calls stations received from listeners. The record promptly died two weeks later, however, when even more callers complained about its negative, upsetting effect.91 “Answer records,” too — songs that respond directly to a big hit — illustrated this radio-as-publicforum hypothesis. Barry McGuire’s 1965 #1 hit “Eve of Destruction” drew a response in the Spokesmen’s “Dawn of Correction,” for example, that, buoyed up by positive listener feedback, gave the impression that musical dialogue between two opposing viewpoints actually took place on any given Top 40 station.92 That simple element of listener response, even in the most cynical of evaluations, cannot be cast aside as an essential factor in a record’s success. Many a program director or disc jockey from the late ’60s and early ’70s can report instances in

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which they either directly “broke” a record (i.e. were the first to take a chance on a single that became a future hit due to heavy telephone response), or saw it happen. Program director John Long reports one such instance while working for KLWW in Cedar Rapids, Iowa: “One day I got a package from Bell Records [containing] ‘I Think I Love You’ by The Partridge Family. I don’t know why but I ‘heard’ the song. I added it to the playlist and the request line began to ring . . . Bell didn’t know it, but they had a hit, [and] they sent me my very first gold record for breaking it.”93 What seemed to have happened in the early ’70s was this: radio stations melded Top 40 and MOR formats together for financial reasons, but also took their cues from an audience that proved willing to listen to these hybrids, showing a strong appetite for both bubblegum and soft rock. These stations could thus follow the sometimes contradictory advice of tipsheets and never betray their audience. If Friday Morning Quarterback publisher Kal Rudman, for example, frequently pushed for “communication Top 40,” which played records “whose lyrics communicate an adult message regularly,” stations could do just that, even while following Bob Hamilton’s advice in his own “Communication Music” column to stop ignoring the legions of “teenyboppers” who called in to request Donny Osmond records.94 The blended MOR/Top 40 formats, thus, became a venue for the reassessment of identity between children and adults — a shared, public space where both demographics could converse and learn about each other on a regular basis. This “communication music” shared by early ’70s adults and children manifested itself through three different categories of songs: sexual songs, novelty and topical songs, and songs celebrating children and their world.

SEXUAL SONGS Hit radio’s initial resistance to late-’60s bubblegum may have had something to do with the fact that the music, without the distraction of television images, brought too much attention to its extraordinarily high ratio of sexual doubleentendre. Notwithstanding Neil Bogart’s claim to Time magazine that his goal in promoting bubblegum was to “give kids something to identify with that is clean, fresh, and happy,” observant listeners like rock critic Lester Bangs were not to be fooled.95 “The irony, which everybody missed at the time,” writes Bangs, referring, among others, to Tommy Roe’s Top 40 hit “Jam Up and Jelly Tight,” “was that while rock was trying to be so hip and ‘adult,’ many bubblegum songs had some of the most lubriciously explicit lyrics in the world.”96 “I’ve got love in my tummy,” sang the Ohio Express. “Love is such a sweet thing, such a good to eat thing.” “If you want a taste of honey, you gotta get next to the bee,” chirped the Osmonds, who joined the bubblegum charge in 1970. “I’ve got a double stroke of lovin’ I’ve been dyin’ to use on you.”97 Joey Levine, who not only sang for the Ohio Express but co-wrote many of the group’s hits, is one of the only

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bubblegum veterans who has admitted to having written naughty lyrics on purpose. “We were told to write these innocent songs,” he told one interviewer, “but we were all in our late teens so we wanted to slide some double entendres past ’em if we could.”98 However mischievous the intentions of writers like Levine may have been, this characteristic of bubblegum jibed with the sexual revolution, which had taken American culture with such force in the 1960s that its affectation on media geared toward children was inevitable. There were other factors at play, though, which encouraged a more tolerant attitude regarding sexuality among Americans of all ages. The introduction of effective birth control pills in 1960 served as a symbolic harbinger of freer sexual relations in the decade to come. “America is very close to the saturation point in terms of our sexual customs,” wrote sexologist Ira L. Reiss in 1960. “Change should come soon.”99 In 1964, cover stories in both Time and Newsweek confirmed a definite loosening up of American sexual mores. The “key to the new morality,” reported Newsweek, was the “widespread belief that a boy and girl” who have established a “meaningful relationship” have the “moral right to sleep together.”100 Reinforcing this emerging cultural attitude was the 1966 publication of Masters and Johnson’s Human Sexual Response and Anne Koedt’s article, “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm,” which, among other revelations, knocked over long-held beliefs about the female orgasm as being dependent on heterosexual intercourse, thereby negating traditional views on the inferiority of self-stimulation or homosexuality as valid vehicles of sexual pleasure.101 These scientific developments accompanied a new sense of openness regarding sex as a subject of both public and private conversation. It permeated popular culture in the appearance, for example, of nudity in Hollywood films, suggestive fashions, an influx of gyrating dance crazes, an increased use of sexuality in advertising, and, of course, the surprising emergence of barely disguised sexual content in pop music meant for preteens. Norm Prescott, a co-creator along with Don Kirshner and Al Nevins of The Archie Show cartoon, revealed somewhat higher aspirations regarding the sexuality both in his show and its music. According to Prescott, one of the most important factors for him in bringing the comic strip to life was an opportunity to portray “the awakening of the relationship between the sexes” and to show that “the opposite sex is never as bad as childhood made them seem.”102 This was in keeping with the emerging narrative regarding male teen idols, which one TV Guide writer described as a phenomenon appealing “to that twilight zone between childhood and maturity when girls from 6 to 16 start to become interested in boys but don’t know why.”103 According to pioneering pop music scholar R. Serge Denisoff, the teen idols demonstrated that “popular music, especially for young girls, serves as a rite of passage from Raggedy Ann to boys.” They also insured that “girls between the ages of nine through 12, an age bracket rapidly expanding to include six-yearolds, purchase a lion’s share of singles in the United States.”104 “Teen idols” were a fixture in American popular music and films before the

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A 1971 Cash Box editorial called “The Necessity of Pre-Teen Stars” lauded bubblegum music for “educating as well as entertaining tomorrow’s late teen-adult music fans,” who “do not bear the burden of forced ‘coolness’ and openly express their joy at the musical pleasures set before them.”105

arrival of the Beatles in 1964. They were handsome, unthreatening boys in their late teens — safer offshoots of the dynamic Elvis Presley — and many of them had their careers carefully molded for them before even learning to sing. Fabian and James Darren, for example, were both picked up by “talent scouts” on the schoolgrounds of a South Philadelphia High School, never having bothered to give the boys’ singing voices a good listen.106 Names like Bobby Vee, Johnny Tillotson, Bobby Vinton, and Frankie Avalon filled the pop charts with songs that were carefully crafted and inoffensive, albeit frequently drenched in heavyhanded string and chorus arrangements and highlighted by lovelorn lyrics. The Beatles effectively ended the chart success of many of these teen idols, sparking at once the British Invasion, the popularity of guitar-oriented groups, and a more organic approach to popular music-making that focused on original compositions.107 Equally important to ’60s rock, as the decade progressed, was an element of frank sexuality particularly evident in the music, lyrics, and posturing of hit-making rock groups like the Rolling Stones and the Doors. Even so, one of the immediate effects of the formatting revolution in the early ’70s was the partitioning off of such groups to album rock formats, while preteens could rediscover, like the preteens of ten years earlier, the innocent pleasures of teen idol worship. Two of the most popular of these, Donny Osmond (a preteen) and David Cassidy (an older teen), were members of other groups — the Osmonds and the Partridge Family, respectively — but became undeniable objects of the fans’ affections. They consequently released solo LPs and singles full of boy–girl

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In 1972, 9-year-old Jimmy Osmond, Donny’s little brother, scored a Top 40 hit with his “Long Haired Lover from Liverpool.” The single’s B-side tempered the randy precociousness of the A-side with a penitent track called “Mother of Mine.”

relationship songs highlighted by memorable melodies and sentimental lyrics primarily written by record label staffers. In the case of Osmond, he resurrected a fairly high ratio of songs from the early ’60s teen idols, immediately associating himself with an era rock historians had begun delineating as a “pre-Beatles” musical dark age.108 Osmond represented a new sort of teen idol in that he and his family openly belonged to the Mormon church, a morally strict religion not previously associated with pop stardom. This, incidentally, along with the fact that they rose up from The Andy Williams Show, a popular variety show among adults, made his and his brothers’ reputations unassailable and their own forays into double entendre virtually undetectable.109 The group’s use of suggestive doublemeanings, in fact, were as numerous as any of the original Buddah bubblegum groups. In addition to the previously mentioned “The Honey Bee Song” and “Double Lovin’,” for instance, the Osmonds had a made-to-order ode to selfpleasure called “My Drum,” a sadomasochism-tinged number called “Flirtin’” (“I’m gonna get a rope and tie you down”), and a celebration of one-night stands in “Find ’Em, Fool ’Em, Forget ’Em.” Another thing working in Donny Osmond’s favor was the fact that he had also yet to hit puberty during the first years of his popularity, thereby exploiting what Erlich referred to, again, in her Billboard article as the “natural tendency of children to imitate adults” and the “tendency of parents to find that imitativeness cute and appealing.”110 When Osmond, therefore, sang “you’re much too sweet and innocent for me,” it in fact sounded both cute and absurd at the same time.111 The early ’70s resurgence of teen idols, the most popular of them having

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sprung from wholesome “family” groups with an unusually high number of kids, provided an opportunity for preteens to explore their sexuality with their parents’ blessing. David Cassidy circa 1972 served as a good example of how this was done. His second solo LP, released late that year, appeared to be a sort of maturation project. “I left home when I was 12,” he sings in “Rock Me Baby,” the album’s title track. “Now all life is is another town.”112 The cover shows him reclining before a painting of a nude woman, while the back cover shows him wrangling with a free-standing, phallus-like post. The same month, he posed suggestively supine and bare for the cover of Rolling Stone and declared in the magazine interview that he was ready to shed his good boy reputation.113 Nonetheless, Cassidy would continue recording ballads that placed comfortably on Billboard’s easy listening charts, playing, until 1975, the squeaky clean TV role of the Partridge Family’s oldest son Keith, who sang regularly with his family in supper clubs populated almost exclusively by middle-aged adults.114

NOVELTY AND TOPICAL SONGS As with the teen idol craze, the early ’70s saw the resurgence of another preBeatles trend in the novelty hit single. Novelty songs are best defined as songs built around a humorous or unusual gimmick, and they were a hit radio phenomenon of the late ’50s and early ’60s, spawning such hits as “The Chipmunk Song,” featuring the sped-up voice of David Seville as the “Chipmunks,” “Baby Sittin’ Boogie,” with the sounds of gurgling baby voices synchronized to a beat, and Nervous Norvus’s “Transfusion,” performed by a reckless-driving, hepcat vocalist singing his way through a series of auto accidents. Among the most popular novelty single trends of the era was the “break-in” single, the creation of disc jockey Dickie Goodman, whose 1956 record “The Flying Saucer” featured snippets of current hit singles inserted into key points of a melodrama that was usually staged as a newscast. The success of that single’s formula prompted a series of follow-ups, such as “The Creature (from a Science Fiction Movie)” (1957) and “Santa and the Satellite” (1957).115 The early ’70s novelty song revival had much to do with the sort of nostalgia that made hits out of the film American Graffiti (1973), the TV series Happy Days (1974–84), the rock ’n’ roll group Sha Na Na, and reissued singles such as Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s 1962 #1 hit, “Monster Mash,” which crept all the way back up to #10 in 1973.116 The revival also likely had to do with the fact that more artistically conscious, album-oriented popular music had been consigned to progressive formats and their young adult audiences. Preteens, along with the adults who enjoyed novelty songs a decade or so ago, could enjoy the new novelty craze together. In the early ’70s, Dickie Goodman resurfaced with another string of “break-in” charting hits. The difference with these new singles, though, bearing titles such as “Convention ’72,” “Mr. President,” “Energy Crisis ’74,” and “Watergrate” [sic]117 was a decidedly dark undertone reflecting the era’s

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frustrating current events. Clearly, Goodman was aware that adults, as well as children, were listening.118 Other creators of novelty songs during the era were also most certainly aware of the adult/child listenership of hit radio. This was evident in the early ’70s novelty songs that had both unmistakable appeal for young audiences along with unmistakable sexual connotations. Folk singer Melanie, whose first Top 40 hit, “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)” showcased her lead vocals atop a rousing gospel choir, shifted gears for her suggestive follow-up, “Brand New Key.” It was an enormously catchy ditty with lyrics that might otherwise sound like children at play: “I’ve got a brand new pair of roller skates / You’ve got a brand new key / I think that we should get together and try them out, you see.” In “Troglodyte,” Jimmy Castor tells the story of a caveman, who chants “gotta find a woman” and drags to his cave the first woman he finds (“Bertha Butt”) by the hair. A Dutch group by the name of Chakachas hit the Top 10 with an instrumental tune called “Jungle Fever” which chugged along between breaks where the music gave way to the sound of a moaning, “fevered” woman. And Chuck Berry, with his “My Ding-a-Ling,” turned an obvious children’s bathroom joke into a #1 smash.119 The pop hits of the early 1970s are frequently lambasted as being a particularly mindless, almost ephemeral body of novelty-oriented music. In 1991, rock critics Jimmy Guterman and Owen O’Donnell published The Worst Rock-and-Roll Records of All Time, which lists 100 records spanning four decades, virtually half of which are products of the early ’70s.120 Columnist Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs may as well have been called the “Book of Bad Early Seventies Songs.”121 Chuck Eddy of Rolling Stone, in reviewing Rhino Records’ multivolume Have a Nice Day: Superhits of the Seventies series, wrote that it was “compiled, no doubt, by some very sick minds.”122 And radio scholar Susan J. Douglas refers to the “numbing repetition of Top 40 radio that made songs like [early ’70s hit] ‘You and Me and a Dog Named Boo’ [sic] a national hit” as one of the entire medium’s low points, and cites the lyrical hook of “Yummy Yummy Yummy” as proof that bubblegum is one of the “most loathsome” of all genres.123 Seldom mentioned, though, is what rock critic Robert A. Hull considers to be among early ’70s pop’s greatest virtues, which was its inextricable ties to the social movements and cultural themes of the decade. Among those themes were antiwar protest (Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods’ “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero”), social and racial commentary (Stories’ “Brother Louie”), looser sexual mores (Sammy Johns’s “Chevy Van”), new spirituality (Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky”), drugs (Brewer and Shipley’s “One Toke Over the Line”) and naughty fads (Ray Stevens’s “The Streak”).124 Other topical songs from the era took form as the “spoken-word single,” referring to recorded recitations that usually featured accompanying background music. A good portion of these records seemed intent on lecturing radio listeners. Victor Lundberg’s “An Open Letter to My Teenage Son,” again, was a prime example of this, but the genre had been brewing in country radio in the late ’50s and all throughout the ’60s. The country hit that kicked off this

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trend was T. Texas Tyler’s “Deck of Cards,”125 which radio personality Wink Martindale brought to the Top 40 in 1959 as Billboard’s first spoken-word pop hit. Right-wing politics almost always fueled the spoken-word country single throughout the 1960s, with hits like Dave Dudley’s “What We’re Fighting For” promoting the Vietnam war effort and Guy Drake’s “Welfare Cadilac [sic]” taking aim at Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. Two of the more notable spoken-word singles of the ’70s were Terry Nelson’s “The Battle of Lt. Calley,” which defended the same Lt. Calley who stood trial for his involvement in the My Lai massacre, and Byron MacGregor’s “America (A Canadian’s Opinion),” an enormously popular pontification regarding “the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth.”126 A clear majority of the topical novelty and spoken-word hit singles of the early ’70s were the work of radio or record industry insiders. Because these people knew who the hit radio audiences were — adults and their increasingly world-wise children — they were not about to miss an opportunity, it seemed, to impart some parental wisdom. Two particularly memorable singles that reflected this apparent instinct were Think’s “Once You Understand” (1972) and Tom Clay’s “What the World Needs Now/Abraham, Martin and John” (1971). Think was an alias for record producer Lou Stallman and children’s songwriter Bobby Susser, and the single featured a series of antagonistic exchanges between a set of hard-nosed parents and their teenagers over a chorus of vocalists repeating, “things get a little easier once you understand.” Eventually, the chorus stops and an officer tells the father his son has died of a drug overdose, and a lone voice

Radio newsman Byron MacGregor’s “America (A Canadian’s Opinion)” took an editorial by Gordon Sinclair, which MacGregor had heard on a Canadian station, and revamped it with a background rendering of “America the Beautiful.” The record shot up to #4 on Billboard’s pop chart and enabled MacGregor to join fellow newsman Victor Lundberg in the pantheon of hit radio’s parental pontificators.

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starts anew the fading refrain under the father’s sobs. Clay, a temporary disc jockey at KGBS in Los Angeles, used his own funds to create a narrative collage that combined soundbites from speeches by John F. Kennedy, Robert Kenendy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., with sound effects like gunshots and recordings of children’s voices attempting to define terms such as “bigotry,” “prejudice,” and “segregation.”127 The single climbed all the way to #8 in 1971.

CELEBRATING CHILDREN Tom Clay’s use of children’s voices throughout his “What the World Needs Now” single was in keeping with a most conspicuous trend in early ’70s pop music that has yet to receive much attention, scholarly or otherwise: a preoccupation with children and their world. In his conservative critique of the ’70s, How We Got Here, David Frum identifies in 1970s cinema a sense of cultural uneasiness toward children, pointing to films such as The Omen, It’s Alive, and The Exorcist, which took their cues from 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby by depicting children as demons in one form or another.128 This was not the case, however, with hit radio, which celebrated children heartily. It celebrated them through songs that featured children’s voices, childlike imagery, or topics related to family living. These songs streamed forth from Top 40 and MOR radio formats like a mass media dialogue between adults and children, aimed expressly toward the adults and children who made up the formats’ primary listenership. The song that most likely kicked off this new trend was a surprise 1970 charting hit billed to Miss Abrams and the Strawberry Point School Third Grade Class called “Mill Valley.”129 Rita Abrams, a kindergarten teacher, wrote the song one evening for her kindergarten class to sing and record the following day. A chance meeting between Abrams and record producer Erik Jacobsen at a party one week later led to an experimental rush-recording with Abrams and the school’s third grade class (which was better able to sing in tune than her kindergarteners). When Jacobsen played the final product at a Warner Bros. sales meeting, the “men in business suits stood up and clapped.” Released a week later, the record grew in popularity not only for its soothing, innocent-sounding voices, but for the childlike simplicity of the story of how it became a hit. Abrams appeared on national television shows such as The Steve Allen Show and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour as a certifiably successful adult emissary to the world of children.130 Shortly after “Mill Valley” came the chart success of “Rubber Duckie,” a record featuring Jim Henson doing the voice of Sesame Street’s muppet Ernie, punctuated by the joyous squeaks of the duckie itself. Few children’s shows have sparked the same level of national attention that Sesame Street did immediately upon its public television debut in 1969. At once praised for its documented effectiveness in improving basic skills in children and condemned for its “jazzy,” “education-as-commercials” style, the show found instant popularity,

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commanding the steady viewership of 95 percent of all preschoolers, according to one Chicago survey.131 A major part of the show’s ethos, that it remain as exciting to parents as it did to children, was echoed by its primary songwriter, Joe Raposo. “The songs and poems of Sesame Street were never written for children alone,” he said. “We’re just dealing with a very short audience.”132 Emphasizing his point was the Carpenters’ hit version of his “Sing,” complete with a children’s chorus, which hit #3 in Billboard in 1973.133 “Sing” was only one part of a steady stream of early ’70s charting singles that featured children’s voices (“Mill Valley,” Ray Stevens’s “Everything is Beautiful,” The English Congregation’s “Softly Whispering I Love You,” Sammy Davis Jr.’s “The Candy Man,” Billy Thunderkloud and the Chieftones’ “What Time of Day”). Equally prominent, if not more so, were songs that celebrated children in the context of family life. Songs like Bobby Goldsboro’s “Watching Scotty Grow” (1970), Bobby Bare’s “Daddy What If ” (1973) (also featuring a child’s voice), and Harry Chapin’s bittersweet “Cat’s in the Cradle” — in which an inattentive father raises an inattentive son — focused on father–son relationships, while Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Claire” and Brotherhood of Man’s “Save Your Kisses for Me” were odes to toddlers. In 1970, songwriter Bobby Russell, who had written the late ’60s smashes “Honey” and “Little Green Apples,”134 charted with “Saturday Morning Confusion,” a novelty song depicting the frenzied tempo of a typical Saturday morning in a suburban household. At the point where the singer sounds ready to collapse, he declares, “Lord, let us thank you for Saturdays, and may they remain our friends / ’cause I work all week long / keep me strong till they’re grown.”135 Providing more specific reasons for adults to cherish children were several hit songs in the early ’70s that depicted children as a source of strength for parents in broken homes. B.J. Thomas’s “Rock and Roll Lullabye” told the story of an

“Mill Valley,” a 1970 single billed to Miss Abrams and the Strawberry Point Third Grade Class (they were fourth graders by the time the album came out, as the cover made clear), only made it to #90 on the Billboard Hot 100. The record nonetheless stirred up a craving among American radio listeners for the voices of children.

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unwed teenage mother whose love for her baby kept her going, while Wayne Newton’s “Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast” featured a “darling daughter” who served as the only hope for a collapsing marriage.136 In Elvis Presley’s “Don’t Cry Daddy,” the singer’s children help him to keep his chin up after the loss of his wife leaves him feeling too emotionally devastated to start over.137 To the extent that it revels in the world of children, for both their innocence and their ability to mimic adult roles, perhaps the most spot-on song from this era is Clint Holmes’s “Playground in My Mind.” Situated in a day and age where hit radio stations were full of children-oriented content even while national birthrates were lower than they had been for over 50 years, Holmes longs for a world he has “left behind,” daydreaming about the “happy little children” in the “playground” of his mind. Among these children is a little boy named Michael who longs for adulthood, announcing his plans to marry his girl Cindy and “have a baby or two.”138 Writing about the late 1800s and early 1900s, Howard P. Chudacoff claims that throughout the twentieth century, “the emergence of childhood themes in popular music has coincided with a sentiment that yearns for the preservation of innocence.” Popular songs from the turn of the century, such as tearjerkers “The Little Lost Child” and “For Sale — A Baby,” as well as the upbeat “Youth is Life’s Time of May,” he observes, mirrored contemporary developments such as the establishment of pediatrics as a separate medical specialty, the passage of school attendance laws, the establishment of junior high schools, and the enactment of statutes fixing minimum ages for employment.139 All of these resulted from a prevailing attitude that placed children in a precious new category separate from the morally volatile young savages psychologist G. Stanley Hall labeled “adolescents” in 1904.140 The depression of the 1890s, brought about by the flagging industrial economy, brought the plight of very young children, forced to work in factories or out on the streets as peddlers or shoeshiners, into national focus. Exposés like Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives revealed the widespread squalor in which many a neglected child suffered and echoed an increasing concern in media and government alike for the plight of children.141 Such revelations stoked fears among upper- and middle-class Americans regarding the moral purity of their own children and the preservation of their families and social status for generations to come. Poverty corrupted children, tossing them headlong into the carnal world of adults. These fears, according to scholar Nicola Beisel, gave Anthony Comstock the extraordinary political powers he wielded in effectively battling carnal knowledge — instead of poverty — by censoring, confiscating, and curtailing printed materials containing corruptible, i.e. sexual, content.142 A similar instinct of cultural preservation as a family crusade emerged again in the 1950s among Americans who clung to the notion of the nuclear family as a stronghold against corruption in the form of sexuality, communism, or general discontent.143 The “ideal” family figured prominently in popular TV shows of the ’50s, like Leave it to Beaver, The Donna Reed Show, and Ozzie and Harriet, while family-oriented singalong songs by Mitch Miller,

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themes from children’s shows like “The Ballad of Davy Crockett,” and novelty songs by the Chipmunks bounced cheerfully across radio airwaves. But what about the early ’70s, when large families like the Osmonds, the Partridge Family, the Jackson 5, the DeFranco Family, and the Five Stairsteps dominated hit radio (and television) along with a high volume of content with childhood subjects?144 Perhaps this trend reflected a similar collective yearning, such as what Chudacoff wrote about, for simple family life. In contrast to previous eras in the twentieth century, though, “family life” faced a number of profound obstacles in the early ’70s, a time when more mothers than ever before were seeking careers, when single-parent households proliferated, and large American families with five or more children, like the Osmonds and Cowsills (and their television counterparts, like the Partridges and Waltons), were becoming fewer and farther between. Family life, for that matter, was no less complicated a subject in the context of commercial hit radio, where the worlds of adults and children overlapped. Here adults reveled in childhood images while children learned the ways of the world, each side reassessing what it meant to be a child or adult in the post-1960s. Those large family acts brought attention, at very least, to this new complexity.

WATCHING SCOTTY GROW In his 1970 Top 40 hit “Watching Scotty Grow,” Bobby Goldsboro depicts a timely scenario. “You can have your TV and your nightclubs and you can have your drive-in picture show,” goes the song. “I’ll stay here with my little man near . . . we’ll listen to the radio . . . biding my time and watching Scotty grow.” The song paints a picture of a father and a son watching the world go by, sharing a medium created just for them, and perhaps not realizing to what extent that medium is impacting their lives. Scotty’s father, for one, glories in having removed himself from the cares of the adult world. The child-friendly radio programming he undoubtedly listens to with Scotty in many ways seems to be promoting exactly the lifestyle he has chosen, but it also removes him from adult reality and tampers with his identity. Scotty, on the other hand, is not only “growing” with the help of his father, but he is also learning about the very same adult world his father rejects with the help of the radio station they listen to together.145 This mutual radio-listening environment that adults and children shared during the early ’70s was a contradictory affair. Child-friendly hit radio programming most certainly seemed to promote a sheltered environment both audiences could enjoy together. But many of the same qualities that may have appealed to parents as cute, such as prepubescent singers like Michael Jackson and Donny Osmond playing the roles of experienced lovers, introduced an element of sexual precociousness that, as Daniel J. Elkind warned about, could potentially draw kids out into dangerous, grown-up territory.146 This would seem to be especially true when these songs intermingled with musically light, albeit

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“I’ll stay here with my little man near,” sang Bobby Goldsboro in his 1970 hit, “Watching Scotty Grow.” “We’ll listen to the radio.”

lyrically complicated relationship songs, such as Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” (1972) or “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be” (1971).147 The topical songs, too, such as Tom Clay’s “What the World Needs Now/Abraham, Martin and John,” so prevalent in early ’70s Top 40 programming, exposed children to the “issues and conflicts of grown-ups,” something Elkind had pinpointed as a primary fault of television. These songs all provided dissonant undertones that resonated beneath the protective, sentimental offerings of “Rubber Duckie,” “The Candy Man,” “Daddy What If,” and so many others. In a troubled time like the early ’70s, Top 40/MOR radio made for a ubiquitous cultural space in which Scotty’s father could “check out” from modern society and its ills. But again, in removing himself farther away from the realm of adults in that way, he also removes himself from reality. On top of that, he participates in a certain willfully transgressive element that was detectable in the radio and record industries’ treatment of children in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Neil Bogart’s efforts to cheerfully market songs with rather blatant double entendres to children, for example, certainly gives observers like Susan J. Douglas permission to regard the genre as “loathsome.”148 When adults allow children into their realm in such a way, a certain sense of carelessness, even perversion, manifests itself and begs for investigation. These Top 40/MOR hybrid formats in the early ’70s may well have reflected a new parental selfishness and/or parental willingness to incorporate a healthy element of realism into their lives. Could

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these formats have also reflected a slightly sick society, mired in violence, sexual uncertainty, war, poverty, and racial strife? Did a resulting fetishistic urge to both mock and watch in fascination as the conflicted world of adults collided with the innocence and naiveté of children exist, propelling both the radio and record industries? The later doings of Neil Bogart do add some fuel to that fire. Within ten years of becoming the “King of Bubblegum,” Bogart became the King of Disco, building a notorious empire in the form of Casablanca Records, home of flamboyant artists such as Kiss, Parliament, and the Village People.149 Each of these Casablanca groups relied on live theatrics and costumes that transformed group members into outlandish caricatures. Kiss, for example, became sexually tinged superhero figures (one member being the “Lover,” another the demon with a long tongue, etc.). The Village People became homoerotic stereotypes (i.e. construction worker, leather-clad biker, etc.), while Parliament became a hedonistic, otherworldly band of funk musicians descended from a cosmic “mothership.” Among the group’s members was cigarette-smoking guitarist Garry Shider, who usually graced the stage in a giant diaper. Two out of these three groups — Kiss and the Village People — found devoted followings among preteen radio listeners and became formidable hitmakers. Casablanca staff member Jim Fouratt attributed the label’s success, including the cocaine-sprinkled excesses it became famous for among industry insiders, to an innate sense of innocence in the music makers themselves, who had a “childlike belief ” that their lives at the label would “go on forever, like a dance beat.”150 Disco did, after all, dominate Top 40 and its heavy preteen audience, soon after the 1975 emergence of “Adult Contemporary” formats. As for the mutual media consumption between parents and children in the early ’70s, another Top 40 hit from 1970, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s “Teach Your Children,” zeroed in further on issues surrounding the scenario. Addressing both parties separately with different verses, the song acts as a suitable prologue for the hit radio era to come. “You of tender years can’t know the fears your elders grew by,” the singers tell children. “So please help them with your youth,” they continue, admonishing them to know that their parents “love you.” As for parents, the song instructs them to endeavor to teach their children regarding the troubles they struggle with as adults (“their father’s hell”) but to be tolerant and non-intrusive regarding their own children’s problems (“never ask them why”). The song reflects a most contradictory moment in American culture in which childhood innocence was to be celebrated and idealized, while the reality of adulthood in troubled times was to be made known as explicitly as possible to children.151 Neil Postman, writing in the early ’80s, looked back at the previous decade and saw the mutual appeal of pop music among parents and children alike as a primary reason why “sustained articulate and mature speech is almost entirely absent from the airwaves.”152 This was a particularly damaging effect of technology, he wrote, and a bevy of 1980s cultural commentators agreed. Writers such

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as Vance Packard, Marie Winn, Valerie Polakow Suransky, and Cheryl Merser all warned of a modern era in which children grow up too fast and many adults never grow up at all. Both generations stagnate at the point where technologybased popular entertainment requires them to be, asserted these critics in various ways.153 Social historian Harvey J. Graff, on the other hand, branded such hypotheses a decade later as pessimistic. The fears of critics like Postman and Packard, he writes, who point to the ’70s as the moment when children started growing up particularly fast, are not supported by numbers. Consistently left out of their diatribes, says Graff, is the fact that although rates of juvenile arrest, suicide, marijuana use, and premarital sex increased from the early 1960s to the mid- to late 1970s, “most of those trends leveled off or declined from the mid to the late 1970s.”154 The mutual appeal of pop music between adults and children, actually, may have had more to do with a general effort to shore up adult–child intergenerational harmony in the midst of turbulent times, just as the lyrics of “Teach Your Children” recommended. It was as appropriate a media space as any — however much it existed as a result of marketing realities and increasingly fragmented audiences — for adults and children to acknowledge one another and to reassess together their roles in society. It was a process that predated the advent of the WB (Warner Bros.) Television Network by two decades. Debuting in 1995, one year after the introduction of the “V-Chip” as a new means for parents to regulate their children’s television viewing,155 the network, commonly known as “The WB,” established itself by focusing on teens and young adults (ages 12–34) as its target prime-time audience, while catering heavily to kids ages 12 and under during weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings. An almost instant result of WB programming was its appeal as a family “co-viewing” vehicle.156 Co-viewing refers to a recommended parenting technique of watching TV with kids so that parents can act, as one writer put it, as a “media value filter and a media educator” and ostensibly protect children from “anti-social behavior, drug use, tobacco use, and early sexual activity.”157 Parents could watch programs like Dawson’s Creek, a coming-of-age drama, 7th Heaven, about a preacher, his wife, and their seven kids struggling through their adolescent years, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in which the teenage title character passes through crucial portals of adulthood while ridding the world of vampires. The programming strategies of the WB arrived alongside another cultural development equally indebted to the Top 40/MOR hybrid formatting practices of the early ’70s — the “buddy parent.” This new brand of parent, “unlike the chasm that separated baby boom parents from their parents,” as one journalist put it, shares (or endeavors to share) “many of today’s teenagers’ tastes in clothes and music.” These teenagers’ political and social beliefs, consequently, tend to “dovetail with those of their parents.”158 If some critics view this negatively, worrying that it might “render a parent insecure in his or her leadership,” surveys like one conducted by the National Association of Secondary School Principals indicate that teenagers’ relationships with their parents have “steadily improved

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The Disney Channel’s Good Luck Charlie is only one recent example of television aimed specifically toward young teens and their parents. The show’s debut in April 2010 brought in nearly 5.7 million viewers, including 1.4 million adults — over twice the network’s usual figure.159

since the early 1970s.”160 As more parents have become involved in their children’s academics, it appears, more colleges have begun to cater to parents with parental service offices, orientation sessions for parents, and other support groups, many of them similar to what is available for their kids.161 If stations like the WB strove to provide a space for co-viewing between old audiences and young, so too did hit radio in the early ’70s make room for “co-listening.” And co-listening, even if not framed that way specifically, has hardly disappeared as a commercial radio value. “AC [adult contemporary] listeners are time pressured and worry about their children,” reads a recent Arbitron-sponsored marketing research pamphlet. “They don’t want radio that is inappropriate for kids [and] they’ll tune out if the kids can’t (or shouldn’t) listen.”162 Radio Disney, on the other hand, is a nationally syndicated radio network that launched in 1996, targeting “kids 6–14 and their moms.” Reaching a record 22.2 million listeners 6 years and older during the month of August 2009, the program can be heard everywhere from AM radio to satellite radio to DirecTV and the internet.163 Among its most notable early accomplishments was introducing the Backstreet Boys to American radio audiences and sparking the teen idol craze of the late ’90s.164 According to former Vice President of Programming Robin Jones, circa 2005, the only songs that reached regular rotation on Radio Disney during its first ten years were ones that viewers requested via telephone, and which broke down to “50% pop, 20% novelty oldies, 20% movie or TV music, and 10% children’s music.”165 Among the chief reasons for the station’s success, according to Jones, is what she referred to as the “Donny Osmond principle,” meaning that mothers will support their children’s interests in the same sorts of teen idols they once adored in the Donny Osmond days.166 (Radio Disney currently rides high on the Walt Disney Company’s mastery of the “tween” demographic, having exploited the familiar TV and movie personality/pop star hybrid formula, such as Hannah Montana, Lizzie McGuire, Camp Rock, and High

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School Musical, into an indomitable billion dollar industry.)167 This hybrid-audience “Donny Osmond principle” had its roots in the early ’70s, when radio programmers began aiming at “smaller demographics” and specific “psychographics” (disparate audiences holding similar opinions and beliefs).168 Adult contemporary station KVIL Dallas, for example, claimed in the late ’70s that its “principal audience was 25–34, earned good money, wore fine clothes, frequented the best restaurants, and drove sports cars.” During that same time three other Dallas album rock stations — KZEW, KFWD, and KLIF — aimed for men ages 18–24, 18–34, and 18–49 respectively. Such target demographics were a far cry from what programmer Alden Diehl referred to in 1973 as the “polarized and congealed” radio audiences of the ’60s. Supporting his view that the programming of the ’70s had indeed become more sophisticated was the fact that “young teens and adults” were “more easily lumped together in target audiences,” a phenomenon he credits to the “upsurge in 1950s-style music and a demand for nostalgia.”169 If the hybridity of child and adult radio formats during the early ’70s seem like an accidental, jumbled result of a commercial radio industry in transition, a good look at today’s media market suggests that they may have actually been on to something.

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Chapter 2

Pillow Talk MOR, Soft Rock, and the “Feminization” of Hit Radio In a 1971 issue of Billboard, program director Brian McIntyre at WLOL Columbus voiced a familiar complaint: “Top 40 radio is stealing the middle-ofthe-road format,” he said. “They have an obsession with reaching the housewife demographic, and that is their fatal flaw.”1 While McIntyre’s death prediction for Top 40 proved erroneous, his observation that Top 40 radio was sounding more and more like middle-of-the-road (MOR) and that the format prioritized “housewives” was nonetheless correct. Hit radio programmers of the early ’70s actually had as much of a passion for the middle-aged adult audience as they did for what was continually referred to as the “housewife” demographic, and the top ratings of MOR stations throughout the ’70s bore them out. Those programmers believed that the secret to bridging the generation gap, as well as reeling in the housewives, was “soft rock.” This new genre effectively blurred the musical distinctions between Top 40 and MOR formats, and proved to have a major effect on radio over the following decades. It was, in fact, the legacy of early ’70s hit radio, the first fruits of the formatting frenzy. MOR hit radio formats, along with the corresponding rise of soft rock, served as crucial gender construction forces in the early ’70s. The radio industry identified the housewife market as its ideal target, even while the women’s liberation movement inspired many American women to challenge conventional notions of femininity and the female gender. While this might seem contradictory, MOR radio actually served a dual purpose in helping to assuage more conventional listeners at a cultural moment fraught with new anxieties regarding gender identity, while providing for listeners of a more progressive, feminist variety materials for gender reconstruction. The term “feminization,” in this context, has a double meaning. One meaning is the incorporation of attributes traditionally associated with females, such as a “softening” of a format’s sound.2 The other meaning is the infusion of a sense of advocacy for political and socioeconomic 55

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equality for women with men. In the public space of hit radio, at least, both modes of feminization occurred due to radio formatting, as well as cultural changes associated with both the women’s liberation movement and the sexual revolution. The rise of soft rock, the confessional sounds of singer-songwriters, the use of soft rock in politics, and the popularity of sexual call-in talk shows for women on MOR stations enabled these changes to take hold permanently. What characteristics actually qualify as “feminine” from the female point of view? Elinor Lenz and Barbara Myerhoff, in their 1985 book called The Feminization of America: How Women’s Values Are Changing Our Public and Private Lives, offer up the following: Woman’s historic responsibility for protecting life has endowed her with a set of adaptive characteristics: a strong nurturing impulse that extends to all living things; a highly developed capacity for intimacy that fosters her need for relatedness; a tendency to integrate rather than separate; an ability to empathize; a predilection for egalitarian relationships together with a resistance to hierarchy; an attachment to the day-to-day process of sustaining life; a spirituality that transcends dogma and sectarianism; a scale of values that places individual growth and fulfillment above abstractions; and a preference for negotiation as a means of problem solving, which springs from her antipathy to violence . . . These are the qualities that are so desperately needed in today’s increasingly divisive and dangerous world.3

SOFT ROCK IN CONTEXT Soft rock ruled the early 1970s. As mentioned in the previous chapter, one industry point of view concerning its dominance was aptly summed up by GRT Records president Len Levy early in 1971 and splashed across Billboard’s front page: “Music is the most direct reflection of the lifestyle of youth, and the most important sociological fact that is currently emerging is that this lifestyle is not going to be nearly as radical as it appeared at first.” Youth and age would inevitably “find a middle ground,” Levy insisted, and although the generation gap might not be easily bridged, neither would it “split the country in half.” The evidence was in the “moderating influence” one could hear on American hit radio, which now had a “softer, more lyrically poignant, conservative” feeling. “It’s a definite trend,” said Levy, “and all of us in the record business will be making a mistake if we ignore it.” According to that old industry adage that the “proof is in the charts,” at least, Levy’s assessment seemed accurate.4 Out of the 122 #1 hits listed in Billboard between 1970 and 1974, 75 of those also appeared on Billboard’s easy listening charts and at least that many could safely be categorized as “soft rock.”5

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The emergence of soft rock in the early ’70s, indeed, accompanied a surge of interest in self-help and religious movements that some journalists interpreted and characterized as a collective American glance inward.6 The era saw the arrival of increasingly affordable and accessible forms of psychotherapy and employer health plans that began covering such treatment. Self-help titles like How To Be Your Own Best Friend and Your Erroneous Zones dominated the bestseller lists, and popular psychology became a steady presence in magazines, lecture tours, and television.7 Among the most visible psychological movements of the 1970s was Werner Erhard’s “est” (Erhard Seminars Training, Inc.), a form of “self-awareness” therapy which Jane Brody of the New York Times coyly described as a 60–70 hour experience during which participants underwent training by an “authoritative leader who ridicules them and attacks their selfesteem.” At $250 per session, trainees were often required to sit together in locked up hotel suites for “as many as 10 hours without eating, smoking, going to the bathroom or leaving the room.” Founded in 1971 by the self-trained Erhard, est sought to demolish “the adherence to the mind’s belief systems,” thereby allowing trainees to transform their lives by taking “total responsibility for all they experience.”8 Erhard’s methods quickly found favor with celebrities, a good number of them pop music singers like Cher and Diana Ross. “Participating in est has created an amazing amount of space for joy and aliveness in my life,”

True to form, John Denver infused a fashionable “back-to-basics” flavor into his 1974 Back Home Again LP, which contained the hit songs “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” and “Grandma’s Feather Bed.” Nothing contextualized the album more, though, than Denver’s plug for est in the gatefold.

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wrote singer-songwriter John Denver in the gatefold of his million-selling 1974 LP, Back Home Again. “It pleases me to share est with you.”9 A burgeoning growth in religious movements walked hand in hand with this national resurgence in popular psychology. The “wilting flower child,” as Life magazine put it in 1971, “has blossomed into the Jesus Freak.” The energy that charged the be-ins and rock festivals of the ’60s now seemed redirected toward non-denominational religious revivalism, and pictures of long-haired teenagers in throes of religious rapture appeared regularly in American general interest magazines. Many Americans also looked beyond Christianity and Christian sects toward more exotic religions.10 A 1977 Gallup poll reported that close to 10 million Americans had tried Transcendental Meditation, yoga, or various other “Oriental religions” such as Buddhism and Hare Krishna.11 In 1973, the guru Maharaj Ji attracted 20,000 listeners, most of them young adults, to the Houston Astrodome, and in 1974, the Christian Korean Reverend Sun Myung Moon drew around the same number of spectators to New York’s Madison Square Garden, where he declared America as the twentieth-century “landing site” of the “Messiah.”12 The pop charts reflected this activity with a Top 40 influx of religion-oriented titles — many of them featuring the spirited voices of gospel choirs — such as the Edwin Hawkins Singers’ “Oh Happy Day,” George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord,” Melanie’s “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain),” Ocean’s “Put Your Hand in the Hand,” Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky,” Rick Springfield’s “Speak to the Sky,” and Sister Janet Mead’s “The Lord’s Prayer,” among others. Some singles, which came forth from the soundtracks of popular Jesus rock musicals, also made the Top 40, such as Murray Head’s “Jesus Christ Superstar,” from the Tim Rice–Andrew Lloyd Webber musical of the same name, and “Day By Day,” sung by the Broadway cast of Godspell.13 Perhaps one of oddest singles in this vein was “Desiderata,” by San Francisco talk show host Les Crane. The song featured Crane speaking the words of an inspirational poem that had been enjoying countercultural circulation, backed by a rousing rock arrangement and a gospel chorus. “Go placidly amid the noise and haste,” he instructed listeners. “You are a child of the universe.”14 The positive lyrics and gentle instrumentation these themes of spirituality and self-actualization evoked fit in snugly with the radio industry’s preoccupation with MOR and its goal of attracting female listeners. Another softening factor was a trend in confessional songwriting. It was in the midst of this national surge of psychological and religious fervor that journalist Tom Wolfe gave the era its enduring nickname in the title of a 1976 article — “The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening.”15 For Wolfe, the reason for this activity was simple. “No matter whether you managed to renovate your personality through encounter sessions or not,” he wrote, “you had finally focused your attention and your energies on the most fascinating subject on earth: Me.”16 The emergence of hitmaking singer-songwriters in the early ’70s seemed to support Wolfe’s analysis. One of the most significant aspects of the singer-songwriter movement that

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was evident upon its arrival in early 1970 was its reconfiguration of American folk music from an all-inclusive group concept to a self-oriented, confessional concept. Folk singers like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and early-’60s Bob Dylan may have acted as spokespeople for their collective audiences during their heyday, but early ’70s Top 40 singer-songwriters such as James Taylor, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, John Lennon, and post-’60s Bob Dylan spoke mostly for themselves. Dylan built an iconic reputation for himself shortly after debuting on Columbia Records on the strength of original songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” Expressing a growing public concern for nuclear disarmament and civil rights, these songs became “folk” anthems, but they also established Dylan as a distinct personality.17 In 1964 he capitalized on this, releasing his Another Side of Bob Dylan. Consisting primarily of songs with relationship-oriented lyrics, the album invited the public into Dylan’s psyche and provoked an interest in the singer-songwriter’s inner self. By the mid- to late 1960s, his lyrics had become surrealistic “poems” with cryptic metaphors that played havoc with religious, mythical, historical, and literary images. Dylan integrated these into the personal narratives through which he now almost exclusively made his musical statements.18 Songs such as “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” and “Visions of Johanna” secured his reputation as the “voice of his generation” and a “modern-day prophet.”19 Throughout the late ’60s, other folk singers had been following Dylan’s lead by marrying quasi-poetic lyrics with traditional sounding music at the risk of being labeled Dylan imitators. Among the most notable of these were Leonard Cohen and Richard Fariña, both of whom also favored the usage of religious imagery to enhance their personal tales. Another group of songwriters, including Tim Hardin (“Reason to Believe,” “If I Were a Carpenter”), Tim Buckley (“Morning Glory”), and Fred Neil (“Everybody’s Talking”), were making their mark with a more nakedly confessional style foretelling the singer-songwriter movement to come.20 Dylan himself, with characteristic sarcasm, heralded this new movement with his first album of the ’70s, a mischievous hodgepodge of experiments, cover versions of other artists’ songs, and fragments that he titled, portentously enough, Self Portrait (1970).21 That same year saw the release of two of the movement’s quintessential albums. James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James featured acoustic musical arrangements and lyrical references to Taylor’s own personal struggles with drug addiction and depression. John Lennon, in his John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, laid bare his own feelings against even sparer instrumentation. A particularly unforgettable element of the album was the former Beatle’s musical demonstrations of the primal scream techniques of psychologist Arthur Janov, with whom he had been undergoing therapy. The self, these singer-songwriters seemed to announce, was indeed the subject of the ’70s. Even while it happened, many a theory proliferated regarding what Time

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Quintessential albums from 1970 by (clockwise from top left) James Taylor (Sweet Baby James), Bob Dylan (Self Portrait), and John Lennon (John Lenon/Plastic Ono Band) heralded the self as the decade’s preeminent subject. Although Paul McCartney’s solo album from the same year (bottom left) didn’t strive for the same confessional goals as former bandmate Lennon’s, it nonetheless featured McCartney playing all instruments and bore the title McCartney.

magazine, in a 1971 cover story, called the “cooling of America.”22 Most were plausible. The fading out of “ear-numbing, mind-blowing acid rock,” the Time article suggested, was perhaps a “symptom of either progress toward harmony and thoughtfulness or a tragic slide from activist rage into a mood of ‘enlightened apathy.’”23 Equally valid was the desire for individual expression on the part of talented rock musicians who had been “too long cooped up in their communal palaces of sound.” Certain rock participants echoed the sentiment, seeming to think that rock couldn’t possibly reach a more frenzied state than it already had. “What else was there to do after Jimi Hendrix lit his guitar on fire? Light yourself on fire?” said guitarist Danny Kortchmar.24 Other youth culture observers pointed to Woodstock and the fact that because no youth gathering could possibly attract the same number of participants, it was only natural for youth to begin looking inward.25 Perhaps a more plausible explanation for this “cooling of America” was the growing marginalization of the identity politics that smoldered in the foreground of ’60s culture. Events like the Vietnam War, which dragged on into the ’70s, later events like Watergate, and an energy crisis sparked by the 1973 OPEC oil embargo did little to discourage a rather gloomy, reflective national mood.26 Neither, for that matter, did a seemingly steady stream of bad news including

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Kent State, the Yom Kippur War, the murder by terrorists of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes, and a global economic recession. If this mood led Americans toward psychological and/or religious movements, it also led them to develop an ear for softer radio sounds. Hit radio became an aural massage parlor of sorts in the early ’70s, a peaceful haven amid an increasingly complex and chaotic world. This velvet revolution in radio music sent songs like the Carpenters’ “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” Bread’s “Make it With You,” and James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” to the top of Billboard’s singles chart in 1970. Each of these songs set the pace for a whole half-decade’s worth of radio hits that featured laid-back tempos, intimate musical arrangements of acoustic guitar and piano along with small string and horn sections, and introspective, usually relationship-oriented lyrics. The Carpenters, a brother-sister duo who followed up “Close to You” with a steady stream of million-selling hits such as “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “Superstar,” and “Rainy Days and Mondays,” might perhaps be credited for inventing the entire soft rock genre singlehandedly. Their 1972 Top 10 hit “Goodbye to Love,” at least, betrayed their every intention to do so. An otherwise non-rock outing, it started out as a number more suited for the cocktail lounge than for hit radio, with its lilting piano accompaniment and sophisticated Tin Pan Alley-esque melody and lyrics. Its extended, blaring guitar solo coda, though, sounded like a calculated attempt to keep younger listeners tuned in without frightening off the older ones. This juxtaposition between “old” and “young,” in fact, became a key component of the new youth-oriented MOR formats.

THE OLD MOR The adult hit radio market has spawned a litany of ever-changing terms that make the prospect of trafficking in them with any precision a challenge. “Middle of the road” (MOR), as a format, originally emerged in the 1950s in competition with Top 40, but with less rigid playlists and much more appeal to older audiences. “Easy listening” is a musical genre that arose in tandem with the MOR format, and the two terms were, for a time, interchangeable. In 1968, as radio stations aimed more pointedly toward women audiences, Billboard started using “easy listening” for the title of their MOR singles chart, which included liberal servings of contemporary soft rock, such as Carole King, the Carpenters, and Neil Diamond. By the late 1970s, the chart turned into “adult contemporary,” and the radio industry began using the term “easy listening” to refer to a more varied version of Muzak.27 “Muzak” is actually a brand name which found widespread usage as a word defining virtually all forms of background music. Brigadier General George Owen Squier, a military technocrat, devised the system of transmitting sound via electronic wire into public places. In 1934, just before his death, Squier also formed a private company that would provide specially prepared mood

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music, calling it “Muzak” (apparently a mix between music and Kodak). A 1944 pamphlet compiled by the US War Production Board called Music in Industry: Principles in Programming led to the standard military practice of wiring Muzak not just into war arsenals, but also into public places for the calming benefit of both workers and consumers. In the late ’40s, Muzak formulated an elaborate program called “Stimulus Progression,” which effectively worked counter to the “Industrial Efficiency Curve” or “fatigue curve.” By the late ’40s, radio formats that featured any mixture of Muzak with original versions of pop standards (a format later referred to in radio as “beautiful” or “good music”), became standard fare for the FM frequency.28 The presence of Muzak as an all-pervasive factor of daily life in the ’70s, with its power to both soothe and madden, became an appropriately subversive motif in Milos Forman’s 1975 film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. In the realm of hit radio, though, the rise of the early ’70s version of MOR is often attributed to Bill Gavin. A one-time radio personality himself, Gavin began compiling and sending out facts and figures on radio popularity, based on airplay reports, to radio stations in 1958. His goal was to “help stations program their music; to be a conduit between radio and records, complete with suggestions for how often records should be rotated.”29 While several other influential “tipsheets,” like the Friday Morning Quarterback, had evolved by the early 1970s, Gavin’s developed a reputation for being among the most authoritative and “honest.”30 It was Gavin, writes Russell Sanjek in his sweeping overview of the popular music industry, who was “instrumental in turning stations to formats other than Top 40.” Under pressure from Gavin and others who followed his lead, a search began for a “format that would hold the 25-to-49 audience, one that had grown up on rock music and was ready for more ‘adult’ fare.” In the early 1970s, middle-of-the-road music grabbed that share of the audience and, with Top 40 and progressive rock, held more than half of all listeners.31 Although the term “MOR” had become passé by 1980, it had heavy currency throughout the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s among record industry executives — as opposed to the radio industry — who had latched on to it in reference to popular vocalists and instrumentalists who hearkened back to the “traditional pop” of the pre-rock era (Patti Page, Frank Sinatra, Percy Faith, etc.).32 This usage of “MOR” is demonstrated by Clive Davis who, in his 1975 memoir, wrote that “pop vocalists and middle-of-the-road composers had to give way during the ’60s to more contemporary writers and performers whose product was first called Rock, and was later expanded to become the broader form known as Contemporary Music.”33 For President Richard Nixon, this Davis-conception of MOR had served as a White House fixture. Guy Lombardo played both of the president’s Inaugural Balls, and Ray Coniff and Frank Sinatra were both specially invited to perform at the White House. During the 1969 inauguration itself, the same sort of Muzak one could hear in elevators and dentist’s offices streamed forth from loudspeakers.35 The early 1970s, with its proliferation of new radio formats, rattled popular

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music’s older regime. The ’60s had already tested the mettle of such institutions as Frank Sinatra, for whom producer Jimmy Bowen wrote of needing to resort to cutthroat tactics in order to get a 1965 single on the charts.36 Having promised Sinatra that he would be able to revive his chart performance, Bowen apparently managed to get the sure hit “Strangers in the Night” recorded and released all within a 24-hour period after finding out that Jack Jones would be shipping a version to radio stations in two days. Jones’s chart career never quite recovered from the blow, while Sinatra had found a career-saving song. Clive Davis, again, writes of discovering at Columbia in the late 1960s that when the label’s MOR artists recorded versions of contemporary hits as opposed to the usual old standards, their record sales improved dramatically. This was most evident in the case of Tony Bennett, who consented to recording contemporary music only occasionally, preferring to stick with the standards. This resulted, evidently, in a sales graph that spiked upward whenever he did go contemporary.37 Successful or not, the transformation of singers like Bennett and Andy Williams strictly into intertrepeters of contemporary hits and movie themes hinted at artistic irrelevance. Sammy Cahn’s publication of his memoirs in 1975 carried with them an implication that the venerable lyricist of mid-century standards such as “Three Coins in the Fountain” and “Call Me Irresponsible” might have been considering retirement, even though he would prove to have two active decades still ahead of him.38 Elvis Presley, the king of rock ’n’ roll himself, declared a similar sense of symbolic retirement when he met with

A “symbolic retirement” for Elvis Presley.

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Nixon on December 21, 1970, to offer his services to the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in order to fight the “drug culture, the hippie Elements, the SDS, Black Panthers, etc.” As one rock historian put it, “he [Presley] was not really opposed to drug-taking, as such, but to the drug culture from which he was alienated, and the ‘counter-culture’ and left-wing political movement that (as he saw it) had knocked him off the charts and now threatened the USA with a lifestyle he didn’t understand.”39

THE NEW MOR The youth market was indeed responsible for the bulk of American record sales and had the power to knock artists like Presley off the charts, and the record industry was well aware of this. Said Joe Smith of Warner Brothers, “one Jimi Hendrix would sell five million records, as opposed to Frank Sinatra’s 200,000.” While nearly all of the major record companies held on to a handful of easy-listening artists, they devoted most of their time, money, and energy to performers who appealed to the record-buying constituent of the under-24 market.40 “The over-35 market has been written off — as not worth appealing to, not worth creating for, not worth re-thinking,” lamented RIAA president Stan Gortikov. “A marketing breakthrough is needed. Experimentation, anyone?”41 Had Gortikov thought at that moment of the radio industry, he would have seen that a breakthrough of sorts was already occuring. The importance of adult audiences for revenue purposes was not lost on the radio industry, and the dominant market shares of MOR formats during the early ’70s demonstrated this. With Top 40 formats proving to be successful on the FM frequency, the early ’70s marked the point at which advertisers began taking radio as seriously as they had been taking television since the 1950s. Radio programmers quickly learned that the 25–54 market was the one advertisers craved most. This demographic was “more settled and prosperous” than the younger, rowdier audience who tuned in to “progressive rock” and did not include the proportionately decreasing teens who still made up much of Top 40s listenership. Most importantly, the 25–54 demographic had “loads of disposable income,” as one radio reporter put it. It was the perfect climate for the mellow sounds of singer-songwriters and soft rockers — they not only attracted young adults who “may have been put off ” by groups like Led Zeppelin and Grand Funk Railroad, but they also met the approval of the “anti-rock older adults.”42 Top 40 stations, also under pressure from advertisers, began parroting the methods of MOR to such an extent that the two formats started to sound indistinguishable. Behind the scenes, MOR set the trends, having left its associations with the “traditional pop” of Perry Como and Doris Day far behind. As Billboard reported in 1972, “the typical middle-of-the-road station is fast becoming a historic oddity in the US . . . a museum piece. The trend among what used to

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be MOR radio stations is toward hit music, tighter playlists, extremely tight but relaxed production, better promotions, upbeat jingles, etc . . . To wit: MOR radio stations of today sound like Top 40 used to sound.”43 MOR, in fact, was perfecting the art of the “no format format” that progressive rock had been working toward.44 “We try to think of ourselves not so much as a middle-of-the-road station, but as one which is all over the road,” said MOR program director Elliott “Biggie” Nevins at WIOD in Miami. “Maybe we don’t hit the shoulders, heavy rock on one side and Mantovani on the other, but we play virtually everything in between that’s tasteful.”45 One of the methods by which MOR radio programmers merged young and old audiences alike involved the combination of softer contemporary hits with “acceptable” older hits from artists like the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel. Top 40, after all, with its demographic profile of 9- to 18-year-olds, had long been relying on “golden oldies,” which reached as far back as the ’50s, to attract advertising money in the form of adult listeners. This hearkened to an apparent large-scale yearning among aging baby boomers for a simpler time, the same impulse that turned George Lucas’s American Graffiti into one of the top grossing movies of 1973. It also put the ’50s revival group Sha Na Na on stage at Woodstock in 1969, and turned Happy Days into one of the decade’s top television sitcoms.46 The oldies format went through something of a golden age during the early ’70s. In 1971, programming consultant Bill Drake transformed Murray the K’s legendary free-form station WOR-FM in New York into a tightly formatted “solid gold oldie” station, thus reinforcing a nationwide trend. Billboard saw the increasing appearance of oldies covers on the singles charts as worthy of mention;47 Variety, at the same time, wondered why the “sounds are old” but the “biz booms.”48 Proponents of the new MOR were hardly mystified. They saw themselves as innovators and Top 40 as a hopelessly dated copycat. According to Nevins, the MOR format simply sought to “establish the broadest base of listenership” that a station served, while Top 40, on the other hand, was “clouded by oversimplifications.”49 Whereas MOR targeted audiences with “more mature problems, tastes, needs, and desires” with broader priorities and perspectives, Top 40 hobbled under the belief that its listenership consisted of nothing more than “tacky brats to be exploited,” and that its attempts to hijack the MOR adult market were bound to fail.50 Top 40 had even attracted a new nickname among insiders — “chicken rock,” which one radio journalist defined as the format played by a “station that pretends to be a real Top 40 operation” but refuses to play any “really hard rock music.”51 MOR had reason to complain — while Top 40 could reap the benefits of “stealing” softer sounds, MOR could not rightly steal the harder sounds from Top 40 as payback.52 One programmer put it this way: “If I played Alice Cooper or Black Sabbath at 10 in the morning, 100,000 women would find another station . . . I’d be looking for another job.”53

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The yearning among baby boomers for a simpler time during the chronically complex 1970s sparked a pop cultural revival of the 1950s. Among its more glaring manifestations: Sha Na Na at Woodstock (1969): Underneath the iconic music festival’s mud, grass, and layers of ’60s hippy mythology, a quintessentially ’70s seed flowered in the form of ’50s revivalism when Sha Na Na, in pompadours and gold lamé, raved up on golden oldies like Danny and the Juniors’ “At the Hop.” Grease (1971): This stage musical, which had made it to Broadway within a year of debuting in Chicago, told the story of greaser Danny Zuko and bobbysoxer Sandy Dumbrowski and reached a fitting, end-of-decade crescendo with a hugely successful film adaptation. Popularity of “oldies” radio: “Golden” or “solid gold” formats featuring hits from rock’s “golden age” (aka the late ’50s/early ’60s) surged during the early ’70s, often doing hybrid duties with MOR stations. The trend prompted popular radio “rockumentaries” like KHJ’s The History of Rock & Roll. American Graffiti (1973): Often credited for sparking the ’50s revival, George Lucas’s big screen depiction of teenage life in 1962, to be exact, merely fanned the flame. The two-record soundtrack LP, featuring vintage radio hits (a clear majority from the ’50s), hit the Billboard Top 10. Happy Days (1974): Taking its cues from American Graffiti, this TV sitcom about a group of middle American teens in the ’50s ran for ten seasons and spawned a number of spinoffs. Awash in ’50s iconography and clichés, the show nonetheless became an authoritative resource for popular ’50s-themed high school sock hops.

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THE HOUSEWIFE MARKET This programmer’s reference to the audience segment as “women” — the one that would most likely reject heavy metal, spoke to radio’s preoccupation with the housewife demographic. The quest for high ratings during the traditionally low daytime hours was an ongoing commercial radio crusade, which had been the case as far back as the 1920s, radio’s earliest years as a commercial medium. Radio scholar Michelle Hilmes points out that not long after radio shifted from the realm of amateur transmitters to that of professional broadcasters in those early days, “selling products to women became radio’s central economic goal.” The idea of radio’s new audience as “feminized and easily led,” she continues, figured large in “industry discourse.”54 Understanding that the primary “household purchasing agents” for up to 85 percent of the new consumer goods on the market were women, advertisers and broadcasters saw to it that the housewives were carefully looked after. They did so primarily by programming serial dramas such as Woman in White and Guiding Light, and by hiring male announcers with “dynamic” voices and personalities.55 Historian Roland Marchand, in his Advertising the American Dream, reports that a perception of the “female masses,” in fact, drove the entire American advertising industry during the 1920s and 1930s. “No facet of the advertiser– audience relationship held such consequence for advertising content,” he writes, “as the perception by the overwhelmingly male advertising elite that it was engaged primarily in talking to masses of women.”56 Because advertising trade journals regularly attributed 85 percent of all consumer spending to women, advertisers thus resorted to techniques that were tailor-made for women’s “wellauthenticated greater emotionality” and “natural inferiority complex.” Among these techniques were the portrayal of “idealized visions” as opposed to real life, and ad copy that was intimate and succinct, since “women will read anything which is broken into short paragraphs and personalized.”57 Top 40 radio, for that matter, had also been devised in the 1950s with the express purpose of tapping into the housewife market. During the daytime at KOWH in Nebraska, Todd Storz applied his new version of “formula radio,” in which the most popular songs in America were broadcast instead of the cluttered music and drama schedules characteristic of the pre-television years, after which he saw ratings shoot upward.58 The popularity of rock ’n’ roll, transistor radios, and surging car sales all worked together to turn Top 40 into an almost exclusively teenage-oriented format by the 1960s. Even so, stations would regularly tone this down during the daytime in order to keep the perceived housewife market happy.59 “My mommy listens to KFWB,” went the late ’50s ad campaign for one of the most powerful Top 40 stations in Los Angeles.60 In New York, Harry Harrison, the daytime disc jockey at WMCA, turned the housewife audience into his stock-in-trade. WMCA promotional literature touted Harrison’s “shameless, harmless, endless love affair with Mom,” as well as his “Housewife Hall of Fame,” in which he would announce the name

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New York City disc jockey Harry Harrison exemplified radio’s efforts during the late 1950s to keep daytime ratings up by paying close attention to the “housewife market.” Programs like Harrison’s own “Housewife Hall of Fame,” “Housewives’ Choice,” and “The Housewives’ Hit Parade” filled the airwaves, while stations like WPTR in Albany boasted of maintaining a survey operation “quizzing some 1,540 housewives” in order to “determine local record tastes.”62 In her “‘The Case of the Radio-Active Housewife’: Relocating Radio in the Age of Television,” media scholar Jennifer Hyland Wang explores the brazenly sexualized form this intra-industry preoccupation could take. One 1957 trade advertisement, for example, called itself “The Harem Which Listened and Listened” and proceeded in the precise direction that title would suggest.63

of a lucky “Mom” every day, pay tribute to her on the air, and reward her with prizes.61 The program director for WMCA, incidentally, was Ruth Meyer, one of the very few females holding that position in early Top 40 radio. Fewer still were the number of female disc jockeys on the air. Record World radio editor Beverly Magid reported in 1973 that “a well meaning top forty program director answered my query of why there aren’t more female disc jockeys on the air by saying ‘women don’t want to hear other women on the radio and men don’t take them seriously’.” Despite “many protests to the contrary,” Magid continues, “I was still only able to come up with eleven women who are regularly doing shifts.”64 The problem with this situation, of course, was that a predominantly male industry was busily deciding what housewives wanted. This happened in spite of the fact that without female consumption, the consumer marketing industry would “disintegrate with startling rapidity,” as one writer of a mid-’70s marketing guidebook for the female consumer put it, a phenomenon “so taken for granted that it is, in effect, denied.” This denial, she wrote, was “demonstrated by all advertisers and marketers who persist in observing the female consumer through their usually male eyes and often smug and ignorant preconceptions, who insist on portraying her and communicating to her in their terms, instead of hers.”65

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If radio’s emphasis on the housewife market had remained steady since its early years, housewives themselves were indeed changing. The 1970s saw an unprecedented increase of women in the workforce. At the end of the decade, the percentage of women in the labor force jumped from 42 percent in 1970 to a record high of 52 percent. For the first time in history, a majority of American women worked outside of the home for a living.66 There were several reasons for this rising figure, not the least of which was basic economic necessity — by mid-decade, only 40 percent of American jobs could support an entire family. Due to the energy crisis of 1973, oil prices went up 350 percent, and inflation had gone up to 11 percent the following year. Another big reason was a changing attitude toward the meaning of work. According to Rene Bartos, who published a study of women’s consumer habits at the end of the decade, it was a “surge toward a sense of self ” that played a fundamental role in the influx of women into the workforce. Just as the “question of work as identity is an assumed part of men’s lives,” she wrote, so too did women yearn “for an identity beyond that of their traditional family roles.”67 In 1975, though, radio programmers still had good reason to value the housewife market because American women were still deciding 75–90 percent of all consumer sales, and that included the purchase of records.68 Bartos, incidentally, had much to reveal regarding the radio-listening habits of women throughout the ’70s by the time her book, The Moving Target: What Every Marketer Should Know About Women, was published in 1982. Having spent the previous decade studying her advertising company’s “psychographics,” she divided women consumers into four categories: “Stay-at-Home Housewives, Plan-to-Work Housewives, ‘Just a Job’ Working Women, and Career-oriented Working Women.” Bartos revealed radio to be a “popular medium with the two categories of working women,” for whom “popular music” and “Top 40” were the preferred formats. Demonstrating just how much of an achievement it was for hit radio stations to attract the housewife market, Bartos also reported that the “stay-at-homes are less likely than the other segments of women to switch on their radio,” that they are particularly likely to listen to telephone talk programs and general talk programs, while those without children at home were also likely to tune in to soft music, semiclassical, and all-news stations. Stay-at-home housewives with children in their homes, for that matter, “regularly tuned in to country music stations.”69 Even so, by the mid-’70s a surprisingly limited amount of reliable research about the radio listening habits of women existed. “There is little data on this medium which is broken down into sex differences,” wrote Rosemary Scott in her own consumer’s guide to women in 1976. “As yet, the effects of local and commercial radio on the housewife listener are relatively unknown quantities.”70 This was evident in Billboard’s eagerness to publish the results of an extensive, one-man radio survey conducted by University of Chicago undergraduate student Greg Budil. According to Budil, dial switching was more prevalent among males under 30, whereas “females of all ages were more apt to give stations a

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‘second chance.’” All adults over 30, for that matter, seldom switched the dial at all.71 With those hair-trigger males safely consigned to progressive rock formats, the time was ripe for hit radio’s “feminization.”

“FEMINIZATION,” POLITICS, AND POP MUSIC The question of whether types of music are “gendered” has sparked some lively debate among academic and popular music critics.72 As Holly Kruse points out, popular music scholarship has taken up the notion of gender as the “social and cultural construction of difference coded as male or female, and as something understood in relation to, but not necessarily tied to, biology.” Thus, music scholars increasingly argue that various kinds of music, particularly rock, is constructed as almost exclusively “male.”73 Certain pop genres, though, such as the “teen idol” or “girl group” pop of the early ’60s, the bubblegum music of the late ’60s and early ’70s, or the “boy bands” of the late ’90s, are characterized by having a predominantly female fan base. This fact, along with the marginalized status to which many a pop music critic has relegated them over the decades, has enforced their gender identification as “inauthentic” female-oriented pop as opposed to “authentic” male-oriented pop. Gender identification, of course, is tricky business, “cross-cut by identifications of race, ethnicity, social class, generation, dis/ability, and so on,” as Susan J. Douglas warns. “Gender identity, therefore, is not a stable, coherent entity but is instead a site of contestation.”74 That being the case, any attempt to establish firm gender categories in relation to popular music would seem counterproductive. Marketing benefits from fixed notions of gender, though, and hit radio in the early ’70s was most certainly subject to a marketing version of “feminization,” the most glaring evidence of which was the rise of soft rock. “WPTR ‘Softens’ Sound to Attract the Housewives,” read the headline for a 1969 Billboard article, which went on to quote the Albany station’s program manager as feeling like he had even joined the bandwagon a bit late because similar switches, as he claimed, had “already been made by most Top 40 stations across the nation.”75 The high ratings of the MOR format, which one commentator asserted as being “predominantly the taste preference of married women over the age of 24,” presented the best case of all that hit radio was being marketed correctly.76 Some program directors continued to view Top 40’s pursuit of the housewife demographic as the very source of the format’s problems. “Stations have been led to believe they should go after the lonely housewife during the day,” said John Jakobs of WICU in Santa Fe. “They think, erroneously, that all housewives go for softer music. This ranges all the way to Easy Listening artists. The Top 40 program directors claim: ‘They’re making the chart.’ The Top 40 program directors don’t realize that airplay put these Easy Listening artists on the chart.”77 Of course, soft rock’s infiltration of hit radio also had much to do with the fact that 1960s youth culture was aging. According to music historian Joseph Lanza,

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the MOR boom simply emblemized the “baby boomers’ metabolic meltdown.”78 By the mid-’70s, Rolling Stone magazine, for example, that one-time bastion of underground rock culture, had begun featuring soft rock icons such as John Denver and the Carpenters on its cover. In fact, the magazine had turned to a general interest format in the early ’70s, giving equal coverage to politics and the arts, as the average age of its readership settled into the 20–30 range. “Politics is the rock and roll of the seventies,” said Jann Wenner, the magazine’s editor.79 But the convergence of politics with actual “rock and roll” during the election campaign of 1972 — which Rolling Stone covered aggressively — only highlighted the music’s passive, “feminized” qualities. The central campaign-related event around which the rock world rallied was a benefit concert for Democratic candidate George McGovern held at the Forum in Los Angeles on April 15.80 Featuring MOR staple Barbra Streisand as headliner with James Taylor and Carole King as supporting acts, the concert contrasted mightily, for example, with the macho images of the MC5 playing outside the chaotic Chicago Democratic convention of 1968. A 1972 McGovern campaign song written and recorded by Johnny Rivers hardly added muscle to the Democratic candidate’s cause. Titled “Come Home America,” this classic sample of early ’70s singer-songwriter fare featured Rivers’ quavering voice pleading for change over the mournful tones of a lone acoustic guitar.81 Released as the B-side to his rollicking hit cover version of Huey Smith and the Clowns’ “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu,” it sounded especially frail in contrast to the A-side, and might have made a suitable musical backdrop for McGovern’s much-mocked pledge to “go to Hanoi on his knees” in order to end the war.82 Richard Nixon’s lopsided 1972 victory seemed to only confirm the passive, and apparently counterproductive influence of the music industry’s

The pacifism and “soft” aura of the George McGovern presidential campaign became a clear liability by the time of the 1972 election. Supporting efforts from pop music’s “soft” rockers likely hurt more than helped.

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support for the Democratic ticket. A conservative expression of the perceived feminine qualities of the Democratic political arena of the early 1970s can be found in future George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum’s How We Got Here, where he treats the McGovern campaign as “one of the more hysterical in recent American politics.” He also points to Senator Edmund Muskie as a distant early warning symbol for what he somehow saw as the oncoming feminization of American politics (a dubious claim even in 2000, the year the book was published) and American manhood itself: “In 1972, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president, Senator Edmund Muskie, destroyed his hopes by appearing to break down and weep during a reply to an editorial attack upon his wife by a New Hampshire newspaper,” he wrote. “Today, those tears would float Senator Muskie into the White House.”83 Former Beatle and 1960s icon John Lennon stood as another high-profile representation of the “feminized” left. One of the more visible pop music agitators during the Nixon administration, Lennon reinvented himself in the early ’70s as a New York-based political activist. In 1971, the Nixon administration learned that Lennon and some radical friends were “talking about organizing a national concert tour to coincide with the 1972 election campaign,” a tour that would “combine rock music and radical politics, during which Lennon would urge young people to register to vote, and vote against the war, which meant, of course, against Nixon.” In early 1972, Senator Strom Thurmond recommended to Attorney General John Mitchell deportation as a “strategy counter-measure.” Many a liberal politician and celebrity rallied to Lennon’s defense, and he was

Released at the height of his political activist era, John Lennon’s “Woman Is the Nigger of the World” (1972) featured a coarsely worded pro-woman sentiment accompanied by a soft rock music track tailor-made for MOR formats. With its label art depicting Lennon’s face merging into Yoko Ono’s, the single stalled at #57 due to radio’s unenthusiastic reception.

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never deported, thanks to Nixon’s safe reelection. The ensuing fuss, though, most certainly did “neutralize” Lennon’s political activity.84 That same year, Lennon basked in an aura of feminism. His 1972 album Some Time in New York City, co-credited to his wife Yoko Ono, featured a collection of exclusively topical songs, as well as lead vocal tracks that alternated between the cozily familiar Lennon and the infamously exotic Ono. The album nonetheless reflected Lennon’s resolve, at the time, to no longer mince words and to depict the world as he saw it.85 Its cover art mimicking the New York Times, the record tackled topics such as women’s oppression, the imprisonment of radicals Angela Davis and John Sinclair, the killings at the Attica State prison, and the “Bloody Sunday” killings in Ireland. The only single Lennon released from the album, “Woman Is the Nigger of the World,” included the refrain “we make her paint her face and dance.”86 As for the song’s accompaniment, Lennon provided an unmistakably soft rock arrangement complete with a slick lead saxophone.87

WOMEN’S LIBERATION Soft rock also held sway in the political arena of the women’s liberation movement. It found an unofficial anthem not in Lennon’s song, but in a Helen Reddy song called “I Am Woman.” The “women’s lib” movement entered public consciousness attached to images of protest street theater. These occurred outside of the 1968 Miss America Pageant when members of the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (WITCH) tossed women’s undergarments, such as lingerie and corsets, into a trash can (and also placed tiaras on live sheep).88 Notwithstanding the trivialization, ridicule, and charges of “bra-burning” tossed its way by detractors, the women’s liberation movement perhaps had a greater influence on American culture than any other movement in the 1970s. Among its more notable reform attempts was the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which aimed for the legal equality of the sexes, and was approved by the House of Representatives in October 1971 and by the Senate in March 1972. Although 30 states had ratified it within a year of Senate approval, it eventually died in 1982, having failed to receive the required number of 38. Even so, public support of the amendment never dropped below 54 percent, a statistic that illustrates the ERA’s considerable influence on American culture.89 Title IX of the 1972 Education Act amendments saw to it that discrimination by sex in any programs receiving federal aid, such as women’s athletics in high schools and colleges, was expressly prohibited. In 1973, the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade guaranteed that a woman could have the right to choose abortion.90 Other changes arose that had been in the works before the early ’70s. Betty Friedan, in her influential book The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963, gave voice to a growing dissatisfaction among American women regarding their perceived roles in American society. Referring to the station of the housewife as a “comfortable concentration camp,” Friedan argued persuasively for women

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Housewife/journalist Betty Friedan gave voice to a growing dissatisfaction among American women regarding their perceived roles in American society when The Feminine Mystique saw publication — and became a bestseller — in 1963.

to strive for education and careers in order to find the individual fulfillment through achievement that American men took for granted.91 A 1966 US News & World Report article observed that women were entering the workforce “in droves,” indicating how accurate Friedan’s assessment was of the general feeling among many an American housewife, and also preempting any notion that the upsurge of working women in the early ’70s had to do strictly with economics.92 In 1966, Friedan, in fact, helped form the National Organization for Women (NOW), which initially aimed to end sexual discrimination in the workforce, but expanded into a more all-encompassing lobby for a variety of issues, such as abortion rights, the adoption of the ERA, and the revision of marriage, divorce, and rape laws. Such efforts contributed considerably to a new national preoccupation with the changing status of women. Best-selling novels such as Alix Kates Shulman’s Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays, and Marge Piercy’s Small Changes focused on the unhappy plight of married female protagonists who not only struggled to find freedom, but also some sort of conclusion regarding their own identities.93 Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives exploited such concerns, telling the horror story of a neighborhood community where men replaced women with obedient housewife-robots. Perhaps one of the more well-known efforts to promote a national consciousness toward women through mass media was the establishment of Ms. magazine

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The derisive term “Stepford wife,” referring to indistinguishably beautiful, seemingly subservient, and empty-headed homemakers, entered the American pop cultural vernacular thanks to Ira Levin’s 1972 novel The Stepford Wives and its filmization in 1975. Its premise: male-designed, humanoid housewives phase out their flesh-and-blood counterparts in a small American town.

in 1972 by a group of journalists led by feminist Gloria Steinem. Its title reflecting the feminist determination to eradicate sexist vocabulary, the magazine became an important touchstone for women’s issues throughout mainstream America and went so far as to fund mass media projects that promoted the women’s movement. One such project was Marlo Thomas’s children’s album Free to Be . . . You and Me LP, released in 1972 (and turned into a television special two years later). The album contained songs and stories such as “It’s All Right to Cry” and “William’s Doll,” performed by celebrities like Diana Ross, Rosie Greer, Harry Belafonte, Alan Alda, and Carol Channing. The album, according to Thomas, aimed to encourage kids to “be the kind of people they want to be” and to “not be forced into male-female roles by society.” In an interview with one Record World reporter, Thomas even made reference to masculine–feminine dynamics in presidential politics: “In a lot of ways men have it tougher than women. I mean, a woman can cry and break down and nothing is thought of it — they’re expected to. But let it happen to a man and the bottom falls out. Look what happened to Eagleton and Muskie. Unfair. Damn unfair.”94 Television was an ideal medium for Thomas’s project, especially because it had proven to be quite responsive to the language and lifestyles of women’s liberation. “Many could argue,” say Edelstein and McDonough in their overview of the decade, “that television did more than reflect the women’s movement, it created a series of women’s role models that made a return to the traditional passive wife role unthinkable.” The Mary Tyler Moore Show, for example, starred the title actress as a single, successful, free-spirited career woman, while Maude

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depicted actress Bea Arthur as an older, middle-aged woman whose sharp tongue left no male chauvinist in its wake. In the 1972–73 season, the character of Maude broke boundaries by getting an abortion. Shows like All in the Family and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, on the other hand, presented two traditional American housewives as objects of pity.95 If television was quick to incorporate women’s liberation-oriented themes into its programming, Hollywood was less so. One of the most popular movies of 1971, just to illustrate, was Play Misty for Me, starring Clint Eastwood as a California disc jockey who is stalked mercilessly by a needy (and ultimately psychopathic) female listener. The film did, however, spawn a soft rock masterpiece in Roberta Flack’s cover of folk singer Ewan MacColl’s “The First Time I Ever I Saw Your Face,” launching her successful recording career in the process. A popular movie version of The Stepford Wives came out in 1975, three years after the book’s publication. The only Hollywood film, though, to treat women’s liberation directly as a movement was Mike Frankovich’s Stand Up and Be Counted (1972). A light comedy depicting a mother and her two daughters who gradually come to a realization over how much they need women’s lib (and each other) in their lives, the film garnered less than enthusiastic reviews from Ms. magazine. “What finally undoes the film,” wrote Molly Haskell, “is not the male orientation as much as the sit-com formula, that instant gag mechanism which turns insight into insult and character into caricature.”96 What really made the film special, though, was its theme song, “I Am Woman.”

Although the critically panned Stand Up and Be Counted (1972) stands out as one of the earliest direct film treatments of the Women’s Liberation Movement, a number of Hollywood films handled women’s liberation conceptually with greater artistic and/or financial success. Among these were: Klute (1971) Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) Julia (1977) Annie Hall (1977) Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) An Unmarried Woman (1978)

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I AM WOMAN In spite of the magazine’s mediocre review of Stand Up and Be Counted, Ms. published a glowing feature story a few months later on Australian expatriate Helen Reddy, the co-writer and performer of “I Am Woman” (Reddy wrote the lyrics, while Australian musician Ray Burton wrote the music). “I can’t bear all those ‘take me back, baby . . . I’m down on my knees . . . If you don’t screw me, I’ll just die’ songs that women are supposed to sing,” she told the magazine. “It was very important to me to make a positive statement.”97 A version of the song first appeared on Reddy’s 1971 debut album, which also included her first Top 40 hit — a version of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” from Jesus Christ Superstar. When Frankovich approached Reddy about using “I Am Woman” for his film, she agreed to do so only if she could re-record it with altered lyrics. Among the changes she insisted upon was the replacement of her original line, “I can face anything,” with the more powerful “I can do anything.” She also told Frankovich he could use the song only if he gave $1,000 each to three different Women’s Centers in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago.98 In December 1972, the song reached the top of Billboard’s singles charts, and it became a staple at women’s liberation movement demonstrations. Betty Friedan paints a vivid picture of the song’s galvanizing aspects in her It Changed My Life: “At a gala entertainment [at the 1973 NOW convention in Washington] . . . a dramatic celebration of our herstory closed with the song ‘I Am Woman’; suddenly women got out of their seats and started dancing around the hotel ballroom, joining hands in a circle that got larger and larger until maybe a thousand of us were dancing and singing: ‘There is nothing I can’t do . . . No price too great to pay . . . I am strong . . . I am invincible . . . I am woman.’ It was a spontaneous, beautiful expression of the exhilaration we all felt in those years, women really moving as women.”99 According to Reddy, airplay did not come easily for the song, which was not surprising due to the fact that most program directors and disc jockeys were male.100 But Reddy promoted the song steadily on television, and eventually “women started calling up radio stations and requesting it,” she said. “Television forced radio to play it.” Adding notoriety to Reddy’s reputation was her speech at the Grammy Awards in Nashville in 1973, where she won “Best Female Pop, Rock, and Folk Vocal Performance” for “I Am Woman.” “I want to thank everyone concerned at Capitol Records,” Reddy told the crowd on national television, “my husband and manager, Jeff Wald, because he makes my success possible, and God because She makes everything possible.” As Fred Bronson puts it in his Billboard Book of Number One Hits, the reaction to her comments were predictable: “approval from feminists” and “shock from religious fundamentalists.”101 For many young female listeners, particularly those who listened to the bubblegum-oriented sounds of what radio consultant Bill Drake referred to as the “FM sweet music station,”102 Reddy made for a palatable, status quo female role model, and “I Am Woman” was a consciousness-raising event. One middle-

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aged business professional reports the empowering effects the song had on her as a newly independent young woman. “I was in college, probably about nineteen years old and kind of flapping my wings for the first time and having some sense of independence because I went away to school,” she says. “That song was ‘yes!’ I got that album and I was home for the summer and my brothers would tease me all the time because I’d be playing it, and the more they teased me the louder I turned it up.”103 Australian modern history professor Michelle Arrow, to date the only scholar to have conducted an in-depth inquiry into the song’s impact on women, offers up words from Australian correspondents that could easily voice the feelings of American listeners.104 She quotes one woman, remembering the song in her late teens as being a key force in helping her fight the “limitations” set upon her by her “family and society in general.” Another, growing up in an environment where “females had no say,” says that “after that song was released I swore that I would do as I pleased and never take orders from men.” And still another points to the song as helping her launch a career in science, saying that although “there were family discussions about women’s liberation and the movement . . . I never felt I could gain anything from these impending changes. Then ‘I Am Woman’ was released and I realized just how relevant the issues were to me.”105 Native Australian Helen Reddy’s banner anthem “I Am Woman” topped the sales and airplay charts in both the United States and Australia. But although numerous volumes have since chronicled women’s liberation, Australian historian Janice Arrow is perhaps the only scholar to have taken a serious look at the direct impact the song has had on female listeners. Among the tidbits from her extensive email correspondences, which she published in 2007: “It empowered me to think of myself and all women as important as a man.” “[I] sang it to my children and am now singing it to my grandchildren.” “[I] used to sing this song around my father to really annoy him because it epitomized the women’s movement to me and him.” “Dad hated that song and Helen Reddy [. . .] Guess he must have seen the strength it gave me. My friend who survived a brutal marriage said her husband was the same and smashed every copy she bought.” “[The song] was like a heartbeat to me.”

The song’s congenial, soft rock aura was problematic to some. “What you hear is the voice of an idealized consumer,” wrote Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie, “even if the commodity for consumption in this instance is a package version of women’s liberation.”106 For Frith and McRobbie, the song evoked a “cute, showbiz self-consciousness” that, as a feminist document, paled in comparison to Tammy

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Although the sentiments expressed in pop vocalist Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” (1972) and country vocalist Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man” (1968) seem diametrically opposed, some critics like Dave Marsh have heard in Wynette’s single the more vivid pro-woman sentiment: “She sings out of a dry throat and an aching heart, and you can’t help but feel that though she’ll stand by her guy, it’s mostly out of an inability to perceive any other option . . . [T]he song bursts into life as soon as she admits, in a voice far more pitying than pitiable, ‘After all, he’s just a man.’”108

Wynette’s 1968 country “ballad of sexual submissiveness,” “Stand By Your Man.” “The female authority of Tammy Wynette’s voice,” they wrote, involved a “knowledge of the world that is in clear contrast to the gooey idealism of Helen Reddy’s sound.”107 A good portion of this difference certainly did have to do with sound. Wynette’s single spotlights a dry, hard-living, world-weary voice, backed up by lazy, lower-register guitars that evoke an all-pervasive sense of resignation. Reddy’s song, in contrast, features a chorus of friendly flutes emphasizing the lead melody throughout, warm arrangements of brass and strings, and a lead vocal that, in contrast to Wynette’s, positively chirps. The song’s soft rock qualities are even more evident in context of her I Am Woman album, where the song appears between her version of Kenny Rankin’s “Peaceful” (also a Top 40 hit for Reddy) and Leon Russell’s MOR staple, “This Masquerade.” Historical memory’s epitomization of the ’70s women’s movement with “I Am Woman” as opposed to the “women’s music” scene (which started picking up steam circa 1973), has rankled some feminists. Scholar Cynthia Lont describes the scene as “music by women, for women, about women, and financially controlled by women.” Songs that fit all of the above criteria, but were recorded on a major label, were disqualified from being considered proper women’s music. “The women’s label stuck because it was less threatening,” writes Lont, “both to the dominant social order and to women’s music performers and audiences.” Knowledge of women’s music, she continues, “became a key into the lesbian community.” If a woman mentioned certain performers in women’s music such as Holly Near, Cris Williamson, or Meg Christian, “it identified her as a lesbian, while talking about one’s interest in the music of Joan Baez or Joni Mitchell was not a clear indication that one was a lesbian or lesbian-identified.”109 In spite of such elements of exclusivity among fans of women’s music, some of its

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Historical memory, easily subject to the influence of popular radio hits, tends to epitomize the women’s movement of the 1970s with “I Am Woman” as opposed to the robust but fiercely independent “women’s music” scene, exemplified by pioneering artists like Holly Near, Cris Williamson, and Meg Christian. Women’s music festivals like the one pictured above have flourished in America since the early ’70s.

advocates resented the success of Reddy’s single. Many women’s music releases were self-produced and sold to 50 or so friends, vented one feminist to the short-lived Paid My Dues, a women’s music periodical. Although Reddy sold a “million copies of ‘I Am Woman’” and lived in a luxurious Hollywood home, the women’s movement, which was largely responsible for its success, received “not one penny” from those millions.110 Equally troubling was the fact that such a so-called women’s anthem could have so much male involvement. With the co-writer, producer, and Reddy’s manager all being men, could Reddy be anything more than an example of how women remained subject to the soft rock values ascribed to them by the male-dominated radio and record industries? Despite any of these potential faults, “I Am Woman” still managed to function as an empowering anthem for certain listeners. Angela McRobbie, actually, in countering male-oriented analyses of youth subculture, provided tools for such a counterview by identifying the home as an alternate site of resistance for women who are “forced to relinquish youth for the premature middle age induced by childbirth and housework.”111 Housewives who similarly drew strength from Reddy’s record were no less engaged in acts of resistance even if it did fit in so cozily with MOR playlists.112 Still, some critics maintained that only “real” rock could save womankind. “We need an all-woman rock ’n’ roll band that can create the kind of loud, savage,

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mesmerizing music that challenges men on their own ground,” wrote rock critic Lester Bangs in Ms. Magazine.113 Marion Meade, in a New York Times editorial, complained about the gentle sounds of “Joan Baez, Judy Collins and Joni Mitchell, who specialize in the bland folk-rock deemed appropriate for a delicate sex.”114 At least one all-female hard rock band called Fanny was endeavoring to turn up the volume, appearing on the Top 40 charts twice in the early ’70s.115 It was rock’s entire “ceremony of masculine power,” though, that was the problem, said Naomi Weisstein and Virginia Blaisdell several months later in Ms. “To break the sexist order,” the two women wrote, “we have to demystify the priesthood of the amplifier.”116 It was precisely the “dictatorial,” cult-of-personality nature of rock that women musicians increasingly were rebelling against in the form of an independent women’s music movement that included groups like the Chicago and New Haven Women’s Liberation Rock Bands, who emphasized the complete breakdown of barriers between performer and audience by relying on audience participation. If hit radio music in the ’70s really was becoming “feminized,” though, and ratings had anything at all to do with what qualified as powerful music, it was soft rock and the women for whom it allegedly existed who reigned supreme.117 Hit radio, by this time, featured many a female singer-songwriter who utilized and mastered the soft rock genre, with its access to the widest possible radio audiences, to fairly powerful, pro-woman effect. Notwithstanding the confessional vulnerability one could often hear in their earlier recordings, singer-songwriters like Laura Nyro and Joni Mitchell exuded an aura of unshakeable career independence, perhaps one of the strongest aspects of the singer-songwriter movement’s convergence with women’s liberation. Nyro and Mitchell, in particular, did so with memorable music that alternated between exuberance, introspection, and sass. Bette Midler stormed into the Top 40 on the strength of a dynamic live show that poked fun at a variety of female vocalists from the Andrews Sisters to early ’60s girl groups to Karen Carpenter. Ms. declared Midler the “woman who’s going to do for the seventies what Mick Jagger did for the sixties,” straining, as she did, the “image of the woman-whore to bursting.”118 Midler zeroed in on identity as her plaything in a 1973 issue of Record World. “I think women are taught from the time they are born to fear certain things,” she said, “to fear not being married, to fear not being beautiful in the way society tells them that they should be. Identity is a peculiar thing.”119 Carole King, who had enormous success as a songwriter with husband Gerry Goffin throughout the ’60s with songs such as “Up on the Roof ” (The Drifters), “I’m Into Something Good” (Herman’s Hermits), and “Just Once in My Life” (The Righteous Brothers), among many others, topped the album charts for 15 weeks straight with her Tapestry LP. She also dominated the singles charts with songs like “I Feel the Earth Move,” “So Far Away,” and “It’s Too Late.” One of her masterful touches with the album was her inclusion of two of her most prescient expressions of female sexuality, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” a 1961 chart topper for the Shirelles, and “A Natural Woman (You Make Me Feel Like),”

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In Sheila Weller’s Girls Like Us, the stories of influential singer-songwriters Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon are bound together by the era in which they flourished — the early ’70s. “This year, 1971, the media would soon essentially declare,” writes Weller, “was both the Year of the Woman and the Year of Women in Music.” And while an “anxiously propagandized, stultifying image of women” gave way to this revolutionary new era, she writes, the songs of King, Mitchell, and Simon were “born of and were narrating that transition.”121

a Top 10 hit for Aretha Franklin in 1967.120 Re-recorded with spare, laid-back instrumentation and bare vocals, the songs came alive in whole new ways during the era of women’s liberation.

TOPLESS RADIO The radio industry itself, nonetheless, was male as ever, and tip sheet writers like Kal Rudman often found themselves taking radio program directors to task for ignoring songs that had what they felt to be special female appeal. Regarding Maureen McGovern’s “The Morning After,” for example, Rudman wrote that although “many male program directors do not hear much in this record on first casual listen, the lyric was written to express hope for females in the never-ending battle between the sexes.” The female mind “has a highly charged emotional orientation to the message of the lyric,” Rudman continued. “Quite obviously, the message is being delivered with thunderous impact and they cannot get enough of this record.”122 Rudman’s strongest argument, though, in behalf of the song, was the fact that “at station after station . . . many women phone in to request the record.”123 As with “I Am Woman,” certain songs with strong feminine appeal often made it past the gatekeepers of radio only after strong and steady “phone” response.124 Perhaps because of the emphasis on telephone response by tip sheet writers like Rudman, particularly when the response came from women, one of the

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biggest successes with the coveted housewife market came through call-in talk shows that had begun to be incorporated in the broadcast schedules of certain MOR stations. Various other attempts by male radio syndicators to market “feminine formats” in the late ’60s and early ’70s failed in succession. One of these, which KGBS in Los Angeles launched in 1970, featured spoken-word poetry by Rod McKuen as well as “doctors discussing the pill, a psychologist discussing how permissive a woman should be in premarital relationships,” and other such things in between Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck records.125 Another one, called “Music . . . only for the woman,” consisted of “highly emotional music featuring today’s leading male vocalists subtly blended with romantic instrumentals.”126 One hit radio program concocted by men and intended for women that did turn out to be a success, though, was Bill Ballance’s talk show, Feminine Forum. Originally a radio newscaster, Ballance had made a name for himself as a disc jockey during the glory years of Top 40 on Los Angeles’ KFWB from 1955–1966. At KFWB, Ballance counted himself among program director Chuck Blore’s “seven swinging gentlemen,” a stable of disc jockeys including the likes of Gary Owens and Wink Martindale, who perfected Blore’s personality-driven notion of “color radio” (a play on “color television”).127 After moving to MOR station KGBS in Los Angeles — the first station to try one of the failed “feminine formats” — Ballance launched Feminine Forum in 1968. An idea hatched by his former employer Blore, it was a live, unedited call-in talk show geared strictly for women, with relationships — especially sexual relationships — as its central focus.128 The program ran weekly from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and it was such a success that it reached syndication in 1972, spawning a wave of imitators nationwide, such as California Girls at KNEW in San Francisco and Dave Ambrose’s Girl Talk at KLIF in Dallas.129 With his droll, newscaster-like delivery peppered with florid verbiage, Ballance played the sympathetic confidante but with a decidedly male point of view for his female callers, who presented their myriad frustrations and dilemmas — primarily of an explicit nature.130 Ballance would prime the pump with questions such as, “What makes your husband jealous?,” “What animal does your husband remind you of ?,” or “How do you shock your man?,” after which details, descriptions, depictions, and confessions came pouring in from his female audience. (On one notorious program, for example, a mother called in to recount how she demonstrated to her son-in-law a variety of techniques that might make her daughter happy.) And when the daily sex talk escapade had drawn to a close, when school bells would soon be ringing, and husbands would start plotting their clueless courses homeward, the station resumed airing its standard playlist, featuring the soft rock sounds of Neil Diamond and the Carpenters.131 So explicit did this program and many of its imitators become, that they soon attracted the steely gaze of FCC Commissioner Dean Burch, who, in a speech before the National Association of Broadcasters, called it “electric voyeurism”

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Veteran hit radio DJ Bill Ballance struck ratings gold with his Feminine Forum, a racy daytime call-in talk show geared exclusively toward women. Having reached national syndication and sparking a bevy of imitators, the show finally buckled under FCC pressure. As a forerunner to the “shock jock” craze aimed toward males, Ballance’s show looks, in retrospect, like the spark to a flame. As a daytime vehicle for women, though, it looks more like a misunderstood curio, much like the vinyl LP above.

and “prurient trash” delivered in “suggestive, pear-shaped tones” by the “smut hustling host.” One program in particular that caught his attention aired on Chicago station WGLD-FM’s Femme Forum (as opposed to Ballance’s Feminine Forum), hosted by Morgan Moore. During a program dealing with oral sex, according to Broadcasting magazine, “several woman callers discussed the problems they had, and overcame, in engaging in oral sex. Some were quoted as referring to the ‘hangup’ of avoiding climax by their husbands, when, as one said, ‘I go down on him.’ Some said they never overcame the aversion to ‘swallowing it.’” Another caller offered her techniques for keeping her sex life alive, saying that “oral sex when driving is a lot of fun — it takes the monotony out of things.” Still another listener called in to offer a technique involving peanut butter.132 While underground radio in the late ’60s and early ’70s famously tested the boundaries of free speech by way of political commentary, drug references, and ribald language in the middle of the night, it is often forgotten that radio talk shows aimed toward housewives on easy-listening radio stations pushed the boundaries like never before, and in broad daylight, no less. Having come to be known as “topless radio” or “sex radio,” these programs, which could be heard

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nationwide either in syndication or as imitations, attracted a flood of public complaints. Such activity prompted the FCC to pick the Sonderling Broadcasting Corporation as a test case, proposing a $2,000 fine to the company along with a dare to take it to court. One of Sonderling’s programs, the aforementioned Femme Forum, had just aired two particularly steamy programs regarding oral sex. Sonderling declined the dare, allowing the FCC to establish its own definitions regarding broadcasting in First Amendment applications.133 “The FCC diminishes broadcast freedom yet another cubit,” reported Broadcasting the following week.134 By 1973, this particular Feminine Forum-style incarnation of “sex radio” had disappeared. After the ruling, Bill Ballance was on air at the usual time, but discussing topics like the meat strike, while WGLD had become an entirely different format altogether. The topless radio trend, though, made some notable points. First of all, the fact that this brand of programming represented one of the most spectacular conquests of the housewife market in radio history was significant in that it identified a healthy, active female market for talk radio — hardly passive — which until then had been largely consigned to the evening hours traditionally reserved for men.135 The fact that Feminine Forum, a talk show geared for women, featured a male was notable, too, in that it reflected the mass media’s version of the “new male” personality, which television’s Phil Donahue, an active member of the National Organization for Women, exemplified. Entering syndication in 1970, Donahue’s talk show revolutionized American daytime television with his controversial — sometimes sensationalistic — topics, as well as the ad hoc participation he drew out of his studio audience, which consisted mostly of women. Erma Bombeck summed up Donahue as “every wife’s replacement for the husband who doesn’t talk to her.”136 Ballance, in defense of himself, made similar claims, emphasizing how much his program helped his listeners. “They are conversationally intimate with me because they can’t communicate with their husbands,” he said. “The show brings out a lot of marital discord that has been simmering below the surface.”137 George Duncan, who was president of Metromedia’s radio division at the time,

Talk show host Phil Donahue and M*A*S*H actor Alan Alda could both lay claim to the title of Most Visible and Iconic “Sensitive Male” of the ’70s. They both advocated openly for women’s rights, and, perhaps even more significantly, came across as men of “words and feelings.”138

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“Sexual revolution” in the early ’70s not only meant that books and movies of an explicit nature, like The Joy of Sex, posted huge sales figures, but also that familiar TV figures like late night host Johnny Carson could discuss, on air, his own screening of the X-rated film, Deep Throat.

said there was “no question that this country is in the process of changing its societal mores,” adding the reminder that “radio is a reflective medium.” Dave Ambrose, host of Girl Talk at KLIF in Dallas, said that “it’s time radio kicked and screamed its way into the twentieth century.” One consulting firm conducted a study of callers to Ballance’s program and found them to be a “stable and mature group, with vested family interests, a fairly conservative outlook on marriage, as shown by lower divorce rates than the national average, and social habits denoting upper middle class.” None of the callers felt violated, apparently, and practically all of them had reported having fun. On one hand, the popularity of Ballance’s program with its call-in emphasis disproved radio’s long-held notion of the housewife audience as “passive.” On the other hand, it may have actually confirmed that same notion because the program worked best with long, sustained listenings. Either way, what is certain is that these programs, popular in their time but forgotten today, marched in step with the sexual revolution, joining such ’70s media events as: The Joy of Sex, a best-selling sex manual celebrating sex as “the safest of all human activities”; explicit films like Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1973), as well as the box-office hit Deep Throat (1972), which brought pornography into the American mainstream; and novels like Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying (1973), which, for a best-seller, discussed female sexuality with an unprecedented sense of frankness and abandon. There was an altruistic element to sex radio, said Ken Gaines, host of KNEW in San Francisco’s California Girls, because “a large portion of the world has opened up to these women for whom the world has never been a very open place.”139

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ADULT CONTEMPORARY The typo in a 1971 Billboard headline seemed rather telling: “Granny [sic] Entries Flavored with Soft Melodic Punch.”140 Not only were the rock and popular categories in the 1971 Grammy Awards dominated by soft rock entries, with their implied adult-female appeal, but the annual awards show continued to reflect radio’s penchant for soft rock throughout the following decades.141 “All the old schmaltz will start happening soon,” Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page complained to Billboard. “We’ve only the radio stations to blame.”142 But the “old schmaltz” also made money.143 By the end of the decade, MOR metamorphosed into A/C (adult contemporary), which radio stations typically marketed as “lite FM” or “magic FM.” Aiming to please the widest possible demographic, as well as the highest possible age group, the format consistently garnered top ratings and dominated commercial radio during the next two decades, much to the chagrin of music critics like Stephen Holden. “An innocuous puree,” he called it, also noting that “lite radio embraces a larger segment of modern pop history than any other current radio format.”144 In a sense, A/C was the Great American Format — an audio melting pot that synthesized generous servings from all other commercial formats into a wide-ranging blend, guaranteeing not to scare anyone off. When the adult contemporary format came into being around 1973, it had the adult woman demographic in mind, if not necessarily the adult “housewife.” Program director Ron Chapman is widely recognized as one who “defined and perfected” the format at KVIL in Dallas. While working at another station in the late ’60s, Chapman recalls telling the radio ownership, “guys, our audience is growing older, they’re not just high school students anymore . . . catering to high schools and playing bubblegum is not where it’s at for this station anymore. We’ve got to grow with the audience.” In 1969 he switched over to competitor KVIL and began to reshape it as a station that specialized in adult formats. “KVIL was going to be a radio station for women,” says Chapman. In order to make sure the disc jockeys always knew this, he hung up a picture of an adult woman in the control room. “The word was that whenever you hired a jock, you said ‘this is who you are talking to,’” Chapman continues. “So you don’t say ‘Come on, Mama!’ You say, ‘Hi, what a pleasure to meet you.’ And you treat her

A telling typo slipped past Billboard editors in the February 6, 1971 issue.

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Dr. Ruth Westheimer and Dr. Laura Schlessinger can both thank MOR/Adult Contemporary radio formats for their legacies.

like a lady, not a chickie.”145 As of writing, Arbitron still ranks KVIL “Lite FM” among the Dallas area’s most profitable stations.146 Along those lines, what the early ’70s seemed to have taught about radio geared toward females, if not radio in general, was that while music programming mattered, the talk aspects were essential if a station wanted to perform well with any consistency. Adult contemporary radio station WINY in New York discovered this in 1979 when it suddenly began collecting top ratings in the 18- to 34-year-olds category after airing a certain talk show after a long day of lite hits. The host was Dr. Ruth Westheimer, and her subject was sex. That same year, an on-air specialist in “sex therapy” named Laura Schlessinger began holding court on Santa Ana station KWIZ on her way to eventual conservative talk radio stardom. Schlessinger’s early radio origins were instructive. She developed her reputation in Los Angeles earlier that decade as a regular caller on The Bill Ballance Show.147 In the late ’60s and early ’70s, the trades and tip sheets liked to promote a concept called “communication music.” Bob Hamilton, writing for Record World in the early ’70s called his column “Communication Music,” and referred to the radio industry as the “communication industy.” “Communication is what radio is all about,” said Bill Gavin, “not just a format.” Tip sheet writer Kal Rudman urged Top 40 stations to play “communication music,” meaning “records whose lyrics communicate an adult message with total emotional commitment by the artist.”148 Music, according to these three, is what delivered listeners to radio stations, and as recently as 2002, an Arbitron report again listed music as the number-one reason why women tune into a station. “Their desire for ‘lots of music’ is strongly associated with ‘little talk’.”149 Walter Sabo, though, the radio program director who launched Dr. Ruth, chimes in, circa 2004, with a completely different take. “It is stunning that there are 1,200 talk stations in America; and 99 percent, both AM and FM, are programmed for guys,” he says. “Yet the financial backbone of daytime TV is talk for women,” he said. “Advertisers are falling all over themselves to find ways to reach

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Lyrics were as crucial a component to ’70s soft rock as were its musical arrangements. A good rule of thumb: How well did a song communicate about relationships? According to this criteria, the talky lead off hit from Carly Simon’s 1971 self-titled debut LP, “That’s the Way I Always Heard it Should Be,” qualifies as an early soft rock masterpiece. Fleetwood Mac’s post-format revolution Rumours (1977), an LP that dominated late ’70s radio and sold in astronomical figures, chronicled the group’s own tangled inner liaisons and perhaps stands as the genre’s gold (platinum, actually) standard.

young women, and radio has ignored them.”150 A New York City “social marketing agency,” furthermore, recently reported that the mom market plays “key roles in influencing key household purchases” and responds to “conversation,” “crowdsourcing,” “participation,” “engagement,” and occasionally “oversharing,” i.e. showing a willingness to peel back the curtains “as the line between public and private are blurred.”151 The year of this report was 2009, leading one to believe that if reliable methods of programming for American women have yet to be worked out, then the radio industry, at least, has an uncanny ability of forgetting its own past.

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Chapter 3

All the Young Dudes Progressive Rock Formats and the Taming of the American Male “Al Kooper has reached his toughest critics,” read a 1970 Billboard advertisement. These tough critics, as shown in the accompanying street scene, were six white boys, dressed in blue jeans, sneakers and tank tops, slouched together on stairsteps along a sidewalk with legs akimbo. None of them smiled, and none looked a day over 17. The foremost boy held the ad’s central image in his left hand — a transistor radio with antenna pointing outward, which the boy brandished like a switchblade. The ad copy went on to boast that six songs from Kooper’s Easy Does It album on Columbia Records and Tapes were on the air “in Top 40 and FM markets,” and that the “more people hear it, the more the word spreads.”1 Kooper, an everywhere-at-once figure in 1960s rock, made a name for himself as a sideman for Bob Dylan during the mid-’60s as well as his involvement with the Blues Project and early Blood, Sweat & Tears.2 He never managed to crack Billboard’s Hot 100 as a solo entity, but his ad did have much to say about hit radio in the early 1970s. First, it acknowledged the age group that gave hit radio — not to mention rock ’n’ roll itself — its early “street” credibility. This same age group, circa 1970, also spread the word about hard rock groups like Grand Funk Railroad, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath, much to the consternation of rock critics and commercial radio alike. The ad also emphasized record labels’ reliance on Top 40 radio to give airtime to the types of records more closely associated with album-oriented FM stations. The image of the transistor represented Columbia’s cue to Top 40 radio that if the format would only air credible rock music like Al Kooper, the young teenage male market, having since migrated to “progressive rock” formats (not to be confused with the ambitious “progressive rock” musical genre of the early ’70s), just might return to the Top 40 fold. Most significantly, though, Columbia’s ad depicted the white male teenager as a separate demographic, thus reinforcing the commercial radio industry’s efforts 91

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Early ’70s trade paper ads like the one above made special efforts to link specific albums with the right radio demographics.

to rope that particular audience away from the coveted 25–49 market. By targeting the white male teenagers so directly, in fact, the Billboard ad may have hurt Kooper’s chances for chart success more than it helped. White male teenagers had become something of a problem market. Always an important credibility factor for record labels, the demographic made trouble for the radio industry during the early ’70s format revolution due to its preference for music that the valuable adult audience generally avoided, and also because the music flourished on FM stations that openly advocated drugs and political dissent. According to a Broadcasting report, a total of 121 stations nationwide identified themselves as underground, progressive, or free-form between 1969 and 1972. These formats, which catered directly to the teenage male demographic, could be heard from large markets like New York City to decidedly smaller ones, like Logan, Utah. The musical and spoken content of these stations attracted the suspicious eye of the FCC and became prime targets of the Nixon administration’s War on Drugs, a political reality that figured prominently in the radio industry’s development of “album rock” formats that could function, in a sense, as isolated cultural spaces for the young white male. “Progressive rock” formats of the late ’60s and early ’70s served two main functions for the nervous radio industry. First, they penned in hard rock’s coarser sonic elements, its attendant sex and (especially) drug references along with its teenage male audience, keeping playlists relatively hard rock–free at Top 40 and MOR stations where adult audiences were rising in value. Second, they provided a site for masculine identity experimentation during a time of intense identity renegotiation for all Americans. For this audience, the Vietnam

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The music business dilemma of balancing youth credibility with adult acceptability had already blindsided the late ’60s Hollywood movie industry when box office successes such as The Graduate (1967), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Easy Rider (1969) (above), and Midnight Cowboy (1969) spoke primarily to the youth market.

War and the Nixon administration’s “War on Drugs” only intensified the confusion, but the emergence of hard rock and progressive rock formats shifted the white teenage male demographic’s focus almost entirely away from politics and over to issues of personal identity. The transition from the loose, politically charged format of underground radio to the tightly regulated format of albumoriented rock (AOR), thus, provided a breakthrough in the radio industry’s efforts to tame the American teenage male.

THE MALE ADOLESCENT AND JUVENILE DELINQUENCY The very concept of male adolescence, as understood in the twentieth century, virtually came into being courtesy of G. Stanley Hall, founder and president of Clark University. He articulated it notably in 1899 while addressing a national convention of school teachers whom he believed to be representative of those forces that influenced young American boys negatively through excessive “feminine sentimentality.” Declaring all young boys to be in the “primitive stage,” he advocated these teachers to treat the boys’ misbehaviors, particularly the physical fights among themselves, with tolerance. These boys, after all, would eventually learn to adapt to civilization, but they would become manlier in having learned to overcome their passions and savage instincts. His words sparked a derisive reaction — the Chicago Tribune referred to his speech as an endorsement of “boxing for babies.” But Hall’s thinking didn’t stray too far from Darwinism, which had begun seeping into American consciousness, along with notions of the “natural man” around the same time. President Theodore Roosevelt joined the chorus too, popularizing his trademark belief in the value of the “strenuous life.” Hall’s thinking fell in line with a burgeoning movement away from “effeminate” Victorian culture, with its all-pervasive emphasis on

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self-denial and restraint. It also reacted to the changing nature of American work in an industrial society where manpower was giving way to machines. Although Hall continually fine-tuned his philosophy, his basic concept of the male adolescent as troublemaker had staying power.3 In the early twentieth century, the apparent willingness of adolescent males to give themselves over quite willingly to some of the violent urges Hall made reference to became an epidemic of sorts. The two world wars and the broken families left in their wake contributed to the problem, breeding impoverished youth who took refuge in street gangs or other forms of public aggression. “Juvenile delinquency” became a much-discussed subject throughout the ’40s, and social reformers aimed their sights toward the problem while magazines and radio turned it into a matter of popular concern. A group of state officials in the Midwest determined that swing music lay at the heart of juvenile delinquency, thereby motivating them to attempt banning jukeboxes altogether. “Some of the most sinful situations existing are in these dimly lit, smoke-filled taverns where people wiggle around while jukeboxes blare,” said one legislator. The liquor had little to do with the teens’ behavior, said another. “It’s the music that gets ’em.”4 In 1948, a psychologist named Fredric Wertham published an article in the Saturday Review of Literature attacking the comic book industry. After surveying the high quantity of comic books with violent content, and realizing how popular they were among young males, Wertham became convinced that they promoted violent behavior in their readers. Popular 1940s comics such as Crime Does Not Pay and Murder Incorporated certainly did depict a cornucopia of murders with careful detail in every issue, and Wertham’s article, which included disturbing images taken directly from comics and an inventory of comic-style crimes recently committed by children, created quite a furor.5 Parents across the nation were glad to have a scapegoat for their sons’ bad behavior. One mother wrote that her two boys, ages 7 and 13, had “unusually high intelligence and excellent ability in school and sports,” but she attributed the “so-called ‘hatred’ that they profess for each other to the harmful influence of these books, plus movies and radio.” Wertham’s article turned into a book which he called Seduction of the Innocent in 1954, prompting a US Senate investigation and the formation of the Comic Magazine Association of America (CMAA), a self-policing organization that the Senate Committee thought represented “steps in the right direction.”6 This solution took its cues from the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), which the movie industry had established two decades earlier when it faced similar concerns.7 While comic books were being marketed to young boys in the ’50s, “juvenile delinquent films” were being marketed to teenagers, especially male teenagers. In his Teenagers and Teenpics, Thomas Doherty lays out four main reasons for this development: the popularity of television among suburban families, the need to escape persistent persecution of the House Unamerican Activities Committee, the collapse of the Hollywood studio system, and finally, the movies’ appeal to teenagers.8 Because media such as comics and movies had been reaching male audiences so directly, they could

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A Senate investigation into the potentially harmful effects of violent comic books on their target audience — male adolescents — prompted the 1954 formation of the self-policing Comic Magazine Association of America (CMAA).

not avoid scrutiny as possible contributors to negative teenage behavior. A flurry of cultural criticism, in the mode of Wertham, focused on movies, comics, television, and radio, searching for clues. Some critics, such as Norman Cousins, saw these forms of media as “an assault againt the human mind,” while others, such as Dwight MacDonald, saw in modern mass media the end of high culture.9 Perhaps closer to the mark, though, was David Riesman, who saw mass media as an essential element in defining new “social forms” and “character types.”10 The male juvenile delinquent certainly did become an omnipresent personality type in postwar films such as The Wild One (1953), The Blackboard Jungle (1955), and Rebel Without a Cause (1956). In The Wild One, Marlon Brando became an icon of juvenile delinquency, starring as a leather-clad leader of a motorcycle gang who infests an unsuspecting American town. The Blackboard Jungle (1955) featured an explosive theme song in Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” and depicted Glenn Ford as an exasperated teacher in an unruly high school. One scene shows a fellow teacher attempting to reach his students through his collection of jazz records, which a teen thug, played by Vic Morrow, promptly smashes against the wall. Reports across the country of teenage unruliness during the film — particularly of dancing in the aisles during the intro and cheering when the movie’s thugs tormented a teacher in any way — confirmed the extent to which it had struck a nerve.11 In England, the film sparked fullblown riots. Stories in American newspapers about broken windows, overturned cars and mass arrests surrounding screenings of the film only added to its notoriety. Perhaps the most famous juvenile delinquent film, though, was Rebel Without a Cause, which presented James Dean’s title character — a brooding and alienated high schooler — as an archetypical product of a society completely out of touch with its youth.12

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Elvis Presley, having declared Rebel Without a Cause his favorite film, arrived in the midst of this environment and, not surprisingly, caused a sensation with his openly sexual stage manner and his raucous musical sound. Appearing on television for the first time, on the Dorsey Brothers’ Stage Show program in 1956, he became an instant legend by thrusting his pelvis repeatedly into his guitar. Later that year, millions watched him on The Milton Berle Show (thereby catapulting his “Heartbreak Hotel” to #1), and in September, The Ed Sullivan Show heightened the national awareness of this aspect of his performance style by showing him only from the waist up. The opinion of one New York Times writer represented a fairly typical adult response, saying Presley “injected movements of the tongue and indulged in wordless singing that was singularly distasteful.” The words of a 15-year-old girl as reported by Life magazine, however, presented an alternate view: “When he does that,” she said, “I want to get down on the floor and scream.”13 In 1956, Presley sold 10 million records (the entire industry had sold 90 million) and was responsible for exactly one-half of the RCA record label’s pop sales.14 Joyce Carol Oates, in her 1966 short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,” toyed with a common notion of the male delinquent as a product of Top 40 radio. Here, the predatory Arnold Friend, dressed like a member of Brando’s motorcycle gang in The Wild One, arrives at victim Connie’s house with his hot rod and transistor radio blaring. “That guy’s great,” proclaims Arnold of fictional disc jockey Bobby King. “He knows where the action is.” A radio addict herself, Connie drifts hopelessly into his clutches.15 To many an adult, the format’s very involvement in launching the career of Elvis Presley confirmed that

Marlon Brando’s portrayal of a leather-clad biker in The Wild One (1953) looms large in ’50s “juvenile delinquent” iconography. “What’re you rebelling against, Johnny?” asks a young girl at one point. His hair trigger response became the most famous line in the film: “Whadda ya got?” James Dean, in Rebel Without a Cause (1956) actually appeared to have a cause of the Freudian variety with his milquetoast, domesticated father (played by Jim Backus), whom Dean chastises for never standing up to his domineering mother, and who even appears in one scene wearing an apron.

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“The gangster of tomorrow is the Elvis Presley type of today,” wrote one concerned correspondent to the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency.

Top 40 radio engaged in the business of juvenile delinquency. “Elvis Presley is a symbol, of course, but a dangerous one,” wrote Mawry M. Travis, correspondent to the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. “His strip-tease antics threaten to ‘rock-n-roll’ the juvenile world into open revolt against society. The gangster of tomorrow is the Elvis Presley type of today.”16 Travis may have been overreacting, but he was certainly correct in implying that Elvis, rock ’n’ roll, and therefore Top 40 radio, contributed to a rebellion against standard notions of masculinity. The 1950s, as discussed earlier, were the era of C. Wright Mills’ “white collar man” as well as William Whyte’s “organization man,” socially impotent conformists who had given themselves over to the rat race to the extent that they had little control over their own lives. Mills, in particular, imbued his subject with an aura of emasculation. “The twentiethcentury white-collar man has never been independent as the farmer used to be, nor as hopeful of the main chance as the businessman,” Mills wrote. “He is always somebody’s man, the corporation’s, the government’s, the army’s; and he is seen as the man who does not rise.” For Mills, this character was the “new little man in the big world of the twentieth century.”17 This image of weakness contrasted dramatically with the juvenile delinquent images popularized in American pulp novels and films.

A MALE INDUSTRY One decidedly masculine aspect of both radio and popular music had to do with the technology itself. Observing that radio had been a “critically important and often redefining invention for men,” Susan J. Douglas points out that since its beginnings, the technology of radio had been associated with “legions of crystal set tinkerers and ham operators” who were almost exclusively male.18 The act

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of “technical tinkering,” she postulates, resolved contradictions which beset the audiophile whose potential status as an effete music aficionado placed him in an “uneasy position” given the strains of anti-intellectualism running through American culture, which especially voiced itself out in the election year rhetoric of 1952 and 1956.19 Both years, the amiable war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson, the eloquent Illinois governor whose appeal seemed limited to diehard Democrats and liberal “eggheads.” Radio and music technology, largely understood as male hobbies, prompted women’s magazine articles such as “I Was a Hi Fi Widow” (McCall’s) and “The High Fidelity Wife, or a Fate Worse than Deaf ” (Harper’s).20 In these magazines, companies like RCA and Magnavox advertised preassembled hi-fis in finished cabinets that “matched existing furniture designs such as French provincial or colonial” — feminine (i.e. inauthentic) versions of the male audiophile’s world.21 A key point in “Rock and Sexuality,” an influential article by pop culture scholars Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie has to do with the masculine roots of the radio and record industries.22 Arguing that rock operated as a form of sexual expression and as a form of sexual control, Frith and McRobbie observed that men not only exerted decisive control over the production of popular music, but the “presentation and marketing of masculine styles,” as well.23 These styles found expression in stereotypical terms, they wrote, such as “cock rock” (characterized by the aggressive sexuality of any number of hard rock groups, like the Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin), and “teenybop” (vulnerable cuteness in the mode of David Cassidy or Donny Osmond). Likewise, if men controlled the production of feminine styles in the radio and record industries, they also determined what designated a given style as “feminine,” such as the madefor-television stage personae of singers like Helen Reddy and Bette Midler, or solitary “pure-voiced” singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins. Frith later acknowledged and expressed regret over what he referred to as the article’s essentialist treatment of male “aggression” and female “passivity,” but

Between 1945–50, Gene Deitch contributed a series of cartoons to a hobby magazine called The Record Changer featuring “The Cat,” a seemingly quintessential mid-twentiethcentury audiophile: bespectacled, obsessive, and highly domesticated. The cartoons have recently been collected in The Cat on a Hot Thin Groove (2003).

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Frith and McRobbie did not exaggerate when they claimed that the radio and record industries were mostly run by men. According to a survey of 330 commercial stations that the Radio and Television News Directors Association conducted in 1972, a mere 15 percent of those stations had women employees.24 Three years later, a Corporation for Public Broadcasting survey revealed that “more than half of the managers still thought people did not like the sound of women on the air.”25 The early patriarchal role of male radio announcers like Howard Arlin and Milton J. Cross as the “national voices of US radio” established itself in the 1920s, later to be epitomized by such household names as Edward R. Murrow and Robert Trout.26 Key radio personalities during the glory years of Top 40 — Alan Freed, Charlie Tuna, and Murray the K — were also male as were those in the freewheeling, underground radio of the 1960s. If, in terms of control and production, the rock record industry could be classified as a “male form,” Frith and McRobbie had plenty of evidence in radio, too, to support such a claim.

TEENAGE CONFIDENTIAL Youth, then as now, represented another privileged category in popular music. Since the birth of Top 40 radio, pop artists have arrived packaged up with unwritten “sell by” dates, and the “intermediaries” of pop have traditionally placed a premium on youth through clothes and language, even if youthful representatives in actual music industry business meetings tend to be few and far between.27 One familiar bit of pop music mythology legend chronicles desperate “talent scouts” scouring the schoolgrounds of South Philadelphia High School, eventually spotting Fabian and James Darren (as mentioned in Chapter 1), and turning them into stars. Whether or not the two boys could actually sing happened to be a secondary issue.29

Teen idols like Frankie Avalon and Fabian populated the carefully groomed rock ’n’ roll scene of the late ’50s and early ’60s.28

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Perhaps a better illustration, though, is the case of Eugene Gilbert, who as a 19-year-old in 1945 understood the tremendous economic opportunities the youth market had to offer. Working as a shoe store clerk, he recommended that his boss advertise directly to younger consumers. They rarely visited the store, he had noticed, even though it stocked all the latest styles. When business boomed as a result of his marketing suggestion, Gilbert had found his calling in life — youth market research. Hiring groups of teenage surveyors to interview other teenage students regarding their tastes and habits, Gilbert quickly developed a reputation as a specialist in an increasingly important field. Within a year, he had attracted accounts from such heavyweights as Quaker Oats, Maybelline, Studebaker, and United Airlines, among others. By the early ’50s he moved his company, Youth Marketing Co., to New York City, ready for the busy decade ahead of him.30 Top 40 radio and rock ’n’ roll music empowered the teenage market throughout the 1950s. Disc jockey Alan Freed stands as a legendary figure in bringing this music to the airwaves. He began airing his “Moon Dog House Rock ’n’ Roll Party” at Cleveland station WJW in the early ’50s, popularizing the term “rock ’n’ roll” along the way. The arrival of Elvis Presley merely certified the genre’s seemingly inevitable commercial preeminence. By the late 1950s, the profitable Top 40 format trafficked regularly in rock ’n’ roll songs celebrating teenage life in a variety of categories: fashion (Presley’s “Blue Suede Shoes,” and the Cheers’ “Black Denim Trousers”), slang (the Coasters’ “Yakety Yak” and Gene Vincent’s “Be-Bop-A-Lula”), teen romance (the Crests’ “Sixteen Candles” and Dion and the Belmonts’ “Teenager in Love”), and the plight of the teen in the world of adults (Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” and the Coasters’ “Charlie Brown”).31 Top 40 radio, too, seemed to operate under the impression that its teenage audience was primarily male. The early male disc jockeys — many of whom sounded like adrenaline-fueled adolescents — distinguished themselves for their hyperactive banter and hip lingo, much of it high-pressure advertising for automobiles, auto wax, sound systems and the like.32 An equally important factor regarding its intended appeal for the American male, perhaps, involved the high-energy music it sent blaring out through car radio speakers. The more rock ’n’ roll and teenage life became cultural commodities, though, the more their images required tidying up. The “whitening” of popular black music, for example, an American tradition since the arrival of Africans to American shores, became particularly common practice in the ’50s. Pat Boone was this phenomenon’s poster boy.33 A white, clean cut, coat- and tie-wearing father of three, Boone’s appearance contrasted sharply with the aggressive, daringly transsexual image of black vocalist Little Richard, for example. Boone’s unthreatening, lower-energy versions of Little Richard songs like “Tutti Frutti” and “Long Tall Sally,” consequently, connected with a wider commercial audience. Equally important, of course, was Boone’s ability to provide an alternative to unruly whites like Presley (notwithstanding his otherwise polite reputation) and the piano-pounding Jerry Lee Lewis. Rock ’n’ roll personalities, too,

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such as Alan Freed — who began hosting a TV show called The Big Beat in 1957 — and American Bandstand’s Dick Clark, saw fit to present themselves to their millions of viewers as upstanding spokesmen for American teens. “They’re the most wonderful age group in America,” Alan Freed can be heard saying on one aircheck from 1955. “Since when does it become a crime to be a teenager?”34 By the end of the decade, though, rock ’n’ roll had become considerably tamer across the board, due to a series of coincidental events: Presley had been drafted into the US Army, Freed never recovered his fallen stature after the Payola hearings, Little Richard became a minister, Buddy Holly died in a plane crash along with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper, Chuck Berry went to jail for transporting a minor across a state line, and Jerry Lee Lewis fell into popular disfavor after marrying his 13-year-old cousin. The new teenage male now found unthreatening teen idols like Bobby Vee and Fabian as his new pop music representatives while Dick Clark became his number-one emissary to the adult world. Underlying all of this cultural activity lay one fairly conspicuous fact, which was that rock ’n’ roll had become an active location for the manufacturing and reinterpretation of the male identity.

UNDERGROUND RADIO AND THE MALE IDENTITY Top 40 radio, with its male disc jockeys, program directors, and advertisements that skewed toward the male audience, became synonymous with the rebellious teenagers that James Dean and Marlon Brando personified in the ’50s. So too did FM “underground” radio give voice to the rebellious male-oriented counterculture of the 1960s. Rock music was getting heavier, and groups like the Doors, the Rolling Stones, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience had developed a sexual stage swagger that became a defining characteristic of the rock idiom.35 Male perspectives permeated the underground press, especially the comic book scene, where a legion of male comic artist and writers, most notoriously R. Crumb, openly plumbed the depths of their own sexual insecurities, but often in a manner that ridiculed and objectified women.36 Male chauvinism also died hard within the political activist realm of the New Left, where women, as Todd Gitlin puts it, “felt the pinch of a discrepancy between their potential and their position in the movement.” Women who dared to voice equal rights at meetings drew catcalls and boos, while the planning of parties, preparation of food, and sleeping with activist men all qualified as expected female services.37 “A man can bring a woman into an organization by sleeping with her and remove her by ceasing to do so,” wrote poet and novelist Marge Piercy, an active SDS member during the ’60s. “The etiquette that governs is one of master-servant.”38 If not necessarily in such condemnatory terms, underground radio arose from such a male-oriented environment. Although FM radio was nothing new in the 1960s, it had yet to become the

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commercial force that AM radio was. This had much to do with the inability of the FM frequency to carry as far as AM frequencies, notwithstanding the fact that it sounded better. But frequency space was becoming scarce, and in May 1964 the FCC issued a “nonduplication ruling,” not enacted until January 1967, which stated that no two stations under the same ownership could share more than 50 percent of the same programming. Step two of the FCC’s action plan was to promote the commercial usage of the FM band, which led to the appearance of 500 new commercial FM stations and 60 educational stations between 1964 and 1967. Although AM radio stations continued to bring in the most money during the ’60s, the proliferation of new FM stations prompted a boom in sales of radios with FM receivers. New stereo systems, too, able to showcase the full sound spectrum of FM, began spicing up the market.39 As an alternative forum with lots of frequency space, experimentation reigned supreme over the FM band during this time. AM stations — due to the nonduplication ruling — were unable to afford running highly commercial formats on their sister FM stations in addition to what they were already running.40 Among FM’s most famous products during this period, then, was laid-back, lowoverhead “underground radio,” also known as “free-form” or “progressive” radio. WOR-FM in New York City became the first official underground radio station to serve a wide, metropolitan listenership. The station’s format apparently came courtesy of flamboyant disc jockey Murray Kaufman (“Murray the K”), who had cultivated a reputation while at WINS in New York as the “fifth Beatle” due to his seemingly round-the-clock coverage of the group’s first visit to America in 1964. Kaufman allegedly became fascinated with the concept of free-form formats when a spontaneous decision to play the flipside of the Association’s “Cherish,” called “Requiem for the Masses,” drew a tremendous telephone response from listeners. According to Billboard’s Claude Hall, Kaufman’s show was “responsible for selling more FM transistor radios in a shorter time than had ever been sold” in New York City.41 The Village Voice referred to the station as the “only place to hear vital new music and hear it well.”42 WOR-FM seemed tailor-made for the counterculture, with its programming devoid of the commercials, chatter, and call-letter jingles that had become such staples on AM stations. Its esoteric song selections relied little, if at all, on the pop charts. Posters designed by graphic designer Milton Glaser featured colorful, psychedelic depictions of long-haired, male rock musicians, spreading the word about the new station throughout the city. Although WOR-FM attracted a formidable following in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut tri-state area among young adults, the station didn’t make it past the first year. By 1968, it became a standardized hit radio station again as a result of what radio historians Peter Fornatale and Joshua Mills characterize as a “clash of personalities and in-house politics.”43 San Francisco disc jockey Tom Donahue is commonly credited as the “father of progressive radio,” even if WOR, with its short commercial lifespan, actually predated his stations.44 Donahue, after all, established two of the most celebrated

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Tom and Rachael Donahue, progressive radio pioneers.

underground stations — KMPX and KSAN, both of them in San Francisco. Although “Big Daddy” Donahue had become a celebrity disc jockey at both WIBG in Philadelphia and KYA in San Francisco, Top 40 had “lost its attraction” to Donahue by 1965, the year he walked out on the format for good in the middle of a KYA broadcast.45 After spending a year listening to records that were “never on the radio,” he decided to get back into the business by launching an FM station with his wife Rachael that followed none of the rules and restrictions he’d been forced to obey while working in AM. Donahue purchased struggling San Francisco station KMPX, which began airing, under Donahue’s stewardship, a progressive, free-form format full-time on April 7, 1967. Donahue later described this new breed of radio to Rolling Stone as a much-needed alternative to the “rotting corpse” of Top 40, characterizing it as a format that “embraces the best of today’s rock ’n’ roll, folk, traditional and city blues, raga, electronic music and some jazzy and classical selections.”46 The music, said Donahue in Record World, “should not be treated as a group of objects to be sorted out like eggs with each category kept rigidly apart from the others.”47 Donahue’s station amassed a devoted, widespread following, and similar free-form FM stations began popping up throughout the nation, such as KMET in Los Angeles, WNEW in New York, WMMR in Philadelphia, WMMS in Cleveland, WABX in Detroit, and WBCN in Boston. Progressive rock radio shattered the industry’s two-pronged perception of what formatting was all about. Before Donahue, says radio historian Phil Eberly, commercial music stations

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were, with minor exceptions, “either Top 40 or MOR, or in an alternate categorization, ‘rockers’ and ‘non-rockers’ since Top 40 had become synonymous with rock and roll.”48 Donahue demonstrated that alternatives were not only possible but potentially profitable. Loose and free as it may have been, it did still aim toward a distinct demographic: the teenage/young adult male.49 By the early ’70s, underground radio had hit the mainstream, a point illustrated by the appearance of two articles within a month of each other. One of the articles, written by Ben Fong-Torres in hip, countercultural Rolling Stone, declared the format dead (i.e. getting very popular) in April 1970. “It appears ‘underground radio,’ under the repressive nursing of network and/or corporate owners, is becoming just another spinoff of commerical, format radio,” he wrote. “Underground radio is safe stuff nowadays, no more ‘progressive’ in terms of hard politics, experimentation with music, or communication with the so-called ‘alternative’ culture than the everyday AM station.”50 The following month, an article in the New York Times recognized the “underground” format as a powerful new force in radio, identifying four key elements that set it apart from other formats: an emphasis on album tracks as opposed to 45 rpm singles, the “blurred diction” of the music’s vocals, the loud, “stereophonic” sound, and the low, seductive sounds of the disc jockey’s voice.51 Like Top 40 radio, underground radio stations tended to operate from a male perspective and cater to male audiences. Although female disc jockeys like Dusty Street and Allison “The Nightbird” Steele became legendary alumni of the underground years, they were rarities. Program director George Burns, in a 1971 interview with Billboard, echoed the prevailing radio industry view that “women listeners hated women on the air.”52 Female KHJ disc jockey Shana, in a later interview with Ben Fong-Torres, concurred with this. “In the seventies, when women were getting on the air, especially on underground FM, they would do that sexy breathy sound,” she said. “I think it was a little threatening to women.”53 Whatever truth there was in this, there was also the problem of basic male chauvinism evidently running rampant in underground stations. Disc jockey Richard Neer characterizes Steele’s tenure at WNEW-FM in New York, for example, as a “constant battle for acceptance in a male-dominated world.” Many of her coworkers, he says, “just refused to accept that a woman could know and love rock, and present it properly.” They were “constantly seeking out chinks in her armor to prove that she was a fraud,” but if any male staffers were to show any similar weaknesses, “it would be dismissed as minor.”54 A promotional photograph published in Michael C. Keith’s Voices in the Purple Haze, an oral history of underground radio, illustrates the sexism of underground radio perhaps even more vividly. It shows the staff of San Francisco station KSAN — 14 men (and one woman) — encircling a bare-breasted female model.55 Other artifacts reveal a decided preference for male listeners in the music selection favored by underground radio. A 1969 memo to staff, written by program director Ed Shane while at Atlanta free-form station WPLO-FM (also

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Radio scholar Michael C. Keith’s Voices in the Purple Haze provides an invaluable overview of late ’60s underground radio on the FM band, including interviews with many of the era’s legendary figures.

published in Keith’s book), commands his staff not to play any “bubblegum or manufactured” music by artists like Tom Jones, the Cowsills, Engelbert Humperdinck, Glen Campbell, and Dionne Warwick. In a 1968 issue of the trade paper Record World, a list of a “basic stock” for any “self-respecting” free-form station listed albums by 123 different artists, only 8 of whom were women or featured female vocals.56 Underground radio, in essence, from its earliest stages, strove to give airtime to music that largely appealed to a specific demographic, which WOR identified in 1967 as the 18–34 adult (with anyone under 18 as “gravy”). Station playlists seemed to imply, then, as did the tightened album rock formats of the later ’70s, that the male version of that same demographic was the most desirable one of all.57 Rock criticism, especially in the late 1960s, supported the unspoken ethos underground radio seemed to be promoting, which was that authentic, quality rock music interwove with masculine values. The male orientation of the rock world gave itself away in the lyrics and rebellious, iconoclastic stage images of performers like Jim Morrision, Jimi Hendrix, and Mick Jagger, who, in the words of Frith and McRobbie, would “swagger untrammelled by responsibility, sexual and otherwise,” and depicted women as “possessive, after a husband, anti-freedom,” and “the ultimate restriction.”58 Such attitudes are reported to have carried over into some of the high-profile sectors of the rock press. In the early 1980s, when Village Voice music editor Ann Powers began writing as a freelancer, she found herself in a largely male-dominated field, where she and other women felt “tacitly, and sometimes even openly, discouraged from pursuing serious careers in rock journalism.”59 Lisa Rhodes claims that certain writers and editors of Rolling Stone “mounted a systematic assault” on women during its late ’60s and early ’70s heyday, and “belittled or ignored the contributions made by women musicians in the realm of popular music and culture.”60 Just as Top 40 radio provided an alternate site for the negotiation of manhood

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for the American teenage male of the 1950s, then, so too did FM free-form radio, reflecting as it did the counterculture’s male-centric elements during the late 1960s. This was particularly significant during an era when the escalation of the Vietnam War promoted a militarized, violent image of manhood. The war based itself partly on the “containment” strategy, which held that if the United States did not contain the threat of communism in Vietnam, then the rest of Southeast Asia, followed by the rest of the world, would fall under communist rule. To many Americans, this sounded like speculation, and the increasingly horrifying and bloody consequences of such speculation made it a hard sell for young people. Still, the war “loomed like a palpable presence,” remembers FM disc jockey Richard Neer, “like a paid assassin relentlessly stalking your consciousness, awaiting an unguarded moment to devour its prey.”61 In the late 1960s, Top 40 radio had proven to be an eager conduit for singles that promoted the war, such as Victor Lundberg’s “An Open Letter to My Teenage Son” (discussed in Chapter 1). Others, like the Spokesmen’s Top 40 hit “Dawn of Correction” answered Barry McGuire’s angst-ridden “Eve of Destruction” by reminding young men that “the Western world has a common dedication to keep free people from Red domination.”62 The most successful of these, though, came from a real life soldier named S.Sgt. Barry Sadler, whose “The Ballad of the Green Berets” topped the Billboard singles chart in 1966. A militantly memorable march praising the bravery of the special forces unit created by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, it became the fastest selling single in RCA history and pounded the drums for Vietnam War boosters all over the world.63 Free-form FM radio, on the other hand, seemed to function as a non-stop antiwar rally that posed political risks for station managers but appealed to youth audiences. “We knew that we were an on-air expression of a major political and cultural revolution,” observed disc jockey Allen Shaw. “It was also known that the FBI was keeping files on all the antiwar activists in the country, plus anyone else whose views might be interpreted as ‘dangerous’ . . . It was a charged atmosphere to do the kind of radio we were doing, but it also energized us.”64 KSAN, during its noontime news coverage (“the noon Gnus”) made it a point to not “sing” the “government’s propaganda song,” revising news copy and changing politically charged terms like “Viet Cong” to “North Vietnamese.” “When the government released its casualty figures for the prior week,” remembers former KSAN disc jockey Thom O’Hair, “it was so much bullshit,” containing as it did copy like “12,765 dirty, godless commies dead and 10 allies and 4 American troops.” The one motivation behind the station’s newscast, says O’Hair, was to stop the war and to “bring home the troops.”65 The political commentary, though, could reach extreme proportions. At one point US Treasury agents raided KSAN and arrested disc jockey Roland Young.66 After giving a speech at an antiwar rally, David Hilliard had stated that he would be willing to kill anyone who “stands in the way of our freedom,” even the president. That night, Young suggested to his listeners that they send a telegram to Nixon echoing Hilliard’s exact words, thereby prompting the raid

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on the station and the subsequent firing of Young the following day.67 Events like this contributed to a general sense that underground radio and its listeners were poised on the front lines against the draft, the war, and the American government itself, representing a rebellious version of masculinity that clashed mightily with the war hawk version. An additional factor that seemed to earmark the underground format as male terrain was its reliance on technology.68 With the proliferation of FM stations came a demand for more technically able disc jockeys and engineers, while stereo systems with FM receivers and improved sound capabilities pleased those audiophile consumers who enjoyed mastering the technology, thereby affording the clearest fidelity and the most authentic sounding music. These improvements in audio technology went hand in hand with the rise in popularity of rock music “virtuosos.” Guitarists like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton became known as “guitar gods,” while rock bands that included players exhibiting a particularly high level of technical proficiency with a given instrument won higher esteem among rock cognoscenti. The early ’70s trend of instrumental radio hits from a variety of genres — all performed by males (Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein,” Focus’s “Hocus Pocus,” Hot Butter’s “Popcorn,” Eric Weissberg’s “Dueling Banjos,” Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa,” Billy Preston’s “Outa Space,” among others) — all testified of this musical value judgement.69 Susan J. Douglas takes it further, arguing that FM rock stations “sanctioned musical appreciation for men and allowed them to claim the skills of musical artistry [such as song construction] . . . as distinctly masculine.” If free-form radio, with its high ratio of male disc jockeys, playlists populated by male virtuosos, and its emphasis on technological and informational mastery qualified it, for some like Douglas, as an alternative site of masculinity during the Vietnam War, it might have had something to do with what radio veteran Richard Neer wrote about in his memoir, FM.70 Listening to WNEW-FM in New York City as a college student before he became a disc jockey, he remembers searching for a sense of reassurance that just by listening, he was registering some sort of dissent. In truth, he, like many of his classmates, held a student deferment and felt the daily mixture of guilt and dread of potentially being drafted when he was done.71 If the progressive rock format, like other formats of the day, provided this sort of escape from some of the world’s harsher realities, it did so in synch with the era’s drug culture, which ultimately hindered those formats more than it helped.

THE WAR ON DRUGS For young men old enough to be drafted during the late ’60s and early ’70s, drugs and rock music became inseparable survival aids, as Simon Frith put it, for the Vietnam era’s “endless tedium” and “fear of active service.”72 As underground radio morphed into “progressive rock” in the early ’70s, one of the biggest

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problem factors with these young men as a radio audience was their preference for stations that aired what the Nixon administration called “pro-drug music.”73 Drugs fueled free-form FM radio from its very inception. Disc jockey Jim Ladd writes of “Big Daddy” Tom Donahue conjuring up his own plan to “expand the parameters of the music” in a “haze of incense and acid.”74 In that same spirit, “jocks talked a lot about drugs while on the air,” according to free-form veteran Scoop Nisker, even making it a point of “letting their audience know they were doing a joint at that very moment.” KMPX and KSAN both offered listeners services that “analyzed the safety and purity of whatever substances were sent them,” while KMET’s general manager reportedly provided for his station a specially ventilated pot smoking room. “Drugs played a huge part at these stations,” admits disc jockey Frank Wood. “The proliferation of cannabis was all part of it. You couldn’t separate the two.”75 Underground radio, which emerged as a free-form utopia right in the midst of the Nixon administration’s crackdown on the media for its pro-drug content, was headed for trouble from the start.76 Vice President Spiro T. Agnew had already begun a vigorous touring campaign against the popular music industry in 1969, accusing radio in particular of “brainwashing” America’s youth and promoting drug abuse because it broadcast songs like the Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends” and the Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.”77 In March 1970, Nixon officially mobilized the media in his War on Drugs, focusing first on television.78 Pleased with the response, he called a “White House Conference on Drugs for the Radio Industry” in October of that year, the purpose of which was to “urge increased drug education programming and to curb pro drug music and jargon of disc jockeys.”79 Seventy radio industry leaders attended the meeting. The program featured shock films, a speech by FCC Commissioner Dean

Although underground radio flourished as a formatting approach in the late ’60s and early ’70s, radio personalities like Bob Fass, whose Radio Unnameable began airing on New York City’s listener supported WBAI in 1963, planted the seeds. Marc Fisher’s Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution that Shaped a Generation (2007) contains colorful profiles of Fass and other American radio pioneers.

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Burch hinting that “the FCC would look favorably on licensees who provided more time for antidrug commercials,” and a final speech from the President himself. “Ninety-eight percent of the young people between the ages of twelve and seventeen listen to the radio,” he said. “No one is in a better position than you to warn our youth constantly against the dangers in drugs.”80 Nicholas Johnson, the young, outspoken FCC Commissioner whose views clashed regularly with his more conservative fellow commissioners, immediately cried foul on the entire War on Drugs, at least as it pertained to American broadcasting, in a New York Times editorial. It was a “thinly veiled political move,” he said. “This Administration has, for reasons best known to the President, chosen to divert the American people’s attention to ‘the drug menace,’ and away from problems like: the growing Southeast Asian war, racial prejudice, inflation, unemployment, hunger, poverty, education, growing urban blight, and so forth.” When broadcasters support this effort, Johnson warned, “they are taking a political stance.” Johnson accused Nixon and the Department of Defense of using the War on Drugs merely as a revenge tactic aimed toward a group of Americans from whom Nixon did not find much support. To limit the creative freedoms of our artists, he continued, is to hamper our ability to divert “social disaster.”81 The recent drug-related deaths of rock stars Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Janis Joplin, however, were hard to ignore.82 Taking cues from the administration, the radio and record industries had already launched a “Drugs as Drag” campaign that featured speeches from disc jockeys and antidrug radio spots from musicians such as Peter Yarrow of popular folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, as well as Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick.83 (April 1971 brought a twist of irony to Peter Yarrow’s involvement in the drive when the Illinois Crime Commission listed his group’s “Puff the Magic Dragon” among popular rock songs that contain drug references.) This “Drugs as Drag” drive held fast to the American entertainment industry tradition of self-regulation in order to avoid state regulation. Such was the case, for example, with the Radio Code of 1929 and the Television Code of 1951 (both of which saw considerable revisions in the ensuing years), the 1930 Production Code of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and the 1954 Comics Code, all of which responded to increasing public and governmental pressure over questionable content.84 It was Mike Curb, though, the boyish, conservative president of the MGM label, who in 1970 helped focus the drug war on FM rock, which the industry, by then, had begun referring to as “progressive rock.” He dropped 18 of his label’s acts, each of them, according to Curb, “progressive rock” and “hard drug groups.”85 President Nixon subsequently commended Curb for his “forthright stand against drug abuse,” but Billboard, shortly thereafter, followed up with an editorial titled “Curb Stirs Heat — Morals or $$?,” pointing out that the acts Curb had dropped were poor sellers, and were he in earnest, he would also have dropped big money acts like Eric Burdon. Burdon, it turns out, embarrassed by the fact that Curb had passed him over, left the label shortly thereafter.86 In any

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case, Curb had succeeded in fingering progressive rock as a problem area for the commercial music industry.87 Another immediate result of the White House Conference on Drugs for the Radio Industry echoed Nixon’s tactic with television, which was to let the possibility of an antitrust suit hang over it like Damocles’ sword: “If the threat of screwing them is going to help us more with their programming than doing it,” he told a White House aide in 1971, “then keep the threat.”88 With radio, the threat came in the form of license confiscation. Shortly after the Conference, FCC Commissioner Burch sent a public notice to radio stations reminding them of their duty to screen all songs for lyrics that tended to “promote or glorify the use of illegal drugs.”89 This may have had the desired effect on AM stations, which had a time-tested, impeccable understanding of how both FCC- and selfimposed regulations worked. FM free-form stations like San Francisco’s KSAN, though, paid no heed, continuing to bask in the unregulated freedom they had thus far enjoyed, and thumbing their noses at the authorities. Disc jockey Thom O’Hair, for one, staged an all-drug weekend in response to the notice, playing “everything that was on the taboo list,” and reading the Bill of Rights between records.90 An incident concerning WTOS-FM in Milwaukee, though, demonstrated

Mike Curb, while serving as President of MGM Records, developed a conservative reputation by advocating wholesome entertainment and upholding an anti-drug policy at the label.91 His conservatism proved to be no mere dalliance. In 1972, he organized one of the few rock-oriented benefit concerts in support of the Nixon campaign, featuring MGM artists like the Osmonds, Cowsills, and his own Mike Curb Congregation (above). In 1973, Curb left MGM and ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor of California in 1974, although another try in 1978 got him elected and brought forth his 1980 governorship when Ronald Reagan went to the White House. Having formed Curb Records in 1974, he went back to running the still-thriving label in 1982.

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how little the FCC really needed to do in order to eventually squelch free-form radio. In 1971, the station’s manager switched its format from free-form to easy listening in order to boost ratings, immediately drawing protests from loyal listeners who went so far as to petition the FCC. The Commission’s response was simple: “A station’s new owner cannot be forced to continue a music format that would bankrupt it.”92 Things heated up some when the FCC declared free-form no longer eligible for a license. “A free form rock format,” the Commission stated, “like a free form class format or a free form anything format gives the announcer such control over the records to be played that it is inconsistent with the strict controls that the licensee must exercise to avoid questionable practice.”93 FM station owners who had begun taking their property seriously were busy making the FCC’s statement a moot point. FM stations, it turns out, especially those that played rock music, really were losing money. Yet there were indications that more FM stations might be able to turn a profit, as evidenced by reports in Billboard and other trades about progressive rock format success stories, the common denominator with all of them being a tight playlist.94 “It’s time to get serious,” ABC president Walter A. Schwartz told the National Association of FM Broadcasters already in 1969. “The FM industry has enjoyed the longest spring training camp in the history of media.”95 Many owners of FM rock stations indeed got serious by turning to Top 40-style “radio doctors,” who recommended a rock format based on demographic profiles of listeners, and counseled stations to follow a rigid formula developed by two Metromedia outlets, WNEW-FM in New York City and KMET in Los Angeles.96 The new format was officially dubbed “progressive rock” and the new playlists that program directors were constructing consisted almost exclusively of white male performers.97 The target audience, not surprisingly, were white males between the ages of 12 and 24.98

HARD ROCK AND THE “UNDER- UNDERGROUND” The term “progressive rock” survives today in reference to an ambitious musical genre that British rock groups like Yes, Jethro Tull, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer epitomized.99 Emerging in the late ’60s and early ’70s, these groups drew inspiration from classical music, emphasizing virtuosity, complicated song arrangements, and a certain preoccupation with quasi-mythical subject matter.100 The radio format called “progressive rock,” though, referred to a much more general selection of rock music, including American trio Grand Funk Railroad. Grand Funk, as the group started calling itself by 1973, hailed from Flint, Michigan, and specialized in rudimentary song structures and simple lyrics. Not particularly known for their actual showmanship, the group’s stage show presented three rock everymen (knowingly depicted as cavemen on one album cover) who essentially played extremely loud for an extremely long time for their audiences. Hair down to his waist, Mark Farner handled the wailing

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vocals and screaming guitar solos, while drummer Don Brewer — with his enormous Caucasian Afro — alongside bearded bassist Mel Shacher, kept time, always ready for their own extended solos. By 1970 the group regularly drew crowds of 100,000, at one point selling out New York’s Shea Stadium faster than the Beatles had done half a decade earlier. Although the group’s drawing power had as much to do with rock audiences’ new Woodstock-inspired willingness to flock en masse to live music events, Grand Funk Railroad is notable in that they managed to attract such high numbers with very little support from any radio format — free-form included — and the bulk of their audience consisted of white teenage males who promoted the group via word of mouth. As rock critic Lester Bangs put it, they were “perhaps the first under-underground band by being loved all the more fiercely by the teens because they were so roundly hated by all the hip rock critics.”101 Such writers included Village Voice critic Robert Christgau, who wrote, in his review of their E Pluribus Funk album, “Not only does it plod — it plods crudely.”102 “There they stood,” wrote a dismissive Cash Box concert reviewer. “Ordinary.”103 A full page ad in Billboard illustrated this dichotomy further, showing nothing but the group’s flamboyant manager, Terry Knight, lifting his middle finger not only to the camera, but also to the entire rock critic establishment. Not only did Grand Funk Railroad’s lack of musical invention irk the hip rock critics — so too did their lack of meaningful politics.104 The group had in fact dabbled with topical messages on their 1971 E Pluribus Funk album, which featured titles such as “People Let’s Stop the War Now” and “Save the Land,” and only invited additional critical sniggering.105 “I’m touched by their message,” Christgau continued in his album review, “although it doesn’t tell me anything I don’t already know.”106 Lead vocalist Mark Farner, too, adopted the populist rhetoric of fellow Michigan rockers the MC5, addressing audiences throughout

Grand Funk Railroad manager Terry Knight let rock critics know exactly what he thought about their opinions of his three moneymakers (left) in a 1971 Billboard ad (right).107

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performances as “brothers and sisters.” Farner had in fact started associating with the MC5’s guru, White Panther John Sinclair and doing “get-out-and-vote” radio commercials for Sinclair’s Rainbow People Party. He also made the occasional guest appearance at charity benefits like one at the Flint Free Clinic where he sang an anti-pollution song called “Flint, You’re Making Me Sick!”108 The MC5, also from Flint, qualified as vintage 1960s agitators. Managed by Sinclair, the group immediately stirred up large-scale controversy on Kick Out the Jams (1969), their first album, with its insurgent sloganeering, song titles like “Motor City Burning” and “Come Together,” and the live, bone-shaking assault of the music.109 “I want to hear some revolution out there, brothers!,” went the album’s opening rant. “The time has come for each and every one of you to decide whether you are gonna be the problem or whether you are gonna be the solution! . . . It takes five seconds to realize your purpose here on this planet!”110 Most jarring of all was Rob Tyner’s rallying cry of “kick out the jams, motherfuckers!” at the beginning of the album’s title track. When stores refused to stock the album, the group’s label, Elektra, recalled and reissued it, with “brothers and sisters” dubbed in place of the offending word. The MC5, disgusted, left the label as a consequence, although the edited 45 of “Kick Out the Jams” climbed up to #82 on the Billboard Hot 100. Considering the uncompromising raucousness of the music, this too was a remarkable feat. The single’s success, however meager, demonstrated FM’s newfound clout in nudging records up the charts. By 1971, the MC5’s manager, White Panther John Sinclair, wound up in jail on marijuana charges, and although the group had released three well-received albums by then, they decided to call it quits.111 As the MC5’s would-be torch bearers, Grand Funk Railroad instead personified the sound and spirit of formatted, apolitical rock radio in the early 1970s. They paved the way for the regular-guy, “faceless” rock groups that dominated album-rock stations for the rest of the decade. Their politics minimal and simplistic, Grand Funk’s view of “unity,” a word they liked to use in concerts, seemed to have more meaning in terms of radio programming practices than with political activism. By 1973, they became experts at straddling the line between hard rock acceptance and Top 40 success, with songs like “We’re An American Band” and their nostalgic cover of Little Eva’s “The Locomotion” riding high on the pop charts. Journalist Richard Goldstein, for one, saw this in a positive light because Grand Funk connected the mainstream with the “lower reaches of the rock hierarchy . . . where a kid sits hunched over his amp, ready to enact again the mythic hustle that is rock ’n’ roll.”112 They played rock for rock’s sake, and the band’s refusal to give press conferences emphasized this. By 1971, manager Knight spoke as though the group had never previously had any political inclinations. “Grand Funk were in the right place at the right time,” he said. “They made no political statements, offered no solutions, took no stands and thereby created no controversy. They were like the early Beatles . . . an escape mechanism.”113 Knight was right. As the man who orchestrated their arrival into the forefront of American rock, he seemed to understand what sort of role they, and early

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’70s rock ’n’ roll in general, could serve during stressful times — particularly for young American males. Holding on to its grassroots street credibility while garnering plenty of Top 40 airplay was a balancing act Grand Funk and their manager Knight hoped to perfect. Knight demonstrated this in his handling of the unexpected success of an album track by another one of his groups, Bloodrock. The track was called “D.O.A.,” a dreary, first-person account of an apparent drug overdose, although the ambiguous lyrics — which focused on the trip to the hospital — fit with numerous other potentially life-threatening emergencies. Although the track featured two components forbidden by the FCC, the sound of sirens and drug references, Knight released “D.O.A.” as a shortened single and launched an airplay campaign based solely on the claim that it had drawn “phenomenal phone response” at other stations. The song went Top 40 in 1971, peaking at #36, shortly after which Knight released antidrug radio spots by both Bloodrock and Grand Funk lead singer Mark Farner (“Hi, this is Mark Farner of Grand Funk with a word to my brothers and sisters. A clean world begins with a clean body . . . don’t pollute yours with hard drugs [italics mine].”). With ads like this, Grand Funk stood a better chance than ever of being able to infiltrate Top 40 while “fighting the drug menace” at the same time.114

TEENAGE WASTELAND Shortly after the 1970 Kent State tragedy, in which the Ohio National Guard fired 67 rounds of ammunition at a group of unarmed student protesters, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young released a protest single called “Ohio,” which became a Top 40 hit. Vice President Spiro Agnew, in response, declared rock “un-American.”115 But the whole affair, including Agnew’s perception of rock music, smoldered like embers from a dying era. The rock music that had been growing in popularity throughout the early ’70s tended to keep its nose out of politics. This did not improve the genre’s chances for getting heavy Top 40 airplay. Many hard rock artists, in fact, did what they could to avoid Top 40 acceptance. Enormously successful British group Led Zeppelin, perhaps the quintessential early ’70s rock act, likely made a play for “under-underground” status when it named itself after a comment made by Keith Moon of the British rock group the Who, using the term “lead zeppelin” as a metaphor for how succesful the group would be. If that were the case, then Rolling Stone’s critical drubbing of their first album seemed to indicate that they had met their goal.116 Relying on subject matter that alternated between mystical and elusive, earthy and sexual, with not so much as a hint toward current political affairs, the group took great pains to keep their appeal limited to a worldwide in-group. A case in point was their fourth album, which the band insisted on giving no title, no reference to whose record it was, and in fact, no writing whatsoever on the sleeve. The label in the middle of the record itself added to the mystery by showing four runic symbols.117

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With their mysteriously named fourth album, album-rock icons Led Zeppelin seemed to be going out of their way to shun Top 40 acceptance. (Above: Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant.)

In spite of repeated requests from their record label (Atlantic), the band adamantly resisted releasing any singles to support the album. (“We told them to forget it,” said lead guitarist Jimmy Page to Billboard’s Ritchie Yorke.118) The belief held among early ’70s rock acts was that releasing singles was equal to selling out. It also betrayed and insulted the intelligence of the group’s albumbuying core audience. If a single simply had to be released, it was best if word got out that the seedy record label was to blame. Argent’s “Hold Your Head Up” was a case in point. Rather than demean themselves by releasing a single, Argent approved only of releasing the song in its full 6-plus-minute album form on an EP. Shortly after the group had gone touring, though, Epic took the liberty of carving out most of the song’s 3-minute organ solo and releasing it as a single, after which it sailed easily into Billboard’s top five.119 With or without Top 40 acceptance, the core audiences for groups like Grand Funk, Led Zeppelin, and Argent consisted primarily of white male teenagers who had become an isolated segment characterized more by antisocial behavior than by the politically tinged agitation instinct of the 1960s.120 This seemed to reflect teenage life in general during an era which saw rising inflation, an energy crisis, and the resignation of a president in the midst of deafening political scandal. Peter N. Carroll, in his overview of the decade, equates this new teenager with the “seeming indifference of adults to the problems of the young.” This was evident in the fact that American teenagers accounted for “half the nation’s unemployment, suffered jobless rates three times the national average, and worked, when they could find jobs, in the lowest paying occupations.” Worse yet, over half of the serious crimes committed in the US, such as murder, rape, assault, robbery, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft, were committed by people aged 10 to 17. As for drugs, 11 percent of all high school seniors “admitted smoking marijuana everyday,” and two-thirds indulged at least three times a week.121 In a 1974 survey, Daniel Yankelovich observes that “only one out of two

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noncollege youth are able to accept easily the present restraints against marijana, a sharp decline from the 71 percent who easily accepted the prohibition in 1969.” Neither college students nor noncollege youth, however, had “any difficulty in accepting the restraints against mind-expanding drugs or heroin.”122 This troublesome climate must have been ideal for the growth of heavy metal, which took its cues from Led Zeppelin and found ideal representatives in Black Sabbath. Also hailing from Britain, Black Sabbath featured an overall darker sound characterized by droning vocals, overdriven amplification, and nihilistic lyrics.123 They were a prime example, as a Billboard feature put it, of a “heavy-sound band beloved only by its massive public which rocketed to the top despite near-total rejection by the rock radio and press establishment” (notwithstanding the group’s occasional forays into political matters, such as their 1971 track, “War Pigs”).124 Black Sabbath did manage to muscle their way into the middle regions of the US singles chart a couple of times in 1971 (“Paranoid”

Where did the term “heavy metal” come from? The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll takes the most oft-cited possibilities and constructs a chronology out of them: The nonscientific use of the term ‘heavy metal’ was coined by Beat novelist William Burroughs in his Naked Lunch and reintroduced into the pop vocabulary by Steppenwolf in their hit ‘Born to Be Wild’ (‘heavy metal thunder’). It was redefined in the Seventies by rock critic Lester Bangs in the music magazine Creem and subsequently overhauled by metal fans themselves by the time of its complete evolution from a hyped-up form of the blues to head-banging music for the masses. (The term “heavy metal” actually appears in Burroughs’ The Soft Machine and Nova Express but not in his more widely read The Naked Lunch.125 Pictured above: Alice Cooper.)

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The “Heavy Sound” on Early ’70s AM Radio (with Billboard chart positions) Grand Funk, “We’re an American Band” (1973, #1) The Edgar Winter Group, “Frankenstein” (1972, #1) Rolling Stones, “Brown Sugar” (1971, #1) Deep Purple, “Smoke on the Water” (1973, #4) Led Zeppelin, “Whole Lotta Love” (1969, #4)126 Free, “All Right Now” (1970, #4) Bad Company, “Can’t Get Enough” (1974, #5) Sweet, “The Ballroom Blitz” (1973, #5) Alice Cooper, “School’s Out” (1972, #7) Rolling Stones, “Tumblin’ Dice” (1972, #7) Pink Floyd, “Money” (1973, #10) Bad Company, “Feel Like Makin’ Love” (1975, #10) The Edgar Winter Group, “Free Ride” (1972, #14) Led Zeppelin, “Black Dog” (1971, #15) Rolling Stones, “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)” (1973, #15) Led Zeppelin, “Immigrant Song” (1970, #16) Rolling Stones, “It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll (But I Like It)” (1974, #16) Faces, “Stay with Me” (1971, #17) Grand Funk Railroad, “Walk Like a Man” (1973, #19) Mountain, “Mississippi Queen” (1970, #21) Alice Cooper, “I’m Eighteen” (1970, #21) Rolling Stones, “Happy” (1972, #22) Rick Derringer, “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo” (1973, #24) Alice Cooper, “No More Mr. Nice Guy” (1973, #25) Black Oak Arkansas, “Jim Dandy” (1973, #25) Grand Funk Railroad, “Footstompin’ Music” (1972, #29) Grand Funk Railroad, “Rock and Roll Soul” (1972, #29) April Wine, “You Could Have Been a Lady” (1972, #32) Bloodrock, “D.O.A.” (1971, #36) Uriah Heep, “Easy Livin’” (1972, #39)

#61, “Iron Man” #52), while a number of other bands with the “heavy sound” climbed even higher.

ACTING LIKE A QUEEN A strong element of heavy metal’s Top 40 appeal came in the form of self-parody which, in early ’70s rock, lent itself easily to gender play among acts like Alice Cooper and David Bowie. These performers represented an androgynous “glam” movement within a paradoxically homophobic genre, rising concurrently with the American gay and lesbian movement. Alice Cooper built a “shock rock”

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empire with his theatrical stage performances which included live snakes, fake blood, and simulated executions, usually of women. The cartoonish nature of his persona arguably aided in turning three of Cooper’s songs into early ’70s Top 40 teenage anthems: “I’m Eighteen” (“I’m eighteen and I don’t know what I want . . . I’m a boy and I’m a man”), “School’s Out” (“School’s out forever . . . school’s been blown to pieces”), and the perfect illustration of rock’s new politics, “Elected” (“If I am elected, I promise the formation of a new party, the third party, the wild party!”).127 Comedy duo Cheech and Chong, at last, turned the badly behaved, pot smoking teenager into a successful novelty routine, with their “Earache My Eye” reaching the Top 10 in 1974.128 The musical sequence of this record features a singer (“Alice Bowie”) who wears his “sister’s clothes” and acts like a “queen.” This poke at heavy metal’s early inclinations toward androgyny as well as the “glam rock” movement, which had been booming in Britain and had begun seeping into American culture, touched upon yet another potential identity aspect the young American male could add to his profile. Along with his apolitical outlook, his penchant for hard rock, and his weakness for drugs, he also liked to cross-dress — or at least listen to musicians who liked to cross-dress. David Bowie exemplified this instinct, changing his image for every new album (a space creature named “Ziggy Stardust” being one of his most famous creations), each of them depending on makeup, outlandish clothes, and questionable sexuality. The “glam” or “glitter” movement found American radio success not only with Bowie (“Space Oddity,” #15, 1973), but with groups like Mott the Hoople (“All the Young Dudes,” #37, 1972) and T. Rex (“Bang a Gong,” #10, 1972). Although glam, as a movement, eventually fizzled, its emphasis on androgyny became a standard characteristic of many mainstream rock acts. Singer-songwriter Elton John and the kabuki makeup-donning rock group Kiss gained notoriety for their over-the-top stage costumes, while Alice Cooper, of course, as well as British rock group Queen invited instant gender confusion with their chosen monickers. The New York Dolls, the legendary hard rock band that never enjoyed Top 40 radio success, appeared notably on the cover of their 1973 debut album in rather convincing drag. From Poison and Twisted Sister in the 1980s to Marilyn Manson in the 1990s, androgyny seemed to tap into potentially deepseated gender issues within young American males, such as an unwillingness to conform to conventional gender roles, as well as a fascination with, outright disdain for, and fear of women.129 In his analysis of heavy metal, Running with the Devil, the musicologist Robert Walser writes that although heavy metal never ran a shortage on female fans, the genre itself has always been “overwhelmingly concerned with presenting images and confronting anxieties that have been traditionally understood as peculiar to men.” He also points out that concert audiences for heavy metal shows started becoming “roughly gender-balanced” only as recently as 1987.130 R. Serge Denisoff, in 1975, overlooking the powerful fantasy aspects of heavy metal, scratches his head over “the question of why so many 14-year-olds”

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The Sociology of Metal: Five Key Books Deena Weinstein, Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture (1991; revised 2000) Donna Gaines, Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia’s Dead End Kids (1991) Robert Walser, Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (1993) Steve Waksman, Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience (2001) Chuck Klosterman, Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota (2001)

listen to groups like Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper. He might have asked the same question in reference to most of the heavy metal and glam acts who wore makeup, high heels, long hair, and leotards, and attracted legions of diehard male audiences. It all makes sense in the context of the early ’70s, when radio formats in particular functioned primarily as laboratories for identity experimentation. If any one format or popular music genre appeared to be directly influenced by the gay liberation movement, in fact, it was album rock. The movement gained momentum after the Stonewall riots of 1969, so named after an incident at the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village gay bar. One night, after a standard police raid, gay men took to the streets and fought back. While the ensuing three-day standoff did not “liberate” American homosexuals per se, it did wreak havoc on gay stereotypes, brought a new confidence to gay urban enclaves, and launched a new identity movement that marched in step with women’s liberation and Black Power.131 Until the AIDS outbreak of the 1980s, gay culture, more so than it ever had, seemed to thrive unfettered in major cities like New York and

Elton John managed to merge album-rock acceptance, Top 40 appeal, and some of pop music’s gaudiest stage costumes into a timely, highly valuable commodity.

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San Francisco.132 In spite of its macho, homophobic image, certain changes began infiltrating the hard rock arena almost immediately after Stonewall.133 High-profile rock stars began dressing in drag, while David Bowie went so far as to publicly declare his sexual preference for men.134 More remarkable than that, his announcement had little effect on his enormous popularity with mixed-gender audiences. Although Elton John would not admit to being homosexual until a 1976 interview with Rolling Stone, his Liberace-esque stage act, featuring the gaudiest costumes in rock, reached its prime well before then, and he also maintained a steady and formidable presence on rock radio formats.135 Heterosexual British glam band Mott the Hoople turned an openly gay anthem written by Bowie called “All the Young Dudes” into their only Top 40 hit, while American rock legend Lou Reed scored his only Top 40 hit with “Walk on the Wild Side,” joining the Kinks’ 1970 “Lola” as one of rock’s most well-known tributes to transvestites and male hustlers. The song had appeared on Reed’s Transformer album, which captured Reed flirting with gay culture in both the lyrics and album art. For young men across America, such alternate versions of masculinity came served up in bitesized samples courtesy of hit radio. All they had to do was tune in.

ALBUM- ORIENTED ROCK (AOR) Although most of the major metropolitan areas had “progressive,” “underground,” or “free form” stations by the end of the ’60s, the format was dying a slow death by the mid-’70s. Many competing programmers, such as those at Top 40 stations, never really took the format seriously. The program managers and disc jockeys at progressive rock stations were “perceived then as wild-eyed hippies, the progressive drug and sex crowd right out of Easy Rider,” as one radio insider put it. “We didn’t think they were a fad, just a strange group of people.”136 With the young teenage male demographic successfully partitioned off by those formats, many station owners and program directors felt it was time to aggressively pursue making a profit. They would do this through tightening the playlists to the point where they could zero in all the more effectively on their target audience. Among the earliest attempts at this was the innovative “Love” format at WABC, a syndicated program hosted by “Brother John,” a Methodist minister who uttered inspirational sayings between sets. On March 1, 1971, program directors Buzz Bennett and Al Casey launched the nation’s first FM Top 40 station, while the following year, KGB in San Diego — programmed by Top 40 veteran Ron Jacobs — incorporated Top 40 research-based programming techniques into a successful new album rock format.137 The consistently strong performances of hard rock albums and singles on the charts prompted even more stations to continue experimenting with album rock formats. “Hard rock has returned to a dominant position in pop music,” Record World announced in 1973. “After a year or two of gentle acoustic music, the

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listings are busting out with incredibly loud, raunchy, heavy, and, above all, electric sounds, so that the music has become, at least for the moment, once more city-oriented, complex and visceral.”138 Cash Box noted that groups like Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Edgar Winter, and Focus were enjoying brisk album sales only because they knew how to present themselves on singles.139 Progressive rock radio, nonetheless, remained a self-contained format that presented no real competition for either Top 40 or MOR because by 1972, it lagged behind in its ability to “break” new acts.140 Led Zeppelin’s untitled fourth album, for example, emblemized the transformation of what was once a field of high adventure into one of monolithic, time-tested, major-label music — the album’s “Stairway to Heaven” became one of the most ubiquitous tracks on rock radio never to have been released as a single and thus never to have made the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. Consequently, rock albums like Led Zeppelin’s fourth, rich as it was with radio-ready tracks, couldn’t change the fact that 75 percent of all albums otherwise failed to make a profit.141 Because FM accounted for one-third of all radio listening but only 14 percent of all radio revenues, progressive rock stations had no choice but to prioritize and play nothing but the favorites.142 By the mid-’70s, the album-oriented rock format (AOR) had arrived.143 San Diego program director Mike Harrison is generally accepted to be the man who coined the term “AOR” in the early ’70s as a replacement for “progressive rock,” preferring its “neutral, objective and semantically open-ended” implications. Storied radio consultants Lee Abrams and Kent Burkhart are most often credited as the ones who actually shaped the format into its present day form.144 Broadcasting scholar Edd Routt and his colleagues, in their Radio Format Conundrum, discuss the importance AOR radio holds in sounding like it has no format at all. “While some programmers claim that the AOR plan is more structured than the old prog-rock or underground format, the idea is to sound unstructured,” they write. “The sequence of music may be planned very carefully, for example, but it is supposed to sound as though the jock is simply expressing his current mood with the music played.”145 Today’s “Bob” and “Jack” formats, whose playlists draw from a wide range of hits spanning the 1960s to the present, can be summed up the same way AOR stations were in a 1978 book called The Radio Format Conundrum: “The idea is to sound unstructured” even though the sequence of music is “planned very carefully.”

As a descriptive, unofficial term, “AOR” had already crept into radio industry lingo in the early ’70s, but its widespread acceptance by the industry as an official format marked the complete standardization of commercial FM rock.146 More than a few rock journalists disapproved of the new format. Ken Tucker called it “aesthetically disastrous.” AOR stations, he wrote, “offered the kind of music

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that their surveys told them appealed most to — white males between the ages of thirteen and twenty-five.” The stations that played it, he continued, consequently “narrowed the very definition of rock and roll: by AOR guidelines, black artists didn’t play it, and neither did women.”147 In fact, by the mid-’70s, it was difficult to tell if the men who played it had any identity at all. AOR’s new ability to “nurture and enclose entire careers” without having to exploit other mass culture media such as television and the movies, says Tucker, led to the advent of “faceless bands” like Styx, REO Speedwagon, and the like. Steve Chapple and Rebee Garofalo, in their 1977 analysis of the music industry, simply interpreted the format’s ascendance as indicative of the “specific processes of co-optation,” which “quelled the creative energies unleashed in the 1960s, exemplifying an inevitable, cyclical process within mass culture.”148 Somewhat less disparaging points of view regarding the standardization of album rock actually do exist. Responding directly to Garofalo and Chapple, Will Straw argues that the AOR format reflected the “triumph of craft-production structures,” which resulted from the “the eclecticism and sheer bulk of record company product” as well as the “recession of the 1970s which called for a more accurate targeting of listening groups.”149 Former free-form disc jockey Dwight Douglas remembers the onset of AOR as a welcome relief from early FM’s excesses, which included “self-important” announcers who either talked too much or “pushed the musical envelope outside of the desires and frame of reference of the audience,” or both.150 Other than the fact that AOR played hard rock music, most of the early stations began mimicking the techniques of classic Top 40. “There is no bubblegum on KNUS,” went the promotional spot for a successsful Dallas station. “For instance, we don’t play the Jackson Five, Partridge Family, David Cassidy, and any of the music that appeals exclusively to teenyboppers. What we do is embellish our unique format with the particularly unique McLendon promotional touch. Just listen to some of the promotions we’ve run on KNUS!”151 Once AOR stations replaced the financially unstable free-form and progressive rock formats, FM radio — save for noncommercial, listener-supported stations on the left side of the dial — marched forward as a fully commercialized, promotion-running success story into the 1980s. In radio, format mechanics seemed to attract higher ratings than the presence of hit songs, and the consistently highest rated formats of the mid- to late ’70s bore witness to this. They were the “beautiful music” formats, specializing in Muzak, that manufactured product for which no Billboard charts — or anything of the sort — even existed.152 In terms of ratings, these stations ran neck to neck with MOR/Adult Contemporary formats, which aimed toward adult listeners with equal fervor.153 Conventional radio wisdom held that the success of these formats relied on the tidy compartmentalization of audiences, particularly young audiences — a practice program directors began to excel at in the 1970s. As demographic research intensified, and radio stations with similar formats began to sound indistinguishable from each other as the decade carried on, the generation gap,

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“Disco Demolition Night,” which Chicago AOR disc jockey Steve Dahl presided over in 1979, came off as a true-life battle scene from the War of the Radio Demographics. Radio consultants Lee Abrams and Kent Burkhart, in fact, orchestrated the event exactly one year after creating New York City’s legendary disco station, WKTU (Disco 92).154

one could say, gave way to the format gap — which was essentially the same thing. Each demographic did, at least, have a format to call its own. If one doubted a radio format’s ability to communicate with and galvanize listeners of a distinct demographic, the infamous “Disco Demolition Night” rally, held between a double-header between the White Sox and Tigers at Chicago’s Comiskey Park in the summer of 1979, laid those doubts to rest. The promotion hit the Windy City courtesy of Steve Dahl, a brash, young disc jockey at AOR station WLUP. Dahl was like a template for the type of disc jockey that became a standard fixture at AOR stations — loud, sometimes shocking, and fully committed to put-down humor. Don Imus was an early ’70s originator of this style while Howard Stern became its most notorious practitioner later on. Dahl’s WLUP promotion featured a pile of unwanted disco records that listeners were told in advance to bring to the game, and amid chants of “disco sucks,” the idea was that he would blow the whole thing up and everyone would cheer. Dahl’s ritual started a riot instead, causing young teenagers (mostly males), to spill out onto the field and trash it.155 The White Sox forfeited the second game, while disco forfeited an element of pop cultural invincibility. A significant factor in that whole affair, from a radio perspective, was that it represented a physical clash of the radio demographics, a very real, and very negative manifestation of what sort of passions niche radio could ignite. Journalist Tom Smucker attributes such hostile reactions to disco to the fact that “no pop music had been as directly or openly shaped by gay taste before.”156 One of Dahl’s public gripes with the genre, in fact, included his perception that one had to be “near perfect” to enjoy it, including having “perfect hair” and wearing a “three-piece suit.”157 Smucker also attributes the hostility to disco’s “blackwhite-Latin mix of influences,” while rock had “long since gone white.” Equally hurtful to the genre’s chances with rock audiences was its penchant for sensual female vocalists who were “uninterested in expressing the male adolescent

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sexual frustration that still inspired much of rock and roll and would later fuel much of rap.”158 From the standpoint of 1979, it looked as though the FM rock demographic — as represented by those white young males who rioted at Comiskey Park — had moved progressively backward since the heady free-form years. The politically aware subversives of the late ’60s had turned into apolitical escapists by the early ’70s. By the late ’70s, apparently, they had even seemed to degenerate into intolerant hooligans. The parallels between this demographic’s behavior and the corresponding state of FM rock formats during this period are instructive. The more tightly formatted FM rock became, the more inflexible its audience seemed to be. The situation eased up in the ’80s when, as disco retreated, rap music took its place as the new “black music.” The first rap song to hit the charts, The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” featured group members rhyming over a track by vintage disco band Chic — a curious fact when considering how rap had gathered up enough momentum by the mid-’80s to forge a rap-rock fusion that still bubbles and transmogrifies into the 2010s.159 The mayhem at Comiskey Park is hardly the sort of image one conjures up when reading the recurring theme in early ’70s trade papers of the “taming” of underground radio and its largely male audience (a ratings graph for progressive rock station KZEW in Dallas revealed its male listenership to be almost twice that of its female listenership by 1978).160 It did, however, serve as a telling demonstration of that which the new method of radio programming — the focus on smaller, more distinct demographics — could accomplish with one of radio’s most undisciplined formats and audiences. “FM Rockers are Taming Their Free Formats,” went the headline of a Broadcasting article. “Progressive Rock: A Little Older, a Little Wiser, a Little More Structured,” went another.161 If the jury was still out at the end of the decade over whether these progressive/ album-rock formats actively influenced their white male listeners for better or for worse, they were, in any case, doing bigger business for the radio industry than they had been doing in the late ’60s. A 1977 McGavren-Guild survey indicated that the largest five-year gain in audience share (60.4 percent) was “enjoyed by progressive stations.” According to programmer Dennis Elsas, this indicated that the “free-form stations of the 60s will be the MORs of the 70s.”162 If progressive rock/AOR formats never actually posted the same high ratings figures as MOR continued to do in the late ’70s, the growth possibilities for their one-time problematic audience at least proved to be as profitable as they were numerous.

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Chapter 4

The Agony and the Ecstasy The Soul Radio Crisis and the Crossover Cure While the music industry trade papers devoted but few pages weekly to soul music in the late ’60s and early ’70s, what little coverage they did contain crackled with concern over the music’s future.1 First, soul music, circa 1970, did not seem to be getting as much “crossover” airplay as it once did. “Like Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man,” lamented Billboard columnist Ed Ochs, “the soul record has been unplayed by general market stations who see and hear everything, but refuse to recognize soul.”2 Rather than profiting from the early ’70s radio format explosion, soul music appeared to be getting lost in the shuffle, even nearing a premature death.3 Soul’s other chief concern found expression in the words of singer Joe Jones, whose announcement that “soul music has gone to the white race” seemed to ring like a death knell.4 “Why has black music become so tempered,” wrote Ochs, “so under control, so much a whiter shade of color?”5 The question of whether “true” soul music itself actually ceased to exist in the early ’70s is still a subject for debate among music historians. These debates, though, generally depend on how radio presented the seemingly shape-shifting genre. Early ’70s format radio’s version of soul music, in fact, reflected the cultural realities of its listenership. Never fully incorporated into the predominatly white rock playlists of underground radio, soul music had nonetheless carved a niche for itself in Top 40, due in large part to Motown Records, which housed, among others, Diana Ross, the Four Tops, the Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, and Marvin Gaye — each of whom were also strong crossover hitmakers during the early ’70s. Soul radio, therefore, tended to function as free-form stations, many of which outlasted better-known rock stations at the forefront of “underground” radio’s golden age. In order to succeed financially, nevertheless, the stations almost inevitably had to mimic the tight programming techniques of other formats. By the mid125

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African American popular music in the early ’70s stood out for its direct and socially aware subject matter.

’70s, black formats favored “crossover” singles — songs by black artists that were marketed as heavily to white audiences as they were to black audiences, and vice versa. Thus began what journalist Nelson George, in his book The Death of Rhythm and Blues, refers to as the “assimilation” of soul music, which, from one angle seems to reflect a general “softening” element in African American popular culture.6 From another, though, the Great Soul Recovery of the mid-’70s could be seen as the assimilation of American pop music into soul. Either way, what is certain is that soul, like every other commercial music radio format, underwent a period of identity agony in the early ’70s crisis that settled down into a carefully controlled, apolitical-sounding entertainment machine before the decade was over.

BLACK MUSIC IN AMERICA Black music is so interwoven into the fabric of American music that one struggles to treat it as a separate entity in a modern context.7 In the early 1800s composer Stephen Foster borrowed musical idioms from black folk songs and turned them into beloved American standards such as “Oh Susanna” and “Old Folks at Home.” Minstrel shows featuring white performers imitiating black stereotypes (such as the popular Christy Minstrels), complete with burnt cork rubbed all over their faces, became American stage mainstays, either singing faithful renditions of black folk songs, turning them into parodies, or relying on

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Minstrel shows featuring white performers imitiating black stereotypes, complete with burnt cork rubbed all over their faces, became popular nineteenth-century stage entertainment that launched many an African American folk song into mainstream circulation.

Foster-esque reinterpretations.8 Not just an act of “ridicule and racist lampoon,” the minstrel fad can be seen in equal measure, as Eric Lott has pointed out, as a “manifestation of the particular desire to try on the accents of ‘blackness,’” and a demonstration of the “permeability of the color line.”9 The influence of African American music continued to broaden throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a New Orleans composer trained in Europe, adapted the syncopated rhythms he heard in black music into his own compositions, most notably the The Banjo (1855).10 John Philip Sousa began to do the same in marches like his “At a Georgia Camp Meetin’” (1897), and French composer Claude Debussy followed suit with his Golliwogg’s Cakewalk (1906) and Minstrels (1914). Ragtime, on the other hand, a cheerful, piano-oriented music characterized by quirky, syncopated rhythms as epitomized by the work of Scott Joplin, became a new American sensation during the first few decades of the twentieth century. Around this same time, jazz — the product of brass bands and mixed cultures (white, black, creole) — had also been percolating in New Orleans, while in the rural South, so had blues, which usually featured lonesome expressions of hardship accompanied by piano or guitar. W. C. Handy, a savvy entrepreneur who was also a veteran of the black vaudevillian scene, saw commercial potential in blues by taking the earthy, exotic musical form and sprucing it up for wider audiences. His most famous manifestation of this process was “St. Louis Blues,” a song that turned Handy into one of the century’s first successful music publishers.11 This type of “sprucing-up” qualifies as one of twentieth-century popular music’s key processes. Lyrics, for starters, would be rewritten and rephrased for the sake of coherence and the protection of mainstream ears from overly suggestive images. The rock ’n’ roll ’50s saw Elvis Presley turning Smiley Lewis’s “One

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Night of Sin” into “One Night With You,” and Bill Haley, in “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” taking Big Joe Turner’s original line, “you wear low dresses, the sun comes shining through” and turning it into “wearing those dresses, your hair done up so right.” The process would also involve tuning up instruments impeccably, sweetening arrangements with strings, perhaps, or lightening up the backbeat. All too frequently, the process called for the replacement of black performers with white ones. Although Louis Armstrong and his Hot Fives now stand as acknowledged jazz originators, for example, it was a less explosive, all-white outfit called the Original Dixieland Jazz Band who first recorded and toured Europe (post–World War I) as official United States “jazz” ambassadors.12 The twentieth century is so full of examples of this particular part of the process — in which Caucasians, to their financial benefit, adapted the groundbreaking work of African Americans — that it has become an inseparable part of the historical narrative. Paul Whiteman and Woody Herman made names for themselves early on as the “King of Jazz” and “King of Swing,” respectively, while Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Fletcher Henderson soldiered on with less lofty mainstream recongition. In the ’40s, the all-white swing bands of Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey carried the jazz torch to the top of the charts while Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie blazed trails in the backdrop. In the ’50s, dozens upon dozens of songs written and performed by black R&B artists were superseded by milder, whitened, and higher-selling versions. Two classic examples of this syndrome are the Crew Cuts’ hit version of “Sh-Boom” overshadowing the Chords’ version, and the McGuire Sisters’ version of “Goodnight Sweetheart Goodnight” outperforming the Spaniels’ original.13 Later in the ’50s, Elvis Presley turned this process into his stock-intrade, while the notoriously unthreatening Pat Boone released considerably toned-down versions of Little Richard ravers like “Tutti Frutti” and outsold the source.14 At its best and worst, this “sprucing-up,” “whitening” or “watering-down” — whatever one chooses to call it — of African American music is part of a larger, ongoing process where “white popular music,” as Simon Frith puts it, is “invigorated by styles and values drawn from black culture.” Although the music may lose much of its original potency as it passes through the “bland wringer of mass music,” he writes, “hip musicians and audiences” will routinely rediscover it.15 Considering its influence, it almost seems strange that black music is still treated as a separate entity at all. The ominous presence of Frith’s “bland wringer,” though, suggests that its continued treatment as something separate has as much to do with self-preservation as it does with marginalization. It also speaks to black music’s value as social currency. In 1950, David Riesman observed how black music’s disadvantaged status added to the music’s appeal for what he referred to as the “minority group” of music listeners, i.e. Frith’s “hip” audiences.16 Indeed, the majority of black music in the pre-rock era, notwithstanding the widespread acceptance of jazz throughout the first part of the century, seemed to exist in a parallel universe. Billboard kept tabs on

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Motown Records’ Berry Gordy marketed artists such as the Four Tops (above), the Supremes, and the Temptations to white adult audiences by booking them in cocktailtype venues while schooling them in the ways of high society etiquette.

this universe through its “race” charts, while major labels produced its records through low-budget “race” subsidiaries.17 Nonetheless, black music’s hold on white audiences throughout the ’60s hardly diminished. The demand for African American performers, in fact, increased, thanks in large part to Detroit record producer Berry Gordy’s Motown Records. Having formed the label in 1960, Gordy quickly built a reputation for investing the same sort of production values in his records that were more typical of high budget labels based in Los Angeles or New York. “The Motown policy,” wrote Charlie Gilett, “always depended on fierce ‘quality control.’”18 Musically, Gordy relied on a formula of tight, well-crafted songwriting, impeccable musicianship, and carefully monitored studio production. But he also marketed his artists to white adult audiences by booking them in cocktailtype venues while schooling them in the ways of high society etiquette. It seemed to work: in 1966 the percentage of records Motown released that made the Billboard pop charts (its “hit ratio”) was an amazing 75 percent.19 Black music, in fact, seemed to have become so integrated with the standard pop scene, that Billboard discontinued its rhythm and blues chart altogether during 1964–65. The success with which Gordy successfully marketed black music to white adult audiences foreshadowed the standardizing techniques that would characterize virtually the entire industry during the radio format explosion of the early ’70s.20

BLACK RADIO IN CONTEXT The advent of rock ’n’ roll in the late ’50s only accentuated the extent to which African American music, however segregated it may have been on the radio and

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the charts up until then, infiltrated not only the tastes of the minority, but the majority as well. The music itself came from writers and performers who were mostly black, and rock ’n’ roll’s legendary disc jockeys, such as Alan Freed and George “Hound Dog” Lorenz, also took their cues from black radio personalities such as Jocko Henderson and Georgie Woods, who specialized in a “rhyming and rapping” style of radio announcing.21 “They were a lot cooler than even the toughest hood in the toughest street gang around,” wrote Wolfman Jack. “They had such command, just by being quick-mouthed and entertaining.”22 The rise of Top 40 formatting, however, coincided with the atmosphere of paranoia brought on by the payola hearings, which squelched much of the spontaneity in early black radio. Even during that period, though, many black radio disc jockeys were able to operate with the same autonomy as before.23 Martha J. Steinberg, a pioneering female disc jockey on Memphis’s WDIA, has even suggested that Top 40, with its virtually automated song selection, found such favor as a white radio format in its early years specifically to insulate white kids from the influence of the black disc jockey during a time of racial and political unrest.24 Black radio programming, for the most part, remained loose, adventurous, and geared strictly toward black audiences. WDIA in Memphis, perhaps the most influential of these early stations, started broadcasting its “black appeal” format in 1947 and featured legendary disc jockeys such as Nat D. Williams (also known as a well-regarded newspaper columnist), Rufus “Bearcat” Thomas (an R&B singer who recorded for Memphis labels Sun and Stax), and Maurice “Hot Rod” Hulbert.25 One remarkable feature of WDIA’s “black appeal” format was the presence of female disc jockeys and distinct programs aimed toward female listeners as early as 1949. (African American women, apparently, did not feel threatened by the female radio voice the way white women, according to conventional radio industry wisdom, did.)26 Among the earliest of these programs was Tan Town Homemakers, aimed toward black middle-class housewives and featuring host Willa Monroe, a local celebrity known for her high-status social events. Homemaker shows, in fact, appeared on virtually every black appeal station in America during the late ’40s and early ’50s.27 The ’50s brought a whole new batch of other popular programs hosted by women to WDIA. On Nite Spot, Gerry Brown played ballads for an hour every weeknight; on Boy Meets Girl, Star McKinney, a local beauty queen, teamed up with Robert “Honeyboy” Thomas every Saturday morning to play more ballads by vocalists like Nat King Cole and Dinah Washington; and on Spotlight, Carlotta Stewart Watson, as Aunt Carrie, took callers every weekday morning to discuss relationship and family problems. The most succesful and talented of these, though, was Martha J. Steinberg, whose Premium Stuff Saturday afternoon show rounded up the week’s top-rated R&B records. So popular had Steinberg become that she eventually took over Nite Spot and Boy Meets Girl when those programs’ hosts bowed out.28 An outspoken advocate of the Civil Rights movement throughout the ’50s and ’60s, Steinberg has also spoken openly about black radio’s role in the

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Black Radio: Three Key Books William Barlow, Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio (1998) Louis Cantor, Wheelin’ on Beale: How WDIA-Memphis Became the Nation’s First All-Black Radio Station and Created the Sound that Changed America (1992) Jannette L. Dates and William Barlow, eds., Split Image: African Americans in the Mass Media (1990)

movement. “If it hadn’t been for black radio, Martin Luther King [sic] would not have gotten off the ground,” she said. African American disc jockeys most certainly did play essential roles in spreading the word about civil rights issues and events. By the early ’60s, soul music and politics mixed together to such a degree that the two seemed synonymous. Disc jockeys could infuse editorials between message songs such as Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” and Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come,” and many of the African American disc jockeys earned reputations as political activists. “They marched on the picket lines, spoke at protest rallies, helped raise money for the cause, and served as officers in local civil rights organizations,” writes historian William Barlow. “These activities kept them closely attuned to the grassroots struggle, which was reflected in what they said and played on the air.” Philadelphia’s Georgie Woods actively recruited listeners into the NAACP and sponsored public appearances by Martin Luther King, Jr., while Jocko Henderson would march in demonstrations and interview civil rights leaders on his shows.29 The civil rights movement thundered across the southern US in the late ’50s and early ’60s against extreme white resistance. Desegregation, in the case of an Arkansas high school and the University of Mississippi, required the help of the National Guard. The freedom rides, in which an interracial group of civil rights activists put Southerners’ compliance to desegregation to the test, ended with beatings and a bus gone up in flames. The murders of 14-year-old Emmet Till, activist Medgar Evars, and four young girls in an Alabama church bombing illustrated to the world just how desperate the situation in the South was becoming. A peaceful demonstration in Washington, DC, in 1963, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., who gave the speech of his life, attracted some 250,000 people and pressured Congress to pass much needed civil rights legislation. The Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 promised an end to racial discrimination in public places and ensured basic voting rights, but a tidal wave of anger and frustration in underpriveleged black communities across the entire nation was rising higher than such legislation could effectively prevent. A series of riots broke out every summer from 1964 to 1967 in various innercity areas. Two riots in particular exploded in the summer of 1967, contrasting sharply with the popular depiction of the era as the “summer of love.” In Newark, New Jersey, which had the highest black unemployment rate of any US city, the beating of a black taxi driver by white police led to a hailstorm of Molotov

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cocktails, bottles, and bricks on a police regiment, followed by widespread looting. Clashes between black citizens and the police force (of which less than 2 percent were black), prompted New Jersey governor Richard J. Hughes to declare that “the line between the jungle and law might as well be drawn here,” and called in the National Guard. The troops killed 25 black citizens and wounded 1,200 by the time any semblance of order had been restored.30 But Newark was merely a prelude to Detroit, which erupted a week later when police raided an after-hours drinking club in a predominantly black neighborhood. The incident sparked days of rioting and looting, ending only after President Johnson sent in the US Army.31 The violence in Detroit claimed 43 lives, and the city, said one observer, “looked like Berlin in 1945.”32 The murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., by a white assassin in April 1968 sparked riots across the nation. Violence, lootings, and fires raged in cities like Boston, Detroit, Harlem, and Washington, DC, killing 46 people (all but five of them black).33

BLACK POWER In the midst of this maelstrom, “Black Power” had been developing into a potent identity movement among African Americans. Taking many of its cues from Malcolm X, this one differed from the civil rights movement in that it stressed the formation of new establishments rather than cooperation with existing ones. “We reject the goal of assimilation into middle-class America,” wrote Stokely Carmichael in 1967, “because the values of that class are in themselves anti-humanist and because that class as a social force perpetuates racism.”34 This new black consciousness energized soul music of the late ’60s, much of it extraordinarily successful on the Billboard charts. “The most expressive Negro music of any given period will be an exact reflection of what the Negro himself is,” wrote LeRoi Jones in 1963, and this new music seemed to take those words to heart.35 James Brown paved the way with the soul anthems “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud” and “I Don’t Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door, I’ll Get it Myself).” As Brown shouted out lyrics advocating black independence, the music backed him up in kind, ignoring the traditional song structures of white pop and stretching out with syncopated, polyrhythmic abandon.36 Such recordings situated Brown as a visible spokesman for “black pride” — the late ’60s movement promoting African Americans’ consciousness of their African roots, a movement which especially influenced fashion and art. In 1969 he appeared on the cover of Look magazine next to Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine under the caption: “James Brown: Is He the Most Important Black Man in America?”37 Curtis Mayfield also established himself as an important voice, chiming in elegantly with songs such as “Keep on Pushin’,” “We’re a Winner,” “Woman’s Got Soul,” “Choice of Colors,” and “This is My Country.” (“I’ve paid three hundred years or more of slave driving, sweat, and welts on my back — this

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James Brown, with his relentless hit-making presence and ability to voice matters of African American consciousness in memorable ways, had Look magazine wondering if he was the “most important black man in America.”

is my country.”)38 Mayfield fused these secular pop songs — each of them Top 40 hits for his group, the Impressions — with a gospel sensibility and turned them into unforgettable sermons in black pride. As Black Power became the prevailing political movement among African Americans, signifying racial pride and self-reliance, Black Power radio also came to the fore. Progressive FM stations dedicated to black “nation building,” such as Howard University’s WHUR in Washington, DC, emerged, while free-form stations like KMPX and KSAN gave generous airtime to the Black Panther Party.39 Most of these developments were short-lived, due to the everincreasing pressure — even on underground radio — to tighten up formats and build revenue. A prevailing notion among many program directors outside of soul radio held that too much soul (as was too much country or easy listening) hurt a station’s general appeal. Ron Jacobs, program director of Los Angeles’ fabled “Boss Radio” Top 40 format, made sure no two soul songs were played too close together for the sake of the station’s sound.40 Ed Shane did the same thing while working at Atlanta underground station WPLO-FM. The station, an underground outlet in the late ’60s and early ’70s, had been tightening up its playlists to the point of airing straight popular charting hits. A memo to staff in which he expressed his views concerning every album and single in the Top 20 circa 1969 also revealed his reservations, from a programmer’s standpoint, about every single soul/R&B entry: “It’s Your Thing” by the Isley Brothers (“complex

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LeBaron Taylor (left) of WDAS in Philadelphia and Tal Forrest (right) of KNOK in Dallas at the Fourth Annual Billboard Radio Programming Forum in 1971.

arrangement”); “Time is Tight” by Booker T. and the MG’s (“too slick”); “Do Your Thing” by the Watts Band (“simply noise with a beat”); and Jerry Butler’s “Only the Strong Survive” and Joe Simon’s “The Chokin’ Kind” (“for most of the day, drop them”).41 Even WHUR and its ilk went the way of every other commercial free-form station as ratings and market pressures became too great an issue for owners who were increasingly interested, understandably, in seeing their stations turn a profit.42 Formatting had taken hold. In 1973, black program director Sonny Taylor of WGRT Chicago proudly claimed to have one of the few black stations that had adopted “white methods of programming.” Under Taylor, disc jockeys were held strictly to his “secret formula” format, avoiding the “constant rhyme, off-the-wall expressions, and talking through music” that they may have indulged in under previous program directors. This, Taylor complained, was an undesirable programming approach in which “the DJ was considered more important than the music.”43 His approach, though, typified the more homogenized sound that had begun infiltrating black radio. “The concept of providing a continuous show from sign-on to sign-off with no real differences between air personalities has helped soul radio gain a larger audience during the past year,” announced KNOK Dallas program director Tal Forrest in 1971.44 Soul radio had begun following in the footsteps of rock radio, establishing a rotating playlist based on the hit records charted in Billboard. By the early 1970s, the black “personality” disc jockey was becoming an endangered species as generic disc jockeys took over.45

BEYOND BLACK POWER Nonetheless, Top 40 soul was becoming more explicitly issue-conscious than it had ever been in the late ’60s. This was perhaps inevitable due to the unfavorable political climate for African Americans during the Nixon years. A private statement leaked to the press in 1970 summed up the president’s general policy

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toward blacks. Written by presidential adviser Daniel Moynihan, it urged a policy of “benign neglect” concerning issues of race. Such issues, after all, had been “too much taken over by hysterics, paranoids, and boodlers on all sides,” and a period was needed in which “Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades.”46 Public outrage over this led to a mild increase in presidential racial rhetoric — most notably concerning school desegregation, peace in the nation’s ghettos, and the creation of an Office of Minority Business Enterprise. If none of it ultimately made much of a difference, Nixon suggested, it was sufficient in that it showed “evidence of attention being paid.”47 Among these perceived “hysterics, paranoids, and boodlers” was Oakland’s Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Motivated by the rhetoric of Malcolm X, who had been gunned down by rival black nationalists in 1965, the organization took to heart his rejection of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s nonviolent tactics. “Revolution is never based on begging someone for an integrated cup of coffee,” said Malcolm, who considered King an “American Uncle Tom.” “Revolutions are never fought by turning the other cheek.”48 One of the Panthers’ most stunning demonstrations was its 1967 entrance into the halls of the California legislature in protest of a bill restricting citizens from carrying loaded weapons in city limits. “The time has come for black people to arm themselves,” read co-founder Bobby Seale before flashing cameras.49 Another demonstration tailor-made for media took place at the 1968 summer Olympics at Mexico City, when African

The 1971 murder of Black Panther George Jackson in San Quentin Prison inspired a single by Bob Dylan about a man who “didn’t take shit from no one” and who was doomed for being “just too real.” In spite of the coarse language and volatile subject matter, the song made it to #33 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

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American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in the Black Power salute as the national anthem played during the medal ceremony.50 A pivotal chapter in the Black Panther saga involved the FBI infiltration of the Chicago Black Panther headquarters in 1969. This ultimately led to a police attack that ended in the murders of Mark Clark and Fred Hampton, and such state-sanctioned violence against African Americans continued into the ’70s.51 Police intervention in demonstrations at Jackson State University and Southern University led to the murders of two black students. Black Panther George Jackson was gunned down at the San Quentin State Prison. An uprising among mainly African American prisoners, allegedly in reaction to Jackson’s murder, led to an uprising at the Attica State Prison in New York, leading to the deaths of 32 inmates and 11 corrections officers. Incidents like these sent a clear message to African Americans that dissension was becoming an increasingly risky prospect.52 Nonetheless, Black Power inspired a larger strain of “Third World liberation” that prompted similar militant tactics by other minority groups. A new Chicano awareness, fueled in large part by César Chávez and his tireless efforts to unite migrant farm workers, gave rise to a number of Mexican-American student organizations as well as Black Panther-esque armies like Los Comancheros in New Mexico and the Brown Berets in east Los Angeles. The Brown Berets described themselves as a “highly disciplined paramilitary organization,” standing guard against police brutality in urban barrios and unfair conditions on farms.53 The early ’70s also saw an outbreak of militant activity among the Native Americans, a group of which took over Alcatraz Island in 1969. The action prompted similar activity by the American Indian Movement (AIM) — in 1970 they seized a replica of the Mayflower in Massachusetts and painted Plymouth Rock red, and in 1972 they took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Indian Health Service (IHS) and ransacked its filing cabinets. That same year, a ten-week seige at Wounded Knee led to the deaths of two Native Americans and one FBI agent.54 In spite of such political unrest, the era saw an unprecedented flowering of pride among American minorities manifesting itself in everyday motif-fashions (i.e. Afros and dashikis among African Americans, beads and feathers among Native Americans, and so on), which also affected the arts. Perhaps the most notable demonstration of this was the Black Arts Movement. This movement picked up steam in the mid-’60s and crescendoed during the mid-’70s. It sought to infuse literature, music, drama, and the visual arts with the aims of Black Power, such as racial pride, African heritage, the current state of black life, and a strong, occasionally militant, tendency toward racial separatism (“we want poems that kill,” wrote Amiri Baraka, one of its preeminent writers in the ’60s55). Two important anthologies — Black Fire (1968) and New Voices (1972) — collected key poems, essays, fiction, and drama, and established the movement as what writer Larry Neal referred to as an “aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept.”56

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In the visual arts, painters like Faith Ringgold and Wadsworth Jarrell emblazoned textual messages into their visual images. Ringgold painted a likeness of the American flag with the words “die nigger” visible upon close inspection, while Jarrell painted portraits enhanced by swarms of multicolored alphabet letters spelling words like “Africa” and “identity.” Black Arts had disintegrated as a concerted movement by the mid-’70s, a big reason for this being the fall of Black Power due to persistent government intervention via COINTELPRO and IRS probes. The Black Arts Movement, however, according to writer Ishmael Reed in a 1995 interview, “struck a blow” for cultural sovereignty, and “there would likely be no multiculturalism movement without it.”57

“THE CONSCIENCE OF OUR SOCIETY” The hit soul music of the early ’70s reflected this broader environment. While black music, since the early twentieth century at least, had always contained much more of an earthy, frankly sexual element than the traditional romantic poesy of white Tin Pan Alley pop, the music had never spelled out political concerns as explicitly as it had begun to in the early ’70s. Although “cultural and political nationalist ideologies” associated with Black Power, as Frank Kofsky wrote in his Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music (1970), had for some time been a permanent fixture in the “smaller jazz millieu” in forms like bebop, these were of a strictly musical nature.58 Music journalist Greil Marcus characterized the presence of social commentary in black American lyrics before the early ’70s as “the occasional blues about the Great Depression or Lead Belly’s party-line ‘Bourgeois Blues,’” as well as “a few tunes about Korea (brought up to date for Vietnam).” As for records by the Coasters, like “Riot in Cell Block #9” (recorded as the Robins) or “Framed,” they were notable even while being “strictly white inventions, or white fantasies about black life,” and this was “partly because in the ’50s they were so anomalous.” Black voices, he suggests, “channeled the emotions kicked up by political exclusion and social despair into songs of sexual and romantic tragedy.”59 A good portion of the soul hits of the early ’70s, though, merged realistic, socially aware lyrics with musical production that alternated between eeriness and anger. Edwin Starr’s “War” (“what is it good for? Absolutely nothing!”) contained an unusually potent dose of anger for a Top 40 hit, while Freda Payne’s equally direct “Bring the Boys Back Home” treated the topic, nonetheless, with an anthemic sense of hope few Americans could disagree with. Other soul hits from the early ’70s dealt with subjects of duplicity and broken promises, reflecting governmental infiltration of organizations like the Black Panthers, on one hand, and on the other, a more general mistreatement of minority groups. The Undisputed Truth’s “Smiling Faces Sometimes (Tell Lies)” slithered ominously with moody minor chords, warning listeners to “beware of the pat on the back, it just might hold you back.” The O’Jays’ “Back Stabbers” and “For

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Marvin Gaye’s 1971 What’s Going On album stands as the ultimate document of early ’70s topical soul.

the Love of Money” pursued this theme further, merging similar words of warning — cloaked in a romantic context — with menacing background voices and soaring horn flourishes that circled like vultures overhead.60 Other songs, like the Chi-Lites’ “(For God’s Sake) Give More Power to the People” and the Stylistics’ “People Make the World Go Round,” as well as War’s “Slipping into Darkness” and “The World Is a Ghetto” turned the hopelessness of urban life into an effective Top 40 song subject. Vocalist Marvin Gaye, one of Motown Records’ most reliable hitmakers throughout the ’60s, released the ultimate document of early ’70s topical soul with his What’s Going On LP in 1971. The record is significant, first of all, in that it represented a stubborn rejection of the streamlined approach to recordmaking that Motown Records had become famous for. After label head Berry Gordy deemed Gaye’s recording of the album’s title track and leadoff single as “uncommercial,” Gaye refused to record again until Gordy released it, which he finally did. The song’s immediate success convinced Gordy to grant Gaye creative freedom to do an entire album.61 The final product emerged as an ethereal, searching meditation on a list of social ills: urban and environmental decay, police brutality, war, poverty, drug addiction, child abandonment. The album spawned three hit singles — “What’s Going On,” “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology),” and “Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler).” Each of these showcased the musical strengths of the album, such as Gaye’s overdubbed vocals which played against each other in alternating registers, and shimmering orchestral sections punctuated by congas, bongos, and other percussion. The album seemed to confirm Nashville station manager Noble V. Blackwell’s earlier assertion to Billboard that “soul music is the conscience of our society.”62 Gaye, along with other soul veterans like Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, and James Brown contributed soundtracks to black action films, which emerged concurrently with the early ’70s influx of topical Top 40 soul. Generally violent, revenge dramas set in urban ghettos, these films featured hard-boiled African Americans as their heroes, standing in direct contrast to the gentlemanly figure of Sidney Poitier, who embodied the Hollywood image of the ideal black leading

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man throughout the ’60s.63 The three most financially successful of these films were Shaft (1971), featuring the explosive adventures of an inner-city, nononsense police detective, while Superfly (1972) and The Mack (1973) told the stories of a coke dealer and a pimp, respectively. These were sympathetic, heroic alpha males who demonstrated an unflappable ability to make the unruly, hostile world around them their own. Other movies, like Coffy (1974) and Cleopatra Jones (1973), featured women in similar roles. “Blaxploitation” became the Hollywood trade paper nickname for these films, and civil rights groups like CORE and the NAACP vigorously protested what they saw as the films’ reliance on negative black stereotypes. These films did, nonetheless, spawn influential soundtracks containing evocative music and socially conscious, inward-looking lyrics. The association of powerful soundtrack albums like Isaac Hayes’ Shaft (1971), Marvin Gaye’s Trouble Man (1972), and especially, Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly (1972) (which offered pointed criticism of the film’s characters) with such exploitative cinema made for what Greil Marcus referred to as a “growing tension” between black films and the

At the time, early ’70s “blaxploitation” movies like The Mack (1973) (left) and Cleopatra Jones (1973) (right) drew criticism for perpetuating and reveling in negative black stereotypes. Cleopatra Jones, incidentally, featured an appearance by legendary disc jockey Frankie Crocker, who made a name for himself at New York City stations WWRL, WMCA, and WBLS.

Isaac Hayes’ Shaft (1971), Marvin Gaye’s Trouble Man (1972), and Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly (1972) soundtrack albums were three valid arguments for the virtues of the otherwise controversial “blaxploitation” film genre. (Above: Curtis Mayfield (left), Isaac Hayes (right).)

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social commentary of early ’70s black music, which brought a “realistic necessity to the pop charts.”64 Marcus points to the Temptations’ unlikely #1 hit from 1972, “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone,” as perhaps the best musical example of this tension. The song features each of the group’s five singers playing the roles of the children, asking their mother concerning the truth about the recently deceased father they never knew. In answer to all of their questions — whether he was a drunk, a pimp, a hustler, a bigamist, or a lying preacher — the mother replies coldly: “Papa was a rollin’ stone / Wherever he laid his hat was his home / And when he died / All he left us was alone.”65 The song is also notable for musical features that were unusual for commercial music at that time. In contrast to Motown hits of old, in which all of the instruments and voices stack up to form a “wall of sound,” “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” utilizes silences and isolated sounds to evoke a feeling of loneliness. The undergirding bass guitar line, for example — which is normally a steady, fluid presence in pop music of the period — divides up into three distinct figures, with the empty space between those three figures adding up to a total of 12 beats. The song also features ultra-spare percussion, keeping a faint but steady pulse. Electric guitar, trumpet, and eerie harp parts drop in and out of the production, seeming to exist independently of any of the song’s other components. This sense of pulsating, disembodied sparseness would later appear in the Philadelphia soul of producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, as well as in early disco.

B(L)ACKLASH Gamble and Huff would play a considerable role in turning soul into a steady radio presence as the ’70s progressed. Before this, though, a feeling existed in the early ’70s that soul music itself was in danger of going extinct due to its apparent decline in airplay on Top 40 and MOR stations. This so-called “backlash” (or “blacklash”66) smoldered as a hotly debated topic in early ’70s soul circles. “Pop radio has not really opened its doors to soul music,” said Billboard’s Buddy Low flatly.67 “It’s not that the charts do not list soul records or that Top 40 radio stations are not playing them,” wrote Ed Ochs. “It’s a matter of ‘as many and degree’ and missing, moreover, is the spirit of responsibility towards an inevitable and judicious representation of blacks in a truly popular music.”68 Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records claimed that soul was “on the decline” due to low airplay. “The radio stations,” he told Billboard, “think they’re reflecting the middle class WASP audience who don’t want to hear the noise of the ghetto or be reminded of the breaking of windows in Watts.”69 Another factor holding up the success of black music, said Roulette Vice President Joe Kosky, was radio programmers who, when recognizing an R&B record as a “hell of a record,” decide to “wait until it makes it black,” rather than trying to break it in pop radio on its own merits. What the stations that discriminate did not seem to

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realize, according to Wexler, was that “black music is not only the source of all this music, it’s the benchmark by which it’s all measured — every singer wants to sound black.”70 Others felt that radio stations themselves were getting increasingly short shrift. KVOV Las Vegas program director Sy Newman complained to Billboard that local hotels were limiting the number of stations that patrons could receive through hotel systems, and that KVOV was among the excluded stations, in spite of the confirmed appeal of black entertainers on the strip.71 San Francisco station KSOL added more fuel to the fire in 1971, when its white owners fired all of its black disc jockeys, hired a new group of white disc jockeys, and changed its format to MOR.72 The switch prompted a court challenge from black community groups in the area, who thought it raised a “precedential question about changes in a radio music format becoming a ‘public interest’ problem in which the FCC would have to take action.” Foreshadowing the deregulation era, which was still ten years away, the FCC held that the “complete change in KSOL programming raised no public interest questions.” The FCC’s Nicholas Johnson dissented, pointing out that when classical station WGKA Atlanta changed to a rock format, the commission granted a hearing when a mere 16 people protested.73 The shaky ground on which soul radio seemed to stand was brought into sharp focus by a couple of Billboard articles within a five-week period. On February 6, the magazine ran a feature on Philadelphia soul station WDAS. Titled “Soul Radio is Here to Stay,” it quoted assistant general manager LeBaron Taylor as saying “soul radio has survived, and is surviving, in spite of changes in the listening habits of Americans coast-to-coast.” The secret to the station’s success, Taylor added, was the fact that “black listeners are more loyal than white listeners and they tend to be faithful.” Moreover, his statement that “most stations became soul music stations because they failed at everything else” seemed to bear witness of soul radio’s invincibility. A mere five weeks later, the following headline appeared in Billboard: “WDAS-FM Format Change to Media-Collective.” The article revealed the term “media-collective” to be a euphemism for MOR. Although the station, which kept Taylor on board, eventually settled back into a format he called “black progressive” and went on to play

Reggie Lavong of Capitol Records speaks on “How to Combat the Continuing Reaction Against Soul Radio” at the 1970 Billboard Annual Radio Programming Forum.74

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a key role in popularizing “Philly Soul,” such volatile headlines hardly eased the perception of a soul crisis.75 Of course, other equally prominent opinions existed regarding the “backlash,” which also appeared in the pages of Billboard. Reggie Lavong, the black vice president of R&B marketing for Capitol Records called it “unrealistic, reactionary and an unfortunate phrase for normal fluctuation in the music industry.”76 San Francisco Chronicle and Rolling Stone columnist Ralph J. Gleason, in response to Jerry Wexler, pointed out that the singles chart that appeared in the very issue of Billboard in which Wexler complained about the backlash showed seven out of the Top 10 to be black artists. The only discernable problem, Gleason suggested, was that none of them belonged to Wexler’s own label, Atlantic.77 A less amusing response came from Skip Broussard, a Caucasian, at progressive rock station WKON in Nashville, who concluded that although the backlash controversy certainly had merit, it simply reflected a rise in the popularity of progressive rock and a general, “psychological” rejection of soul. “The Negro wants to be a first class citizen,” said Broussard. “He’s dropping a lot of his old habits.”78 While evidence was hardly necessary, a subsequent report in Billboard by Ed Ochs and Don Ovens disproved hypotheses like Broussard’s. Citing data from Billboard’s chart research department, the report revealed that although a relatively small amount of soul product was indeed being added to Top 40 playlists, soul product had been nonetheless “parlaying heavy pop dealer sales.” Because pop stations had never actually been in the business of breaking black records, the report indicated that soul stations were like Top 40 stations “in their own right,” offering solid competition for Top 40 stations in many markets, while dominating in others. Soul singles, too, were selling well, and dealers stocked them according to local soul station chart data, indicating that the soul radio industry seemed to be in quite good health. “Soul is in a bullish cycle,” the report stated, adding credence to the backlash theory.79

THE HARVARD REPORT Another far more legendary report supported the claims of Ochs and Ovens. From 1967 to 1973, Clive Davis served as president of CBS Records, the mightiest record company in America. Immediately after his ascendance, Davis began pursuing and signing rock ’n’ roll artists such as Santana, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Blood, Sweat and Tears, a risky move at the time for such a conservative label, but profitable nonetheless.80 By 1970, CBS’s market share had risen from 13 percent in 1967 to 22 percent, with profits exceeding $15 million.81 “I felt a revolution in the making,” wrote Davis, who paints a fairly convincing picture of just how difficult it likely was to convince the already profitable label to buy into rock.82 Some even point to Clive Davis as being a contributing force in pop music’s seeming diversity between 1970 and 1973 — during those years he had engineered an influential policy that allowed various

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divisions to compete with one another, therefore fostering market diversity. But the labels’ accountants eventually saw such “in-firm competition” as “wasteful, inefficient, and unnecessary.” Commentators like Richard G. Peterson and David G. Berger, at least, saw CBS’s ouster of Davis in 1973 for the mishandling of company funds as nothing more than the label’s not-so-subtle seizure of “central control over the creative process.”83 A prime example of such Davis-era diversification came in the form of an aggressive, profitable campaign to move CBS into the soul music market. “There suddenly seemed to be a greater receptivity to R&B crossovers,” Davis wrote, citing the success of Isaac Hayes’ Shaft soundtrack as his revelatory moment. “I asked for some market research on this, and it became clear that black audiences — mostly singles consumers until now — were buying more and more albums.”84 The research Davis requested fell into his lap on May 11, 1972, and went by the title of “A Study of the Soul Music Environment Prepared for the Columbia Records Group,” as prepared by the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration.85 Journalist Nelson George writes about the “Harvard Report” as a document with sinister origins. For a period of six months during the summer of 1971, he writes, “record retailers, deejays and program directors at R&B stations, and talent managers in the Boston area received phone calls and requests for information from — they could hardly believe it — the Harvard University Business School.” When the interviewees were told it had something to do with Columbia Records, some of them, doubtless, saw it as a “sign of black progress that the nation’s most prestigious business school was interested in them.” It was, as a matter of fact, but not for reasons the interviewees had fantasized. “Claiming to

A 1972 Cash Box editorial, discussing the “boom in ‘black music’,” pointed to the “increasing importance of black-oriented radio stations,” many of which were “competing effectively for share-of-audience with their Top 40 counterparts” due to their willingness to operate on a “less restricted programming schedule.”

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be the ‘result of an investigation’ on soul music and ‘analyses of relevant data,’” George continues, “the so-called ‘Harvard Report’ has since come to symbolize the cold, hard role business plays in shaping popular culture.”86 The report informed Davis that not only was the market ripe and ready, but that his label’s previous efforts to do so had been inadequate, and organizational changes — such as the enlisting of more African American professionals — were in order. (The soul industry, it said, perceived CBS as “an ultra-rich, ultra-white giant which has for the most part chosen to snub blacks in the business.”)87 The “critical link” to record sales, the report advised, was radio: “First, it provides access to a large and growing record buying public, namely, the Black consumer. Second, and for some of the record companies more important, it is perhaps the most effective way of getting a record to a Top 40 playlist.”88 As for the large record companies like Motown, Atlantic, and Stax, which had already acquired a “deep understanding” of the soul market’s subtleties, they would be CBS’s toughest competition, it warned. In fact, those labels were poised to challenge CBS on its own turf as they were well-equipped to “graduate their soul artists into other markets, such as Middle of the Road and Pop,” something Motown artists Stevie Wonder and Diana Ross were demonstrating spectacularly.89 None of this information, of course, would have been news to some of CBS’s competitors. Even in the midst of the “backlash” scare, industry professionals like Atlantic’s Jerry Wexler took heart in the fact that record sales, at least, were remaining steady. “Wexler Attributes Greater R&B Volume to Black Buyer,” read a 1971 Billboard headline. “Black music is too potent, too powerful,” the article quoted Wexler, seeming to have calmed down since his recent Billboard outburst, as saying. “Something inside us responds to black music and it will not be denied.”90 Record producer Al Bell asserted that “Blacks, regardless of income, buy more records and record playing equipment and spend more money for entertainment than anyone else in the major markets.”91 Regardless of what such competitors had felt about the soul situation during the backlash, though, the Harvard Report had fulfilled its mission for CBS. By the following year, CBS had regained its position as leader in both the album and singles markets.92 In an interview with Cash Box early in 1973, Davis stressed the “crossover approach” for his label’s black acts as an important factor in their current success. “What we’re starting to do is to take the same care as we do in product in building the images of these artist so they do not just appeal to the black market,” he said. Davis, thus, would mimic the strategy of Berry Gordy, who saw to it that his artists began showcasing in clubs not normally associated with black performers. “They’ll play the Apollo, but they’ll also play the Whiskey and the Troubadour and indeed, even Winterland.”93 This policy would contribute to the establishment of a “universal audience” for all of the label’s pop acts, and also the breaking down of barriers that not only “saw black artists and producers previously pigeon-hole themselves with few exceptions,” but which might have excluded “white-oriented acts” like Santana and Janis Joplin from the “black music” market.94

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MAKING IT MELLOW Coincidentally enough, the Harvard study reached Davis around the same time Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff called him from Philadelphia. Under a series of independent production deals, the two had been producing steady hits for artists such as Jerry Butler, the Delfonics and the Intruders, establishing them as one of the country’s most successful African American production teams. After learning of their desire to work with a large-scale label that could provide reliable, long-term distribution, Davis agreed to sign them. Gamble and Huff gave their new label under CBS the name of Philadelphia International, and before the year was over, they had sold 10 million singles, including Billy Paul’s “Me and Mrs. Jones,” Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes’ “If You Don’t Know Me By Now,” and the Spinners’ “I’ll Be Around” — all of which featured lush, sophisticated string-laden arrangements (“urbane glossiness,” said Jim Miller), and all of which spawned respectable album sales. Motown met its match — the “Sound of Philadelphia” had arrived, and Billboard’s easy listening chart awaited with open arms.95 Notwithstanding its essentially soft features, the music Gamble and Huff produced qualified as message music, addressing their perceived black audiences even while crossing over to white audiences with ease. This was evident in their earliest hits for CBS — the O’Jays’ “Back Stabbers” and “For the Love of Money.” Other tracks, such as Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes’ “Wake Up Everybody” and another O’Jays’ track, “Love Train,” strove for social uplift, while other minor hits, like Billy Paul’s “Am I Black Enough for You” addressed Black Power, and Joe Simon’s “I Found My Dad” discussed the broken family epidemic in a similar vein as the Temptations’ “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone.” The overall success of Gamble and Huff ’s “Philadelphia Sound,” however, indicated that soul had found its way back into the mainstream. “The clearest trend in the Top 100 thus far,” said Cash Box in late 1972, “has been the

John A. Jackson’s A House on Fire provides an in-depth look at the key personalities behind the “rise and fall” of Philadelphia soul. (Above: The O’Jays.)

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increasing pop acceptance of soul music at the very top of the charts.” Touting the broadness of the musical form, the magazine pointed out recent successes of black music with an MOR slant (the 5th Dimension, Roberta Flack), as well as that which appealed to the progressive rock market (Sly and the Family Stone, War). These successes showed that while soul was “still concerned with its roots,” the editorial continued, the marketplace was “willing to accept a large part of it in dilluted form.”96 Equally important to the boom in black music, said the same magazine the following month, were black-oriented radio stations that were “competing effectively for share-of-audience with their Top 40 counterparts” by “operating on a less restricted programming schedule” and affording a broader interpretation of what qualified for airplay, thereby introducing more new music to listeners.97 For some, soul music was taking on a more “dilluted form” in general, and not for the better. In 1973, the soul pages of Billboard again began to murmur. “The beat of the black man has become refined, polished, modified, and now softened,” opined Billboard soul columnist Eliot Tiegel. “Today’s black music is a kind of sweet, sugary pop version of a story about love and the human experience, but not necessarily about the ‘Black experience.’”98 Nostalgic feelings for the days of an isolated black music industry, free from meddlesome, whitening influences (albeit only one year gone), seemed to be wafting in. “There remains very much confusion as to what soul music is all about,” wrote Billboard columnist LeRoy Robinson. “Someone has cleverly taken possession of this important black music form so as to exclude the progenitors.”99 As a matter of fact, soul radio seemed to be getting a dose of the “feminine format” treatment. Shelly Heber pointed out that male groups dominated the upper regions of the soul chart, and that the “predominant feel of the chart leans towards a soft, romantic sound.”100 20th Century Records president Ros Regan seemed to reinforce Heber’s findings by declaring that soul’s best “formula” for eliciting strong audience ratings was to “use material which appeals to young girls,” because when it came to records, Regan asserted, black men usually bought only what their women liked.101 By the mid-’70s, black stations seemed to be sounding so much like MOR and Top 40 stations that Cash Box, having recently published editorials about the lessons the entire industry could learn from black radio and its flexible programming approaches, felt obligated to chime in once again. “Black music radio has been one of the vital growth factors on the radio scene,” went the editorial, “but their lists are becoming tighter.” Black music radio, it continued, “can no longer be identified solely as the outlet for ‘crossover hits,’ but as an entity for the exposure of music that breeds its own success.” While the extensive airplay for such Top 40 hits as Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets” and Eric Clapton’s “I Shot the Sheriff ” on black radio were boosting profits, it did so at the expense of bringing exciting new music into the world, wrote the editorialist. Cash Box, in other words, was urging black radio to sacrifice profits for musical integrity.102 For certain black artists, though, the real musical integrity lay in abolishing labels and formats altogether, “dilution” or not. Curtis Mayfield told Billboard

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in 1970 that “the only label that has ever bothered me was one particular label and that is R&B, which tends to break down an individual or group or whatever it may be as being black.”103 Willie Mitchell, producer for singer Al Green, who sent a dozen of his minimalist soul classics into the Top 40 during the early ’70s, saw the new pop-orientation of R&B as progress. “We’ve gone way up in black records,” he told Dede Babney at Record World. “The records have become more unique; more concerned about going pop . . . in a very short time I think all music companies will disregard the term R&B.”104 Thom Bell, songwriter and producer for the Stylistics concurred: “There is no such thing as R&B, that’s just the way it’s been categorized,” he said. “When you start categorizing that means you don’t know much about what you are trying to find out.”105 It was understandably hard at this time for soul enthusiasts not to feel as though the music was selling out. Not only did CBS’s “Philly soul,” despite a promising start, seem to be squelching a Top 40 run of politically outspoken soul, but James Brown, that musical icon of black pride, ended up endorsing Nixon during the 1972 election campaign. An aura of resignation accompanied this, particularly in light of the fact that only two years earlier Brown had told Rolling Stone magazine: “Me and Nixon don’t get along. He asked me to go along to Memphis in the campaign. I don’t want to be his bullet proof vest.”106 A meeting with Robert J. Brown, special assistant to the president, who had met the entertainer while traveling to promote the president’s push for black capitalism, prompted a change in his thinking. “You can either try to get inside and have some influence, or you can stay outside and be pure and powerless,” explained Brown, himself a businessman. “I’m not selling out. I’m buying in. Dig it?”107 Although he refused to play Nixon’s inauguration, Brown’s loss of political credibility seemed to have negatively affected his commercial momentum — his lone Top 40 hit in 1974 would be his last before a 12-year dry spell.108 According to historians Robert E. Weems and Lewis A. Randolph, Nixon developed his “black capitalism” initiative in hopes he could subvert Black Power, which he increasingly feared to be a serious internal security threat. The

James Brown, in his 1986 autobiography writes that his 1972 endorsement of Richard Nixon likely had a permanently damaging effect on his “black audience,” many of whom never forgave him.

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initiative, they say, was like a domestic adaptation of détente, his well-known foreign policy which sought to “contain” the Soviet Union and China. Nixon encouraged blacks to go into business by making small business loans available through the newly established Minority Business Development Agency, and also set in motion an Affirmative Action plan that would offer apprenticeships to black workers in union jobs. A leading critic of this initiative, however, was African American economist Andrew F. Brimmer, also a member of the Federal Reserve System Board of Governors. “The only really promising path to equal opportunity for Negroes in business as in other aspects of economic activity lies in full participation in an integrated, national economy,” wrote Brimmer in The Nation’s Business. “It cannot be found in a backwater of separatism and segregation.”109 In spite of such skepticism, Nixon did, at least, accomplish his alleged goal of redirecting, somewhat, the attentions of African Americans. Businessman Earl Graves’ Black Enterprise magazine, which he began publishing in 1970, appeared to reflect this cultural shift as it morphed into a multimillion dollar enterprise itself over the course of the decade.110

DISCO By the mid-1970s, the majority of Top 40 soul reflected the changing political climate by turning away from matters social to matters sexual, reverting back to its familiar role as America’s musical libido. Motown’s Marvin Gaye demonstrated this most conspicuously. The anguished, forthright social commentary of his What’s Going On carried over into his follow-up, the 1972 Trouble Man soundtrack. But the following year he released Let’s Get it On, an album as remarkable for its sexuality as it was for its about-face from the political direction Gaye had seemed to be heading toward and to which he would never return. One could argue that this simply marked an era of sex-as-politics, nodding to funk-pioneer

Funk in the ’70s, as Nelson George suggests in his Death of Rhythm and Blues (1988), gave listeners “an amusing way of thumbing one’s nose” at “funkless black music.” (Above: Funkadelic.)

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George Clinton and his flamboyant P-Funk projects. The primary purpose of “P-Funk” — an umbrella term for several groups formed by Clinton, including Funkadelic (a rock-oriented outfit influenced by Sly and the Family Stone) and Parliament — summed itself up in an early album title: Free Your Mind . . . And Your Ass Will Follow. Live “P-Funk” shows featured outrageous costumes and eye-popping stage props, like the giant “mothership” that arrived from the “planet funk” during performances. Nelson George suggests that P-Funk provided for fans “an amusing way of thumbing one’s nose” at “funkless black music,” and perhaps because of this, P-Funk never performed as well on the pop charts during its heyday as its “funkless” counterparts who were recording disco.111 Disco clearly evolved from the work of Gamble and Huff, taking the production duo’s lush arrangements and steady grooves, and transforming them into thudding, string-drenched frenzies tailor-made for the burgeoning urban discotheques of the early ’70s.112 This sound, which would dominate the airwaves in the late ’70s, made itself manifest earlier in the decade on hit singles like the Love Unlimited Orchestra’s “Love’s Theme” (a Barry White production), M.F.S.B’s “T.S.O.P. (The Sound of Philadelphia)” (familiar to many as the Soul Train TV show theme), Van McCoy’s “The Hustle,” and Gloria Gaynor’s version of the Jackson 5 hit, “Never Can Say Goodbye.” Certain industry insiders felt some discomfort about disco’s mid-’70s momentum from the outset. “The industry may have created a ‘monster’ which is in danger of being more injurious than good for business,” read a 1975 Cash Box editorial. “As it stands today, disco music is developing to a state that encourages monotony of sound [and] a near-Muzak quality.” As for record companies, the editorialist continued, they should “keep the discos in perspective as one avenue of exposure for their music, but should be careful not to overdo it to the point that it interferes with the task of recording good music of all styles.”113 What Cash Box described as disco’s “near-Muzak” quality had to do with the genre’s perceived negative technological and hypnotic musical aspects. Skunk Baxter, guitarist for Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers called it the “antithesis of what music used to be,” mere “accompaniment” that served as an “anthem of alienation.” Album rock radio staple Tom Petty openly derided the genre, calling it “trance music” whose success “infuriate[d]” him.114 While such theories fueled the “Disco Sucks” rallying cry among the white male album rock radio audience (discussed in Chapter 3), other prominent white rockers like the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, the Kinks, Paul McCartney, Queen, and Kiss openly explored disco’s musical and commercial potential with varying results. Chic’s seminal 1977 debut single, “Dance Dance Dance (Yowsah Yowsah Yowsah),” serves as a classic example of disco’s strengths and weaknesses, depending on one’s point of view. Because disco flourished in the 12-inch singles format — LP-sized records containing one song per side — a single disco song could carry on way beyond a 7-inch record’s standard 2–4 minutes. “Dance Dance Dance” clocked in at 8 minutes and 30 seconds, and contained other key

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Caucasian Album Rockers with Disco Hits Rolling Stones — “Miss You” (1978) Rolling Stones — “Emotional Rescue” (1979) Paul McCartney — “Goodnight Tonight” (1979) Pink Floyd — “Another Brick in the Wall” (1979) Kiss — “I Was Made for Loving You” (1979) Queen — “Another One Bites the Dust” (1979) The Kinks — “(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman” (1979)

disco elements: A thudding, repititious beat, anonymous, chant-like vocals, and orchestral string flourishes weaving in and out of the proceedings. “It all sounds the same,” said Chicago “Disco Demolition Night” DJ Steve Dahl, speaking for one particular contingent of fed up radio listeners.115 Disco earned its good standing with record labels, though, because it sold so well through airplay in discotheques, needing little, if any, promotional help from the labels themselves. The genre thrived in the mid-’70s, doing booming business in an era otherwise characterized by a sluggish economy. Among the most successful disco labels was Casablanca, run by former bubblegum king Neil Bogart. The label housed key artists such as Donna Summer, whose “Love to Love You Baby” and “I Feel Love” became early disco anthems with their relentlessly pulsating beats and moaning sexuality. The Village People, a troupe of singing and dancing men, dressed as campy gay stereotypes who symbolized the genre’s association with gay pride. This rather quirky genre, though, which eventually attracted unreasonable levels of hostility from its detractors, tended to present itself, or merely stand in for, the official late ’70s version of soul and the rightful heir to that genre’s traditional audience. There were good reasons for this general perception, chief among them being disco’s powerful presence on Billboard’s R&B charts. Even so, disco had become an irritant to those who identified deeply with “authentic” soul.116

ASSIMILATION Some historians of African American popular music have, not without justification, viewed the early ’70s as a moment when soul and R&B lost their way. As the music found unprecedented, widespread success as crossover material for dominant MOR and Top 40 stations, and therefore found itself assimilated into the American mainstream, it ran the risk of losing some of its African American individuality. The marriage of CBS with Gamble and Huff, for example, gave birth to disco, perhaps the most aggressively commercialized genre of the decade. Commercial forces, in fact, eventually inflated disco to the point that it completely overshadowed certain key elements of soul’s roots. These commercial

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forces worked toward disconnecting soul, writes Mark Anthony Neal, from its “organic sources,” which often “sought to invest the tradition with a highly politicized and critical consciousness.”117 Nelson George evokes Amiri Baraka, who had said the following in the early ’60s: Negro music is always radical in the context of formal American culture. What has happened is that there are many more Negroes, jazz musicians and otherwise, who have moved successfully into the featureless syndrome of that culture, who can no longer realize the basic social and emotional philosophy that has traditionally informed Afro-American music.118

George’s own summation of Gamble and Huff ’s Philadelphia International label goes like this: “Assimilation worked, especially for a nationalistic capitalist who could write hit songs.”119 George also lays the blame for R&B’s “death” in the ’70s on powerful FM radio programmers like Frankie Crocker who experimented with playlists to the extent, perhaps, of denigrating the entire genre. A legendary New York City disc jockey who made a name for himself in the ’50s, Crocker programmed WBLS throughout the decade and helped turn the station into a ratings powerhouse. In order to accomplish this, however, he diluted the station’s trademark classic jazz and vintage soul offerings with commercial jazz-fusion along with black pop music — especially the kind that had been performing well on the Billboard charts. Crocker’s criteria for whether or not a song received airplay, said George, depended entirely on record sales and nightclub popularity. Crocker called the format the “the total black experience in sound,” and the station ranked as one of New York’s top three stations by 1975.120 In order to stay competitive, though, Crocker slowly but surely started to add white artists into the mix, such as Elton John, Bette Midler, Hall and Oates, and the Bee Gees, who had performed most of the disco music that appeared on the 1977 mega-hit Saturday Night Fever soundtrack album. Crocker’s reasons for doing this, George writes, was to “increase the percentage of white artists played, and in turn, the number of white listeners, and ultimately, white advertising dollars without losing the black audience base.” According to a later interview with Radio and Records, though, Crocker said his programming decisions had to do with his audience’s self-image in relation to white audiences. “Black people turned on where they worked,” Crocker explained, “because there wasn’t somebody coming on with jive talk, selling roaches and cheap wine and saying you didn’t need any credit and other people laughing and them feeling ashamed of the kinds of music they want.” The crossover playlists, said Crocker, had the same effect on his audiences that the urbane, well-spoken disc jockeys had. “Black audiences were proud,” he said, “that the people on the radio were intelligent and could speak to them and could speak to anybody.”121 Around this same time, the Howard University station WHUR, once known for its free formats and active politics, mellowed into a ballad-oriented R&B/jazz

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Smokey Robinson’s A Quiet Storm (1975) set the mold for an entire alternate R&B genre, along with accompanying radio formats, which developed concurrently with disco — neither of which seemed to build on the searching identity-consciousness of early ’70s soul.

fusion station similar to WBLS in New York. WHUR called this new format “quiet storm,” named after a popular 1975 Smokey Robinson ballad. With their benign, adult contemporary playlists, WHUR and numerous other “quiet storms” broke nationwide. African American music scholar William Barlow added his voice to this development’s dissenters in 1990. “Crossover is not balanced,” he wrote. “Many more white musicians are featured on urban contemporary stations than black artists on rock-formatted outlets.” “But, more important,” said Barlow, “this crossover tendency, like the integration policies of the past two decades, assimilates only the most successful and privileged black artists and disc jockeys into the mainstream of corporate America.” The crossover phenomenon, consequently, “draws valuable personnel and resouces away from the black community, and from the collective task of building a self-sufficient culture for the masses who are still relegated to the margins of American society, and have little chance of crossing over into the mainstream.”122 Whether or not crossover formatting practices compromised soul’s individuality, it certainly did boost the music to comparatively stunning levels of success. And if music only qualifies as “Negro” when it is radical, as Amiri Baraka put it, could his oft-quoted line also be understood as meaning that all manner of African American musical expression, even that which the white American cultural mainstream has fully embraced, qualifies as radical just by being there?

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Were the politically charged Top 40 singles of the early ’70s any less “Negro” for having crossed over? Gamble and Huff may well have appeared to be pawns in a white man’s game, but did they play no role in breaking down any barriers?123 Was Curtis Mayfield any less “Negro” for wishing the R&B label didn’t exist?124 And do the words of pioneering black music scholar Albert Murray, who wrote of the blues as race-neutral, characterizing its performances as “rituals of elegant endeavor and perseverance in unfavorable circumstances” apply here?125 If crossover radio success shut down a distinctly identity-conscious era for soul and helped the genre settle back down into the mainstream, it also made such questions all the more compelling. From a present-day perspective, when music either generated by African Americans or directly infuenced by African American traditions, i.e. R&B or hip-hop, regularly account for a majority of the nation’s most popular songs (and when an African American, no less, serves as President of the United States), to imagine a time when the future health of “black music” wallowed in any kind of uncertainty requires some doing.126 Although the extent to which early ’70s formatting practices helped or hurt the music’s quality is open for debate, they certainly did demonstrate its enormous, wide-ranging popularity and profit potential. It was a lesson the first programmers of cable television’s Music Television (MTV) had to learn all over again in the disco backlash ashes of the early ’80s. Their glaring preference for Caucasian rock at the conspicuous expense of all things African American became an indefensible embarrassment by the time of the concurrent arrivals of (1) the Michael Jackson Thriller tsunami and (2) rap, more commonly known today as hip-hop. So all-pervasive is “black music” today with its numerous sub-genres and audience niches that the early ’70s radio industry’s efforts to understand the music along with its audiences might strike us as simplistic, if not archaic. We can credit those very efforts, though, for our comparative level of enlightenment.

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Chapter 5

What Is Truth Country Radio’s Growing Pains As new formats sprouted up across radio dials at the dawn of the ’70s, Top 40 and underground rock disc jockeys began converting to formats like country in order to find work. The country format, in fact, was gathering so much momentum in the early ’70s that stations needed all the help they could get. According to a 1977 study by the radio research firm McGavren-Guild, the market share of country stations had gone up by 52.3 percent in only five years. Many a country station thus found it necessary to hire disc jockeys with experience in Top 40 programming, even if they had no genuine background or interest in country at all.1 According to KBBQ Burbank general manager Bill Ward, 95 percent of radio stations playing country music circa 1970 “came in the back door” because they had failed at everything else. Speaking at the annual broadcaster’s meeting of the Country Music Association that year, Ward expressed the view that the “best type of air personality” for country radio was “a Top 40 jock from the midwest” who would, at very least, “know how to pronounce Red Sovine’s name.” Although many a rock ’n’ roll disc jockey was converted to country in the early ’70s, a look back at this era of country/rock hybrid formats, such as “cross country” and “progressive country,” indicates that those disc jockeys may have been doing a bit of proselytizing of their own.2 This new influx of rock ’n’ roll disc jockeys into country radio was merely a symptom of big changes going on in country, an industry that had been managing to keep its sales and airplay charts relatively safe from “crossover” invasions from as far back as the late ’50s. Eventually, social realities like the civil rights unrest in the South and the Vietnam War, for which the country audience maintained a widespread perception of adamant support, isolated country from the rest of the pop music world. By the late ’60s and early ’70s, though, a large-scale identity crisis had taken hold of America, and one can get a sense of its near stomach-churning effects when reading the era’s music trades, which ping-ponged between (1) predicting the death of country as we’d known it, and (2) heralding its miraculous recovery. With seeming abandon, country 155

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format radio (as did every other format during this era), experimented with playlists in an effort to build its listenership and eventually nudge itself into the profitable mainstream. Happening at a moment Bruce J. Schulman has called the “reddening of America,” which saw a distinct rise in southern cultural and political influence, country radio’s mid-’70s arrival as an American success story may appear, in retrospect, to have simply resulted from changing times. The journey was far from smooth, though, and country radio’s power to instigate cultural change ought not to be underestimated.

THE EMERGENCE OF COUNTRY RADIO George D. Hay virtually defined country radio in the mid-’20s when his two programs, The Grand Ole Opry and The National Barn Dance, quickly developed wide national followings.4 Hay was so adept at attracting audiences for his programs that one imagines that — had he wanted to — he could have nurtured his shows’ performers into American mainstream “crossover” success stories at will. But in fact, Hay worked hard to preserve the “down-home atmosphere” of his performers and shows, featuring old-time fiddle music and continually reminding his performers to “keep it down to earth.”5 He chose names for his string bands that evoked vivid, rustic images, such as the Skillet Lickers, the Possum Hunters, and the Fruit Jar Drinkers.6 The formula was simple, the response was overwhelming, and Opry performers stood out as ragtag alternatives to mainstream popular performers such as Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters. This is not to say that other early country performers had not entered the mainstream themselves — in 1925, Texas singer Vernon Dalhart’s “The Prisoner’s Song” became the biggestselling non- holiday record of the pre- 1955 era, and “singing brakeman” Jimmie Rodgers

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The Compton Brothers, who cracked the country Top 20 with twangy cover versions of the Coasters’ “Charlie Brown” and Jumpin’ Gene Simmons’ “Haunted House” in 1969, also demonstrated country/rock hybridity with their hair.3

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Grand Ole Opry string bands like the Skillet Lickers, the Possum Hunters, the Fruit Jar Drinkers, and Curly Williams and the Georgia Peach Pickers followed George D. Hay’s instructions to “keep it down to earth.” Above: The Opry cast circa 1944.8

reached the #2 position for record sales in both Billboard and Variety as early as 1928.7 Country radio continued this way, airing live radio programs along with recordings by popular performers like Rodgers until the 1950s, which was a boom decade for American radio in general. In the late ’40s and early ’50s, radio stations with all-country formats began appearing, such as “Pappy” Dave Stone’s KDAV in Lubbock (founded in 1953 and widely accepted as the first one), most of which took their cues from the early Opry and the popular barn dances.9 These stations also aired a wide array of “honky-tonk,” Western swing, folk, and bluegrass, with an emphasis on local talent. But soon enough, with the onset of Top 40 formatting, country radio became more standardized than ever. Among the earliest all-country stations to be noticeably affected by Top 40 was KRAK in Sacramento, California, where program manager Joe Allison applied the approach in 1962 with impressive financial results. KRAK soon became a tightly formatted country station with professional-sounding disc jockeys and consistent playlists.10 As was the case with any true Top 40 station, management controlled most of KRAK’s musical output.11 In the general radio arena, one of the Top 40 format’s apparent virtues was that it provided, however superficial, a coherent picture of American popular music in all of its variety. In the case of an already distinct genre like country, though, the adoption of Top 40 formatting methods had a more dramatic effect. The efforts of Top 40 country radio stations like KRAK to attract as wide a listenership as possible, for example, made for a willingness on the part of programmers to incorporate an influx of slickly produced country songs that effectively diluted much of the earthiness commonly associated with the genre. Gone from country radio by the early ’60s were the homegrown skillet

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lickers of old. Also gone from the airwaves were old-time fiddle music, Western swing, country gospel, and bluegrass. While musicians such as Western swing’s Bob Wills and bluegrass’s Bill Monroe never lost their status as revered icons of tradition, radio programmers’ new interest in more contemporary sounds edged Wills’ and Monroe’s genres off of country playlists for good.12 While programmers pruned most of the music’s raw edges in favor of smooth background choruses and strings, the glossed-over format itself became a paradoxical emblem of authenticity to programmers. This was most evident in the country record industry’s response to the rise in popularity of rockabilly. Described by country historian John Morthland as “white, southern rock ’n’ roll,”13 Elvis Presley’s unique sound popularized the entire rockabilly genre when Sam Phillips of Sun Records released his 1954 single “That’s All Right,” backed with “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” This music, along with much of what Presley recorded throughout the rest of his career, also had unmistakable R&B/gospel elements, such as a hard, swinging rhythm and wailing, unrestrained vocals. Phillips, in fact, famously conceptualized Presley as the “white man with the Negro sound and the Negro feel” who could earn him “a billion dollars.”14 But the singer’s early personal trademarks became essential components of the rockabilly idiom — trebly guitar lines, stuttering vocals, swiveling hips. The advent of country format radio and its eventual phasing-out of Presley all too easily suggests conspiratorial scenarios featuring politically minded schemesters in headsets, aiming to shape popular taste at the drop of a needle. In the case of Elvis Presley and the first rock ’n’ roll invasion of country, though, these scenarios don’t seem entirely preposterous. Since Presley’s emergence in 1954, before the days of Top 40-style country formatting, the singer held a steady residence on country music charts and radio playlists. The problem was that in

Chris Lane, program director of WJJD in Chicago, applied the Top 40 approach to country with great success in 1965. “We screen our music like crazy,” Lane told Billboard’s Ray Brack, a tactic that resulted in a listenership with “no line as to education, economics, or cultural background.”15 Top row (left to right): WJJD disc jockeys Don Chapman, Roy Stingley, Bob Lockwood, Chris Lane, John Trotter, Stan Scott. Bottom row (left to right): Unidentified model, Buck Owens, Del Reeves.

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Elvis Presley’s Billboard country chart performance seemed to correlate directly with formatting trends in the commercial radio industry. Between 1960 (“Are You Lonesome Tonight,” #22), when Top 40 programming techniques were kicking into high gear, and 1970 (“Don’t Cry Daddy,” #13), a year of unprecedented playlist experimentation, Presley never made an appearance in the Billboard country Top 40.16

spite of his ability to generate business instantly, he also introduced complicating factors to the established business of country, which he appeared to be doing not only through his racially color-blind music, but also the unruly, youthful audiences he attracted. Soon enough, a group of country industry insiders pressured Billboard in a letter to the editor not to list any artists (i.e. Presley) who were influenced by rhythm and blues music on the country charts. A Billboard editorial suggested the signers of the letter were overreacting, reminding its readers that those who resist giving a consumer “what he wants may be well-intentioned, but they will lose out to someone who will.”17 Country consumers, it turned out, coincidentally lost interest in Presley in 1960, which was evident in the simple black-and-white fact that during that year — eerily coinciding with the advent of Top 40-style formatting in country radio — he had dropped out of the country singles chart’s upper regions until 1970.18 Whether or not artists such as Presley were, indeed, actively being purged from country radio playlists, the country music industry did successfully navigate its way through a potentially disruptive identity crisis, settling comfortably into the highly successful, studio-centric, and adult-oriented “Nashville Sound” era throughout most of the ’60s. Characterized by the lushly orchestrated hits of artists like Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline, and Skeeter Davis, country radio exported “crossover” pop hits aplenty during this era, even while keeping its import levels from outside genres closely regulated. Although the “Nashville Sound” was a response, primarily, to rockabilly, it also correlated with the rise — and production values — of producers Owen Bradley and Chet Atkins. Bradley’s work with Patsy Cline for Decca Records, including the hits “Sweet Dreams” and “Crazy,” perhaps represent this era best, with their swirling string arrangements, background vocal choruses, and twinkling piano lines. As for guitar giant Atkins, who became chief of RCA’s country division in Nashville in 1957, his deliberate and prominent usage of orchestras

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R&B legend Ray Charles is a towering exception to the country industry’s apparent closed-door policy concerning crossover imports in the early ’60s. Even so, the songs that placed him on the country charts in the ’60s, taken from his 1962 Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music volumes, treated the “Nashville Sound” with reverence and stand among the most lushly orchestrated recordings in his catalog.

and voice ensembles found enormous crossover success in performers like Jim Reeves, Don Gibson, Floyd Cramer, and Skeeter Davis — whose “End of the World” reached as high as #2 on the pop charts in 1962.19 This “countrypolitan” sound also relied heavily on the systematized involvement of staff songwriters and career studio sidemen, much like the country industry today.20 This new sense of sophistication most certainly helped the country music industry flourish during the early ’60s. Country artists bounced into the pop charts more than ever before, and pop audiences who may have once found the backwoods aura of country off-putting, now found little amiss in these new, polished sounds. In many cases, a slight twang in the lead vocal gave the only hint regarding a record’s Nashville studio origins. True-blue country fans, too, seemed to enjoy the music’s reliability and new-found respectability.21 In the late ’60s and early ’70s, producer and songwriter Billy Sherrill (also head of CBS Records in Nashville) exploited these aspects to such an extent that commercial country and the “Sherrill Sound” became synonymous.22 Signature songs of his, like Tammy Wynette’s “Stand by Your Man” (1968), Tanya Tucker’s “Delta Dawn” (1972), and Charlie Rich’s “Behind Closed Doors” (1973) mixed glittering, tightly arranged studiocraft with more traditional country lyrical themes, all seasoned with a dash of steel guitar.

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CROSSOVER HITS AND PROPHECIES OF DEATH By the end of the ’60s, though, the country industry again reeled with uncertainty, and the chaotic state of commercial radio had much to do with it. First of all, a formatting revolution was underway. Commercial radio industry professionals, experimenting heavily with formats and working overtime to understand and articulate the nature of ever-specific target audiences, began introducing mushy concepts like “blended play,” “Top 40/MOR,” “progressive rock” and “cross country” into the business.23 Second, “free-form” rock formats on the increasingly popular FM band threatened to obliterate format boundaries altogether. Just like it did in the early ’60s, rock now posed a threat to a commercial country genre that already sounded conspicuously non-rural. The country pages of Billboard contained a river of commentary about the impending death of traditional country music at the hands of radio programmers. Wesley Rose, president of the Acuff-Rose song publication company, warned that country stations were “giving the public a bum steer” by ignoring time-tested “hard country” (such as the still-active Roy Acuff and Kitty Wells, as well as the entire bluegrass genre) and favoring unproven artists.24 Nashville-based publicist Paul W. Soelberg pointed to formatting as the heart of the problem, indicating that country would no longer be with us unless “the fan gets adequate opportunity to hear and buy all the country music he wants.”25 Radio programmers often pointed the finger at other programmers. “Programming is what we make it,” warned William Wheately at WWOK in Miami. “The music has become too modern to be called ‘country’ by definitions which have stood the test of time.” Dan McKinnon of KSON San Diego worried that country music was “losing its identity,” while Randall Dickerson of WKGN Knoxville warned of a “strong rebellion” that had “taken over country.”26 In a Record World interview, country music veteran Billy Walker echoed these sentiments. “Your basic country music has about another ten years and it will be out,” he told the publication. “I see a loss of identity coming to country.” As for the frail condition of “basic country,” Walker blamed media gatekeepers who insisted on presenting whitewashed images. Performers who were “good enough to play for the president,” were not “good enough to perform on network talk shows,” said Walker. “They think of us as illiterate stepchildren of southern immorality.”27 A Nashville promotional executive named Chuck Chellman reaffirmed the more common view that rock and soul posed a bigger threat in bringing forth the imminent demise of country than did the occasional dalliance of an MOR vocalist or two. “Nobody fussed when Dean Martin and Al Martino started getting a taste of the country pie,” he told the Music City News. “But do you realize,” he continued, “a couple of major market stations added records by the Chi-Lites and the Rolling Stones? What comes next?”28 The few programmers who openly advocated tinkering with the traditional country sound made it clear they were doing it for business’ sake. Jack Gardiner of KBOX Dallas stood before the Annual Radio Programmers Forum in 1969

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and advocated eliminating the term “country” altogether, because it had been “upgraded” and moved “uptown” by Nashville producers. “Astute radio men come up against that word and completely lose their cool,” he said.29 Jim Harrison at KFOX in Long Beach concurred. “The ‘Ya-all-come’ country framework no longer exists,” he told the audience, encouraging country programmers to keep an eye on the broad, “all impressive 25 to 49 age group,” while making it a point, perhaps, to “play a hymn at least once an hour.”30 While statements like these may have sounded heretical to the “hard country” fan, they certainly reflected the practices of those programmers who were hoping to see their stations turn a profit. “Country music must maintain a level of sophistication if it is to survive,” said KRAK’s Jay Hoffer in 1968. “New listeners are needed for a country station to lift its rating, and those listeners,” he declared, “will not come from country music traditionalists.”31 (Hoffer goes on to suggest moderate doses of artists like Dean Martin and the Byrds.) Lynn Higbee of KCMD in Kansas City, a country/MOR “blended play” format that consistently posted high ratings, derided country radio for “pulling an ostrich maneuver” in an effort to keep country pure. “Their efforts to maintain their ethnic monopoly will probably assure them a share of the audience,” he continued, “but will stifle any opportunity for growth.”32

A 1972 ad for country singer Jerry Wallace depicted him “covering all the bases.”

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Virtually all successful country stations, actually, were either “blending” their formats or favoring songs from established country artists with a more general-appeal sound. Few, however, were eager to admit it to audiences, let alone fellow radio workers, thus tainting their perceived aura of authenticity. This was an ideal climate for programmers with Top 40 or MOR experience who saw the high market potential of country but had no country experience. When Soelberg, in his interview with Billboard, complained of “new programmers” holding the “power of life or death over new records,” he most certainly had such carpetbagging corrupters in mind. “There’s a lot of insecurity in country radio,” he told Billboard. “Many of the people in it don’t know very much about the music and they’re afraid to admit it.”33 In spite of such concerns, “crossing over” had become a primary objective for both the radio and record industries, and a profitable, behind-the-scenes fact of life. A 1972 Billboard advertisement for a new Jerry Wallace single brought this new era into focus: “Jerry Wallace is covering all the bases with ‘To Get To You,’” read the ad copy. A rendering of a baseball diamond surrounded a photo of Wallace, with the words “pop” on first, “MOR” on second, and “country” on third.34 “Country music is slowly, but surely making a firm and quite substantial entry into the pop music field,” reported Billboard’s Claude Hall. “This is nothing new; country artists for years have come up with, occasionally, big pop hits . . . However, today record companies are concentrating on creating cross-over records.”35 Labels, for that matter, were releasing MOR product in traditional country markets and servicing it to country stations, a strategy that helped bring Elvis Presley back from country chart exile in 1970 and garnered country airplay for pop-oriented artists like James Taylor and Helen Reddy.36 To an unprecedented degree, records from the pop charts were actually crossing over into the country charts — a development that had similarly upset the country establishment in the late ’50s. It almost appeared as though relations were thawing in the polarized US, that a form of healthy cultural dialogue was underway, and that subcultures were mingling together the way they were supposed to do in the great American melting pot.

COUNTRY CONSERVATISM AND ISOLATION In his Mind of the South (1941), W. J. Cash calls Southerners “the most sentimental people in history.”37 Adding support to this statement is the Stephen Foster-esque depiction of the South as an idyllic land of fun and comfort, which served as a major recurring theme in country music between World War II and the mid-’50s. Country music scholar Melton McLaurin refers to the image conveyed by the songs from this era as “a slightly more sophisticated version of the Dogpatch” from the Lil’ Abner comic strip. Songs like Hank Williams’ “Jambalaya,” Eddy Arnold’s “Bundle of Southern Sunshine,” and “Tennessee” Ernie Ford’s “Smoky Mountain Boogie” support this observation to great effect.

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Among the very best examples, though, are nine songs Red Foley sent into the Top 10 between 1948 and 1955 with Southern regional references in the titles (“Chattanoogie Shoeshine Boy,” “Tennessee Saturday Night,” “Alabama Jubilee,” “Mississippi,” and “Birmingham Bounce,” to name a few). Foley’s “Tennessee Saturday Night,” a #1 hit released in 1948, is a particularly fine example. It depicts a land hidden by a “bunch of pines” where the “tall corn grows” and where otherwise civilized people “all go native on a Saturday night.” Here in Foley’s South, the “woods are full of couples looking for romance,” who “struggle and shuffle till broad daylight.” Those tempted to make trouble, though, are fully aware that the “other fellow packs a gun” and there’s “gonna be a funeral” if they start a fight.38 Men with white hoods and lynch mobs also quite possibly lurked in those cheerful woods. This was something the 1955 murder of a 14-year-old African American boy named Emmett Till, for allegedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi, brought to Americans’ attention, if it had not already. The incident attracted negative worldwide press and energized the burgeoning civil rights movement. The boiling racial unrest in the Southern US that followed the 1955–56 Montgomery bus boycott and carried over into the early ’70s made the image of a friendly, hospitable South an increasingly tough sell. Images on television and photographs in publications like Life magazine depicted crowds of demonstrators at the mercy of water cannons, tear gas, and attack dogs. They revealed single black females either being chased in the street by white males with baseball bats or shouted down by mobs, while national guardsmen lined the walls of public schools. This era spawned an underground industry of racist country records, most notably those produced by Reb Rebel Records in the late ’60s, such as Johnny Rebel’s “Cajun KKK” and “We Don’t Want Niggers in Our Schools.”39 Country notables like Hank Snow and the Wilburn Brothers, too, openly lent campaign support to the folksy albeit segregationist Alabama governor, George Wallace. This unrest in the South generally made itself felt in country radio through an absence of Foley-style regional celebrations. Songs of exile took their place, where singers yearned for a distant, long-lost home (i.e. Bobby Bare’s “Detroit City,” Merle Haggard’s “Sing Me Back Home”).40 Racial issues penetrated the country singles charts only very rarely. Johnny Cash’s brother Tommy had a #4 hit with “Six White Horses” in 1969, a tribute to the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr., and was the only song that came close. The escalation of the Vietnam War in the mid-’60s fostered an unmistakable sense of political solidarity in the music of hit country, as radio programmers added war singles to their playlists. Between December 1965 and August 1966, as country historian Jens Lund notes, no time existed in which at least four songs about the war were not present in the Billboard country singles chart.41 Among the earliest of these were Johnny Wright’s “Hello Vietnam” and “Keep the Flag Flying,” as well as Dave Dudley’s “What We’re Fighting For.” After these three came the onslaught, including another one by Dudley called “Viet Nam Blues,”

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Jim Reeves’s “Distant Drums,” Marty Robbins’s “Private Wilson White” and Mel Tillis’s “Stateside.”42 In 1966, S.Sgt. Barry Sadler raised the stakes when his “Ballad of the Green Berets” topped the Billboard singles chart and hit #2 on the country chart. Once Sadler broke the ice, a series of increasingly confrontational country hits addressed to those on the other side of the issue surfaced. Among these were Johnny Sea’s “Day for Decision” and Stonewall Jackson’s “The Minute Men are Turning in Their Graves,” each of which decried the lack of patriotism shown by war protestors.43 It was Merle Haggard who released the two most famous anti-protest songs of the period: “Okie from Muskogee” and “The Fightin’ Side of Me.” Recorded in 1969, “Okie from Muskogee” was Haggard’s vision of the ideal, American citizen. “We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee,” went its memorable first line, after which Haggard listed a series of other “don’ts,” such as wearing beads and sandals, burning draft cards, disrespecting the flag, and so on.44 Portraying a steadfast, conservative image of “living right and being free,” the song came out at the height of national conflict over Vietnam and darted to the top of the country singles chart where it remained for four weeks. The song had a dramatic impact on Haggard’s career, making him, in the words of Peter Guralnick, an instant “symbol of the populist backlash” and a “hardhat hero.”45 Haggard’s follow-up single, “The Fightin’ Side of Me,” set his image as a spokesman for the silent majority in stone. While “Okie from Muskogee” painted a somewhat idyllic picture of an imaginary, less complicated America, “The Fightin’ Side of Me” took the form of an outright threat to those who did not live according to that fantasy. “I read about some squirrely guy who claims

The problem with Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee,” said Billboard magazine in 1977, was that “many listeners missed the humorous aspects of the song, and branded Haggard the poet laureate of the right wing.” The article points to Haggard songs like “Irma Jackson,” about an interracial relationship, and “The Farmer’s Daughter” (from his 1971 Hag LP), “which advocates tolerance of many of the elements impugned in ‘Muskogee’” as evidence of Haggard’s “refusal to be pigeonholed, politically or in any other way.”46

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that he just don’t believe in fightin’,” Haggard sang. “And I wonder just how long the rest of us can count on being free.”47 Advising those who were “running down our way of life” to either love America or leave it, the song became one of the most well-known anti-dissent tirades of the Vietnam era. “The Fightin’ Side of Me” followed “Okie from Muskogee” to the top of the charts, and the giant success of the two singles led to his being selected as the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year in 1970.48 Most significantly, he won the endorsement of a new country enthusiast named Richard M. Nixon. During the divisive period of the Vietnam War, President Nixon seized upon country music as an ally who could join him in criticizing protestors and defending “traditional American values.” Nixon consequently staged a series of White House concerts featuring country musicians such as Haggard, Johnny Cash, and Buck Owens.49 For the country music industry, the imprimatur of the US president was good for business as it equated the purchase of country records with a sense of patriotic duty. As one Harper’s writer snidely put it, “he who does not like country music does not stand up for the flag and, therefore, is not a good American.”50 Not surprisingly, Nixon journeyed to Nashville in 1974, in the midst of the Watergate crisis, to attend the official dedication of the new Grand Ole Opry House. The embattled president, as Bill C. Malone puts it, “sought refuge in an institution that seemed solidly identified with Middle America.”51 Malone, in his authoritative country music history, suggests that the door may as well be shut on any attempts to fully understand why the country music industry embraced the Vietnam War with such vigor. “The obsession with politics had been out of character, just as had the unquestioning acceptance of national policies displayed in the war songs,” he writes.52 Kris Kristofferson and Tom T. Hall, he points out, who were two of the men responsible for the first

Ever since its publication in 1968, Bill C. Malone’s Country Music USA (seeing its 3rd revision in 2010), has served as the Bible of country music scholarship. The book is also a thorough, even-keeled standard bearer of popular music scholarship of any stripe.

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1965 hit songs supporting the war, were among the few Nashville writers and musicians known to hold openly liberal views by the late ’60s.53 Malone does, however, attribute an essential conservatism in country music to differences between rural and urban cultures, noting that while urban folk music was predominantly liberal, country music had always been popular in Yankee rural areas.54 Another fairly common explanation for country music’s political conservatism is that it had to do with traditional Southern character. “For well over a hundred years,” writes Melton McLaurin, “southerners have been noted for their unswerving patriotism, as expressed in their willingness, indeed, even eagerness, to fight for their country.” World War II, for example, spawned giant country hits in Elton Britt’s 1942 “There’s a Star Spangled Banner Flying Somewhere” and Red Foley’s 1944 “Smoke on the Water.” Also pointing to such examples as Davy Crockett, Andrew Jackson, Alvin York, Audie Murphy, the ferocious Confederate Army, and consistent support from Southern congressmen for every American war since the Spanish–American War in 1898, McLaurin presents his case. Because the Civil War “branded southerners as disloyal Americans,” he continues, Southerners have since “struggled to remove that stigma and prove themselves truly loyal Americans.”55 Statistics from the Vietnam War, at least, support McLaurin’s theory. According to data from the Veterans Administration and Department of Defense, the 11 former Confederate states, which made up less than 25 percent of the population of the US from 1965 to 1973, accounted for 31 percent of those who served in Vietnam and 28 percent of those killed there.56

CRACKS IN THE STRUCTURE Not only through pro-Vietnam sentiments did country radio express its dogged conservatism. One of the most popular country singles of 1970, Guy Drake’s “Welfare Cadilac [sic],” took aim at the Johnson Administration’s War on Poverty.57 “They tell me this new President has put in a whole new poverty plan,” went the drawling, spoken-word recitation. “He’s gonna send us poor folks money, they say we’re gonna get it out there in sacks — in fact, my wife’s already shopping around for her new Cadillac.” Nixon regularly cited both “Okie from Muskogee” and “Welfare Cadilac” as his two favorite songs, specially requesting to hear each of them at White House concerts.58 Of course, many a liberal observer viewed Nixon’s relationship with the country music industry as diabolical, prompting journalist Richard Goldstein to call country the “perfect musical extension of the Nixon Administration.”59 Notwithstanding country radio’s convincing show of political solidarity, there were certainly cracks in the structure, even though country musicians whose convictions fell more squarely to the left found it difficult to express those views at all. In 1971, Nashville songwriter John D. Loudermilk observed that it was

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almost impossible for an antiwar country tune to receive airplay. “If a strong anti-war song hit the charts,” he said, “it would be taken off the air. They [radio programmers] think an antiwar song is Communist, written by a man who is afraid, or doesn’t want to fight.”60 Perhaps, but programmers were likely most concerned that such songs did not fit the established format. This was evident in the case of Arlene Harden’s “Congratulations, You Sure Made a Man Out of Him,” one of the most scathing country music attacks on the war. Using a title which was a play on a Marine Corps recruiting slogan, she sang about her husband: “I watch him just sit by the window and silently stare into space, and once when I watched him a tear trickled down on his face . . . Congratulations, you sure made a man out of him.” Her one-of-a-kind single stalled at #49.61 Other fissures in the conservative country edifice came courtesy of Haggard himself, whose own political stance proved to be more ambiguous than his two pro-war anthems indicated. In her early ’70s study of Merle Haggard as an example of how country musicians tend to behave in accordance with “exoteric” expectations, Patricia Averill offers up an alternate view of Haggard’s jingoist heyday.62 Citing a 1970 Music City News interview with Haggard’s wife, Bonnie Owens, Averill points out that Haggard had planned on releasing a song called “Irma Jackson” after “Okie,” which was critical of the discrimination suffered by people who are involved in interracial dating or marriage.63 According to Owens, Capitol records would not let Haggard record “Irma Jackson” since they felt it would “alienate the audience for ‘Okie,’ and told him to write another patriotic song,” even though “Okie” was not explicitly patriotic. In spite of such surprising revelations, Owens did see to it that readers of the publication knew that “it’s not that we believe in interracial marriages,” but that “Merle likes to write about things that could happen or is happening [sic].”64 Averill also reports of being present at the Philadelphia concert at which Haggard’s 1970 live album, The Fightin’ Side of Me, was recorded, and noting how moderate the audience’s response to both “Okie” and “Fightin’ Side” had been. The album’s liner notes, however, cited the two songs as being the clear favorites.65 And although Haggard has never apologized for his political views during that period, he insisted in 1976 that he had written “Okie” as a joke and that its enormous success surprised him.66 The song, in fact, was very much in line with his rather compassionate portrayals of working-class life in earlier songs such as “Mama Tried” (1968) and “Hungry Eyes” (1969). As Malone notes, Haggard’s follow-up single, “The Fightin’ Side of Me,” had deeply disappointed many listeners who were familiar with his earlier work.67 Another country artist, Guy Drake of “Welfare Cadilac” renown — whose very career owed much to the president’s good publicity — had the gumption in 1971 to announce that he planned on running against Nixon for the presidency of the United States. Standing on the sidewalk of Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame, Drake indicated that his policies would “parallel those of Governor George Wallace of Alabama.” Drake then listed three reasons for running: That he played a fairly good game of golf, that he would like to travel around the world

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Johnny Cash’s 1970 single “What Is Truth” made a case for generational harmony and provided a welcome voice of moderation in the country music arena. “The ones that you’re calling wild are gonna be the leaders in a little while,” he sang to the older generation. “This old world’s wakin’ to a new born day and I solemnly swear that it’ll be their way . . .”

at the taxpayers’ expense, and that he had a son “who would like a televised wedding at the White House.” Drake then announced that his first act as president would be to “bring all the boys home” from Vietnam and send politicians to replace them. “After all,” he said, “it’s the politicians’ war.” Drake, incidentally, would never again make the country charts.68 Johnny Cash was yet another Nixon favorite who proved to hold ambiguous political views. In 1966 Cash scored a hit with a novelty number called “The One on the Right Is on the Left.” The song told the story about a folk group comprised of members of varying political persuasions who finally end up in an onstage free-for-all. The moral of the story: “If you have political convictions, keep ’em to yourself.” Cash practiced what he preached — when invited by Nixon to play a White House concert, Cash declined a request by the president to play “Okie from Muskogee” and “Welfare Cadilac,” tactfully explaining that he didn’t know either.69 That same year, though, he broke his own policy of political silence by recording a spoken-word composition called “What Is Truth,” a #3 country hit which advocated tolerance and peace. “The ones that you’re callin’ wild are gonna be the leaders in a little while,” Cash declared. “You better help that voice of youth find what is truth.”70 Providing a strong voice of moderation in the country radio arena, “What Is Truth?” was the last of the big Vietnam-era country radio hits, suggesting anew that it was perhaps time to give all the political songs a rest.71 Echoing this sentiment from within the country radio industry was at least one exasperated radio programmer, Ted Cramer of KCKN in Kansas City, who, in Billboard’s final issue of 1970, listed “message music” as being among “the biggest problems” in country music. The subject matter had “gotten out of hand,” said Kramer. “The public isn’t buying it, and I don’t think they will.”72

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Journalist Chris Willman’s Rednecks and Bluenecks: The Politics of Country Music provides a timely exploration of political attitudes within the country music industry circa the mid-2000s. The subject became a matter of heightened public interest when the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the 2003 War in Iraq generated a number of heated songs and statements by certain well-known country artists.

“WE DON’T SMOKE MARIJUANA”: COUNTRY AND THE COUNTERCULTURE Adding resonance to Cash’s “What is Truth?” at the beginning of the new decade was the very real extent to which the country music industry and the “hippie” counterculture had not been getting along. This made for a good decade or so of awkward cultural juxtapositions. One in particular led to the suspension of vocalist Skeeter Davis from the Grand Ole Opry in December 1973. Early that month, a caravan of some 30 trucks and 200 “Jesus people” had pitched circus tents near downtown Nashville and spread out in the streets to proselytize.73 In between spots on the Saturday night Opry broadcast, Davis witnessed the arrests of 11 of these at a shopping center where customers had complained of harassment. Troubled by this, she returned to the Opry, where she had been a regular since the early ’50s. “This is really something that I should share,” she said, introducing her spot on the program. “I didn’t ask our manager, but they’ve arrested fifteen people just for telling people that Jesus loved them.” She then led a sing-along of “Amazing Grace.”74 Although the audience seemed to respond positively, Opry manager Bud Wendell did not. In a matter of days, Wendell called Davis to inform her of her suspension. Although Davis eventually reentered the Opry’s regular rotation, she never again reached the country Top 40. Her final hit, prophetically titled “I Can’t Believe That It’s All Over,” had reached #12 several months earlier. The ensuing dry spell, for that matter, prompted her to re-release her similarly themed 1962 smash, “The End of the World.” Davis either knew she was getting herself in trouble, or she underestimated the country industry caretakers’ keen preservation instinct. She had expressed sympathy for young demonstrators, a segment generally at odds with country audiences, and she had done so, no less, on national radio. There were also a few

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One of the few country crossover success stories of the late ’60s, Glen Campbell merged his “country boy” persona with a respectable pop music pedigree (as a studio regular for Phil Spector and the Beach Boys) into a successful country/pop career. Album covers like the one above, featuring Campbell with a peace sign necklace, likely prompted a 1970 “upside down cross” rant by Music City News radio columnist Bill Jones.

other black marks by her name: she was known to flash peace signs to her audiences, and not long before her Grand Ole Opry suspension, Davis had turned down an invitation by President Nixon to play at the White House. She had been openly critical of the Vietnam War, and had recorded an album track called “When You Gonna Send Our Boys Back Home.” Had she accepted the invitation, Davis later wrote, she could not have “endured the hypocrisy of it all.”75 But the President and country music had been enjoying a mutually fond relationship, and when Davis broke the Opry’s “no politics, no religion” policy that night in 1973, Wendell had an opportunity to expel an evidently disruptive influence at a time when country’s identity seemed up for grabs like never before. The pressure Wendell faced as a country insider to maintain an ideological sense of status quo was nothing to take lightly. Columnists in the Music City News regularly used up column space to weigh in on social matters. Radio editor Bill Jones was among the most active on this front. “How many of you DJs know the implication of the [peace] symbol?” he wrote in one 1970 issue. “The sign dates back to the middle ages,” he continues, “and was used as a subtle sign

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of those [who] were opposed to Christianity!” — that is, it was an upside-down broken cross, an idea widely circulated among evangelicals. After going on to connect the symbol to communist Russia, he finishes up his plea for vigilant playlist regulation with the suggestion that “those artists who use it in their advertising possibly don’t know its meaning — or are these people REALLY antiChrist?”76 Around the same time, columnist Don Thomas’ attention drifted from his usual music industry-related fare and on to a diatribe against school boards that passed “rulings forbidding the local schools from having any Christmas decorations or ceremonies with religious connotations.”77 A controversial 1971 hit single prompted radio columnist Jones, again, to take a stand based on personal experience. The song in question was the “The Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley,” by a group that billed itself as C Company featuring Terry Nelson. They were actually an assortment of studio musicians fronted by Alabama disc jockey Nelson, and the single was a spoken-word piece sung from the point of view of Lt. William Calley, Jr., who was court-martialed and convicted for the My Lai massacre in which his army company killed 21 unarmed civilians. Jones recites a letter he had received from an Army sergeant, who says, “I do not feel that we can use the same laws for a soldier in battle as we can for a civilian in a peacetime situation.” Endorsing the sergeant’s view, Jones adds: “Having been a bomber aircraft commander, I’m not kidding myself that all the bombs I dropped fell only on enemy military personnel.”78 These columnists reaffirmed some prevailing points of view held by many within the country audience and industry alike. They also underscored the extent to which the struggle to maintain “authentic” ideological attitudes — unswerving loyalty to God and country, for example — have always been key flashpoints inside the country establishment. The Skeeter Davis Grand Ole Opry incident, though, presented complications in that Davis betrayed neither God nor country so much as the country music establishment. Changing times brought forth such complexity in an industry racked with an identity crisis that ran as deep, if not deeper, than that which Elvis Presley had wrought upon it in the late ’50s. In the early ’70s, of course, issues of identity and authenticity in country music became more heated than ever, especially from a musical standpoint.

MUSICAL AUTHENTICITY Authenticity issues concerning the sound of country — as opposed to its lyrical content — were certainly not lost on Jones and other Music City News editors, who made it a point to print letters from readers urging radio stations not to waver in their commitment to “real genuine country.”79 The battle over “authenticity,” of course, serves as an ongoing, energizing force in popular music, with country being no exception. As Creating Country Music author Richard A. Peterson puts it, the definition of authenticity is ever changing and continually

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“renegotiated” with the goal of “each contending interest” to “naturalize a particular construction” of it.80 Peterson characterizes this struggle, in the case of country, as the “dialectic of hard core and soft shell,” a characterization that nonetheless requires Peterson to interpret what the always-debatable qualifications for “hard core” (folksy, uncomplicated, and authentic) and “soft shell” (overly produced, sophisticated, and less authentic) are. Country Cultural Theory: A Starter List Richard A. Peterson, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity (1997) Joli Jensen, The Nashville Sound: Authenticity, Commercialization, and Country Music (1998) Aaron Fox, Real Country: Music and Language in Working-Class Culture (2004) Diane Pecknold, The Selling Sound: The Rise of the Country Music Industry (2007)

To differentiate between hard-core and soft-shell country performers, Peterson provides a list of attributes related to questions of the performer’s origins and personal life (hard core: details widely known and celebrated; soft shell: very few details known), as well as the stage presentation and clothes/hair style (hard core: straightforward, “warts and all”; soft core: flashy, distant, contemporary). In terms of the music, hard-core performers prefer songs with heavy autobiographical content and uncomplicated song structures. They tend to use traditional stringed instruments like guitar, banjo, and dobro, sing in accented, regional dialects, and pay tribute to musical heroes by playing in vintage country styles like Western swing, rockabilly, and bluegrass. As for soft-shell performers, they almost exclusively sing songs written by professional songwriters who employ ultra-contemporary, sophisticated song structures and incorporate little, if any, autobiographical elements in the lyrics. They favor synthesizers, woodwinds, lush orchestration, and choruses, sing without a strong accent, and make little to no effort to pay tribute to venerable predecessors.81 The country music situation in the late ’60s and early ’70s, though, involved two more complicating factors: The musical experimentation happening in the late ’60s, especially, and the rampant experimentation in radio formatting already underway.82 The proliferation of “free-form” formats, hybrid formats, and the waning influence of singles-oriented Top 40 all made for a friendly radio industry environment for the era’s musical adventuring. The Beatles had been setting the pace by tinkering with genres ranging from soul to country to British music hall to straight rock ’n’ roll. If their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band concept album employed an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink aesthetic in terms of production and arrangement, their 1968 double LP The Beatles (known as “the white album”) stood out as a head-spinning exercise in genre-hopping. Bob Dylan, too, had famously shunned his folk purist persona in the late ’60s,

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having “gone electric” and closing out the decade with a straight country album, Nashville Skyline. Such high-profile musical zigzags directly affected more specialized genres like soul and country to the extent that the question of “identity” became an important trade paper subject. Buck Owens serves as a rather vivid example of how this identity crisis played out in certain country artists’ careers. Always an astute businessman and the consummate showman, Owens nevertheless established himself in the early ’60s as a “hard” country stalwart at a time when “soft” country artists like Jim Reeves and Eddy Arnold reigned supreme. Along with Merle Haggard, Owens and his group of crack sidemen, the Buckaroos, put Bakersfield, California on the map as a Mecca for straight, steel guitar-driven honky-tonk music. In early 1965, at the same time his biggest single, “I’ve Got a Tiger By the Tail” was climbing the pop charts,83 Owens took out a full-page ad in the Music City News for his “Pledge to Country Music”: I shall sing no song that is not a country song. I shall make no record that is not a country record. I refuse to be known as anything but a country singer. I am proud to be associated with country music. Country music and country music fans made me what I am today. And I shall not forget it.84

That Owens felt the need to do this at all illustrates the country community’s comparative rigidity at the time. An instantly problematic aspect of Owens’s pledge, though, was that the criteria for what constituted real country music seemed ultimately to be in the eye and ear of the beholder. For some, the appearance on his most recent album (also called I’ve Got a Tiger By the Tail) of a honky-tonk version of Chuck Berry’s chestnut, “Memphis,” might have contradicted his pledge outright.85 By 1969, Owens had perhaps forgotten the pledge completely when he followed up his single “Who’s Gonna Mow Your Grass,” which featured an arrangement of fuzz guitar and psychedelic harpsichord, with a cover of Berry’s decidedly rock ’n’ roll “Johnny B. Goode.” In 1971, he charted with a version of Paul Simon’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Perhaps as penance, Owens spent the rest of the ’70s and much of the ’80s retooling his identity as co-host of CBS’s Hee Haw, where nary a fuzz guitar nor identity crisis could register.

KEEP ON THE SUNNY SIDE AND VICE VERSA: TV AND MOVIES Country music as heard on late ’60s and early ’70s commercial radio was developing a complex nature. So too was the regional culture associated with it, although television and movies presented fairly one-dimensional views. Since the early ’60s, CBS had committed itself to rural-themed programming. This was largely due to the success of both The Andy Griffith Show, which began airing

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in 1961, and The Beverly Hillbillies two years later. By the end of the decade, the network was running, in addition to those two shows, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, Mayberry RFD (a spinoff of The Andy Griffith Show), and three country music variety shows, Glen Campbell’s Goodtime Hour, The Johnny Cash Show, and Hee Haw.86 By far the most successful of the bunch — and controversial (more so than “X-rated movies,” said Music City News) — was Hee Haw.87 Modeling itself after Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, the show featured fastpaced sketch comedy interspersed with musical numbers by cast members like Buck Owens and banjo/guitar virtuoso Roy Clark (who were also the show’s co-hosts), as well as its weekly musical guest stars. Among the program’s other regulars were venerable Grand Ole Opry comedians like Grandpa Jones and Minnie Pearl, as well as a group of provocatively dressed women called the “Hee Haw Honeys.” Hee Haw raised a different sort of controversy than did the show it was called upon to replace, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour — cancelled

Hee Haw, which became one of the most popular variety shows of the ’70s, merged cornball humor with sophisticated, fast-paced production values. The 1973 issue of TV Guide pictured above reported that the show reached 33 million viewers per week and was hard evidence that “country music has moved uptown.”88

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in 1969 for its all-too-frequent political barbs and countercultural aura. First, it portrayed rural America as a one-dimensional, backwoods bastion of simpleminded humor. One of the more common sequences, for example, involved cast members popping up from a cornfield to deliver broad one-liners. Second, it was enormously successful, a source of considerable dismay for those TV critics who had previously panned — and subsequently seen the phenomenal success of — The Beverly Hillbillies (which the New York Times’ Jack Gould summed up as “twanging guitar, polka-dot gingham, deliberate drawl, prolific cousins, and rural no-think.”)89 Hee Haw ran for an impressive 17 seasons, and talent coordinator Jack McFadden attributed the show’s immediate success to the fact that it “appeals mostly to kids.”90 Other factors, though, such as the rising popularity of country music, most certainly had something to do with it, as did the show’s eye-catching, colorful look and its modern, fast-paced production values. In the case of Hee Haw, in fact, an innovative computerized system assembled its hodgepodge of skits into a coherent whole.91 Another aspect of its commercial success had to do with Peterson’s “soft-shell” qualities: Hee Haw portrayed an ultra-simple rural existence full of shenanigans, smiles, and glad music. Buck Owens’ own involvement in the show correlated directly with a lowered sense of adventure in his own recordings and an overreliance on gags and gimmicks (“You Ain’t Gonna Have Ol’ Buck to Kick Around No More” [1972], “Big Game Hunter” [1973], “On the Cover of Music City News” [1973], etc.). Two other country music variety shows to debut in 1969, Glen Campbell’s Goodtime Hour (CBS) and The Johnny Cash Show (ABC), provided an equally simple, “soft-shell” version of the genre to American viewers. Campbell was a studio session player and fill-in for the Beach Boys before skyrocketing up the charts with “Gentle on My Mind” in 1966. A virtuoso guitarist and a fine tenor vocalist, Campbell was at once successful on both the pop and country charts, and made a name for himself through his interpretations of the unusual, wellconstructed pop songs of Jim Webb (“Wichita Lineman,” “Galveston,” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix”). Campbell’s show presented a no-frills variety hour featuring music, banter, more music, and the occasional visit from his Arkansas parents. Johnny Cash’s show debuted on the heels of his edgy At Folsom Prison LP, leading some, perhaps, to hope that it would offer more surprises than it did, but it followed more or less the same pattern as Glen Campbell’s show. Both shows were cancelled by 1972. If television chose to look on the sunny side of country music and American rural life, the movie industry consistently chose the opposite side. The dangerous, intolerant South became a recurring movie motif that found heightened expression in Easy Rider (1969) and Deliverance (1972). Easy Rider told the story of two chopper-riding hippies crossing the Southern US on their way to Mardi Gras. The Southerners they come in contact with end up refusing to give them motel rooms, mock them in cafes, throw them in jail, and finally blow them to smithereens with shotguns. The film prompted one of the quintessential

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Charlie Daniels’ 1973 hit single “Uneasy Rider” cast a pot smoking, country music outlaw in place of the doomed bikers of Easy Rider. The closing scene, in which the narrator chases his redneck tormentors around the parking lot, comes off not so much as a victory for hippies over squares, but a warning shot from the New South to the Old. “People are becoming much more tolerant and the kids are growing up and becoming a majority that won’t be pushed around,” Daniels told Billboard in 1973. “The South is really changing.”92

country-rock singles of the early ’70s with Charlie Daniels’ “Uneasy Rider,” reaching #9 in 1973. Here Daniels sings from the point of view of a traveler on his way to Los Angeles, “toking on a number” and crossing the Mississippi border. A flat tire leads him to the “Dew Drop Inn” where his hair accidentally falls out of his hat and he escapes a fight only by accusing one of his attackers of being a “pinko commie fag” who voted for McGovern. The ensuing confusion allows him to escape back to his car, chase the attackers around the parking lot a time or two, and consider bypassing the South altogether.93 A runaway box office success, Easy Rider set a tone that would resonate throughout a whole spate of ’70s films about the evidently benighted South. Among the most unforgettable of these was Deliverance, in which four city dwellers go for a river-riding adventure deep in the Appalachians. Along the way they meet inbred villagers, natural hazards, and manhunters with shotguns who rape one of the men and murder another. A particularly memorable scene in the film depicts one of the doomed river riders playing a guitar “duel” with a maniacally grinning, inbred banjo picker before starting down the river. The recording of the song used in the film, Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandell’s “Dueling Banjos,” reverberated ominously on commercial radio airwaves, climbing all the way up to #2 on Billboard’s pop charts. Two other movies from this era provided a similarly gloomy view of the country music industry itself: Payday (1973) and Nashville (1975). Payday starred Rip Torn as a perpetually touring B-grade country music singer named Maury Dann, who, notwithstanding the adulation that awaits him from town to town, mistreats every last person with whom he comes in contact, including himself. In one scene a world-wise disc jockey, a convincing advocate-of-thepeople sort, attempts to persuade Dann to attend a promotional affair for the

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Film critic Scott Von Doviak’s Hick Flicks (2004) takes an in-depth look at the “hixploitation” genre — movies that explore and exploit “rural American folklore.” Von Doviak zeroes in on the 1970s as hixploitation’s golden age. 94

sake of his fans. Dann glares at him menacingly and stalks out of the station. As for the characters Dann wades through and habitually disappoints, they are wayward, small-town souls in the dark, desperate for any glimmer of light. The film’s executive producer, San Francisco music journalist and Rolling Stone magazine’s Ralph J. Gleason, said that the movie’s objective was simply to provide an honest portrayal of life in the country music business.95 Although the movie was not widely seen, those who did see it would likely never view Hee Haw the same way again. Robert Altman’s Nashville focused on the random interactions of some two dozen very human characters against the common backdrop of Music City USA. As in Payday, the notion of formulaic, commercial music as a potential savior and uniter, even when disguised in phony rhinestones and polyester, haunts the film. But while the characters, virtually all of them Nashville outsiders, converge and intertwine at different points, none of them are able to forge any sort of meaningful relationship — let alone contact — with one another. By the closing scene of the film, which takes place at a fundraising concert in honor of a fictional third-party candidate modeled after George Wallace (“What this country needs is some monosyllable answers,” he says at one point), the sense of disconnect has become all-pervasive. When a crazed fan shoots the concert’s star attraction, the stunned crowd is easily coaxed into singing a rousing chorus of “It Don’t Worry Me” by a replacement singer, after which the credits finally roll. According to Nashville, country music consumership reflected three negative but intrinsically American states of being: isolation, assimilation, and tranquilization.96

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“CROSS COUNTRY” Country music, as one heard it on commercial radio, presented a far more multidimensional version of rural culture than what one saw in movies and TV, and this development certainly did not hurt the genre’s popularity. The arrival of the first full-time country stations in both Los Angeles and New York verified this. KLAC-Los Angeles became the country format’s largest station when it began broadcasting in 1971, and, aided by the talents of well-known personalities such as Jay Lawrence and FM underground radio refugee Jimmy Rabbitt, it was a huge success.97 Lawrence, who had been with KLAC in its previous MOR incarnation, enthusiastically supported the format change. “Country music has become more relevant to the needs of people today,” he told Record World. “It’s based on one-to-one relationships.”98 In New York City, easy listening station WHN (one of the city’s oldest stations) switched formats to become the city’s pioneering full-time country station in 1973, featuring disc jockey Jack Spektor, who billed himself as the “first kosher cowboy from Coney Island,” and also country radio veterans Lee Arnold, Dan Daniel, Dan Taylor, and Jessie Scott, all of them knowledgeable country radio veterans.99 The emergence of the small but powerful Nashville station WENO, which claimed to be the nation’s first 24-hour country station ever in the summer of 1971, served as another key indicator of country radio’s rising status.100 It was Cal Young who established the station, the same man who had launched WSOK (later WVOL), Nashville’s oldest R&B station, in 1957. (WENO, incidentally, also made history for its inclusion of Lee Dorris, the first African American allcountry disc jockey, on its staff.) WENO set itself apart through a particularly effective promotional campaign. The station simply sent semi trucks throughout the city with its call letters painted on each side, ensuring that word would not only spread about the station, but that it would associate itself with an industry that had become a subject of country romance ever since Ted Daffan’s “Truck Driver’s Blues” became a top seller in 1939.101 Before this new era of WENO-style 24-hour programming, country programs either aired throughout the day and signed off in the evenings, or vice versa. The country programs that played throughout the night on certain stations, in fact, usually from around 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., catered directly to all-night truck drivers, and became bastions of country purity in their own right. Among the most powerful of these was WHO in Des Moines, Iowa, whose central location and powerful wattage made disc jockey Mike Hoyer’s Country Music USA program easily accessible for truckers across the nation. Hoyer held fast to a playlist that he (and, therefore, his legions of listeners) deemed orthodox country, a judgment call he felt not every country disc jockey could be entrusted with. “There are too many former rock jockeys who suddenly are country experts and who are selecting the music for the stations,” Hoyer complained to the Music City News. “I find it very frustrating to listen to a mish mash country format and see records on country charts that just aren’t country.”102

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Hoyer undoubtedly had in mind the new “cross country” formats. These formats were direct descendants of FM “underground” radio, which had become known for its lack of reliable playlists and for its disc jockeys with omniverous, unpredictable musical tastes. The new cross-country stations, such as KCMD in Kansas City, most certainly adhered to tight playlists, but these playlists also happened to include servings of non-country artists like Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles, and Percy Sledge.103 More than a few country music industry voices raised themselves in protest along the way. Referring to such stations’ playlists as a “tutti frutti concoction,” Music City News staffwriter John Pugh chimed in with a 1971 polemic calling the trend “absolutely the worst thing that can happen to country music.” In being subjected to such treatment, he continued, country was “in danger of losing its identity.” Country artists and producers were equally responsible, he said, justifying their pop-oriented attitudes with such terms as a “need for ‘growth,’ ‘experimentation,’ ‘change,’” and a need to “educate” a public that perhaps had no interest in being educated in the first place. “Country pop,” wrote Pugh, would inevitably lead to such unthinkable travesties as “soul country.”104 Pugh certainly did not stand alone in his opinion, and among those who shared his views most ardently seemed to be fans who wrote letters to the publication. “Phooey, I can’t stand this modern sound,” went one letter. “Real genuine country music fans want real genuine country music.” As for disc jockeys, they had “too much power,” with most of them “not oriented in country music” at all.105 Another reader saw problems with modern country’s preoccupation with “drinking and sex,” and considered most of it “too rotten to ever be released.” According to this reader, the music’s value correlated directly to how well it might fit into a “family show.”106 Pugh eventually went so far as to recommend that the industry transform itself into a strictly fan-regulated system in which the fans would pick songs and recording styles of their favorite artists before they even entered the studio. This system would save country consumers from being “subjected to more pop and rock than country.”107 Although radio programmers’ distinct and mighty advantage in determining which records made the airwaves, listener response — also mighty — had never ceased to be one of format radio’s most fundamental principles. Format radio was, in fact, already a fan-regulated system, as many a programmer would readily argue. Fans, for that matter, were highly susceptible to reacting in surprising ways, causing certain country radio stations to reevaluate their song choices altogether. This was the case with powerful Houston station KENR, for example, when positive listener telephone response for a late night airing of Jim Croce’s “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim” in 1972 ultimately nudged the “hard country” station toward country pop.108 The general music industry view from outside the gates tended to celebrate the country industry’s newfound sense of adventure. “Country music is opening its ears to the pop, soul and rhythm and blues sounds around it,” went a Cash Box editorial. “Once a form of music that closely adhered to its traditional

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An editorial by John Pugh warning of the potential emergence of “soul country” appeared in an early ’70s issue of Music City News that also featured an advertisement for a gospel-oriented new single by an African American duo called Sarge and Shirley West. (The Wests billed themselves, according to a 1969 mention in Billboard, as “Mr. and Mrs. Colored Country Music.”)109 The close proximity of these two items invites thoughts about the racially charged, unfavorable odds working against African American country musicians throughout the genre’s history, even during the experimental early ’70s. Racial concerns, however unspoken, have likely simmered somewhere below the surface of all country-format anxiety from the ’50s onward. The late ’60s, though, saw a breakthrough with Charley Pride, who was not only the most commercially successful African American country singer, but one of the most successful country singers, period. Between 1967 and 1983, Pride scored 29 #1 country hits and was the Country Music Association’s Male Vocalist of the Year for 1971 and 1972. The subject of an RCA stealth campaign that won listeners over to his music before they knew he was black, Pride ultimately reaped success by being a well-loved, first rate country singer. As Bill C. Malone suggests, though, Pride perhaps also became a popular and unthreatening “means by which [country] audiences rid themselves of racial guilt.” Pride’s career looks even more extraordinary in retrospect when considering how few African Americans have followed in his footsteps. Save for a flurry of early ’70s chart activity by singers Stoney Edwards and O. B. McClinton, Pride has essentially stood alone all the way up until the present-day crossover success of Darius Rucker, who has scored four country #1 singles since 2008.

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guidelines, country has over the past few years broadened the scope of its listening audience.”110 The Music City News itself did not give short shrift to attitudes that supported this new, potentially profitable approach of enhancing country formats with other genres. “In this age of the solo artist-writer,” went another 1971 editorial, “we see how country music fits into the rock scene, especially with the success of such country-oriented writer/performers as Kris Kristofferson and John Denver.”111 Indeed, country crossover — be it in the form of “country-oriented” pop/ rock/soul artists or vice versa — had become standard fare by the early ’70s. The MCA label made country crossover its specialty, enjoying major pop hits with Conway Twitty, Olivia Newton-John, and Jeanne Pruett. As for chart performance, Epic’s Charlie Rich was most successful of all. Musically well rounded, Rich had struggled to find a niche for himself since the ’50s when he belonged to Sun Records, the pioneering, genre-crossing label that spawned Elvis Presley. After nurturing a steady residence in the country charts, Rich had settled into a soft and sweetened MOR friendly sound by the early ’70s, which resulted in a #1 pop hit (“The Most Beautiful Girl in the World,” 1975) surrounded by a cluster of Top 40s, including “Behind Closed Doors” (1973). The crossover boom of the early ’70s provided the perfect radio environment for someone like Rich, which gave his behavior as a presenter at the 1975 Country Music Association (CMA) Awards — when he lit the card that cited pop folksinger John Denver as Entertainer of the Year with a cigarette lighter — a certain hypocritical edge.112 The Country Music Association, incidentally, sprang from a Disc Jockey convention in 1958 as a vehicle “by which country music could attain respectability and achieve a wider popularity,” and the organization certainly played a significant role in nurturing the genre into a commercially successful, radiodriven force throughout the ’60s.113 The identity crisis-fraught ’70s, though, gave the CMA a rough ride. In 1973, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson thumbed their noses by holding a free, jam-packed concert at the Nashville Sheraton on the same night of the CMA awards ceremony, and in 1974, Olivia NewtonJohn committed the outrage of winning the award for female performer of the year.114 A group of 50 established performers, in reaction to this, met at the home of George Jones and Tammy Wynette and conjured up the (short-lived) Association of Country Entertainers (ACE), the official aim of which was to “preserve the identity of country music.”115 The biggest problem, perhaps, with the three biggest country crossover artists of the mid-’70s was that they essentially began their chart careers with mainstream popular success before logging in a respectable history of country-only charting hits: John Denver songs such as “Take Me Home, Country Roads” and “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” arguably sounded more explicitly “country” — or rural — in terms of both lyrics and instrumentation than many country classics (though not in their twang-free vocals). Denver came to prominence with ’60s folk group the Chad Mitchell Trio and his enthusiasm for nature as

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subject matter seemed to be his main qualification as a country artist. In the case of Australian vocalist Olivia Newton-John, her first American chart success came in the pop category, when her cover of Bob Dylan’s “If Not For You” reached the Top 40 in 1971. This was also true with Texan Mac Davis. Already a successful songwriter (Elvis Presley’s “Don’t Cry Daddy” and “In the Ghetto,” as well as Bobby Goldsboro’s “Watching Scotty Grow”), Davis racked up two Top 10 pop hits, including the chart-topping “Baby Don’t Get Hooked On Me” before settling down as a country hitmaker in the early ’80s. While plenty of seemingly faux-country MOR artists like Denver, NewtonJohn, and Davis were paying frequent visits from their pop home base to the country charts, an increasing number of authentic-sounding country artists were also returning the favor. Charlie Rich and his string of Top 40 hits, Jeanne Pruett’s “Satin Sheets,” Billy Swan’s “I Can Help,” Joe Stampley’s “Soul Song” (a straightforward love song with a cheeky crossover title), and Donna Fargo’s “Happiest Girl in the Whole USA” and “Funny Face” all whetted the public appetite for all types of “country” regardless of how the Association of Country

John Denver, Olivia Newton-John, and Mac Davis, three of the biggest crossover country stars of the early ’70s, all found chart success in the pop category before infiltrating the country charts. Each one of them also pursued authenticity-endangering side careers as actors.

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Entertainers might have felt about it.116 Adding emphasis to this trend were two developments in 1974: Motown opened a new country subsidiary label called Melodyland, featuring vocalists Pat Boone and Jerry Naylor; and the Pointer Sisters, a successful R&B trio, cracked the country Top 40 with their convincingly country “Fairytale.”117

PROGRESSIVE COUNTRY “Country rock” was one of the most influential hybrid genres to flourish in the early ’70s. As with most genres of popular music, its precise origins are difficult to trace. One can safely point to the Byrds, though, as one of its crucial innovators. In 1968 the group recorded their Sweetheart of the Rodeo LP, which aimed for a classic, old-time country sound featuring steel guitar and fiddle. It also showcased their versions of country standards like Merle Travis’s “I Am a Pilgrim” and the Louvin Brothers’ “The Christian Life.” Perhaps due to their inability to keep their rock backgrounds entirely in check, the group managed to introduce a fresh, new country-rock sound to both rock and country radio. So pleased were the Byrds with the direction in which they were heading, that they got themselves booked for a performance on the Grand Ole Opry. Met with occasional catcalls inviting the group to “join the army” and “get a haircut,” among other things, the group’s otherwise solid performance led to no future Opry invitations.118 The Byrds nonetheless continued their country rock course while other bands like the Flying Burrito Brothers (a Byrds offshoot), Poco, the Eagles, the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, and Dr. Hook, among many others, followed suit. So too did Southern rock groups like Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers Band — both were heavily guitar-oriented rock bands with unmistakable country and blues elements at their heart. Country rock music scenes, such as a particularly lively one in Austin, Texas, began to sprout up across America. The early ’70s were a mythical moment in Austin music history, a time when the country music “outlaw,” the “cosmic cowboy,” or as journalist Jan Reid labeled it in his 1974 document of the era, “redneck rock” dominated, at least conceptually, the local scene.119 These were the days when the Armadillo World Headquarters, housing Austin icon Willie Nelson one night, blues guitarist Freddy King the next, and the Austin Ballet the night after that, earned its fabled status for eclecticism. Country “rednecks” and rock ’n’ roll “freaks” lay down together like the Biblical lamb and lion, or in the words of Austin musician Craig Hillis, simply “traded their beer for pot, and vice versa.”120 This was also a time when a commercial radio station with the double-entendre call letters KOKE-FM developed a loose format that intended to capture the essence of this new scene, labeled it “progressive country,” and kept that format on the air for five years. In spite of its ultimate failure, KOKE-FM emblemized country music’s changing identity.

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The story of the “progressive country” format begins in 1973 when local Top 40 disc jockey Rusty Bell proposed a new, experimental format to KOKEFM, which at that time was the city’s dominant country station. Bell had observed small radio markets all over the US, but he was especially impressed by the extent to which Austin radio listeners identified themselves as Texans. He developed a musical format that he hoped would simultaneously appeal to the younger market favored by pop and rock stations and identify itself with singularly Texan musical styles, and he called it “progressive country.”121 The achievement of the progressive country sound came through a “very liberal definition of country music” which relied not on the “identity or hair length or philosophy of the singers,” as Bell put it, “but the kind of instruments that accompanied them.” He added that “if anything remotely country could be discerned in a recording, it qualified.”122 In his later study of the Austin rock scene, Barry Shank defines these crucial sounds as the “timbre of fiddles and steel guitars, a steady, uncomplicated shuffle or two-step rhythm, and, at the most, a particular style of closely harmonized vocals.” Thus Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson could sit comfortably alongside Janis Joplin and the Rolling Stones without breaking any rules.123

Michael (Martin) Murphey, one of the few early ’70s Austin country rockers to score a Top 40 hit (“Geronimo’s Cadillac,” #37), gave the era’s now mythical scene a defining image with his 1973 song, “Cosmic Cowboy.” By 1975 he’d left the scene behind and racked up a #3 pop hit with “Wildfire.” Murphey spent most of the ’80s in the upper regions of the country charts.

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Most important to this format, though, was its emphasis on local music, live interviews, and in-studio performances, giving regular exposure not only to Nelson but to artists such as Jerry Jeff Walker, Asleep at the Wheel, and Michael Murphey. Unabashedly idealistic, KOKE-FM sought to document the movement with an intensity that former Austin American-Statesman radio columnist John Herndon equated with religious zealotry. One programmer characterized what the station was doing as “applied folklore.”124 In comparison to the ruthless standards of today’s commercial radio, KOKE’s idealism looks hopelessly naïve, a view seemingly confirmed by the fact that the station could not outlast the decade. Its naïveté or boldness — whichever one prefers — did earn it a “Most Innovative Station” award from Billboard magazine in 1974.125 Yet despite such industry accolades and a loyal cult listenership, KOKE-FM continually struggled to make a sizeable dent in the Austin ratings picture. At the peak of the station’s influence, KOKE-FM never exceeded a 2.0 share. To place that in perspective, Austin’s most popular country station, KASE country, drew ratings as high as 15.4 throughout the 1990s.126 Although part of KOKE’s difficulty attracting listeners can be attributed to the fact that AM was still outdrawing FM in the early ’70s, KOKE’s numbers were nonetheless disappointing. Gradually, KOKE imposed a tighter playlist, and vainly tried to attract a rock listenership by incorporating mainstream rock material into their increasingly mainstream country sound.127 By 1977, the station had morphed into “Sterling Country KOKE, home of the hits.”128 During its heyday, though, KOKE was notable in that it sought to legitimize a movement that essentially prided itself on shunning tradition. Other progressive country stations that arose in KOKE’s wake, such as KGBS-FM in Los Angeles, KAFM-FM in Dallas, and WNOE-FM New Orleans indicated that the movement was catching on. The Bob Hamilton Radio Report devoted an entire section weekly to progressive country, which radio personality Jimmy Rabbitt edited. Among the terms Rabbit used to describe it was “outlaw music.”129 By the early 1970s, Austin had become a haven for disaffected country musicians who were increasingly uncomfortable with the prospect of working under the restrictions of the Nashville music establishment. One such renegade, of course, was the Texan Willie Nelson, who had considerable success as a songwriter in Nashville but had grown frustrated over his record label’s consistent reluctance to promote him as a performer. By 1972 he moved to Austin and became a live music fixture, adopting a more relaxed, longhaired look not only more suited to his own tastes, but also to the city’s youthful live music audiences.130 Cementing Nelson’s image as both an Austin countercultural icon as well as a country music stalwart were his Fourth of July picnics in Dripping Springs, Texas. The first official one, held in 1973, featured newer artists like Tom T. Hall and Billy Joe Shaver along with full-blown country legends like Tex Ritter, Roy Acuff, and Earl Scruggs. Subsequent festivals drew larger crowds and profits, developing an “aura of country Woodstocks” with their “marijuana fumes” and “uninhibited youth with scanty or no clothing.”131

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Nelson and kindred spirits like Waylon Jennings, Billy Joe Shaver, and Jerry Jeff Walker met any form of pigeonholing, even from the outlaw-embracing “progressive country” format of KOKE-FM, with resistance. This attitude arose memorably in a 1998 issue of the Austin Chronicle, in which Steven Fromholz, referring to the “great progressive country scare of the seventies,” said “I don’t know a musician in the business today to whom I give any credence, to whom I acknowledge any class, who ever claimed or admitted to be a ‘progressive country musician.’ Nobody did.”132 Ray Benson expressed a similar disdain for the label, describing his own band, Asleep at the Wheel, as “regressive country,” implying a preference for pre-rock genres such as swing, blues, and jazz.133 Fromholz’s and Benson’s disdain for labels is precisely what the progressive country formats attempted to encourage. Many advocates of the format and accompanying movement felt the monicker referred more to the audiences and musicians, and not necessarily the music.134 Also known as the “cosmic cowboy” movement, thanks to a song by Michael Martin Murphey, the progressive country scene rejected the homogenized culture of commercial country and evolved into a sort of aural anti-Muskogee that mixed “redneck” and “hippie” cultures.135 KOKE and other progressive country stations, in championing nonstandard country artists like Murphey, B. W. Stevenson, and Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, were instrumental in getting each of these artists

“Progressive country” in the Billboard Top 40 (1970–75)

Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen — “Hot Rod Lincoln” (1972, #9) Michael Murphey — “Geronimo’s Cadillac” (1972, #37) Charlie Daniels — “Uneasy Rider” (1973, #9) B. W. Stevenson — “My Maria” (1973, #9) Willie Nelson — “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” (1975, #21) (Above: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen)

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placed in the Billboard Top 40, even though the country chart ignored them.136 KOKE’s 1977 format change signaled the end of the progressive country format’s viability nationwide, but during its five-year run, it seemed to have tapped into an essential country music truth: that the notions of authenticity and identity are among its most cherished myths.

COUNTRY AND THE “SYMBOLIC SOUTH” In 1917, H. L. Mencken ridiculed the southern US in a manner that would resonate throughout popular culture for the rest of the century. Mencken’s South was one that had been left to the “harsh mercies of the poor white trash,” where a poet is as “rare as an oboe-player,” and where “free inquiry is blocked by the idiotic certainties of ignorant men.” By the end of the 1960s, non-country music listeners were likely to equate the genre’s loud support for the Vietnam War and the segregationist policies of politicians such as George Wallace with such “idiotic certainties.” President Lyndon B. Johnson, the man whose escalation of American involvement in Vietnam in the ’60s overshadowed his domestic successes, spoke with a thick Texas accent, liked to hold backyard barbecues instead of the “elegant French soirées” of the Kennedy administration, and was “reported to careen around his ranch in a Lincoln convertible, tossing empty beer cans by the roadside” — another case in point for the Menckenites.137 Non-country consumers, though, were shrinking in numbers, as ruralsounding music in the late ’60s and early ’70s saw a clear upsurge in popularity. A prevailing countercultural urge to drop out of society altogether and get “back to nature” was one reason for this. Many a hippie went off to the country to join or form a commune, clutching a copy of Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog, which sought to empower the seeker of a more natural way of life to “conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested.”138 The success of the 1969 Woodstock Music and Arts Fair at Max Yasgur’s farm in rural New York was, in a sense, the greatest advertisement for communal living the whole back-to-nature movement had to offer, with half a million young people converging in one place for several days and not a single riot or any other disaster being reported. “The movement retreated to the country,” wrote David Pichaske in his A Generation in Motion. “Following this vanguard, America moved to the country.”139 Among those Americans who did not literally go to the country, many went there in spirit as they celebrated Earth Day, prompted environmental legislation, and turned health food consciousness into big business.140 Another contributing factor to country radio’s rise in momentum had to do with what Bruce J. Schulman, again, refers to in his own analysis of the 1970s as the “reddening of America.” The ascendance of the “sunbelt” — the entire geographical region stretching from “Virginia and Florida to Southern California” — as a locus of political and cultural power qualifies as one of the

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“A brand new breeze is blowing across the southland,” sang Tanya Tucker in 1974, the same year a new show called Pop! Goes the Country debuted on national television.

key characteristics of the decade, he writes. This was a time when “a herd of racial moderates, including Georgia’s Jimmy Carter, stampeded the statehouses of the South, promising to bring the region into the national mainstream.” Evoking Tanya Tucker’s 1974 recording “I Believe the South Is Gonna Rise Again,” he points to the persistence of national agenda values like “low taxes and scant public services, military preparedness and a preference for state and local government over federal supremacy” as evidence that Tucker’s South had already risen. Among the cultural manifestations of this, Schulman writes, are the ever-increasing number of country radio stations, soaring country record sales, and country crossover hits. The “accompanying appeal of the country lifestyle across rural America” — including confederate flags, pickup trucks with gun racks and the popularity of stock car racing — proved that “country flourished not so much in the real South as in a symbolic South.”141 Country radio reflected this movement, and the whole awkward growth process could be heard on air throughout the first part of the decade. It was a public space where listeners could reconsider and renegotiate prevailing cultural notions of rural versus non-rural or South versus North. It served as an outlet

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for identity formation, prompting changes in popular perception that eased country music and rural culture out of the backwoods by mid-decade. However short-lived cross country and progressive country formats may have been, they were almost always replaced by powerful, hit country stations that would likely not have been so powerful had those hybrid formats not preceded them. Bob Pittman, a country program manager in the ’70s who would go on to develop MTV (not without controversy — see Chapter 4) and later become the president of America Online, felt that the influx of rock disc jockeys into country radio was essential to the format’s success in the ’70s. Pittman became program manager for WMAQ in Chicago after it changed to a country format in 1975, and saw it transform itself, almost immediately, into the most widely listened to country station in America. Pittman cites among the reasons for the station’s success a rock-and-roll-to-the-rescue factor. “Most of the people on the air,” said Pittman, came to WMAQ from “rock stations rather than country stations.” These people, according to him, were “much less subjective about country music” and “willing and able enough to be adaptable.”142 Across the board, country radio has benefited handsomely from the post1960s formatting efforts and crossover techniques that the radio industry employed so aggressively in the early ’70s.143 Radio scholar Michael C. Keith, circa 2007, reports that more stations have adopted country formats as opposed to anything else since the 1970s. And although they rarely lead in market ratings, they maintain an “exceptionally broad” appeal, which the fact that there are “over 10 times as many full-time country stations today than there were 20 years ago” attests to. Over 2,600 stations nationwide, in fact, play country music today, and although the high-profile hybrid stations of the early ’70s are no longer around, country radio stations of every technological variety still experiment with different approaches to “skew” a given audience toward the older or younger side.144 From today’s vantage point, where aggressively cross-sectioned and nichemarketed media outlets reign supreme, the authenticity debates that one could read in the trades and hear played out on air might seem quaint. If those early ’70s commentators had been in possession of a crystal ball, a glance at the present-day environment would certainly have drawn a torrent of sharp rebuttals condemning the country tradition’s near-extinction. By 1977, though, the trades had all but grown quiet over the authenticity issue while the “hit country” radio machine, stronger than ever, effectively ran full steam ahead. Those very debates, it seemed, generated all the heat necessary to make it go. And although we have yet to witness such a steady stream of lively identity-oriented radio commentary in the trades since the volatile late ’60s and early ’70s, we can surely see that the entire country music industry, in fact, continues to develop and expand both in support of, and resistance to, that machine.

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Chapter 6

Conclusion: Never Ending Song of Love The Continuing Legacy of Early ’70s Formatting One of the ultimate ’70s novelty records was a late 1974 recording by a studio group called Reunion. Singing lead for this outfit was Joey Levine, the same man who, with Ohio Express, graced the airwaves with “Yummy Yummy Yummy” in the late ’60s. The song, a Top 10 hit, featured Levine spewing forth the names of famous rock ’n’ roll performers, disc jockeys, and key phrases from hit singles from the ’50s onward at lightning speed. “Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me,” went the infectious, measured chorus in between each hyperventilated verse. “At the end of my rainbow lies a golden oldie.”1 That song title — “Life Is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)” — made for a sloganesque summation of a prevailing American mid-’70s mood: times may be hard, but at least we’ve got music to remind us of happier times. The single may as well have been a response to American Graffiti, George Lucas’s 1973 movie that followed the escapades of a group of early ’60s teenagers, all united by the blaring local Top 40 station before drifting apart into the complexities of adulthood and changing times. Mid-’70s Americans had good reason to look longingly at days gone by. The Watergate scandal sent presidential politics into disarray, culminating in the resignation of Richard Nixon in August 1974, while the OPEC oil embargo of 1973 prompted an economic slump that weighed heavily on American life throughout the following year. Inflation and recession darkened the national economy as lines of automobiles snaked around service stations with limited supplies of gasoline. The US finally pulled out of Vietnam with no victory to declare, having lost the lives of over 58,000 American soldiers and reeling from a divisive, decade-long cultural war on the home front. Inquisitive ’70s children, wondering about the world around them, likely heard the phrase 191

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Today, media audiences expect ’70s nostalgia to be served up with heaping side orders of irony. TV shows and films whose molds have been set by That ’70s Show (1998–2006) and Dazed and Confused (1993) (above) will depict aimless but loveable (and frequently stoned) teenagers, awkward generational divides, and eyesore fashions. Reservoir Dogs (1992) used the relentlessly cheerful sounds of early ’70s pop hits as a smirking backdrop for explicit violence.

“it’s complicated” as a catch-all explanation from their parents more than any generation previous. The legacy of early ’70s pop music — unlike the cheerful music of the depression era, for example — suffers from a perceived incongruity between its otherworldly rosiness and the complexity of the era that spawned it. Even with a full understanding of the pop music industry’s traditional aim to lighten listeners’ moods and sell more records, songs like Gallery’s “Nice to Be With You” or Edison Lighthouse’s “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)” or (fill in your own love-to-hate/hate-to-love entry) all contribute to the era’s inauthentic aura. These songs can strike present-day listeners as false, studio-crafted opiates reflecting a national culture of denial or, worse yet, cynical disregard. We listen and wonder how the era could ever qualify for the misty-eyed nostalgia that those in the ’70s seemed to harbor for the ’50s and early ’60s. “The consensus is clear,” writes Thomas Hine in The Great Funk, his cultural analysis of the decade. “The seventies were awful. The important things were awful, and the trivial things were awful . . . Even in an era like ours that seems nostalgic for everything, seventies style sounds like an oxymoron.” The hit music of the era will likely be filed forever under the official genre descriptions of “schlock pop” or “cheese.”2 This negative legacy overlooks the actual depth of early ’70s hit music as well as certain virtues of the faceless, prefab songs that did so well on radio. Robert A. Hull, who researched and marketed ’70s compilations for Time-Life, expresses one such virtue as follows: “The anonymous gestures of ’70s pop carry no hidden agenda, no baggage of personality. They are simply good, silly songs, produced with great craft.”3 These “faceless” hit singles — songs recorded by rotating groups of unknown studio musicians credited to band names that were rarely heard from again — prospered at a time when program directors strove for mainstream acceptability at all costs. Looking back at the radio industry’s

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Phil Dellio and Scott Woods, in their I Wanna Be Sedated: Pop Music in the Seventies, offer up the following definition for the “slime pit” of early ’70s Top 40: “A murky, dank, frightening netherworld of Polka Rock, Martial-Arts Rock, and million-selling singles by nuns, Swedes, truckers, and popcorn machines.”4 Above: “Toot-A-Loop,” “Panapet,” and other novelty transistors from the 1973 Eaton’s Christmas Catalog.

formatting efforts during that time, one gets the clear sense that the quest for mainstream appeal within a given format (especially soul and country), was actually regarded as a worthy ideal — a sort of benevolent homogenizing process that sought to equalize target audiences and also to treat them with respect while increasing stations’ profitability. Any underlying sense of social concern on the radio industry’s part seems to dissipate in the early ’80s, though, when 1981 decisions by both the Supreme Court and the FCC gave station owners more freedom to pursue whichever markets they pleased, however they pleased. With old-fashioned requirements for certain quotas in news, public affairs, and educational offerings no longer applicable, “stations segmented the audience with a vengeance,” as Marc Fisher puts it. “Increasingly, you were what you listened to.”5 The allure and perceived market enhancement of an ever-increasing number of diverse radio formats served as justification for the Telecommunications Act, which President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1996. Among other things, this legislation removed regulatory controls that had prevented ownership consolidation, according to rationales that (1) owners, who would have their hands full with outside competition, wouldn’t want to bother competing with themselves, and (2) consolidation would prompt owners to diversify their stations and, as a result, expand the format choices available for radio audiences. What ended up happening was that commercial music radio, facing oncoming charges of inbreeding and bloat, went about its usual business within those five essential format parameters that had settled in for the long haul back in the early ’70s.6 Scathing criticisms of modern-day FM radio, personified by major companies like Clear Channel, as a money grubbing behemoth resistant to diversity and completely unwilling to experiment have become recurring editorial subjects, especially since 1996. “Dissatisfaction with the quality of music programming has reached a breaking point,” said industry vet Miles Copeland in Rolling Stone. “People are listening to radio less, and the reason is simple: the days of local radio

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breaking new records, taking chances on unknown acts and responding to its audience’s interests have all but disappeared.”7 Simon Renshaw, the Dixie Chicks’ manager, saw consolidation as the real culprit in his star clients’ 2003 airwave blackout in response to their onstage criticims of President George W. Bush. “The mad rush to consolidate has dramatically tipped the balance in favor of the radio industry,” he said in a Billboard editorial. “What happened to my clients is perhaps the most compelling evidence that radio ownership consolidation has a direct negative impact on diversity of programming and political discourse over the public airwaves.”8 An official Billboard editorial from the previous month voiced similar concerns: “Consolidation has led to a plague of cookie-cutter music formats, overuses of syndication filler, repetitive playlists, and a surge in the number of formats.”9 “Syndication filler” was another “faceless” radio innovation — or desecration, depending on whom you talk to — that had reached a level of maturity by the mid-’70s. “Automation” was the new industry buzzword as stations now had the ability, with the aid of computers, to run preprogrammed musical and advertising content, using voice-tracking systems to allow for the insertion of call letters and DJ patter.10 This era saw the emergence of syndicated programs like Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 and Ron Jacobs’ The History of Rock & Roll, as well as The Wolfman Jack Show. In a 1972 piece called “The Age of Syndication,” Billboard editor Claude Hall noted fears among some radio insiders that syndication would lead to “conformity” and “staleness,” but also cited counterarguments that it would free up local personalities to “be even more creative.”11 The debate continues today as stations rely on syndicated programming in order to keep overheads low and maintain a professional sound and

Although radio ownership consolidation may have contributed to the Dixie Chicks’ loss of airplay momentum in the wake of their onstage criticisms of President George W. Bush in 2003, country radio history suggests their fate was inevitable in an industry that’s never taken too kindly to controversy. Three decades earlier, singer Skeeter Davis saw her future chances for topping the charts evaporate after voicing protest on the Grand Ole Opry stage.12

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high ratings, even while trade editorials warn of the “overuse of syndication filler” leading to an “Orwellian world” which removes “local programmers from the music selection process.”13 Many such criticisms, minus the consolidation aspect, sound similar to the early ’70s: radio personnel having too much power over the fate of records and, consequently, entire genres; tight playlists contributing toward the “depletion of audiences” for radio and causing hit radio stations to “sound like everybody else”; “Orwellian fears” of syndication; and artists and songs facing airplay blackouts due to a controversial reputation.14 The early ’70s were where commerical music formatting as we understand it today began, where essentialized notions of target demographics were developed, and where succesful programming methods, criticized and worried about even then, were set in motion. Fast forward to 2010, with consolidation having been more or less accepted as a terrestrial radio reality, and radio concerns still sound quite a bit like they did four decades ago. “Nearly one-third of country fans are turned off by repetitive radio playlists,” reported Billboard in June 2010. “And industry sources say there’s a real risk of stagnation if country radio doesn’t keep up with the music industry’s dazzling changes.” Any effort to “change programming practices at country radio means going against strategies that have been developed over decades.”15 As formatting pioneer Lee Abrams said to FMQB in 2006 regarding present-day FM radio, “the playbook was written in the early to mid–’70s and it hasn’t been updated.”16 Abrams, a key figure in transforming progressive rock into AOR in the early ’70s and in writing portions of the very playbook he mentions, said those words from the standpoint of a well-established career in satellite radio. Joining XM in 1998, he was “instantly given the task of developing and implementing 100 radio stations,” the type of project that made the radio industry’s efforts to divide audiences into predictable categories seem antiquated. At the outset, commercial-free satellite radio, presenting what Billboard called in 2000 the “most incredibly narrow niche formats you can imagine” to an ever-diversified listenership, appeared to signal the end of commercial music radio as we’d known it.17 This hasn’t been the case, though, as “terrestrial” FM radio has dug in its heels and continued adhering, with some exceptions (such as the burgeoning Latino demographic), to variations of the five main formats established four decades ago. These five formats developed as distinct social functionaries that responded to changes in the radio and record industries, but especially to changes in post1960s American culture: Top 40, with its newly revamped target audiences, became virtually indistinguishable from MOR, and served as a venue for meaningful “co-listening” between adults and preteens. By the mid-’70s, the “adult contemporary” (AC) format largely replaced MOR, which became a familiar term for easy-listening stations geared toward listeners of 50 and older. AC siphoned off adult listeners from Top 40 formats, which have since survived as a vehicle for younger teenage

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listeners while maintaining a conceptual aura of democratic inclusiveness so important to the format since its inception in the ’50s. Radio industry insiders began referring to the format as CHR (contemporary hit radio) in the ’80s, and it fluctuates in stature now as then. MOR (later to become AC) developed in the early ’70s as a format geared toward both older audiences and, more specifically, the “housewife” demographic. So successful did this format become that its star offspring, the “soft rock” genre, infiltrated the entire hit radio arena. This format also became a space for gender construction and sexual politics at a time when the women’s liberation movement brought long-held beliefs and prejudices regarding femininity into question. The rise of soft rock, its usage as a vehicle for political commentary, the confessional offerings of singer-songwriters, as well as the incorporation of “sex talk” into MOR programming reflected this new cultural milieu. Progressive rock formats, eventually to be tidied up and revamped as AOR (“album-oriented rock”) by the mid-’70s, served a similar role as MOR for its own target audience. With their expanded, hard-edged playlists and reputation for drug friendliness, these formats, which aimed for the teenage male demographic and successfully partitioned them off from adult audiences, became sites for the negotiation of masculine identity during the Vietnam War and Nixon’s “War on Drugs.” An element of escapism contributed to the appeal of the popular hard rock groups featured on these formats, varying between apolitical everymen (Grand Funk Railroad), leather-clad purveyors of fantasy (Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath), and androgynous glam rockers (David Bowie, Alice Cooper). These stations, which became known exclusively as AOR by the late ’70s, spawned alternate versions of the approach, catering to younger audiences (modern/alternative rock, active rock) and older audiences (classic rock, adult album alternative (AAA)) and plausibly taking this original sense of escapism still further. Soul stations, many of which existed as free-form stations in the early ’70s, began tightening their playlists, favoring the softer sounds that had been doing so well on MOR stations and featuring less of the sharper-edged social commentary heard in the first few years of the decade. More “crossover” songs by black artists found airplay on Top 40 and MOR stations during this time, just as “reverse crossover” songs by white artists were getting airplay on black stations. These stations, on one hand, presented an idealized image of interracial harmony that, on the other, diluted soul music in a way that put listeners’ notions of racial identity to the test. Soul radio, renamed as “urban contemporary” or “R&B” by the ’80s, has since become one of commercial radio’s most powerful forces, bringing forth numerous variations such as hip-hop, jammin’ oldies, and rhythmic crossover, as well as Latino variations on the same. A far cry from the “backlash” scare of the early ’70s, soul’s progeny regularly dominates the Billboard Top 10. Like soul, country formats in the early ’70s also tampered with seemingly sacred, long-held notions of musical purity in an effort to build its listenership

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and nudge an entire genre into the mainstream. When American popular music succumbed to a youth revolution with the advent of Elvis Presley and rock ’n’ roll in the mid-’50s, the country music industry set up soft barriers in the form of the adult-oriented countrypolitan or “Nashville Sound.” But the civil rights unrest in the South along with the country audience’s adamant support for the Vietnam War exacerbated the industry’s sense of isolation from the rest of the pop music world. Although country crossover was hardly nonexistent, it could not compare with soul, which had been been producing so many crossover hits that Billboard did away with its soul charts altogether for a mid-’60s spell. By the early ’70s, however, country crossover singles began to infiltrate Top 40 and MOR playlists while country radio, especially the new “cross country” and “progressive country” formats of the time, both generated and responded to a reevaluation of identity going on inside and outside rural America, prompting its reentry into the American mainstream where it still remains. The niche orientation of radio and television today reaches back to the early ’70s, a time when industry professionals divided and conquered, as it were, in reaction to bewildering new changes in a medium they had once understood so well. Today satellite radio and television offer hundreds of channels to consumers, and the choices are so plentiful that one wonders if a lifestyle-oriented allegiance to one specific format is even possible anymore, the way it used to be in the early days of formatting. A philosophical divide, actually, appears to have developed between these two radio modes which designates one (satellite) as mood-oriented and the other (terrestrial) as demographic-, and therefore, identity-oriented. Satellite radio, like our stereos and iPods, bends easily to the whims of the isolated listener. Old fashioned “terrestrial” commercial music radio, though, with its tight and automated playlists, advertisements, and target demographics, demands a certain level of acceptance and trust. For all of its faults, it is the closest thing we have to a communal music listening experience that connects us with corresponding local “demographics.” As long as it remains readily available, it will serve that social function and will likely die hard.

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INTRODUCTION 1 Philip K. Eberly, Music in the Air: America’s Changing Tastes in Popular Music, 1920–1980 (New York: Hastings House, 1982), 227. 2 Michael C. Keith, Radio Programming: Consultancy and Formatics (Boston: Focal Press, 1987), 125. 3 Susan J. Douglas, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination (New York: Times Books, 1999), 256. 4 Quoted in Eberly, Music in the Air, 241. 5 Don Breithaupt and Jeff Breithaupt, Precious and Few: Pop Music in the Early ’70s (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1996), 3. The authors of both I Wanna Be Sedated and Precious and Few are Canadians. 6 Peter N. Carroll, It Seems Like Nothing Happened: The Tragedy and Promise of America in the 1970s (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982), ix. 7 David, Hoeveler Jr., The Postmodernist Turn: American Thought and Culture in the 1970s (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996), xiii. 8 David Frum, How We Got Here: The 70s: The Decade that Brought You Modern Life, for Better or Worse (New York: Basic Books, 2000), xx. 9 Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: Free Press, 2001), 114–15. 10 Beth Bailey and David Farber, eds., America in the Seventies (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 1, 4–5. 11 Edward D. Berkowitz, Something Happened: A Political and Cultural Overview of the Seventies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 5, 10. 12 Thomas Hine, The Great Funk: Styles of the Shaggy, Sexy, Shameless 1970s (New York: Sarah Crichton Books, 2007), 10. 13 Radio and Records, first published in 1973, gained momentum later in the decade. 14 Joel Whitburn, Top Pop Singles: 1955-1993 (Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research, 1994), ix. 15 Craig Rosen, The Billboard Book of Number One Albums (New York: Billboard Books, 1996), xiv, 354. 16 Fredric Dannen, Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business (New York: Times Books, 1990), 174; Brian Ward, Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm

198

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17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32

33

34

35 36 37

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and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race Relations (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998), 7. Steve Chapple and Rebee Garofolo, Rock and Roll is Here to Pay: The History and Politics of the Music Industry (Chicago, IL: Nelson Hall, 1977), 111. I am grateful to Ron Fell, a former editor of the Gavin Report during the 1970s, for bringing this to my attention. Dannen, Hit Men, 89–91; Fong-Torres, The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The History of Top 40 Radio (San Francisco, CA: Miller Freeman Books, 1998), 216. “Campus and Commercial Twains Meet?” Billboard (November 20, 1971), 16, 20. Ibid. Steve Millard, “Radio at 50: An Endless Search for Infinite Variety,” Broadcasting (October 16, 1972), 38. Charles K. Wolfe, A Good-Natured Riot: The Birth of the Grand Ole Opry (Nashville, TN: Country Music Foundation Press and Vanderbilt University Press), 21–2. Ken Barnes, “Top 40: A Fragment of the Imagination,” in Simon Frith, ed., Facing the Music (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), 9-11. Joel Whitburn, Joel Whitburn’s Pop Memories 1890–1954: The History of American Popular Music (Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research, 1986), 7–8. Philip K. Eberly, Music in the Air, 125–6. Gene Lees, Singers and the Song (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), ix. Whitburn, Pop Memories, 9–10. Ibid. Rob Durkee, American Top 40: The Countdown of the Century (New York: Schirmer Books, 1999), 9. Although the focus of Durkee’s book is Casey Kasem’s “American Top 40” radio program, it provides a generous overview of Your Hit Parade, incorporating personal interviews with YHP singers Bea Wain and Gisele MacKenzie as well as YHP historian Bruce Elrod. See also Elrod, Your Hit Parade and American Top 10 Hits: A Week-by-Week Guide to the Nation’s Favorite Music, 1935–1994, 4th ed. (Ann Arbor, MI: Popular Culture Ink, 1994); and Eberly, Music in the Air, 126. A televised version of the show ran from 1950 to 1959. Durkee, American Top 40, 9–10. The show’s bandleader, Snooky Lanson, allegedly maintained that the show’s sponsor, American Tobacco, began pushing a lower quality brand of cigarettes in 1958, and that those cigarettes — not rock ’n’ roll — were the real cause of the show’s demise. Durkee, 10. Fred Bronson, The Billboard Book of Number One Hits, 3rd ed. (New York: Billboard Books, 1992), xxii. Although a “Top 100” appeared intermittently in Billboard as early as November 12, 1955, Billboard introduced its definitive “Hot 100” chart on August 4, 1958. Ibid. Paul J. Bindas, All of This Music Belongs to the Nation: The WPA’s Federal Music Project and American Society (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1995), 16; see also William Stott, Documentary Expressions and Thirties America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 102–18. Martin Parker, “Reading the Charts — Making Sense with the Hit Parade,” Popular Music 10 (May, 1991): 210–11. David Brackett, Interpreting Popular Music (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 37. Greil Marcus, Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ’n’ Roll Music (New York: Plume, 1997), 98.

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38 Claude Hall, “Top 40 Birth Attributed to Juke Replays,” Billboard (January 6, 1973), 10. 39 Although variations and claims on the origins of Top 40 occasionally surface, the roles of Storz and Stewart in devising the format as a major market juggernaut hold firm as established radio history. Ben Fong-Torres thumbs through some of the variations in The Hits Just Keep on Coming, 37–9. 40 Eberly, Music in the Air, 240–1. 41 Fong-Torres, The Hits Just Keep on Coming, 38. See also Hall, “Top 40 Birth Attributed to Juke Replays,” 10. 42 “Payola” is a term unique to the music industry, merging the words “pay” and “victrola.” For more on the payola scandals, see Douglas, Listening In, 251, and Peter Fornatale and Joshua E. Mills, Radio in the Television Age (New York: Overlook Press, 1980), 48–51. 43 Hall, “Low Incomes: Top 40 Target,” 20. 44 Claude Hall, “Programming Consultants on Upswing,” Billboard (June 17, 1972), 46. See also James L. Baughman, The Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking, and Broadcasting in America since 1941, 2nd ed. (Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 197. 45 “Radio — 1/5 of Her Life,” Broadcasting (October 12, 1959), 48; “At Last a Reliable Music Survey,” Broadcasting (October 12, 1959), 33. 46 Richard Schickel, “The Big Revolution in Records,” Look (April 15, 1958), 27. 47 Douglas, Listening In, 260–1. 48 Ibid., 263. 49 Claude Hall, “FM Protects Progressive Rock,” Billboard (November 6, 1971), RN-38; see Chapter 3 for a more in-depth look at the advent of free-form stations in the 1960s. 50 Eberly, Music in the Air, 241. 51 Ken Barnes, “Democratic Radio,” in Dave Marsh, et al., eds., The First Rock & Roll Confidential Report, 48.

CHAPTER 1: WATCHING SCOTTY GROW 1 Ernie, “Rubber Duckie” (Columbia, 1970); Johnny Cash, “What is Truth” (Columbia, 1970); Donny Osmond, “Sweet and Innocent” (MGM, 1970). 2 Peter Fornatale and Joshua E. Mills, Radio in the Television Age (New York: Overlook Press, 1980), 67–9; “2 More Outlets Switching to Blended Play,” Billboard (March 1, 1969), 36. 3 “Billboard Hot 100,” Billboard (September 26, 1970), 76; Columbia “Rubber Duckie” ad, Billboard (August 1, 1970), 15. 4 Theodor Adorno, “A Social Critique of Radio Music,” Kenyon Review 7 (Spring 1945): 214. 5 “Television: Turning the Tables,” Time (March 24, 1958), 61. 6 Mark Coleman, Playback: From the Victrola to MP3, 100 Years of Music, Machines and Money (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2003), 79; Susan J. Douglas, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination (New York: Times Books, 1999), 226–7. 7 David P. Szatmary, Rockin’ in Time: A Social History of Rock and Roll (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2004), 21. 8 Ibid., 56. 9 “Album Reviews,” Billboard (July 15, 1972), 50; Advertisement, Billboard (August 21, 1971), 43.

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10 In Solid Gold, R. Serge Denisoff classifies the preteen audience as “nubies”: R. Serge Denisoff, Solid Gold: The Popular Record Industry (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1975), 427. 11 Douglas, Listening In, 244. 12 Russell Sanjek, Pennies from Heaven: The American Popular Music Business in the Twentieth Century (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996; originally published as American Popular Music and Its Business, Volume III: From 1900 to 1984), 232–4. 13 Denisoff, Solid Gold, 244. 14 Claude Hall and Barbara Hall, This Business of Radio Programming (New York: Billboard Publications, 1977), 19, 324. 15 Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (New York: Delacorte Press, 1982), 149. 16 Michael S. Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: Free Press, 1996), 241. 17 “The Inheritor,” Time (January 6, 1967), 18–23. 18 Terry H. Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 164–5. 19 Michael S. Foley, The War Machine: Draft Resistance During the Vietnam War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 136. 20 Jerry Markon, “After 40 years, FBI Hunt for Elusive Bomb Suspect Heats Up,” Washington Post (September 22, 2010), A20. 21 Joel Selvin, Summer of Love: The Inside Story of LSD, Rock and Roll, Free Love, and High Times in the Wild West (New York: Dutton, 1994), 106–7. 22 Gimme Shelter, directed by Albert Maysles and David Maysles (Criterion, 1970). 23 “Rock Festivals: Groovy, but No Gravy,” Business Week (August 8, 1970), 20–1. 24 Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties, 194–204. 25 Ibid., 328–9. 26 Tom W. Smith, “Changes in the Generation Gap, 1972–1998” (Chicago, IL: National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, 2000), 1. 27 K. Ross Toole, “I’m Tired of the Tyranny of Spoiled Brats,” Reader’s Digest (June 1970), 129. 28 Bill Sievert, “Spiro T. Agnew: He Sure Had a Way with Words,” Rolling Stone (November 22, 1973), 9. 29 Victor Lundberg, “An Open Letter To My Teenage Son” (Liberty Records, 1967). 30 Tom Donahue, “A Rotting Corpse, Stinking Up the Airways,” Rolling Stone (November 23, 1967), 14. 31 Sanjek, Pennies from Heaven, 232–4. Also see Steve Chapple and Rebee Garofalo, Rock ’n’ Roll is Here to Pay: The History and Politics of the Music Industry (Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1977), 15–16, 20–4; Ed Ward, Geoffrey Stokes and Ken Tucker, Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll (New York: Rolling Stone Press, 1986), 410; Coleman, Playback. 32 Ward, Stokes, and Tucker, Rock of Ages, 369–71. 33 Claude Hall, “LP’s Putting PD’s in Spin,” Billboard (May 24, 1969), 29; “Album Play on Top 40 in Upswing; Tape Sales Poll,” Billboard (February 28, 1970), 24. 34 “Save Our Singles,” Editorial, Billboard (Jul. 12, 1969), 8. 35 Kim Cooper and David Smay, eds., Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2001), 1. 36 Ward, Stokes, and Tucker, Rock of Ages, 408. 37 Fredric Dannen, Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business (New

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38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48

49 50

51

52 53 54 55 56

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York: Times Books, 1990), 164–5. All data regarding chart positions are taken from Joel Whitburn, The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits (New York: Billboard Books, 2000). Nancy Erlich, “Bubblegum is an Artificial Product But Its Sales Are Super,” Billboard (July 22, 1972), 66. Fornatale and Mills, Radio in the Television Age, 44. Richard Schickel, “The Big Revolution in Records,” Look (April 15, 1958) 27; Ward, Stokes and Tucker, Rock of Ages, 123. Denisoff, Solid Gold, 436. Erlich, “Bubblegum is an Artificial Product but Its Sales Are Super,” 66. “The Beatles” ran on ABC from 1965 to 1968. See Gary H. Grossman, Saturday Morning TV (New York: Dell Publishing, 1981), 377. Nicholas Schaffner, The Beatles Forever (Harrisburg, PA: Stackhouse Publishing, 1977), 30. Erlich, “Bubblegum is an Artificial Product but Its Sales Are Super,” 66. Regarding the Monkee rebellion, Geoffrey Stokes put it this way: “Working with the Monkees had been profitable but also a pain in the neck because the band members like Mike Nesmith began to get ideas that [Monkees co-creator Don] Kirshner felt were above their station.” Among the wild ideas the band members had gotten were to write their own music and play on their own records. Ward, Stokes, and Tucker, Rock of Ages, 409. The Cowsills’ biggest hits were “The Rain, the Park and Other Things” (#2, 1967), “Indian Lake” (#10, 1968), and “Hair” (#2, 1969). Lead vocalist Ron Dante also sang lead for a hit-making bubblegum outfit called The Cuff Links. The group’s songs were all written by seasoned songwriter Jeff Barry. See David Smay, “The Candy Ass Charisma of the Archies,” in Cooper and Smay, eds., Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth, 42–5. Hall and Hall, This Business of Radio Programming, 324. J. Lyle and H. R. Hoffman, “Children’s Use of Television and Other Media,” in E. A. Rubinstein, G. A. Comstock, and J. P. Murray, eds., Television and Social Behavior: Vol. 4. Television in Day-to-Day Life: Patterns of Use (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1972), 129–256. J. D. Brown, K. W. Childers, K. E. Bauman, and G. G. Koch, “The Influence of New Media and Family Structure on Young Adolescents’ Television and Radio Use,” Communication Research 17 (1990): 65–82. Haejung Paik, “The History of Children’s Electronic Media,” in Dorothy G. Singer and Jerome L. Singer, eds., Handbook of Children and the Media (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001), 12. See also Horst Stipp, “Children’s Knowledge Of and Taste in Popular Music,” Popular Music and Society 10(2) (1985): 12; Donald F. Roberts and Peter G. Christenson, “Popular Music in Childhood and Adolescence,” in Singer and Singer, eds., Handbook of Children and the Media, 395. Quoted by David Pichaske, A Generation in Motion: Popular Music and Culture in the Sixties (New York: Schirmer Books, 1979), 163. Ibid. Hall and Hall, This Business of Radio Programming, 19, 248. Ibid. Gene Sculatti, “Gator in the Candy Lab: A Brief History of Buddah Records,” in Cooper and Smay, eds., Bubblegum Music is the Naked, 233. See also Fredric Dannen, Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business (New York: Times Books, 1990), 165, and Beverly Magid, “KRLA: On Top, In Touch” Record World (January 6, 1973), 14.

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57 A. M. Rubin, “Television Usage, Attitudes, and Viewing Behavior of Children and Adolescents,” Journal of Broadcasting 21 (1977): 355–69; George Comstock, Television and Human Behavior (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978); J. W. C. Johnstone, “Social Integration and Mass Media Use Among Adolescents: A Case Study,” in Jay G. Blumler and Elihu Katz, eds., The Uses of Mass Communications: Current Perspectives on Gratifications Research (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1974), 35–47. 58 Grossman, Saturday Morning TV, 384–414. 59 The Partridge Family starred Shirley Jones as a single mother of five musical kids. See Alex McNeil, Total Television: A Comprehensive Guide to Programming from 1948 to the Present, 3rd ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 587. 60 David Frum, How We Got Here: The 70s, The Decade That Brought You Modern Life — For Better or Worse (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 106–11. 61 Daniel Yankelovich, The New Morality: A Profile of American Youth in the 70s (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), 92–9. 62 Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978); Tom Wolfe, “The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening,” in Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976), 143. 63 Beth Bailey, America in the Seventies (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 7; Frum, How We Got Here, 106–11. 64 Peter Carroll, It Seemed Like Nothing Happened, 285. 65 Ellen Wartella, A. Alexander, and D. Lemish, “The Mass Media Environment of Children,” American Behavioral Scientist 23 (1979): 33–52. 66 Roper Organization, Changing Public Attitudes toward Television and Other Mass Media (New York: Television Information Office, 1973). 67 Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior, Television and Growing Up: The Impact of Televised Violence (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1972), 17–19. 68 Christopher H. Sterling and John Michael Kittross, Stay Tuned: A History of American Broadcasting (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002), 458–9. 69 Carroll, It Seemed Like Nothing Happened, 284–5; See Daniel Yankelovich, New Rules: Searching for Self-Fulfillment in a World Turned Upside Down (New York: Random House, 1981), 21. 70 Wayne Dyer, Your Erroneous Zones (1976; New York: Harper Perrenial, 1991), 200. 71 Paik, “The History of Children’s Electronic Media,” 15–16. 72 Richard D. Lyon, “Dr. Spock, Denying ‘Permissiveness,’ Says Agnew’s Gibes Are ‘a Compliment,’” New York Times (September 27, 1970), 47. See also Thomas Maier, Dr. Spock: An American Life (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1998), 323–4. 73 Benjamin Spock, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pierce, 1946), 4. 74 William Graebner, “The Unstable World of Benjamin Spock: Social Engineering in a Democratic Culture, 1917–1950,” Journal of American History 67(3) (1980): 613. 75 Fitzhugh Dodson, How to Parent (Los Angeles, CA: Nash Publishing, 1970); Lee Salk and Rita Kramer, How to Raise a Human Being: A Parent’s Guide to Emotional Health from Infancy to Adolescence (New York: Random House, 1969). See also

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76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

93

94 95 96 97 98 99

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Nancy McGrath, “By the Book,” New York Times Magazine (June 27, 1976), 26; Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism, 166–8. Daniel Elkind, The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1981), 6. Marie Winn, “What Became of Childhood Innocence,” New York Times Magazine (January 25, 1981), SM17. “The Un-radical Young,” Life (January 8, 1971), 39. Mike Gross, “Mod(eration) is New Disk Theme,” Billboard (February 6, 1971), 1, 10. Sculatti, “Gator in the Candy Lab: A Brief History of Buddah Records,” in Cooper and Smay, eds., Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth, 233 Hall and Hall, This Business of Radio Programming, 226. “2 More Outlets Switching to Blended Play,” Billboard (March 1, 1969), 36; Kal Rudman, “Money Music,” Record World (March 2, 1968), 20. Herb Hendler, Year By Year in the Rock Era (New York: Praeger, 1983), 150. Claude Hall, “Watermark Launches 1st Global Syndicated Top 40 Show,” Billboard (May 23, 1970), 30. David Riesman, “Listening to Popular Music” (1950), reprinted in Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin, eds., On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word (New York: Pantheon Books, 1990), 8. Joel Whitburn, Top Pop Singles 1955–1993 (Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research, 1994), v. Durkee, American Top 40; Pete Battistini, American Top 40 with Casey Kasem (The 70s) (Bloomington, IN: Authorhouse, 2004). Hall and Hall, This Business of Radio Programming, 238. Erlich, “Bubblegum is an Artificial Product But Its Sales Are Super,” 66. Adorno, “A Social Critique of Radio Music,” 216. Kal Rudman, “Money Music,” Record World (December 16, 1967), 16. “Answer records” had been a record industry fad throughout the ’50s and ’60s, with country singer Dodie Stevens’s “Yes, I’m Lonesome Tonight,” a response to Elvis Presley’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight,” being among the most conspicuous. See Various Artists, And the Answer Is: Great Answer Pop Disks from the ’50s–’60s, Vol. 1 (Bear Family, 1994). See also Steve Otfinoski, The Golden Age of Novelty Songs (New York: Billboard Books, 2000), 65–86. John Long, Puttin’ on the Hits: A True Story About Top 40 Radio in the 60s and 70s (Online: Oidar Productions, 2003). The Partridge Family’s “I Think I Love You” single predated the Partridge Family television show’s September 1970 debut by several months. Kal Rudman, “Money Music,” Record World (March 9, 1968), 78; Bob Hamilton, “Communication Music,” Record World (May 27, 1972), 73. “Tunes for Teeny-Weenies,” Time (July 19, 1968), 57. Lester Bangs, “Bubblegum,” in Anthony DeCurtis, James Henke, and Holly GeorgeWarren, eds., The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll (New York: Random House, 1992), 452. The Ohio Express, “Yummy Yummy Yummy” (Buddah, 1968); The Osmonds, “The Honey Bee Song” (MGM, 1971); The Osmonds, “Double Lovin’” (MGM, 1971). Becky Ebenkamp, “Ohio Express Ephemera,” in Cooper, Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth, 234. Ira L. Reiss, Premarital Sexual Standards in America: A Sociological Investigation

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100 101

102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109

110 111

112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119

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of the Relative Sociaolgical and Cultural Integration of America’s Sexual Standards (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1960), 249; see also Alan Petigny, “Illegitimacy, Postwar Psychology, and the Reperiodization of the Sexual Revolution,” Journal of Social History 38(1) (2004): 63–79. “Sex in the US: Mores and Morality,” Time (January 24, 1964), 54–9; “Morals Revolution on the US Campus,” Newsweek (April 6, 1964), 52–9. William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson, Human Sexual Response (Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co., 1966); Anne Koedt, “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm,” Voices from Women’s Liberation (New York: New American Library / Mentor Books, 1970), 158–66. Koedt’s article first appeared in New York Radical Women, Notes from the First Year (New York: New York Radical Women, 1968). Gary H.Grossman, Saturday Morning TV (New York: Dell Publishing, 1981), 375–7. Quoted in Denisoff, Solid Gold: The Popular Record Industry, 427. Ibid. “The Necessity of Pre-Teen Stars,” Cash Box (December 11, 1971), 3. A. M. Nolan, Rock ’n’ Roll Road Trip: The Ultimate Guide to the Sites, the Shrines and the Legends Across America (New York: Pharos Books, 1992), 48. Two exceptions to this rule were Paul Anka and Neil Sedaka, who not only wrote their own songs but also many hit singles for other performers. Ward, Stokes, and Tucker, Rock of Ages, 166, 228–9. Ibid. For some Mormon church officials, the group’s association with rock music was worthy of public comment if not official censure. One church authority referred to the group’s 1973 Mormon doctrine concept album, The Plan, as “celestial truths in terrestrial garb.” The group’s penchant for suggestive lyrics, in any case, seems to have flown below the church’s radar. Michael Hicks, Mormonism and Music: A History (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 202–3. Erlich, “Bubblegum is an Artificial Product But Its Sales Are Super,” 66. The Osmonds: “The Honey Bee Song” (MGM, 1971), “Double Lovin’” (MGM, 1970), “My Drum” (MGM, 1971), “Flirtin’” (MGM, 1970), “Find ’Em, Fool ’Em, Forget ’Em” (MGM, 1970). Osmond, Donny, “Sweet and Innocent” (MGM, 1971). David Cassidy, “Rock Me Baby” (MGM, 1972). Robin Green, “Naked Lunch Box: The David Cassidy Story,” Rolling Stone (May 11, 1972), 26–32. Don Breithaupt and Jeff Breithaupt, Precious and Few: Pop Music of the Early ’70s (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 27. Steve Otfinoski, The Golden Age of Novelty Songs (New York: Billboard Books, 2000), 3, 9–13. “Oldies Radio: A Natural for the 70s,” Broadcasting (March 12, 1973), 63. The title “Watergrate” as opposed to “Watergate” simply reflects the parodic namechanging Goodman engages in on the recording, as in the names “John Snitchell” and “John Bean.” Dickie Goodman, “Watergrate” (Rainy Wednesday, 1973). Goodman died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1989. Otfinoski, The Golden Age of Novelty Songs, 13. Melanie featuring the Edwin Hawkins Singers, “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)” (Buddah, 1970); Melanie, “Brand New Key” (Buddah, 1971); Jimmy Castor Bunch, “Troglodyte” (RCA, 1972); Chakachas, “Jungle Fever” (Polydor, 1972); Chuck Berry, “My Ding-a-Ling” (Chess, 1972).

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120 Jimmy Guterman and Owen O’Donnell, The Worst Rock ’n’ Roll Records of All Time: A Fan’s Guide to the Stuff You Love to Hate (New York: Citadel Press, 1991), 179. 121 Dave Barry, Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs (New York: Andrews McKeel Publishing, 2000). 122 Chuck Eddy, “Have a Nice Day, Vols 1–10 (review),” Rolling Stone (March 8, 1990), 102. 123 Douglas, Listening In, 25; Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (New York: Times Books, 1994), 149. 124 Robert A. Hull, “My Pop Conscience,” in Ashley Kahn, Holly George-Warren, Shawn Dahl, eds., Rolling Stone: The Seventies (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1998), 38. 125 Tyler’s 1948 single is the earliest spoken word country hit single listed in Joel Whitburn’s Billboard Book of Top 40 Country Hits (New York: Billboard Books, 1996), 336; Wink Martindale’s 1959 version, likewise, is the earliest charting spoken word pop hit listed in Whitburn’s Top Pop Singles, 383. For an extended treatment of “Deck of Cards,” see Nick Tosches, Country: The Biggest Music in America (New York: Stein & Day, 1977), 4–5. 126 Byron MacGregor, “Americans (A Canadian’s Opinion)” (Westbound, 1973). Canadian radio personality Gordon Sinclair’s original, which did not include musical backing, eventually climbed all the way up to #24. A third version by Country Music Hall of Famer Tex Ritter stalled at #90, but reached #35 on the country chart 127 Wayne Jancik, The Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders (New York: Billboard Books, 1990), 274. 128 Frum, How We Got Here, 106. 129 Abrams, Ms., and the Strawberry Point School Third Grade Class, “Mill Valley” (Reprise, 1970). 130 Rita Abrams, “Still Here; Or How Could I Leave Mill Valley?” liner notes, Miss Abrams and the Strawberry Point 4th Grade Class (Varese Sarabande, 2000). 131 “‘Sesame Street’: CTW’s Big Act that No One’s Followed,” Broadcasting (November 20, 1972), 50. 132 David Borgenicht, Sesame Street Unpaved (New York: Hyperion, 1998), 145. 133 The Carpenters, “Sing” (A&M, 1973). 134 Ray Stevens, “Everything is Beautiful” (Barnaby, 1970); English Congregation, “Softly Whispering I Love You” (Signpost, 1972); Sammy Davis, Jr., “The Candy Man” (MGM, 1972); Bobby Goldsboro, “Watching Scotty Grow” (United Artists, 1970); Bobby Bare, “Daddy What If ” (Bear Family, 1973); Harry Chapin, “Cat’s in the Cradle” (Elektra, 1974); Gilbert O’Sullivan, “Clair” (Mamou, 1972); Brotherhood of Man, “Save Your Kisses for Me” (Pye, 1976). 135 Bobby Russell, “Saturday Morning Confusion” (United Artists, 1970). 136 B. J. Thomas, “Rock and Roll Lullabye” (Scepter, 1972); Wayne Newton, “Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast,” (Chelsea, 1972). 137 Elvis Presley, “Don’t Cry Daddy,” (RCA, 1970). The nature of the loss in Presley’s song is never made explicit. 138 Clint Holmes, “Playground in My Mind” (Epic, 1972). 139 Howard P. Chudacoff, How Old Are You?: Age Consciousness in American Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 148–9. 140 G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physilogy, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education, 2 vols. (1904; New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1908).

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141 Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (1890; New York: Penguin Books, 1997). 142 Nicola Kay Beisel, Imperiled Innocents: Anthony Comstock and Family Reproduction in Victorian America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 4. 143 Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 4–5. May equates the American foreign policy of “containment” with this family-oriented strategy for cultural survival in the 1950s. 144 Other than The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family, two other notable 1970s series focused on large families later in the decade: The Waltons (CBS, 1972–81) and Eight is Enough (ABC, 1977–81). McNeil, Total Television, 231–2, 814–16. 145 Bobby Goldsboro, “Watching Scotty Grow” (United Artists, 1970). 146 Elkind, The Hurried Child, 10. 147 Carly Simon, “You’re So Vain” (Elektra, 1972); “That’s the Way I Always Heard it Should Be,” Carly Simon (1970). These were songs about sexual arrogance and a perplexing marriage proposal, respectively, in the midst of the sexual revolution. 148 Douglas, Where the Girls Are, 149. 149 Excessive expenses in the label’s cocaine department, in fact, would apparently prove to be its eventual downfall. Dannen, Hit Men, 161–81. 150 Ian Cranna, “Disco Infernal,” Q (April 1998), 98. 151 Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, “Teach Your Children” (Atlantic, 1970). 152 Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood, 79–80. 153 Vance Packard, Our Endangered Children: Growing Up in a Changing World (Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co., 1983), 98–104; Valerie and Polakow Suransky, The Erosion of Childhood (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), 189; Marie Winn, Children Without Childhood (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), 42–6; Cheryl Merser, “Grown-Ups”: A Generation in Search of Childhood (New York: Putnam, 1987), 22–3. 154 Harvey J. Graff, Conflicting Paths: Growing Up in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 344. 155 Edmund L. Andrews, “Communications Bill Signed, and the Battles Begin Anew,” New York Times (February 9, 1996), 1A. 156 A. Dorr, P. Kovaric, and C. Doubleday, “Parent-Child Coviewing of Television,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media (1999): 33–51. See also Victor C. Strasburger, Barbara J. Wilson, and Amy B. Jordan (2002), Children, Adolescents, and the Media (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2009), 506–7. 157 Frank Furedi, Paranoid Parenting: Why Ignoring the Experts May Be Best for Your Child (Chicago, IL: Chicago Press Review, 2002), 28; “Anti-social behavior . . .” quoted by Furedi from Pamela Orpinas and N. Murray, “Parental Influences of Students’ Aggressive Behaviors and Weapon Carrying,” Health Education and Behavior 26(6) (1999): 775. 158 Susan Barbieri, “The Parent Trap: Teenagers’ Relationships with Parents are Better Than Ever. But Are They Getting too Cozy?” Star Tribune (December 13, 2004), 1E; see also Ellyn Spragins, “Love and Money: Out of the Classroom, Back in the House,” Wall Street Journal (August 3, 2003), 9. 159 Amy Chozik, “How Parents Became Cool,” Wall Street Journal (April 28, 2010). 160 Michael Thompson, quoted in Barbieri, “The Parent Trap,” 1E; Anna Bahney, “High School Heroes: Mom and Dad,” New York Times (May 16, 2004), 1. 161 Barbara Buchholz, “Colleges Reinventing Freshman Orientation,” Chicago Tribune (July 13, 2003); “College Gets a Big Lesson in How Rankings Can Rule,” Washington Post (September 25, 2000), A02.

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162 Laura Ivery and John Parikhal, What Women Want: From AC Radio (Columbia, MD: Arbitron and Joint Communications, 2002), 4, 6. 163 Katy Bachman, “Radio Disney Listening Up in ’09,” Media Week (November 4, 2009). 164 Chuck Taylor, “Top 40’s Top 40: Robin Jones,” Billboard (March 11, 2005), 1. 165 Craig Rosen, “Labels Tap Into Kid Power: More Young Fans Are Tuning In — and Buying,” Billboard (May 30, 1998), 1, 94. 166 Taylor, “Top 40’s Top 40,” 1. 167 Dawn C. Chmielewski, “The Starmaker Behind Miley and the Jonases,” Los Angeles Times (June 21, 2009), A1. 168 Edd Routt, James B. McGrath, and Fredric A. Weiss, The Radio Format Conundrum (New York: Communication Arts Books, 1978), 49. 169 Ibid.

CHAPTER 2: PILLOW TALK 1 Claude Hall, “Easy Listening Stations Are not Lifting Top 40 Sound,” Billboard (February 7, 1970), 28. 2 “WPTR ‘Softens’ Sound to Attract the Housewives,” Billboard (January 18, 1969), 49. 3 Elinor Lenz and Barbara Myerhoff, The Feminization of America: How Women’s Values Are Changing Our Public and Private Lives (Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1985), 4–5. 4 Mike Gross, “Mod(eration) is New Disk Theme,” Billboard (February 6, 1971),1, 10. 5 Data gathered from Fred Bronson, The Billboard Book of Number One Hits (New York: Billboard, 1992), and Wesley Hyatt, The Billboard Book of Number One Adult Contemporary Hits (New York: Billboard Books, 1999). 6 “The Un-radical Young,” Life (January 8, 1971), 39; “The Cooling of America,” Time (February 22, 1971), 32. 7 Andrew J. Edelstein and Kevin McDonough, The Seventies: From Hot Pants to Hot Tubs (New York: Dutton, 1990), 104–9; David Frum, How We Got Here (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 100–1. 8 Luke Rhinehart, The Book of est (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1976), xii–xiii. See also Jane Brody, “Reports of Psychosis After Erhard Course,” New York Times (April 24, 1977), 23. 9 John Denver, Back Home Again album notes (RCA Victor, 1975); see also Charlotte Faltermayer, “The Best of Est?” Time (March 16, 1998), 52–3. 10 “The Un-radical Young,” Life (January 8, 1971), 39. 11 Jackson W. Carroll, Douglas W. Johnson, and Martin Marty, Religion in America: 1950 to the Present (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 25. 12 Richard Levine, “When the Lord God of the Universe Played Houston,” Rolling Stone (March 14, 1974), 36–50. 13 “Sounding a New Beat in Radio: The Jesus Rockers,” Broadcasting (August 20, 1973), 76–7. 14 Les Crane, “Desiderata” (Warner, 1971). The word “desiderata” is a latin term meaning important, essential things. The poem was actually written in 1906 by an Indiana lawyer by the name of Max Ehrman, who gave it the title “Go Placidly Amid the Noise and Haste.” A popular Baltimore pastor allegedly first lifted it out

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15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36 37 38 39 40 41

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of obscurity in the ’50s. Ritchie Unterberger, liner notes, in Les Crane, Desiderata (Warner, 1971; Collectors’ Choice Music, 2003). Tom Wolfe, “The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening,” in Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine, 143. Ibid., 145. Robert Shelton, No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan (New York: W. Morrow & Co., 1986), 173–8, 245–52. Ibid. Ibid., 444–52, 457–64. See Mark Brend, American Troubadours: Groundbreaking Singer-Songwriters of the ’60s (San Francisco, CA: Backbeat Books, 2001). Shelton, No Direction Home, 479–81. “The Cooling of America,” Time (February 22, 1971), 32. “James Taylor: One Man’s Family of Rock,” Time (March 1, 1971), 27. Ibid. Ward, Stokes, and Tucker, Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll, 486. See Edelstein and McDonough, The Seventies, 104–9. Joseph Lanza, Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other Moodsong (New York: Picador, 1994), 34–54; Routt, McGrath, and Weiss, The Radio Format Conundrum,145–67. Lanza, Elevator Music, 43–4. Fong-Torres, The Hits Just Keep on Coming, 59–64. Although Gavin also sold subscriptions of his tipsheet to record companies, his focus never wavered from radio. Ibid., 63. See also Fredric Dannen, Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business (New York: Times Books, 1990), 89–104. Sanjek, Pennies from Heaven: The American Popular Music Business in the Twentieth Century, 547. “Traditional pop” is the term currently used by the National Association for the Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS, which sponsors the Grammy Awards). See Sanjek, Pennies from Heaven, 369–70. Clive Davis, Clive: Inside the Record Business (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1975), 209. Denisoff, Solid Gold: The Popular Record Industry, 8–9. Lanza, Elevator Music, 149. This in spite of what the First Lady told Barbara Walters on the Today show in 1970: “I like light opera. My husband likes the classics and my daughters — some of them even boogaloo . . .” Kahn, George-Warren, Dahl, eds., Rolling Stone: The Seventies, 14. Jimmy Bowen and Jim Jerome, Rough Mix (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 96–100. Davis, Clive, 209–10. Cahn took over leadership of the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame in New York in the early 1980s, while Davis took over leadership of Arista records. Thanks to my father, Ron Simpson, for bringing this to my attention. See also Dannen, Hit Men, 246–51. Robin Denselow, When the Music’s Over: The Story of Political Pop (London: Faber, 1989), 112. Denisoff, Solid Gold, 10. “Gortikov Comments on Rock Festivals, Blacks, Tape, High Royalty Advances,

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42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

64 65 66 67 68

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Piracy and Other Key Issues,” Billboard (December 11, 1971), 1. RIAA stands for the Recording Industry Association of America. Barnes, “Top 40,” 18. “Changes Phasing Out Classic MOR,” Billboard (January 8, 1972), 1. “Yates: Free-Form on Way Out,” Billboard (March 11, 1972), 36. Sara Lane, “Daylight Music, Night Talk Hype Miami Watter Ratings,” Billboard (July 3, 1971), 44. Robert Sklar, “The Fonz, Laverne, Shirley, and the Great American Class Struggle,” Television: The Critical View, ed. Horace Newcomb (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 77–9. Claude Hall, “Radio Enters the ‘Age of Syndication’,” Billboard (June 22, 1972), 69; Dan Bottisch, “Oldies Make Charts Via Rock, Pop Acts,” Billboard (May 27, 1972), 1. The new WOR-FM did not entirely eschew Top 40. Herb Hendler, Year by Year in the Rock Era: Events and Conditions Shaping the Rock Era that Shaped America (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983), 142. Quoted in “MOR Audience Underestimated,” Billboard (July 11, 1970), 36. “Top 40 in Topsy Turvy Turmoil is Consensus,” Billboard (May 13, 1972), 1. Routt, McGrath, and Weiss, The Radio Format Conundrum, 11, 49. “Blended play” was another, less derisive term favored by certain MOR programmers. See “2 More Outlets Switching to Blended Play,” Billboard (March 1, 1969), 36. Claude Hall, “‘Stealing’ Ties Top 40, MOR Radio in Unhappy Wedlock,” Billboard (January 31, 1970), 1. “Most Radio men involved — on either side of the programming fence,” writes Hall, “will tell you that the barriers in music hardly exist anymore.” Denisoff, Solid Gold, 10. Hilmes, Radio Voices, 59. Ibid., 32, 151–8. Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985), 66. As quoted by Marchand in Advertising the American Dream, 66. Fong-Torres, The Hits Just Keep on Coming, 38 Douglas, Listening In, 253. Fong-Torres, The Hits Just Keep on Coming, 52. Allen Sniffen, “So You Want Some More Good Guy Pictures,” WMCA: Fabulous 57; Hans Knot, “The Morning Mayor of New York,” Soundscapes.info (2003). Knot, “The Morning Mayor of New York”; Charles Sinclair, “Indie Matches DJ’s to Survey Tastes,” Billboard (May 26, 1958), 10; June Bundy, “Vox Jox,” Billboard (December 2, 1957), 50. Jennifer Hyland Wang, “‘The Case of the Radio-Active Housewife’: Relocating Radio in the Age of Television,” in Michele Hilmes and Jason Loviglio, eds., Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio (New York: Routledge, 2002), 343, 359–60. Beverly Magid, “Distaff DJ’s Speak Out: Rock On, Sisters,” Record World (January 13, 1973), 32. Rosemary Scott, The Female Consumer (New York: Halsted, 1976), x. Rene Bartos, The Moving Target: What Every Marketer Should Know About Women (New York: Free Press, 1982), 9–11. Ibid., 28–9. Scott, The Female Consumer, x; Denisoff, Solid Gold, 8.

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69 Bartos, The Moving Target, 73; Hall and Hall, This Business of Radio Programming, 141. 70 Scott, The Female Consumer, 213. 71 Earl Paige, “Single College Student Survey Yields Bonanza,” Billboard (March 25, 1972), 23. 72 See Frith and McRobbie, “Rock and Sexuality,” in Frith and Goodwin, eds., On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word (New York: Pantheon Books, 1990), 371–89; Douglas, Listening In, 274–5; Keith Negus, Popular Music Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press), 123–6. 73 Holly Kruse, “Gender,” Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 85–6. See also Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press). 74 Douglas, Listening In, 274–5. 75 “WPTR ‘Softens’ Sound to Attract the Housewives,” Billboard (January 18, 1969), 49. 76 Denisoff, Solid Gold, 32. 77 Claude Hall, “Can Top 40 Radio Survive a Multilevel Onslaught?” Billboard (February 15, 1969), 34. 78 Lanza, Elevator Music, 178. 79 Robert Draper, Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored History (New York: Doubleday, 1990). No less important to Rolling Stone’s new direction was the political bent of Hunter S. Thompson, its star writer during the early ’70s, not to mention the magazine’s good fortune in hiring Howard Kohn and David Weir, who unraveled the Patty Hearst kidnapping mystery in a 1974 exclusive. Ibid., 160–9, 232–4. 80 George McGovern, Grassroots: The Autobiography of George McGovern (New York: Random House, 1977), 172–3; Ben Fong-Torres, “Stars Come Out for McGovern,” Rolling Stone (May 11, 1972), 8. 81 Johnny Rivers, “Come Home America” (United Artists, 1972). 82 Jurek Martin, “A Memory That Never Flags: Twenty Years On, the Vietnam War Remains a Quintessential American Faultline,” London Financial Times (April 29, 1995), 6. 83 Frum, How We Got Here, xviii; David Broder of the Washington Post reports that Muskie did not cry and that the story resulted from the “pack mentality” of reporters. See Lester Hyman, “Remembrances” (Edmund S. Muskie Foundation, 2000). 84 Jon Wiener, Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 1–2. 85 Lennon granted a famously frank interview to Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner in late 1970. See Jann Wenner, “The Rolling Stone Interview: John Lennon: Part 1: The Working Class Man,” Rolling Stone (December 24, 1970), 33. See Schaffner, The Beatles Forever, 152. 86 John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band with Elephants Memory and the Invisible Strings, “Woman is the Nigger of the World” (Apple, 1972); John and Yoko/Plastic Ono Band with Elephant’s Memory Plus Invisible Strings, Sometime in New York City (Apple, 1972). 87 Unable to crack the Top 40, the song stalled at #57 on Billboard’s singles chart. 88 Carroll, It Seemed Like Nothing Happened, 28; Douglas, Where the Girls Are, 139–40.

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89 Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, eds., The Reader’s Companion to American History (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991), 356–7. 90 Winifred D. Wandersee, On the Move: American Women in the 1970s (Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 1988), 118–19; id, 182. 91 Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: W. W. Norton & Co.), 337. 92 “How Women’s Role in the US is Changing,” US News & World Report (May 30, 1966), 58. 93 Carroll, It Seemed Like Nothing Happened, 31. 94 Allen Levy, “Free to Be Marlo Thomas,” Record World (January 27, 1973), 16. 95 Edelstein and McDonough, The Seventies, 69. 96 “Stand Up and Be Counted,” movie review, Ms. (August 1972), 14. 97 Susan Lydon, “And Now Here’s . . . Helen Reddy,” Ms. (July 1973), 28. 98 “A Certain Sort of Woman,” Cash Box (November 22, 1975), R-34; Bronson, The Billboard Book of Number One Hits, 324 99 Betty Friedan, It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement (New York: Random House, 1976), 257. 100 Bronson, The Billboard Book of Number One Hits, 324. 101 Ibid. 102 Hall and Hall, This Business of Radio Programming, 248. 103 Ann M. Savage, They’re Playing Our Songs: Women Talk about Feminist Rock Music (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 74. 104 Although “I Am Woman” enjoyed chart topping success in both Australia and the US, the song never caught fire in the UK and did not chart. 105 Michelle Arrow, “It Has Become My Personal Anthem: ‘I Am Woman’, Popular Culture, and 1970s Feminism,” Australian Feminist Studies 22 (2007): 225. 106 Frith and McRobbie, “Rock and Sexuality,” 385. 107 Ibid. 108 Dave Marsh, The Heart of Rock and Soul (New York: New American Library, 1989), 475. 109 Cynthia Lont, “Women’s Music: No Longer a Small Private Party,” Rockin’ the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements, Rebee Garofalo, ed. (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1992), 241. 110 Jerome L. Rodnitzky, Feminist Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of a Feminist Counterculture (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999), 61. 111 Angela McRobbie, “Settling Accounts with Subcultures: A Feminist Critique,” in Frith and Goodwin, eds., On Record, 80. McRobbie’s piece responds to influential — albeit male-focused — studies of youth subcultures such as Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Methuen, 1979) and Paul Willis’s Learning to Labour (London: Saxon House, 1977). 112 Susan Lydon, “And Now, Here’s . . . Helen Reddy,” Ms. (January 1973), 28. 113 Lester Bangs, “Women in Rock: They Won’t Get Fooled Again,” Ms. (August 1972), 25. 114 Marion Meade, “The Degradation of Women,” in R. Serge Denisoff, ed., The Sounds of Social Change (Chicago, IL: Rand McNally, 1972), 176. 115 Fanny’s two Top 40 hits were “Charity Ball” (#40, 1971) and “Butter Boy” (#29, 1975). 116 Naomi Weisstein and Virginia Blaisdell, “Feminist Rock: No More Balls and Chains,” Ms. (December 1972), 27. 117 Bangs, “Women in Rock,” 23. 118 Dale McConathy, quoted in Gloria Steinem, ed. The Decade of Women: A Ms.

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119 120 121 122 123 124

125 126 127 128

129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141

142 143

213

History of the Seventies in Words and Pictures (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1980), 152. Loraine Alterman, “Bette Midler: A Now Woman,” Ms. (May 19, 1973), 8. For an extended analysis of this song’s cultural significance, see Douglas, Where the Boys Are, 83–98. Sheila Weller, Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon — and the Journey of a Generation (New York: Atria Books, 2008), 25–6. Kal Rudman, “Money Music,” Record World (June 16, 1973), 24. Kal Rudman, “Money Music,” Record World (June 23, 1973), 32. Other songs that “broke” through female phone response, according to Rudman, were the aforementioned “Playground in My Mind,” by Clint Holmes, “Oh Babe What Would You Say,” by elderly voiced Hurricane Smith, and Engelbert Humperdinck’s “I Never Said Good-bye.” Kal Rudman, “Money Music,” Record World (November 25, 1972), 22. Claude Hall, “Draper Launches Format Aimed at Women, Daytime Stations,” Billboard (September 26, 1970), C-15. “Daily 18-Hour Feminine Format Is Sold Nationally by Peters Prod.,” Billboard (May 29, 1971), 32. Fong-Torres, The Hits Just Keep on Coming, 47–52. “‘Ballances’ Life for Housewife,” Billboard (May 15, 1971), 27; Claude Hall, “Interview: Blore Keys Format on Changes in Lifestyle,” Billboard (November 11, 1972), 12. For an overview of early ’70s “sex talk” radio, complete with sample dialogues, see Robert L. Hilliard and Michael C. Keith, Dirty Discourse: Sex and Indecency in Broadcasting (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 57–63. Beverly Magid, “Listening Post,” Record World (January 13, 1973), 32. A particular specialty of Ballance’s was his usage of words that sounded obscene but really weren’t, such as “Your fatuities leave me breathless” and “I’m here stroking my stallion ganglia.” Fong-Torres, The Hits Just Keep on Coming, 123–5. Bill Ballance, KGBS Presents Bill Ballance and the Feminine Forum (Mark Records, 1971). “FCC Draws Its Lines on Sex Talk,” Broadcasting (April 16, 1973), 31–2. Ibid. Len Zeidenberg, “Perpectives on the News,” Broadcasting (April 23, 1973), 42. Hilmes, Radio Voices, 154. Stern and Stern, Jane and Michael Stern’s Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, 6–8, 124–5. “Sex on the Dial,” Newsweek (September 4, 1972), 90. Stern and Stern, Jane and Michael Stern’s Encyclopedia of Pop Culture (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), 6–8, 124–5. “Touchiest Topic on Radio Now: Talk About Sex,” Broadcasting (March 19, 1973), 119. “Granny Entries Flavored with Soft Melodic Punch,” Billboard (February 6, 1971), 3. The term “Grammy” refers to the award (resembling an old-fashioned gramophone) which the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) presents annually to individuals it selects as deserving recognition for “artistic creativity in the recording field.” The Academy came into being for this express purpose in 1957, and its first awards were presented in 1958. Sanjek, Pennies from Heaven, 369. Ritchie Yorke, “Top May 40 Be Rocking, But Is It Relating to What’s Happening Today?” RN-26. Mike Gross, “Pop Speaks Soft, Carries Big $tick,” Billboard (May 31, 1969), 1.

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144 Stephen Holden, “Rock-a-Bye Baby Boomer,” New York Times (June 3, 1990), 22–4. 145 Radio & Records: 30 Year Anniversary, CD (November 2003). 146 “Arbitron: Dallas-Ft. Worth Radio Ranker,” Arbitron.com (January 8, 2010). 147 “Bill Ballance, Shock Jock Forerunner Who Hosted Provocative 1970s Radio Show, Dead at 85,” NCTimes.com (September 24, 2004); Randy Dotinga, “On Ballance, he had quite a radio life,” NCTimes.com (September 24, 2004). Schlessinger’s own relationship with Ballance and its rather scandalous fallout are hereby left open for readers’ independent investigations. 148 Bob Hamilton, “Communication Music,” Record World (May 27, 1972), 23; Beverly Magid, “Bill Gavin and the Credibility Game,” Record World (December 2, 1972), 8; Kal Rudman, “Money Music,” (March 9, 1968), 76. 149 Laura Ivery and John Parikhal, What Women Want: From AC Radio (Columbia, MD: Arbitron and Joint Communications, 2002), 9. 150 Reed Bunzel, “Walter Sabo on Dark Holes and ‘Vision,’” Radio Ink (May 10, 2004). 151 Mr. Youth and RepNation Media, “Millennial Mom 101: Why Millennial Moms Are Supplanting College Students as the Most Connected and Technology Dependent Poulation,” (October, 2009). White paper.

CHAPTER 3: ALL THE YOUNG DUDES 1 Advertisement, Billboard (September 5, 1970), 83. 2 Ed Ward, Geoffrey Stokes, and Ken Tucker, Rock of Ages (New York: Rolling Stone Press, 1986), 637. Kooper wrote Gary Lewis and the Playboys’ 1965 #1 hit “This Diamond Ring” and played French horn on the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” 3 Gail Bederman, “‘Teaching Our Sons to Do What We Have Been Teaching the Savages to Avoid’: G. Stanley Hall, Racial Recapitulation, and the Neurasthenic Paradox,” in Gail Bederman, ed., Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 77–8, 100. 4 Grace Palladino, Teenagers: An American History (New York: Basic Books, 1996), 81–4. 5 Nicky Wright, “Seducers of the Innocent: The Bloody Legacy of Pre-Code Crime,” Comic Book Marketplace, 65 (December 1998); Fredric Wertham, “The Comics . . . Very Funny!” The Saturday Review of Literature (May 29, 1948), 6–7, 27–8. 6 Fredric Wertham, The Seduction of the Innocent (New York: Rinehart, 1954); Bradford W. Wright, Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America (Batimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 2001), 172–9; “Inquiry Demands Purge of ‘Comics,’” New York Times (February 20, 1955), 73. 7 Thomas Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930–34 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 2. 8 Thomas Doherty, Teenagers and Teenpics: The Juvenilization of American Movies in the 1950s (Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1988), 2, 22–3. 9 Norman Cousins, quoted in Robert Lewis Shayon, Television and Our Children (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1951), 21; Dwight MacDonald, Against the American Grain (New York: Random House, 1962), 12–15.

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10 David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950), 4–6, 22. 11 James Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage: America’s Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 84–5; David Pichaske, A Generation in Motion (New York: Schirmer Books, 1979), 33. 12 The Wild One, directed by Laszlo Benedek (Columbia, 1953); Blackboard Jungle, directed by Richard Brooks (MGM, 1975); Rebel Without a Cause, directed by Nicholas Ray (Warner Bros., 1955). 13 “The Impact of Elvis Presley,” Life (August 27, 1956), 101–9. 14 Palladino, Teenagers, 129. 15 Joyce Carol Oates, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” (Epoch, Fall 1966), reprinted in Martha Foley, ed., 200 Years of Great American Short Stories (New York: Galahad Books, 1975), 918–19 16 Mawry M. Travis to Arthur H. Bernstone, March 13, 1958, as quoted in Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage: America’s Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s, 18. 17 Michael S. Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: Free Press, 1996), 241. 18 Susan J. Douglas, Listening In (New York: Times Books, 1999), 12, 15. 19 Chester J. Pach, Jr., and Elmo Richardson, The Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 41. 20 Opal Loomis, “The High Fidelity Wife, or a Fate Worse than Deaf,” Harper’s (August 1955), 34–6; A. Goodenough, “I Am a Hi-Fi Widow,” McCall’s (May 1954), 11–12. 21 Kyle Barnett, “Furniture Music,” paper presented at the IASPM-US Annual Meeting, October 17, 2004. 22 Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie, “Rock and Sexuality” (1978), reprinted in Frith and Goodwin, eds., On Record, 371. In his “Afterthoughts” (1985), also reprinted in Frith and Goodwin, eds., On Record, 419. 23 Frith and McRobbie, “Rock and Sexuality,” 373, 376. 24 Vernon A. Stone, “Surveys Show Younger Women Becoming News Directors,” RTNDA Communicator (October 1976), 10–12. 25 Caroline C. Isber and Muriel Cantor, The Report of the Task Force on Women in Public Broadcasting (1975), in Pamela J. Creedon, ed., Women in Mass Communication (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1993), 157. 26 Michele Hilmes, Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922–1952 (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 58. 27 Martin Parker, “Reading the Charts — Making Sense with the Hit Parade,” Popular Music 10 (May, 1991), 212. 28 Advertisement in Billboard, (June 1, 1959), 40. 29 A. M. Nolan, Rock ’n’ Roll Road Trip: The Ultimate Guide to the Sites, the Shrines and the Legends Across America (New York: Pharos Books, 1992), 48. 30 Palladino, Teenagers, 109–11; Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage, 205–10. 31 Palladino, Teenagers, 132. 32 Douglas, Listening In, 244. 33 Steve Chapple and Rebee Garofalo, Rock ’n’ Roll is Here to Pay (Chicago, IL: Nelson Hall, 1977), 238–9. 34 Alan Freed, quoted from a WINS- New York recording, March 23, 1955. Available from Reel Top 40 Radio Repository: www.reelradio.com/lw/index. html#afwins032355 (accessed February 3, 2005). 35 Frith and McRobbie, “Rock and Sexuality,” 374.

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36 Abe Peck, Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press (New York: Citadel Press, 1985), 154–5. 37 Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam Books, 1987), 365. 38 Terry H. Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 313. 39 Douglas, Listening In, 263. 40 Ibid.; Christopher H. Sterling and John Michael Kittross, Stay Tuned (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002), 526. 41 Claude Hall, “FM Protects Progressive Rock,” Billboard (November 6, 1971), RN-38. 42 Peter Fornatale and Joshua E. Mills, Radio in the Television Age (New York: Overlook Press, 1980), 131. 43 Ibid. 44 Bob Shannon, Turn It Up! American Radio Tales 1946–1996 (Bainbridge Island, WA: Austrian Monk Publishing, 2009), 100. 45 Richard Neer, FM: The Rise and Fall of Rock Radio (New York: Villard, 2001), 84–5; Fong-Torres, The Hits Just Keep on Coming (San Francisco, CA: Miller Freeman Books, 1998), 206–7. 46 Ben Fong-Torres, “FM Radio: Love for Sale,” Rolling Stone (April 2, 1970), 1–8. 47 “Editorial: Record World Introduces Underground Column,” Record World, (April 27, 1968), 3. 48 Eberly, Music in the Air, 241. 49 Michael C. Keith, Voices in the Purple Haze: Underground Radio and the Sixties (London: Praeger Publishers, 1997), 77; Routt, McGrath, and Weiss, The Radio Format Conundrum, 51. 50 Fong-Torres, “FM Radio: Love for Sale,” 1–8. 51 Jack Gould, “Around Country, FM Turns to Rock,” New York Times (May 20, 1970), 23. 52 George Burns, quoted in Hall and Hall, This Business of Radio Programming, 330. 53 Fong-Torres, The Hits Just Keep on Coming, 219. 54 Neer, FM, 207. 55 Keith, Voices in the Purple Haze, 134. 56 “Rock Stock: A Basic Stock for Any Self Respecting Hard Rock Radio Station,” Record World (July 6, 1968), 14. 57 Keith, Voices in the Purple Haze, 77. 58 Frith and McRobbie, “Rock and Sexuality,” 374. 59 Matt Ashare, “Women Who Write: Evelyn McDonnell and Ann Powers Rock the Old-Boy Net,” review of Rock She Wrote edited by Evelyn McDonnell and Ann Powers, Boston Phoenix (March 4, 1996). 60 Lisa L. Rhodes, Electric Ladyland: Women and Rock Culture (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), xiii. 61 Neer, FM, 81. 62 The Spokesmen, “The Dawn of Correction” (Decca, 1965); Barry McGuire, “Eve of Destruction,” (Dunhill, 1965). 63 S. Sgt. Barry Sadler, “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” (RCA Victor, 1966). 64 Allen Shaw, quoted in Keith, Voices in the Purple Haze, 128. 65 Thom O’Hair, quoted in Keith, Voices in the Purple Haze, 67. 66 Ibid., 169. 67 William Barlow, Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1999), 229.

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68 Douglas, Listening In, 263–4. 69 “Instrumental Hits: Some Patterns Emerge,” Cash Box (June 2, 1973), 3; “Instrumentals Take the Spotlight as Musical 1974 Marks a New Trend,” Cash Box (May 11, 1974), 9; “The New Respectability of Rock,” Broadcasting (August 11, 1969), 46A. 70 Douglas, Listening In, 275–6. See also Michael C. Keith, Voices in the Purple Haze, 134. 71 Neer, FM, 207. 72 Frith, Sound Effects, 194. 73 “Nixon Backs Curb Anti Drug Drive,” Billboard (December 19, 1970), 8. 74 Jim Ladd, Radio Waves: Life and Revolution on the FM Dial (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), 6–7. 75 Neer, FM, 235; Keith, Voices in the Purple Haze, 146–7. 76 Keith, Voices in the Purple Haze, 193. 77 “Agnew vs. the White Rabbit,” Rolling Stone (October 20, 1970), 24. Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane reportedly sent Agnew a box of his own group’s latest records to bring him more up to date. The offending line in the Beatles’ “With a Little Help from my Friends” was, of course, “I get high with a little help from my friends.” 78 Edward Jay Epstein, Agency of Fear: Opiates and Political Power in America (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1977), 166. 79 Ibid., 170–1. 80 Ibid. 81 Nicholas Johnson, “‘Up Up and Away’ Over the Airwaves,” New York Times (April 3, 1971), 29. 82 “Time for Action: Industry Must Act on Drugs,” Record World (October 17, 1970), 115. 83 “Record, Radio Industries Start All-Out ‘Drugs as Drag’ Drive,” Billboard (March 7, 1970), 10. See R. Serge Denisoff, Solid Gold: The Popular Record Industry (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1975), 413. 84 Angela J. Campbell, “Self-Regulation and the Media,” Federal Communications Law Journal 51 (May 1999): 720–2, 749. 85 Eliot Tiegel, “MGM Busts 18 Rock Groups,” Billboard (November 7, 1970), 1. 86 Ibid.; “Curb Stirs Heat — Morals or $$?,” Billboard (November 14, 1970), 10. Burdon’s management reportedly told Billboard that he would be “ecstatic” if Curb let him go because he did not want to record for a label that did not “understand rock music.” Ibid. 87 Eliot Tiegel, “Stars Bonding to Back Nixon Drive,” Billboard (September 30, 1972), 1, 66. 88 Walter Pincus and George Lardner, Jr., “Nixon Hoped Antitrust Suit Would Sway Network Coverage,” Washington Post (December 1, 1997), A1. 89 “Nixon Requests Broadcasters to Screen Lyrics,” Billboard (October 24, 1970), 1. 90 Keith, Voices in the Purple Haze, 74. 91 Eliot Tiegel, “Curb Backs Curbing Stand; Will Not Name Acts Cut,” Billboard (November 21, 1971), 1. 92 “FCC Rules for WTOS FM Format Switch to Aid Station’s $ Problem,” Billboard (March 13, 1971), 30. 93 “FCC Opposes ‘Free Form’ Radio Format,” Billboard (August 21, 1971), 50. 94 Jan Ehler, “Yates: Free-Form On Way Out,” Billboard (March 11, 1972), 36. See also John Sippel, “Dowe Systematizes FM Rock; Ratings Elevated,” Billboard (April 14,

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95 96 97 98 99 100 101

102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117

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1973), 22; “Progressive Rock: A Little Older, a Little Wiser, a Little More Structured,” Broadcasting (September 24, 1973), 36. “KXXK FM’s Gardner Advises NAFMP: Give Format an Aim,” Billboard (April 5, 1969), 23. James L. Baughman, The Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking, and Broadcasting in America since 1941, 2nd ed. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). 197. Ward, Stokes, and Tucker, Rock of Ages, 484. Baughman, The Republic of Mass Culture, 197; Keith, Voices in the Purple Haze, 193. In terms of Billboard’s Hot 100, at least, these three were by far the most successful of all British progressive rock groups. Ward, Stokes, and Tucker, Rock of Ages, 482. Lester Bangs, “Heavy Metal,” in DeCurtis, Henke, and George-Warren, eds., The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, 460. For Bangs’s own irony-tinged love/hate relationship with the group, see “Of Pop and Pies and Fun: A Program for Mass Liberation in the Form of a Stooges Review” (1970), reprinted in Lester Bangs, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (New York: Vintage Books: 1988), 31–4, 224. Robert Christgau, Christgau’s Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1985), 155. “Grand Funk Railroad,” Cash Box (July 31, 1971), 31. The apolitical “under-underground” had already begun stirring with late-’60s hard rock outfits like Blue Cheer and Iron Butterfly. See Ward, Stokes, and Tucker, Rock of Ages, 399–400. See Christgau, Christgau’s Record Guide, 155–6. See also Billy James, An American Band: The Story of Grand Funk Railroad (London: SAF Publishing, 1999), 66. Advertisement in Billboard (December 25, 1971), TA-12, TA-112. Christgau, Christgau’s Record Guide, 155–6. James, An American Band, 44. Unlike the Beatles’ similarly titled 1969 hit, which featured John Lennon’s absurdist lyrics, the MC5’s “Come Together” featured a more straightforward call for unity. MC5, “Ramblin’ Rose” (Elektra, 1969). Ward, Stokes, and Tucker, Rock of Ages, 400–1. Richard Goldstein, “Also sprach Grand Funk Railroad,” Harper’s (October 1971), 32. “Grand Funk Travels the Hard Sound Track to Selloutsville,” Billboard (September 6, 1971), RN-38. Denisoff, Solid Gold, 415–16. “50 Greatest Moments in Rock and Pop,” George (February 2000), 25. John Mendelsohn, “Led Zeppelin (review),” Rolling Stone, March 15, 1969: 28. In Mendelssohn’s view, the group offered “little that its twin, the Jeff Beck Group, didn’t say as well or better.” These symbols were apparently discovered by lead guitarist Jimmy Page in Iceland. They became instant identifying symbols for fellow disciples of the band. The album is alternately referred to as “ZOSO” (a phonetic interpretation based on the letters those runic symbols resemble closest), “Untitled,” and “Led Zeppelin IV.” See Steve Waksman, Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 365, n109. See also Chuck Eddy, Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the

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119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127

128 129

130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140

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Universe (New York: Harmony Books, 1991), 14; Donna Gaines, Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia’s Dead End Kids (New York: Pantheon Books, 1991), 181. Ritchie Yorke, “Top May 40 Be Rocking, But Is It Relating To What’s Happening Today?,” Billboard (November 6, 1971), RN-26. “Black Dog” and “Rock and Roll” were eventually released as singles, although their album rock anthem “Stairway to Heaven,” famously, never was. Wayne Jancik, The Billboard Book of One Hit Wonders (New York: Billboard Books, 1990), 287. Robert Walser, Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1993), 110. Peter Carroll, It Seemed Like Nothing Happened: The Tragedy and Promise of America in the 1970s (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1982), 264–5. Daniel Yankelovich, The New Morality: A Profile of American Youth in the 70s (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), 89. Patricia Romanowski and Holly George-Warren, eds., The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll (New York: Fireside, 1995), 432. “Black Sabbath Undergoes an Image Change and it Works Like Magic,” Billboard (July 22, 1972), 65. Romanowski and George-Warren, eds., The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll, 432; William S. Burroughs, The Soft Machine (New York: Grove Press, 1961), 155–6, and Nova Express (New York: Grove Press, 1964), 112. Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” entered the Billboard charts in late 1969 but peaked in 1970. Alice Cooper, “Eighteen” (Warner Bros., 1971), “School’s Out” (Warner Bros., 1972), and “Elected” (Warner Bros., 1973). The few proto-metal Top 40 hits of the late 1960s, in contrast, tended to focus on the life-enriching, mind-expanding wonders of psychedelic drugs. (See, for example, Bubble Puppy’s “Hot Smoke and Sassafras” (1969); The Amboy Dukes’ “Journey to the Center of the Mind” (1968); Steppenwolf ’s “Magic Carpet Ride” (1968).) Alice Cooper, “School’s Out” (Warner Bros., 1972), “Eighteen” (Warner Bros., 1971), and “Elected” (Warner Bros., 1972); Cheech and Chong featuring Alice Bowie, “Earache My Eye” (Ode, 1974). For extended analyses of heavy metal androgyny, see Walser, Running with the Devil. Barney Hoskyns’s Glam: Bowie, Bolan and the Glitter Rock Revolution (New York: Pocket Books, 1998) provides a decent overview of glam rock and its influences on US music and culture. Walser, Running With the Devil, 110. Barry Adam, The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement (Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 1987), 81–9. Ibid.; Frances FitzGerald, Cities on a Hill: A Journey Through Contemporary American Cultures (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), 27. Walser, Running With the Devil, 110. “Oh You Pretty Thing,” Melody Maker (January 22, 1972), 1. Cliff Jahr, “Elton John: It’s Lonely at the Top,” Rolling Stone (October 7, 1976), 11ff. “AM & FM,” R&R: 30 Years of Radio and Records, CD (November 2003). “Ron Jacobs Takes the Extreme Route,” Record World (October 14, 1972), 8. Allen Levy and Lenny Beer, “Hard Rock Blasts Off Again,” Record World (May 19, 1973), 3; Kal Rudman, “Money Music,” Record World (January 6, 1973), 14. “Hard Rock Acts Add Power to the Single,” Cash Box (August 25, 1973), 3. “Program Directors Forecast Radio’s Continual Upgrading,” Billboard (May 20,

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141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152

153 154 155 156 157 158 159

160 161 162

Notes

1972), 1. Also see Herb Hendler, Year by Year in the Rock Era: Events and Conditions Shaping the Rock Era that Shaped America (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983), 157. Ibid. “FM Rockers are Taming Their Free Formats,” Broadcasting (November 25, 1974), 47–9. Edd Routt, James B. McGrath, and Fredric A. Weiss, The Radio Format Conundrum (New York: Communication Arts Books, 1978), 88. Fisher, Something in the Air, 189–97. Ibid. Mike Harrison, “AOR: Fading Memory of a Simpler Industry,” Billboard (January 24, 1981), 31. See also R. Serge Denisoff, Tarnished Gold: The Record Industry Revisited (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1986), 253–9. Ward, Stokes, and Tucker, Rock of Ages, 484. Chapple and Garofalo, Rock ’n’ Roll is Here to Pay, 313–15. Will Straw, “Characterizing Rock Music Culture: The Case of Heavy Metal,” in Frith and Goodwin, eds., On Record, 100. Dwight Douglas, quoted in Keith, Voices in the Purple Haze, 155. “Album Radio in Assorted Flavors,” R&R: 30 Years of Radio and Records, CD. Legendary radio programmer Gordon McLendon was the owner of KNUS. Anne Duston, “There’s a Lot of Beautiful Music,” Billboard (April 19, 1975), C16; “Beautiful Music, Beautiful Numbers,” Broadcasting (July 21, 1975), 38; “McGavrenGuild Ranks Radio’s Most Popular Program Formats,” Broadcasting (May 2, 1977), 51; Lanza, Elevator Music, 178. “McGavren-Guild,” Broadcasting, 51. Fisher, Something in the Air, 215–218. Abe Peck, “Hangover at Dahl House,” Chicago Daily News (July 13, 1979), 6. Tom Smucker, “Disco,” in Anthony DeCurtis, James Henke, and Holly GeorgeWarren, eds., The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, 570. Peck, “Hangover at Dahl House,” 43. Smucker, “Disco,” 570. The rap genre’s popularity forged a groundbreaking fusion with rappers Run–DMC and rock group Aerosmith, who had been a staple on FM rock formats since the early ’70s. Rock and rap have, in fact, coexisted from that point on. Run–DMC, “Walk This Way” (Profile, 1986). “FM Rockers,” Broadcasting, 47. “Progressive Rock: A Little Older, a Little Wiser, a Little More Structured,” 36. “McGavren-Guild,” Broadcasting, 51.

CHAPTER 4: THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY 1 In 1969, Billboard — whose coverage of African American music was steadier and went more in-depth than competing trades — changed the name of its “rhythm and blues” charts to soul. I refer to African American popular music in the early ’70s, then, as soul, sometimes adopting the term “black music,” which many of the music’s practitioners also used during that time. “R&B Now Soul,” Billboard (August 23, 1969), 4. In 1982, incidentally, Billboard renamed the charts “black,” then switched them back to to “rhythm and blues” in 1990. In 1999, they became “hip-hop/R&B.” Joel

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2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28

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Whitburn, Top R&B/Hip-Hop Singles: 1942–2004 (Menomenee Falls, WI: Record Research, 2004), xii; “Billboard R&B Charts Get Updated Names,” Billboard (December 11, 1999), 6. Ed Ochs, “Soul Sauce,” Billboard (June 20, 1970), 70. Ed Ochs, “Soul Sauce,” Billboard (January 24, 1970), 67. Joe Jones, “Soul Music, RIP,” Billboard (August 22, 1970), 32. Jones is best known as the voice behind the 1960 #3 novelty hit, “You Talk Too Much.” Ochs, “Soul Sauce,” (June 20, 1970), 70. Nelson George, The Death of Rhythm and Blues (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988). Eileen Southern, Music of Black Americans (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1971), 103. Richard Crawford, America’s Musical Life (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2001), 210. Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 3–6. Crawford, America’s Musical Life, 338. Ibid., 559. William Barlow, “Cashing In: 1900–1939,” in Jannette L. Dates and William Barlow, eds., Split Image: African Americans in the Mass Media (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1990), 30. Steve Chapple and Rebee Garofalo, Rock ’n’ Roll is Here to Pay (Chicago, IL: Nelson Hall, 1977), 231, 239–40. In terms of chart performance, Boone was an enormous success, amassing a total of 18 Top 10 hits between 1955 and 1962. Simon Frith, Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure and the Politics of Rock (London: Constable, 1983), 15–16. Riesman, “Listening to Popular Music,” 359–71. Russell Sanjek, Pennies from Heaven (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), 223–5. Quoted in James L. Baughman, The Republic of Mass Culture, 2nd ed. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 133. See Joe McEwen and Jim Miller, “Motown,” Anthony DeCurtis, James Henke, and Holly George-Warren, eds., The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll (New York: Random House, 1992), 177. Mark Anthony Neal, What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture (New York: Routledge, 1999), 94. Susan J. Douglas, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination (New York: Times Books, 1999), 233–4. Wolfman Jack, Have Mercy: Confessions of the Original Rock ’n’ Roll Animal (New York: Warner Books, 1995), 38–9. Anne Duston, “Didn’t Fill Taylor’s Standards,” Billboard (March 10, 1973), 22. Quoted in Douglas, Listening In, 248. William Barlow, Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1999), 109–11. Michele Hilmes, Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922–1952 (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 143; Claude Hall and Barbara Hall, This Business of Radio Programming Programming (New York: Billboard Publications, 1977), 330; Ben Fong-Torres, The Hits Just Keep on Coming (San Francisco, CA: Miller Freeman Books, 1998), 219. Barlow, Voice Over, 148. Ibid., 122; see also Louis Cantor, Wheelin’ on Beale: How WDIA- Memphis

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29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

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Became the Nation’s First All-Black Radio Station and Created the Sound that Changed America (New York: Pharos Books, 1992), 91; Barlow, Voice Over, 122. Barlow, Voice Over, 210–11. Tom Hayden, “A Special Supplement: The Occupation of Newark,” The New York Review of Books (August 24, 1967), 14–24. “An American Tragedy,” Newsweek (August 21, 1967), 18–26. Terry H. Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 168. Ibid. Stokely V. Carmichael, and Charles Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (New York: Vintage, 1967), 41. LeRoi Jones, Blues People: Negro Music in White America (New York: Morrow Quill, 1963), 137. James Brown, “Say it Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud, Pt. 1” (Polydor, 1968); James Brown, “I Don’t Want No One to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door I’ll Get it Myself)” (Polydor, 1970); Look (February 18, 1969). Other James Brown titles from this era included “America Is My Home,” and “Don’t Be a Dropout.” The Impressions, “This is My Country” (Curtom, 1968). Barlow, Voice Over, 230–41. Ron Jacobs, KHJ: Inside Boss Radio (Stafford, TX: Zapoleon Publishing, 2002), 271. Keith, Voices in the Purple Haze, 83–6. Ibid. Duston, “Didn’t Fill Taylor’s Standards,” 22. Forrest, Tal, quoted in “How the Successful DJ in Soul Music Radio Handles His Job on the Air,” Billboard, (September 11, 1971), 33. Barlow, Voice Over, 222–3. Carroll, It Seemed Like Nothing Happened, 254–63. Referring to the influx of black radicals in American prisons, Carroll writes that the “ultimate weapon” the White House relied on in achieving “racial peace” was military force, and that the Department of Justice under Nixon prepared for armed war against blacks. Ibid., 256 Pichaske, A Generation in Motion, 67. Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties, 177. Pichaske, A Generation in Motion, 54. Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties, 177–8. “War at Attica: Was There No Other Way?,” Time (September 27, 1971), 18–26. Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties, 306–7. Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior, Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee (New York: New Press, 1996), 232–44. Amiri Baraka, “Black Art,” in William J. Harris, ed., The LeRoi Jones / Amiri Baraka Reader (New York: Thunderís Mouth Press, 1991), 219. Larry Neal, “The Black Arts Movement,” in Andrews, Smith-Foster, and Harris, eds., The Drama Review 12(4) (1968): 29. Kaluma ya Salaam, “Black Arts Movement,” The Oxford Companion to African American Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 70. Frank Kofsky, Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), 54. Greil Marcus, Mystery Train, 240-1.

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60 The Undisputed Truth, “Smiling Faces (Sometimes Lie)” (Gordy, 1971); The O’Jays, “Back Stabbers” (Epic/Legacy, 1972); The O’Jays, “For the Love of Money” (Epic/ Legacy, 1972). 61 Berry Gordy, To Be Loved: The Music, the Magic, the Memories of Motown: An Autobiography (New York: Warner Books, 1994), 302–3. 62 Noble V. Blackwell, “How Soul Music Affects Audiences,” Billboard (August 22, 1970), 28. 63 Nelson George, The Death of Rhythm and Blues (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), 122–3. 64 “Black Films Bring Movie-Theme Music Back to Radio,” Broadcasting (January 22, 1973), 38; Marcus, Mystery Train, 80–1. 65 The Temptations, “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” (Motown, 1972). 66 Claude Hall, “‘Backlash’ Cuts Soul on Top 40 Radio,” Billboard (December 6, 1969), 1. 67 Buddy Low, “Proven Hits Only,” Billboard (August 22, 1970), 34. 68 Ed Ochs, “Soul Sauce,” Billboard (June 20, 1970), 70. 69 Quoted in Ochs, “Soul Sauce,” Billboard (January 24, 1970), 67. 70 “FCC Decrees and Black Music Key Rudman Radio/Music Meet,” Cash Box (July 31, 1971), 7. 71 Low, “Proven Hits Only,” 34. 72 KSOL, incidentally, is the station where Sly Stone worked before becoming a soulrock superstar. Fong-Torres, The Hits Just Keep on Coming, 202–4. 73 “Blacks Oppose Shift to MOR by KSOL,” Billboard (February 2, 1971), 27. 74 “Soul Is Cornerstone of Pop Music,” Billboard (July 11, 1970), 36. 75 “Soul Radio Here to Stay: WDAS,” Billboard (February 6, 1971), 38; “WDAS-FM Format Change to Media-Collective,” Billboard (March 13, 1971), 32; Claude Hall, “Gavin Meet Covers Program Spectrum,” Billboard (November 27, 1971), 19. 76 Reggie Lavong, “Psychological Resistance to Soul,” Billboard (August 22, 1970), 34. 77 Quoted in Ed Ochs, “Soul Sauce,” Billboard (February 7, 1970), 33. 78 Hall, “‘Backlash’,” 1. 79 Ochs, Ed and Don Ovens, “Soul Hot on Top 40 Despite Chill,” Billboard (July 3, 1971), 1, 8. 80 CBS’s greatest success up to this point had been the original cast soundtrack to Broadway musical My Fair Lady. Davis, Clive: Inside the Record Business (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1975), 3. 81 Fredric Dannen, Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business (New York: Times Books, 1990), 74. 82 Davis, Clive, 103. 83 Richard A. Peterson and David G. Berger, “Cycles in Symbol Production: The Case of Popular Music,” in Frith and Goodwin, eds., On Record, 155–6. 84 Davis, Clive, 144–5. 85 Nelson George, The Death of Rhythm and Blues, 135–6. I am grateful to Jeff Sprague, who procured a copy of this elusive document for me. 86 Ibid.; Sanjek, Pennies from Heaven, 553–7. 87 “A Study of the Soul Environment Prepared for Columbia Records Group,” Report Prepared by Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University (May 11, 1972), 15. 88 Ibid., 9. 89 Ibid., 12–13.

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90 “Wexler Attributes Greater R&B Volume to Black Buyer,” Billboard (November 20, 1971), 8. 91 “Black Impact is Cited by Al Bell,” Billboard (April 4, 1970), 8. 92 Peterson and Berger, “Cycles in Symbol Production,” in Frith and Goodwin, eds., On Record, 155–6. 93 The Apollo is a legendary New York performance venue that has been specializing in black artists since the ’50s. The Whiskey a Go Go and the Troubadour are longstanding Los Angeles rock clubs, while the Winterland Ballroom was a bastion for the San Francisco rock scene. 94 “Columbia’s Black Experiment is Obtaining a Universal Audience,” Cash Box (January 13, 1973), 7. 95 Jim Miller, “The Sound of Philadelphia,” in DeCurtis, Henke, and George-Warren, eds., The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, 518; Davis, Clive, 144–5. 96 “Soul Music Breaks Pop, But Retains Identity,” Cash Box (August 19, 1972), 3. 97 “Lessons to Learn from Black Radio,” Cash Box (September 9, 1972), 3. 98 Eliot Tiegel, “Soul Sauce: Soft Sounds Spell Success for Today,” Billboard (July 21, 1973), 26. 99 Leroy Robinson, “Soul Sauce: Contributors Keep Soul’s Soul Alive,” Billboard (October 6, 1973), 27. The Billboard editors concocted a headline for this particular column which completely mismatched the angry new columnist’s sentiments. 100 Shelley Heber, “Soul Sauce,” Billboard (June 16, 1973), 23. See also Neal, What the Music Said, 119. 101 Eliot Tiegel, “Soul Sauce,” Billboard (June 30, 1973), 26. 102 “Black Radio: Restricting Its Growth?,” Cash Box (November 9, 1974), 3. 103 Curtis Mayfield, “A Whole New Thing,” Billboard (August 22, 1970), 14. 104 “Willie Mitchell — Memphis Soulman,” Record World (March 17, 1973), 8. 105 “Thom Bell: Spinning Hits with Style,” Record World (January 6, 1973), 8+. 106 Quoted in Ray Brack, “James Brown: ‘The Man’ vs. ‘Negroes,’” Rolling Stone (January 21, 1970), 12. Brown did, however, play Nixon’s 1969 inaugural gala even though he had “supported Mr. Humphrey.” See James Brown and Bruce Tucker, James Brown: The Godfather of Soul (New York: Macmillan, 1986), 204. 107 Brown and Tucker, James Brown, 230. 108 Ibid., 232. 109 Robert E. Weems and Lewis A. Randolph, “The National Response to Richard M. Nixon’s Black Capitalism Initiative: The Success of Domestic Détente,” Journal of Black Studies 32(1) (2001): 66–83. 110 Earl G. Graves, “How We Got Started,” Fortune (September, 2003). 111 George, The Death of Rhythm and Blues, 155–6. 112 Smucker, Tom, “Disco,” in Anthony DeCurtis, James Henke, and Holly GeorgeWarren, eds., The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, 562. 113 “Disco — Out of Control?,” Cash Box (August 2, 1975), 3. 114 Craig Werner, A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race and the Soul of America (New York: Plume, 1998), 211; Cameron Crowe, “Tom Petty’s Gonna Get It — His Way,” Rolling Stone (October 19, 1978), 34–6, 39. 115 Abe Peck, “Hangover at Dahl House,” Chicago Daily News (July 13, 1979), 6. 116 “Disco — out of control?,” 3. 117 Neal, What the Music Said, 86. 118 LeRoi Jones, Blues People: Negro Music in White America (New York: Morrow Quill

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119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126

225

Paperbacks, 1963), 235. Baraka, who had written Blues People under the name LeRoi Jones, changed his name in 1968. George, The Death of Rhythm and Blues, 146. Ibid., 228–9. “In the Black,” R&R: 30 Year Anniversary, CD-2 (November 2003). William Barlow, “Commercial and Noncommercial Radio,” in Jannette L. Dates and William Barlow, eds., Split Image, 232. Ibid. Curtis Mayfield, “A Whole New Thing,” Billboard (August 22, 1970), 14. Albert Murray, Stompin the Blues (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), 250. A personal review of Billboard’s year-end charts for the past ten years bears me out on this claim.

CHAPTER 5: WHAT IS TRUTH 1 Bill C. Malone, Country Music USA, 2nd ed. (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1985), 264. 2 Claude Hall, “WDEE Follows the Swing,” Billboard (October 31, 1970), 29. 3 Advertisement, Billboard (March 18, 1972), 42. 4 Charles K. Wolfe, A Good-Natured Riot: The Birth of the Grand Ole Opry (Nashville, TN: University of Vanderbilt Press, 1999), 11–15. Also see Malone, Country Music USA, 70–1, 75; Richard A. Peterson, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 69–77. 5 Malone, Country Music USA, 71. 6 Ibid. 7 Joel Whitburn, Joel Whitburn’s Pop Memories, 1890–1954: The History of American Popular Music (Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research, 1986), 118, 373. 8 Advertisement, The Billboard 1944 Music Yearbook (1944), 331. 9 Malone, Country Music USA, 265. 10 Richard P. Stockdell, “The Evolution of the Country Radio Format,” Journal of Popular Culture 16 (Spring 1983): 148. There were most likely predecessors to KRAK. In a 1970 Billboard interview, program director Ted Cramer of KCKN in Kansas City claims that his own station converted to a Top 40-style country format in 1959. Claude Hall, “The Message is Not the Buying Signal for Country, Asserts KCKN’s Cramer,” Billboard (December 26, 1970), 28. 11 Stockdell, “The Evolution of the Country Radio Format,” 149. 12 John Morthland, The Best of Country Music (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984), 151. 13 Morthland, The Best of Country Music, 240. 14 Ed Ward, Geoffrey Stokes, and Ken Tucker, Rock of Ages (New York: Rolling Stone Press, 1986), 77. 15 Ray Brack, “WJJD Format Boosts Country,” Billboard (October 16, 1965), 3; Nick Biro, “WJJD Spurred to Success,” Billboard (June 12, 1965), 34. 16 Presley’s “Don’t Cry Daddy” came out in November 1969, but entered the country Top 40 on January 3, 1970. 17 “Don’t Lose That Kid!,” Billboard (March 17, 1956), 18. 18 Data on country music chart positions from Joel Whitburn’s Billboard Book of Top 40 Country Hits (New York: Billboard Books, 1996). ’50s rockers Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis also suffered blackouts of varying severity (1958–1967 and

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226

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43

Notes

1964–1968, respectively), while the Everly Brothers dropped off in 1961, not to return until 1986. Malone, Country Music USA, 257–8. Ibid. Ibid. “The Sherrill Sound,” Time (October 22, 1973), 83. MOR (middle of the road) was a radio industry term that had morphed into AC (adult contemporary) by the ’80s. Wesley Rose, quoted in Claude Hall, “Country Stations Giving Public Bum Steer: Rose,” Billboard (September 13, 1969), 1. Paul W. Soelberg, “Modern Country Radio: Friend or Foe?,” Billboard (October 17, 1970), CM-44. “Country Music ‘Too Modern,’” Billboard (July 11, 1970), 38. Billy Walker, quoted in Dan Beck, “Muses About the Future of Country Music,” Record World (February 2, 1973), 57. Walker is referring here to high profile White House performances by Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, and Johnny Cash for President Richard M. Nixon. “Chellman Has Another View,” Music City News (September 1973), 20. “Oh Girl,” by soul group the Chi-Lites, with its laid-back tempo and harmonica refrain, had been finding traction as a country crossover hit during this era, as had the Rolling Stones’ acoustic guitar-oriented ballad, “Angie.” “On Programming of Mod Country Format,” Billboard (July 12, 1969), 35. “Trends in the Country Sound,” Billboard (July 12, 1969), 35. “‘Howdy, Neighbor’ Country Radio Gets Fond Goodbye,” Billboard (June 22, 1968), 76. Quoted in Claude Hall, “Top 40 in Topsy Turvy Turmoil is Consensus,” Billboard (May 13, 1972), 1. Soelberg, “Modern Country Radio: Friend or Foe?,” CM-44. Advertisement in Billboard (April 29, 1972). The Wallace strategy had already been working wonders for other all-bases-covered superstars like Glen Campbell and Mac Davis. Claude Hall, “Cross-Overs Boost C/M Sales Peak,” Billboard (July 28, 1973), 1. “Cross Country Confuses Issues; Brings MOR Push,” Billboard (May 26, 1973), 43. W. J. Cash, The Mind of the South (New York: Vintage, 1941), 127. Melton A. McLaurin, “Songs of the South,” in Melton McLaurin and Richard A. Peterson, eds., You Wrote My Life (Philadelphia, PA: Gordon & Breach, 1992), 15–34. Nick Pittman, “Johnny Rebel Speaks,” The Gambit Weekly (June 10, 2003). McLaurin, “Songs of the South,” 15–34. Jens Lund, “Fundamentalism, Racism, and Political Reaction in Country Music,” in R. Serge Denisoff, ed., The Sounds of Social Change: Studies in Popular Culture (New York: Rand McNally, 1972), 88. Although “Hello Vietnam” and “What We’re Fighting For” were written by Tom T. Hall, they were recorded by Johnny Wright and Dave Dudley, respectively. The hit recording of Kristofferson’s “Viet Nam Blues” was by Dave Dudley. Bill C. Malone notes that both Hall and Kristofferson claimed that they were defending American soldiers and “not American policy.” Country Music USA, 318. “Day for Decision” was a direct response to Barry McGuire’s #1 hit of 1965, “Eve of Destruction.”

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227

44 Merle Haggard, “Okie from Muskogee” (Capitol, 1969). 45 Peter Guralnick, Lost Highways: Journeys and Arrivals of American Musicians (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 240. 46 Todd Everett, “Merle Haggard,” Billboard (February 19, 1977), H-2; advertisement, Billboard (Oct 24, 1970), 69. 47 Merle Haggard, “The Fightin’ Side of Me” (Capitol, 1969). 48 Malone, Country Music USA, 319. 49 “Country Artists, Music Hurl Hat in the Political Arena,” Billboard (April 11, 1970), 58; “Country, Cash Win White House,” Billboard (May 2, 1970), 61. 50 Florence King “Red Necks, White Socks, and Blue Ribbon Beer,” Harper’s 249 (July 1974), 30–4. 51 Malone, Country Music USA, 372. 52 Ibid., 319. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., 280–3; see also Roderic J. Roberts, “An Introduction to the Study of Northern Country Music,” Journal of Country Music 7 (1978): 22–8; George H. Lewis, “A Tombstone Every Mile: Country Music in Maine,” in Lewis, ed., All That Glitters: Country Music in America (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993), 102–15. 55 Melton McLaurin, “Country Music and the Vietnam War,” in James C. Cobb and Charles R. Wilson, eds., Perspectives on the American South, Vol. 3 (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1985), 145. 56 James R. Wilson, Landing Zones: Southern Veterans Remember Vietnam (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), xi–xii. 57 Ibid., 317–18; see also Patricia Averill, “Esoteric-Exoteric Expectations of Redneck Behavior and Country Music,” Journal of Country Music 4 (Summer 1973): 35. 58 Frye Gaillard, Watermelon Wine: The Spirit of Country Music (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978), 63. 59 Richard Goldstein, “My Country Music Problem — and Yours,” Mademoiselle 77 (June 1973), 115. 60 Christopher Wren, “Country Music,” Look (July 13, 1971), 11–16. 61 Arlene Harden, “Congratulations, You Sure Made a Man Out of Him” (Columbia, 1971). John C. Pugh, “‘No One Can Say I Haven’t Tried’ Comments Columbia’s Arleen Harden,” Music City News (October 1971), 43. Although the temptation exists to blame this controversial single for Harden’s inability to ever again crack the country Top 20, the way she’d done with “Lovin’ Man (Oh, Pretty Woman)” (1970, #13), one never knows. A considerably more successful single expressing less-than-positive views of Vietnam was Kenny Rogers and the First Edition’s “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town.” Although the song took the point of view of a wheelchair-bound war veteran, it was not quite as pointed in its war criticism as was Harden’s single. 62 Averill, “Esoteric-Exoteric Expectations of Redneck Behavior and Country Music,” 35. Averill credits folklorist William Jansen for the terms “esoteric” and “exoteric” in analyzing culture. 63 Ibid., 36. 64 Audrey Winters, “Who’s Gonna win ‘Irma Jackson’?,” Music City News 7 (March 1970), 10. 65 Averill, “Esoteric-Exoteric Expectations of Redneck Behavior and Country Music,” 35. 66 Merle Haggard, Penthouse 8(3) (November 1976), 126–8, 178–84. For more about

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228

67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

83 84 85

86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

Notes

Haggard’s political views, see Chris Willman, Rednecks and Bluenecks: The Politics of Country Music (New York: The New Press, 2005). Malone, Country Music USA, 319, 487. “Guy Drake Looks to White House,” Billboard (July 31, 1971), 36. Gaillard, Watermelon Wine, 63. Johnny Cash, “The One on the Right Is on the Left” (Columbia, 1966); Johnny Cash, “What Is Truth?” (Columbia, 1970). “What Is Truth?” also hit #19 on the Billboard Hot 100. A curious side note: Cash was working for fellow country legend Tex Ritter’s Republican Senatorial campaign at the time. “Cash to Handle Ritter’s Campaign Cash in Drive,” Billboard (December 26, 1970), 73. Claude Hall, “The Message is Not the Buying Signal for Country, Asserts KCKN’s Cramer,” Billboard (December 26, 1970), 28. Patrick Thomas, “Grand Old Opry Suspends a Star,” Rolling Stone (January 31, 1974), 22. Ibid.; Skeeter Davis, Bus Fare to Kentucky: The Autobiography of Skeeter Davis (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1993), 261–8. Thomas, “Grand Old Opry Suspends a Star,” 22; Skeeter Davis, Bus Fare to Kentucky, 261–8, 273–4. Bill Jones, “Segue Sermonette,” Music City News (March 1970), 10. Don Thomas, “The Great Country,” Music City News (January 1973), 13. Bill Jones, “DJ’s Corner,” Music City News (May 1971), 30. Everett Corbin, “Readers Speak Minds on ‘Modern’ Country,” Music City News (August 1971), 12. Richard A. Peterson, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 220. Ibid., 152–3. Claude Hall, “LP’s Putting PD’s in Spin,” Billboard (May 24, 1969), 29; “Album Play on Top 40 in Upswing; Tape Sales Poll,” Billboard (February 28, 1970), 24. See Michael C. Keith, Voices in the Purple Haze: Underground Radio and the Sixties (London: Praeger Publishers, 1997), for an excellent oral history of FM “underground” radio. The single reached #25 and was Owens’s highest showing on the pop charts. Buck Owens, “Pledge to Country Music,” Music City News (March 1965), 12. Owens answered this by claiming that he never said he “wasn’t gonna do rockabilly.” Owens had also recorded a couple of Coasters covers — “Charlie Brown” and “Along Came Jones” — before the decade was over. See Rich Kienzle, liner notes, The Buck Owens Collection (1959–1990) (Rhino, 1992). CBS’s hit series The Waltons, about a large, rural, depression-era family in the Appalachians, debuted in 1972. Bill Hance, “‘Hee Haw’ Analyzed By Men Behind Scenes,” Music City News (February 1970), 1. Neil Hickey, “Direct to You from Tin Pan Valley,” TV Guide (August 11, 1973), 15. Jack Gould, “TV: ‘Beverly Hillbillies,’” New York Times (November 2, 1962), 63. Ibid. John Fergus Ryan, “Push a Button and Out Comes ‘Hee Haw,’” Country Music 2(1) (September 1973), 28–34. “New to the Charts,” Billboard (August 18, 1973), 18. Daniels has since become known as one of country music’s most outspoken

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94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118

229

conservatives. See Randy Rudder, “In Whose Name?: Country Artists Speak Out on Gulf War II,” in Charles K. Wolfe and James E. Akenson, Country Music Goes to War (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2005), 219–22. Scott Von Doviak, Hick Flicks: The Rise and Fall of Redneck Cinema (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005). Jann Wenner, “Ralph J. Gleason in Perspective,” Rolling Stone (July 17, 1975), 41. Nashville, directed by Robert Altman (Paramount, 1975). “KLAC Radio Covers Los Angeles, California Like the Morning Dew,” Music City News (April 1971), 10. “Jay Lawrence: Personality/Country,” Record World (April 21, 1973), 20. Chet Flippo, “Nashville Skyline: Turn Your Radio On,” CMT.com (June 28, 2002). Scott’s involvement with WHN earned her the distinction of becoming New York City’s very first female AM disc jockey. There were certainly predecessors, such as WUBE in Cincinnati, to this particular high-profile 24-hour development. “WUBE Switches to 24-Hour Country,” Billboard (April 12, 1969), 28. La Wayne Satterfield, “WENO Radio is Nation’s First All Country Station,” Music City News (August 1971), 15. La Wayne Satterfield, “WHO Radio Uniquely Popular in Country Music,” Music City News (June 1971), 12. John Pugh, “Will Success Spoil Country Music?,” Music City News (April 1971), 16. Ibid. Lorrie Maynard and Lillian Maynard, quoted in Corbin, “Readers Speak Minds on ‘Modern’ Country,” Music City News (August 1971), 12. “Country Music Hitting Bottom?” Music City News (March 1970), 6. “Country Music Fans — Do They Get What They Want?,” Music City News (October 1972), 16. Dan Beck, “Country Radio — The Sleeping Giant,” Record World (March 3, 1973), 56. Bill Williams, “Nashville Scene,” Billboard (August 2, 1969), 34. “Country Crossover,” Cash Box (April 8, 1972), 3. “Country Music: A Heritage That Continues to Give,” Cash Box (October 16, 1971), 3. Peter Guralnick, Lost Highway: Journeys and Arrivals of American Musicians (Boston, MA: D. R. Godine, 1979), 145. To be fair, Guralnick makes clear that Rich had been drinking. Malone, Country Music USA, 264–5. Chet Flippo, “A Convention of Disc jockeys: 6000 Views on the State of C&W,” Rolling Stone (January 31, 1974), 22. Malone, Country Music USA, 375. “Dot Busting Out with Pop Crossovers,” Record World (February 17, 1973), 53. “The Pedal Steel Invades Top 40,” Broadcasting (November 4, 1974), 47. Jason Walker, God’s Own Singer: The Life of Gram Parsons (London: Helter Skelter, 2002), 74–8. The Byrds sparked another backstage controversy by making an onstage decision to sing an original song instead of Merle Haggard’s “Sing Me Back Home.” Host Tompall Glaser and the Opry cast were livid except for Skeeter Davis, who hugged the band and congratulated them for not being intimidated. Ibid. Another item of Byrds folkore from their Nashville foray was their allegedly cold reception by influential disc jockey Ralph Emery, who had later referred to

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119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131

132 133 134 135 136

137 138 139 140 141

142 143

Notes

them as “hippie bastards.” The Byrds’ “Drugstore Truck Drivin’ Man” (1969) is their lampoon of Emery. John Einarson, Desperados: The Roots of Country Rock (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001), 98. Emery, incidentally, was married to Skeeter Davis in the early ’60s. Ralph Emery, Memories: The Autobiography of Ralph Emery (New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1991), 100–9. See also Skeeter Davis, Bus Fare to Kentucky: The Autobiography of Skeeter Davis (Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing Group, 1993), 201–4. Jan Reid, The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock (Austin, TX: Heidelberg Press, 1974). Craig Hillis. Personal interview (November 17, 2002). Barry Shank. Dissonant Identities: The Rock ’n’ Roll Scene in Austin, Texas (Hanover, NH: University of New England Press, 1994), 57. Quoted in Reid, The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock, 69–71. Shank, Dissonant Identities, 58. John Herndon, quoted in Gilberto G. Garcia, The Development of Alternative FM Radio in Austin (MA thesis: University of Texas at Austin, 1990), 29. Garcia, The Development of Alternative FM Radio in Austin, 29. Ibid., 29–30. Ibid., 30. Michael Bertin, “Phil Music,” Austin Chronicle (November 6–12, 1998), 42. Larry Shannon, “The Radio Lives and Legends of Jimmy Rabbitt,” Radio Daily News (2001). David Menconi, Music, Media and the Metropolis: The Case of Austin’s Armadillo World Headquarters (MA, thesis: University of Texas at Austin, 1985), 82–3. Patrick Carr, “It’s So ‘Progressive’ in Texas,” New York Times (July 22, 1973), 97; Malone, Country Music USA, 396–7. A similar festival, organized by “a group of Dallas promoters,” took place in Dripping Springs in March of 1972. Roy Reed, “Country Music Draws Long-Haired Fans,” New York Times (March 21, 1972), 30. Lee Nichols, “Steven Fromholz,” Austin Chronicle (September 11, 1998). Michael Bertin, “Never Mind the Bollocks,” Austin Chronicle (March 15, 2002). Menconi, Music, Media and the Metropolis, 89. Ibid., 86–7. These three were the most successful Austin artists in terms of Billboard pop chart performance. While none of them was an Austin native, all three had settled there and established residencies in local clubs during the early ’70s. See Reid, The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock. Jane Stern and Michael Stern, Jane and Michael Stern’s Encyclopedia of Popular Culture (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), 415. Whole Earth Catalog (Fall 1969), (Menlo Park, CA: Portola Institute, 1969). Pichaske, A Generation in Motion, 136. Edelstein and McDonough, The Seventies, 65. Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: The Free Press, 2001), 114–16, 284. Schulman borrowed the “reddening of America” phrase from a Roger Shattuck review of V. S. Naipaul’s Turn in the South. See also Schulman, “The Sunbelt South: Old Times Forgotten,” Reviews in American History 21(2) (1993): 340. “Are You Ready for the Country,” R&R: 30 Years of Radio and Records (November 2003). See Willman’s Rednecks and Bluenecks for a journalistic, even-handed treatment of this recent, politically volatile era in country music, which appears, as of writing, to have run its course.

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144 Michael C. Keith, The Radio Station: Broadcast, Satellite and Internet (Burlington, MA: Elsevier, 2007), 94–5.

CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION 1 Reunion, “Life Is a Rock, But the Radio Rolled Me” (RCA Victor, 1974). 2 Hine, The Great Funk; 10: Chris Morris, “Rhino Chronicles ‘California Sound,’” Billboard (June 15, 1996), 13, 19; “The Top 20 Reissues,” Spin (September 1999), 127. 3 Robert A. Hull, “My Pop Conscience,” in Kahn, George-Warren, and Dahl, eds., Rolling Stone: The Seventies (New York: Rolling Stone Press), 36. 4 Phil Dellio and Scott Woods, I Wanna Be Sedated: Pop Music in the Seventies (Toronto, ON: Sound and Vision, 1993), 88. 5 Marc Fisher, Something in the Air (New York: Random House, 2007), 212–13. 6 Jenny Toomey, “Empire of the Air: The Deregulation of Radio Broadcasting,” The Nation (January 13, 2003), 28. 7 Quoted in Greg Kot, “What’s Wrong with Radio?,” Rolling Stone (August 16, 2001), 25. 8 Simon Renshaw, “The Dangers of Consolidation,” Billboard (July 19, 2003), 11. In response to criticisms like Renshaw’s, a group of country broadcasters — not surprisingly — assured Billboard Nashville bureau chief Phyllis Stark that “the hostility of some lawmakers, journalists and artist groups toward radio hasn’t trickled down to the station level.” Many believed, in fact, “that when you take away the political and interest-group voices, mass radio consumers are happy with their local radio stations.” Marc Schiffman, “Locals Immune to Image Issue,” Billboard (June 28, 2003), 49. 9 “Controlling the Airwaves,” Billboard (June 28, 2003), 9. 10 Fisher, Something in the Air, 210–11. 11 Claude Hall, “Radio Enters the ‘Age of Syndication’,” Billboard (July 22, 1972), 68. 12 See Chapter 5, pp. 176–7. 13 “Controlling the Airwaves”; Mike Stern and Jeffrey Yorke, “Remote Control,” Billboard (May 16, 2009), 8. 14 Claude Hall, “Country Stations Giving Public Bum Steer,” Billboard (September 13, 1969), 1; Joe Jones, “Soul Music, RIP,” Billboard (August 22, 1970), 32; Claude Hall, “Radio Playlists Are Undergoing Changes,” Billboard (November 16, 1974), 1, 45; Earl Paige, “Music Goes On and On as Automated Equipment Expands Formats,” Billboard (February 22, 1975), 22; Yorke, “Top 40 Radio May Be Rocking,” Billboard (November 6, 1971), RN-26. 15 Paul Heine, “Stuck on Repeat,” Billboard (June 12, 2010), 18. 16 Quoted in Fred Deane, “Up Close with XM Satellite Radio SVP and Chief Creative Officer Lee Abrams,” FMQB (June 9, 2006). 17 Chuck Taylor, “Digital Radio Promises: Too Little, Too Late in Face of Competition?” Billboard (January 29, 2000), 1.

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Index

12-inch single 149 16 (magazine) 19, 27 1910 Fruitgum Company (musical group) 25–6 1968 Summer Olympics 135 20th Century Records 146 5th Dimension, The (musical group) 146 7th Heaven (television program) 51

Agnew, Spiro T. 23, 33, 108, 114, 201, 203, 217, 244, 249, 251 AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) 119 Akenson, James E. 228, 240 “Alabama Jubilee” (song) 164 Alda, Alan 75, 85 Alexander, A. 203, 249 Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (film) 76 All in the Family (television program) 30–1, 76 “All Right Now” (song) 117 “All the Young Dudes” (song) 118 Allen, Jared 15 Allison, Joe 157 Allman Brothers Band, The (musical group) 184 Allston, Bob 5 “Along Came Jones” (song) 228 Altamont Speedway 22 Alterman, Loraine 213, 240 Altman, Robert 178, 229 AM (amplitude modulation) radio 52, 12–14, 102–4, 110, 117 “Am I Black Enough for You” (song) 145 Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan, The (television program) 28 “Amazing Grace” (song) 170 Amboy Dukes, The 219 Ambrose, Dave 83, 86 “America (A Canadian’s Opinion)” (song) 44, 206 America in the Seventies (book) 4, 198 “America Is My Home” (song) 222 America Online 190 “America the Beautiful” (song) 44 American Bandstand (television program) 101 American Broadcasting Company (ABC) 33, 111, 176, 202, 207

ABC Afterschool Special, The (television program) 33 abortion 73–4, 76 Abrams, Lee 121, 123, 195, 231, 242 Abrams, Rita 45–6, 206 AC (adult contemporary) (radio format) 6, 50, 52–3, 61, 87–8, 122, 152, 195, 208, 226, 236 Action for Children’s Television (ACT) 32 Acuff, Roy 161, 186 Acuff-Rose Music 161 Adam, Barry 219, 232 adolescence 7, 20, 28, 32, 47, 51, 93–5, 100, 124, 202–3, 206–7, 235, 238–9, 241, 247 Adorno, Theodor 18, 200, 204, 240 adult audiences 6, 12, 17, 19–20, 38, 41–6, 48–53, 55, 64, 69, 92, 129, 196 adults 6, 14, 17, 19 adults and adulthood 6, 17–18, 22–3, 32, 35, 37–8, 46, 48–9, 100, 102, 115, 195 Advertising the American Dream (book) 67, 210, 237 Aerosmith (musical group) 220 Affirmative Action 148 African American audiences 2, 7, 126, 128, 130, 141, 143, 145, 151, 196 African American music 100, 125–53, 220, 223, 247

251

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Index

American Graffiti (album) 66 American Graffiti (film) 42, 65–6, 191 American Indian Movement (AIM) 136 American Tobacco 199 American Top 40 (book) 199, 204, 232, 234 American Top 40 (radio program) 36, 194 American Top 40 with Casey Kasem (The 1970s) (book) 36, 204, 232 Amy 15 Anderson, Terry H. 201, 216, 222, 232 Andrews Sisters, The (musical group) 81, 156 Andrews, Edmund L. 207, 232 Andy Griffith Show, The (television program) 174–5 Andy Williams Show, The (television program) 41 Annie Hall (film) 76 Annual Billboard Radio Programming Forum 5, 134, 141, 161 “Another Brick in the Wall” (song) 150 “Another One Bites the Dust” (single) 150 Another Side of Bob Dylan (album) 59 anti-intellectualism 98 antiwar movement of the 1960s 23, 165 AOR (album-oriented rock) (radio format) 2, 19, 93, 120–4, 195–6, 220, 244 Apollo Theatre 144 Appalachian Mountains 177 April Wine (musical group) 117 Arbitron 14, 52, 88, 208, 214, 240 Archie Show, The (television program) 28 Archie’s Funhouse (television program) 28 Archies, The 19, 27, 29, 202 “Are You Lonesome Tonight” (song) 159, 204 Argent (musical group) 115 Arkansas 131 Arlin, Howard 99 Armadillo World Headquarters 184 Armstrong, E. Howard 12 Armstrong, Louis 128 Arnold, Eddy 163, 174 Arnold, Lee 179 Arrow, Michelle 78, 212, 240 Arthur, Bea 75 Asa 14 Ashare, Matt 216, 240 Asleep at the Wheel (musical group) 186–7 Association of Country Entertainers (ACE) 182–3 Association, The (musical group) 102 “At a Georgia Camp Meetin’” (song) 127 At Folsom Prison (album) 176 At the Hop (album) 66

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“At the Hop” (song) 66 Atkins, Chet 159–60 Atlantic Records 115, 140, 142, 144, 207 Attica State Prison 73, 136, 222, 249 Austin American-Statesman (newspaper) 186 Austin Ballet 184 Austin, Texas 184–7, 230, 235, 237–8 Australia 77–8, 183 automobiles 19, 21, 53, 95, 100, 177, 189, 191 Avalon, Frankie 40 Averill, Patricia 168, 227, 241 Axelrod, James 10 Babney, Dede 147 baby boomers 65–6, 70 “Baby Don’t Get Hooked on Me” (song) 183 “Baby Sittin’ Boogie” (song) 42 Bachman, Katy 208, 241 Back Home Again (album) 57 “Back Stabbers” (song) 137, 145, 222 Backstreet Boys, The (musical group) 52 Backus, Jim 96 Bad Company (musical group) 117 Baez, Joan 59, 79, 81 Bahney, Anna 207, 241 Bailey, Beth 4, 203, 232 Bakersfield, California 174 “Ballad of Davy Crockett, The” (song) 48 “Ballad of the Green Berets” (song) 106, 165, 216 Ballance, Bill 83–5, 213–14, 241 “Ballroom Blitz, The” (song) 117 “Bang a Gong (Get It On)” (song) 118 Bangs, Lester 38, 81, 112, 116, 204, 212, 218, 232, 241 Banjo, The (musical composition) 127 Baraka, Amiri (LeRoi Jones) 132, 136, 151–2, 222, 224, 235, 241 Barbieri, Susan 207, 241 Bare, Bobby 46, 164, 206 Barlow, William 131, 152, 216, 221–2, 225, 232–3 Barnes, Ken 199–200, 210, 241 Barnett, Kyle 15, 215 Barry, Dave 43, 206, 232 Barry, Jeff 202 Bartos, Rene 69, 210–11, 232 Baruch, Andre 9 Basie, Count 128 Battistini, Pete 36, 204, 232 “Battle Hymn of the Republic” (song) 24 “Battle of Lt. Calley” (song) 44, 172 Baughman, James L. 200, 218, 221, 232 Bauman, K. E. 202, 241 Baxter, Skunk 149

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Index Beach Boys, The (musical group) 176 Beagles, The (television program) 28 Beatles, The (album) 173 Beatles, The (musical group) 25–8, 40–2, 65, 72, 102, 108, 112–13, 173, 180, 202, 211, 217–18 Beatles, The (television program) 28 beautiful music (radio format) 62, 122 “Be-Bop-A-Lula” (song) 100 Beck, Dan 226, 229, 241 Beck, Jeff, Group (musical group) 218 Bederman, Gail 214, 232 Beer, Lenny 219, 245 “Behind Closed Doors” (song) 160, 182 Beisel, Nicola 47, 207, 232 Belafonte, Harry 75 Bell Records 38 Bell, Al 144, 223 Bell, Rusty 185 Bell, Thom 147 Benedek, Laszlo 215 Bennett, Buzz 120 Bennett, Tony 63 “Bennie and the Jets” (song) 146 Benson, Ray 187 Berger, David G. 143 Bergman, Elizabeth 15 Berkowitz, Edward D. 4 Berlin 132 Bernstone, Arthur H. 215 Berry, Chuck 43, 101, 174, 205 Bertin, Michael 230, 241 Bertolucci, Bernardo 86 Beverly Hillbillies, The (television program) 175–6 Big Bopper, The 101 Big Brother and the Holding Company (musical group) 142 “Big Game Hunter” (song) 176 Bill of Rights, The 110 Billboard (magazine) 1, 4–5, 9–11, 13–14, 18–19, 25, 28–9, 34, 36–7, 41–2, 44, 46, 55–6, 61, 64–6, 69–70, 72, 77, 87, 91–2, 102, 104, 106, 109, 111–13, 115–17, 122, 125, 128–9, 132, 134–5, 138, 140–2, 144–6, 150–1, 157–9, 161, 163–5, 169, 177, 181, 186–8, 194–206, 208, 210–31, 240–9 Billboard Book of Number One Hits 77 Billboard Hot 100, The 18, 36, 46, 91, 113, 121, 135, 199, 200, 218, 228, 241 “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero” (song) 43 Bindas, Paul J. 199, 232 “Birmingham Bounce” (song) 164 birth control 39, 83

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253

Black Arts Movement 136 “Black Denim Trousers” (song) 100 “Black Dog” (song) 117, 218–19 Black Enterprise (magazine) 148 Black Fire (book) 136 Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music (book) 137 Black Oak Arkansas (musical group) 117 Black Panther Party for Self Defense 64, 133, 135–7 Black Power 7, 34, 119, 132–4, 136–7, 145, 147, 222, 233, Black Power radio 133 black pride 132 black progressive (radio format) 141 Black Sabbath (musical group) 65, 91, 116, 119, 196, 219, 241 Blackboard Jungle, The (film) 95, 215 Blackwell, Noble V. 138, 223, 241 Blaisdell, Virginia 81, 212, 249 Blaxploitation 138–9 blended play 17, 34–5, 37, 161–2, 200, 204, 210, 244 Blood, Sweat & Tears (musical group) 18, 91, 142 Bloodrock (musical group) 114 Bloody Sunday (1972) 73 Blore, Chuck 83, 213, 244 “Blowin’ in the Wind” (song) 59 Blue Cheer (musical group) 218 “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” (song) 187 “Blue Moon of Kentucky” (song) 158 “Blue Suede Shoes” (song) 100 bluegrass (musical genre) 157–8, 161, 173 blues (musical genre) 103, 116, 127, 137, 152, 184, 187 Blues Project, The (musical group) 91 Blumler, Jay G. 203 Bob FM (radio format) 121 Bob Hamilton Radio Report, The (tipsheet) 186 Bobbie Gentry and Glen Campbell (album) 171 Bogart, Neil 25–6, 34, 38, 49–50, 150 Bombeck, Erma 85 Bonnie and Clyde (film) 93 Booker T. and the MGs (musical group) 134 Boone, Pat 100, 128, 184 Borgenicht, David 206, 232 “Born to Be Wild” (song) 116 Boss Radio 29, 133, 222, 236 Boston, Massachusetts 32, 103, 132, 143 “Bourgeois Blues” (song) 137 Bowen, Jimmy 63, 209, 233 Bowen, Michael 21 Bowie, David 117–18, 120, 196, 219, 236

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254

Index

Bowman baseball cards 36 boy bands 52, 70 Brack, Ray 158, 224–5, 241 Brackett, David 11, 199, 233 Bradley, Owen 159 Brady Bunch, The (television program) 30–1, 207 Brady Kids, The (television program) 27–8 “Brand New Key” (song) 43 Brand, Stewart 188 Brando, Marlon 95–6, 101 brass bands 127 Bread (musical group) 20, 34, 61 break-in singles 42 Breithaupt, Don and Jeff 3, 205, 233 Brend, Mark 209, 233 Brewer and Shipley (musical group) 43 Brewer, Don 112 “Bridge Over Troubled Water” (song) 174 Brimmer, Andrew F. 148 “Bring the Boys Back Home” (song) 137 British Invasion, The 40 Britt, Elton 167 Broadcasting (magazine) 2, 5, 8, 12, 84–5, 92, 124, 199–200, 205–6, 208, 213, 217, 220, 223, 229, 231–2, 241, 243, 245–9 Broadcasting and Cable (magazine) 5 Broder, David 211 Brody, Jane 57, 208, 241 Bronson, Fred 77, 199, 208, 212, 233 Brooks, Garth 5 Brother John 120 “Brother Louie” (song) 43 Brotherhood of Man (musical group) 46, 206 Broussard, Skip 142 Brown Berets, The 136 Brown, Gerry 130 Brown, J. D. 202, 241 Brown, James 132–3, 138, 147, 222, 224, 241, 243 Brown, Robert J. 147 Bubble Gum Is the Naked Truth (album) 35 Bubble Gum Is the Naked Truth (book) 29, 35 Bubble Puppy (musical group) 219 bubblegum (musical genre) 3, 20, 25–7, 29, 34–5, 37–41, 43, 50, 70, 77, 87, 105, 122, 150, 201–2, 204–5, 233, 243 Bucholz, Barbara 207 Buckaroos, The (musical group) 174 Buckley, Tim 59 Buddah Records 25, 29, 34–5, 41, 202, 204–5 Buddhism 58 Budil, Greg 69 Buffy the Vampire Slayer (television program) 51

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Buhler, James 15 “Bundle of Southern Sunshine” (song) 163 Bundy, June 210, 242 Bunzel, Reed 214, 242 Burch, Dean 83, 109–10 Burdon, Eric 109–10 Bureau Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs 64 Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) 136 Burkhart, Kent 121, 123 Burns, George 28, 104, 216 Burroughs, William S. 116, 219, 233 Burton, Ray 77 Bush, George W. 72, 194 Business Week 22, 201, 247 Butler, Jerry 134, 145 “Butter Boy” (song) 212 “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” (song) 176 Byrds, The (musical group) 162, 184, 229 C Company featuring Terry Nelson (musical group) 172 Cahn, Sammy 63 “Cajun KKK” (song) 164 California 110, 188 California Girls (radio program) 83 California State Legislature 135 “Call Me Irresponsible” (song) 63 Camp Rock (television program) 53 Campbell, Angela J. 217, 244 Campbell, Glen 105, 171, 175–6, 226 “Can’t Get Enough” (song) 117 “Candy Man, The” (song) 46, 49, 206 Cantor, Louis 131, 221, 233 Capitol Records 77, 141–2, 168, 226–7 “Captain Groovy and His Bubblegum Army” (song) 25 Carlos, John 136 Carmichael, Stokely V. 132, 222, 233 Carnegie Hall 34 Carpenter, Karen 81 Carpenters, The (musical group) 18, 20, 34, 46, 61, 71, 83, 206 Carroll, Jackson W. 208, 233 Carroll, Peter N. 4, 32, 115, 198, 203, 208, 211–12, 219, 222, 233 Carson, Johnny 86 Carter, Jimmy 189 cartoons (animated) 26–9, 39 Casablanca Records 50, 150 Casey, Al 120 Cash Box (magazine) 1, 4, 5, 14, 40, 112, 121, 143–6, 149, 180, 205, 212, 217–19, 223–4, 229, 240–5, 248

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Index Cash, Johnny 17, 164, 166, 169, 175–6, 200, 226, 228 Cash, Tommy 164 Cash, W. J. 163, 226 Cassidy, David 19, 27, 40, 42, 98, 122, 205, 244 Castor, Jimmy 43, 205 Cat on a Hot Thin Groove, The (book) 98 “Cat’s in the Cradle” (song) 46 CBS (television network) 32, 174, 207, 228 CBS Records 142–5, 147, 150, 160, 223 censorship 110 Chakachas (musical group) 43 “Change Is Gonna Come, A” (song) 131 Channing, Carol 75 Chapin, Harry 46, 206 Chapman, Don 158 Chapman, Ron 87 Chapple, Steve 122, 199, 201, 215, 221, 233 “Charity Ball” (song) 212 Charles, Ray 160 “Charlie Brown” (song) 100, 156, 228 Charlie Tuna 99 “Chattanoogie Shoeshine Boy” (song) 164 Chávez, César 136 Cheech and Chong 118, 219 Cheers, The (musical group) 100 Chellman, Chuck 161, 226, 242 Cher 57 “Cherish” (song) 102 “Chevy Van” (song) 43 Chic (musical group) 124, 149 Chicago (musical group) 18 Chicago and New Haven Women’s Liberation Rock Bands 81 Chicago Tribune, The 93, 207, 241 Chicago White Sox 123 Chicago, Illinois 22, 37, 46, 66, 69, 71, 77, 81, 84, 93, 123, 134, 136, 150, 158, 190 Chicano Movement 136 chicken rock 35, 65 Childers, K.W. 202, 241 childhood 20, 25, 39, 47–8, 50, 201–2, 204, 207, 237–40, 249 children 6, 17–20, 28–9, 31–41, 43–52, 69, 75, 78, 94, 140, 191, 201–3, 207, 214, 241–2, 245, 251–3 Chi-Lites, The (musical group) 126, 138, 161, 226 China 148 “Chipmunk Song, The” (song) 42 Chipmunks, The 42, 48 Chmielewski, Dawn C. 208, 242 “Choice of Colors” (song) 132

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“Chokin’ Kind, The” (song) 134 Chords, The (musical group) 128 Chozik, Amy 207, 242 CHR (contemporary hit radio) (radio format) 196 Christenson, Peter G. 202 Christgau, Robert 112, 218, 233 “Christian Life, The” (song) 184 Christian, Meg 79–80 Christianity 58, 172 Christy Minstrels, The (musical group) 126 Chudacoff, Howard P. 47, 206, 233 Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 131 civil rights movement 7, 22, 59, 130–2, 139, 155, 164, 197 “Claire” (song) 46 Clapton, Eric 107, 146 Clark University 93 Clark, Dick 101 Clark, Mark 136 Clark, Roy 175 classical music 7, 8, 11, 69, 103, 111, 141 Clay, Tom 44–5, 49 Clear Channel Communications, Inc. 193 Cleopatra Jones (film) 139 Cleveland, Ohio 100, 103 Cline, Patsy 159 Clinton, Bill 193 Clinton, George 149 Coasters, The (musical group) 100, 137, 156, 228 Cobb, James C. 227, 233 Cochran, Eddie 100 cock rock 98 Coffy (film) 139 Cohen, Allen 51 Cohen, Leonard 59 COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) 137 Coleman, Mark 200–1, 233 Collins, Judy 81, 98 Columbia Records 18, 59, 63, 91, 143, 200, 208, 223–4, 227–8, 240, 242, 246 Columbia University 22, 31 “Come Home America” (song) 71 “Come Together” (song) 113 comic books 27, 39, 94–5, 101, 109 Comic Magazine Association of America (CMAA) 94–5 comic strips 27, 39, 163 Comics Code Authority of 1954 109 Comiskey Park 123–4 Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen (musical group) 187

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256

Index

Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, The (book) 33, 203 communism 47, 106, 168, 172, 177 Como, Perry 20, 64 Compton Brothers, The (musical group) 156 Comstock, Anthony 47, 202, 207, 232 Comstock, George A. 202, 237 Confederate Army 167 Confederate states 167 “Congratulations, You Sure Made a Man Out of Him” (song) 168 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) 139 Coniff, Ray 62 Connecticut 102 consolidation 193–5 “Convention ’72” (song) 42 Cooke, Sam 131 Cooper, Alice 65, 116–19, 196, 219 Cooper, Kim 201–2, 204, 233 Copeland, Miles 193 Corbin, Everett 228–9, 242 Cornell University 21 Corporation for Public Broadcasting 99 “Cosmic Cowboy” (song) 185 counterculture of the 1960s 21, 64, 101–2, 106, 170 country (musical genre) 7, 11, 14, 69, 155–90, 197, 206, 225, 230 country (radio format) 6, 7, 8, 155–8, 161–3, 167–9, 179–88, 190, 196–7, 225–6, 250 country audiences 155–6, 161–3, 168, 170–2, 181–2, 187, 191, 194, 196–7 country gospel (musical genre) 158 Country Music Association (CMA) 155, 166, 181–2 Country Music Hall of Fame 14, 168, 206, 209 Country Music USA (book) 166 Country Music USA (radio program) 179 country rock (musical genre) 184–5, 229, 234, 155–6, 177 countrypolitan (musical genre) 160, 197 Courage to Divorce, The (book) 30 Courtship of Eddie’s Father, The (television program) 30 Cousins, Norman 95, 214 Cowsills, The (musical group) 27, 48, 105, 110, 202 Cramer, Floyd 160 Cramer, Ted 169, 225, 228, 244 Crane, Les 58, 208–9 Cranna, Ian 207, 242 Crawford, Richard 221, 233 “Crazy” (song) 159 Creating Country Music (book) 172

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“Creature (from a Science Fiction Movie) The” (song) 42 Creem (magazine) 116 Creole culture 127 Crests, The (musical group) 100 Crew Cuts, The (musical group) 128 crime 115 Crime Does Not Pay (comic book) 94 Crime SuspenStories (comic book) 95 Croce, Jim 180 Crocker, Frankie 139, 151 Crockett, Davy 167 Crosby, Bing 156 Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (musical group) 50, 114, 207 cross country (radio format) 155, 161, 179–80, 190, 197, 226, 246 Cross, Milton J. 99 crossover 2, 7, 125–6, 143–4, 146, 150–2, 155–6, 159–63, 171, 181–3, 189–90, 196–7, 226, 229, 242–3 Crowe, Cameron 224, 242 Crumb, R. 101 Cuff Links, The (musical group) 202 Curb Records 110 Curb, Mike 109–10 “Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast” (song) 47, 206 “Daddy What If ” (song) 46, 49, 206 Daffan, Ted 179 Dahl, Shawn 206, 209, 232 Dahl, Steve 123 Dalhart, Vernon 156 Dallas, Texas 14, 53, 83, 86–8, 122, 124, 134, 161, 186, 214, 230, 240 Damocles’ sword 110 “Dance Dance Dance (Yowsah Yowsah Yowsah)” (song) 149 Daniel, Dan 179 Daniels, Charlie 177, 187, 228 Dann, Maury 177 Dannen, Fredric 198–9, 201–2, 207, 209, 223, 233 Danny and the Juniors (musical group) 66 Dante, Ron 202 Darren, James 40, 99 Darwinism 93 Dates, Jannette, L. 131, 221, 225, 233 Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs (book) 43, 206, 232 Davis, Angela 73 Davis, Clive 62–3, 142–5, 159, 209, 223–4, 226, 233

27/5/11 11:08:23 AM

Index Davis, Janet M. 15 Davis, Mac 183 Davis, Sammy, Jr. 46, 206 Davis, Skeeter 159–60, 170, 172, 194, 228–30, 233 Davis, Tim 14 “Dawn of Correction” (song) 37, 106, 216 Dawson’s Creek (television program) 51 “Day By Day” (song) 58 “Day for Decision” (song) 165 Day, Doris 64 Dazed and Confused (film) 192 Dean, James 95–6, 101 Deane, Fred 231, 244 Death of Rhythm and Blues, The (book) 126, 148, 221, 223–4, 235 Debussy, Claude 127 Decca Records 159, 216 “Deck of Cards” (song) 44, 206 DeCurtis, Anthony 204, 220, 224, 234 Deep Purple (musical group) 117, 121 Deep Throat (film) 86 DeFranco Family, The (musical group) 48 Deitch, Gene 98 Delfonics, The (musical group) 145 Deliverance (film) 176–7 Dellio, Phil 193 “Delta Dawn” (song) 160 Democratic National Convention of 1968 22, 71 Democratic Party 22, 71–2 demographic research 3, 14, 53, 87, 92, 111, 122, 123 demographics 111 Denisoff, R. Serge 39, 118, 200–2, 205, 209–12, 217–18, 220, 226, 234 Denselow, Robin 209, 234 Denver, John 57–8, 71, 182–3 Depression of the 1890s 47 Derringer, Rick 117 desegregation 131 Desiderata (album) 209 “Desiderata” (song) 58, 208–9 “Detroit City” (song) 164 Detroit riot of 1967 132 Detroit Tigers 123 Detroit, Michigan 37, 103, 129, 132 Diamond, Neil 61, 83 Dibango, Manu 107 Dickerson, Randall 161 Didion, Joan 74 Diehl, Alden 53 “Dinner with Drac” (song) 10 Dion and the Belmonts (musical group) 100 DirecTV, 52

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257

disc jockeys 2, 12–13, 18, 24, 37, 68, 77, 83, 87, 100–1, 104, 107–9, 120, 130, 131, 134, 141, 151–2, 155, 157–8, 180, 190–1, 229, 243 disco 9, 50, 123–4, 128, 140, 148–53, 207, 220, 224, 242 Disco Demolition Night 123, 150 Disney Channel, The 52 “Distant Drums” (song) 165 divorce 17, 30, 33, 74, 86 Dixie Chicks, The (musical group) 194 “Do Your Thing” (song) 134 “D.O.A.” (song) 114 Dodson, Fitzhugh 33, 203, 234 Doherty, Thomas 94, 214, 234 “Don’t Be a Dropout” (song) 222 “Don’t Cry Daddy” (song) 47, 159, 183, 206, 225 Donahue, Phil 85 Donahue, Rachael 103 Donahue, Tom 13, 24, 102–4, 108 Donaldson, Bo, and the Heywoods (musical group) 43 Donna Reed Show, The (television program) 47 “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)” (song) 117 Doobie Brothers, The (musical group) 149 Doors, The (musical group) 40, 101 Dorr, A. 207, 244 Dorris, Lee 179 Dorsey Brothers, The 96 Dorsey, Tommy 96, 128 Dotinga, Randy 214, 243 “Double Lovin’” (song) 38 Doubleday, C. 207, 244 Douglas, Dwight 122 Douglas, Susan J. 13, 43, 49, 70, 97, 107, 198, 200, 215, 221, 234 Dr. Hook (musical group) 184 Drake, Bill 12, 29, 65, 77 Drake, Guy 44, 167–8, 227, 244 Draper, Robert 211, 234 Drifters, The (musical group) 81 Dripping Springs, Texas 186 drugs 7, 21–2, 24, 34, 43, 51, 64, 92–3, 107–10, 113–16, 118, 165, 170, 186, 196, 201, 217, 219, 238, 246 “Drugs as Drag” drive 109, 217, 250 “Drugstore Truck Drivin’ Man” (song) 229 Dudley, Dave 44, 164, 226 “Dueling Banjos” (song) 107, 177 Dumbrowski, Sandy 66 Duncan, George 85

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258

Index

Durkee, Rob 36, 199, 204, 234 Duston, Anne 220 Dyer, Wayne 32, 203, 234 Dylan, Bob 18, 29, 59–60, 91, 135, 173, 183, 209, 238 E Pluribus Funk (album) 112 Eagles, The (musical group) 184 Eagleton, Thomas 75 “Earache My Eye” (song) 118 Earth Day 188 Eastwood, Clint 76 Easy Does It (album) 91 easy listening (musical genre) 42, 56, 61, 70, 133, 145, 208 easy listening (radio format) 19, 42, 56, 61, 84, 111, 145, 179, 195, 208, 236, 244 “Easy Livin’” (song) 117 Easy Rider (film) 34, 93, 120, 176–7 Eaton’s Christmas Catalog 193 Ebenkamp, Becky 204 Eberly, Philip K. 8, 13, 56, 104, 198–200, 216, 234 Eddy, Chuck 43, 206, 218, 234, 243 Edelstein, Andrew J. 75, 208–9, 212, 230, 234 Edison Lighthouse (musical group) 192 Edison, Thomas 9 Edwards, Stoney 181 Ehler, Jan 217, 243 Ehrman, Max 208 Eight Is Enough (television program) 207 Einarson, Joe 229, 234 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 98, 215, 239 “Elected” (song) 118, 219 Election campaign of 1952 98 Election campaign of 1956 98 Election campaign of 1972 71–2, 147–8 Electric Company, The (television program) 29 Elektra Records 113 Elkind, Daniel 33, 48–9, 204, 207, 234 Ellington, Duke 128 Ellison, Ralph 125 Elrod, Bruce 10, 199, 234 Elsas, Dennis 124 Emerson, Lake and Palmer (musical group) 111 Emery, Ralph 229, 234 “Emotional Rescue” (song) 150 “End of the World, The” (song) 160, 170 “Energy Crisis ’74” (song) 42 energy crisis of 1973 42, 60, 69, 115 English Congregation, The (musical group) 46 Epic Records 115, 182, 206, 222 Epstein, Edward Jay 217, 234 Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) 73–4

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Erhard Seminars Training, Inc. (est) 57, 208, 241 Erhard, Werner 57, 208, 241 Erlich, Nancy 37, 41, 202, 204–5, 243 Ernie 17–18 Evars, Medgar 131 “Eve of Destruction” (song) 37, 106, 216, 226 Everett, Todd 226 “Everybody’s Talking” (song) 59 “Everything Is Beautiful” (song) 46 Exorcist, The (film) 45 Fabian 40, 99, 101, 215, 243 Faces (musical group) 117 “Fairytale” (song) 184 Faith, Percy 62 Faltermeyer, Charlotte 208, 243 family 17–18, 26–7, 30–3, 35, 41–2, 45–8, 51, 69, 78, 86, 94, 130, 145, 180, 202, 207, 228, 236, 241, 245 Fanny (musical group) 81, 212 Farber, David 4, 198, 234 Fargo Rock City (book) 119 Fargo, Donna 183 Fariña, Richard 59 “Farmer’s Daughter, The” (song) 165 Farner, Mark 112–14 Fass, Bob 13, 108 Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (television program) 28, 30 Fear of Flying (book) 86 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 106, 136, 201, 211, 240 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) 7, 12–13, 32, 83–5, 92, 102, 109–11, 114, 141, 193, 213, 217, 223, 243 Federal Music Project (FMP) 10, 199, 232 Federal Reserve System Board of Governors 148 “Feel Like Makin’ Love” (song) 117 Fell, Ron 15, 199 female audiences 2, 6–7, 11–12, 26–7, 39, 55, 58, 61, 67–89, 96, 124, 130, 146, 196 Feminine Forum (radio program) 83–5, 88, 213 Feminine Mystique, The (book) 73 femininity 7, 55–6, 67, 70–2, 81 feminism 55, 73–4, 77–80, 212, 238, 240, 249 Feminization of America, The (book) 56 Femme Forum (radio program) 84–5 Fightin’ Side of Me, The (album) 168 “Fightin’ Side of Me, The” (song) 165, 166, 168, 227 “Find ‘Em, Fool ‘Em, Forget ‘Em” (song) 41 “Fire and Rain” (song) 34, 61 “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, The” (song) 76

27/5/11 11:08:23 AM

Index Fisher, Marc 13, 108, 193, 220, 231, 238 FitzGerald, Frances 219, 234 Five Stairsteps, The (musical group) 48 Flack, Roberta 76, 146 Fleetwood Mac 89 Flint Free Clinic 113 Flint, Michigan 111, 113 “Flint, You’re Making Me Sick” (song) 113 Flippo, Chet 229, 243 “Flirtin’” (song) 41 Florida 188 Flying Burrito Brothers, The (musical group) 184 “Flying Saucer, The” (song) 42 FM (book) 107, 216–17 FM (frequency modulation) 1, 2, 7, 12–14, 19, 62, 64, 77, 87–8, 91–2, 101–13, 120–2, 124, 130, 133, 151, 161, 179, 180, 184–7, 193–5, 200, 210, 216–21, 228, 230, 235, 240, 243–4, 247 Focus (musical group) 107, 121 Foley, Michael S. 201, 234 Foley, Red 164, 167 folk (musical genre) 30, 43, 59, 76–7, 81, 103, 109, 126–7, 157, 167, 169, 173, 182 Foner, Eric 212, 234 Fong-Torres, Ben 13, 15, 104, 199–200, 209–11, 213, 216, 221, 223, 239, 243 “Footstompin’ Music” (song) 117 For God’s Sake) Give More Power to the People (album) 126 “For God’s Sake) Give More Power to the People” (song) 138 “For Sale – A Baby” (song) 47 “For the Love of Money” (song) 137–8, 222 Ford, “Tennessee” Ernie 163 Ford, Glenn 95 Forman, Milos 62 formula radio 12–13, 67 Fornatale, Peter 13, 102, 200, 202, 216, 235 Forrest, Tal 134, 222 Foster, Stephen 126–7, 163 Four Tops, The (musical group) 125, 129 Fouratt, Jim 50 Fox, Aaron 173 “Framed” (song) 137 “Frankenstein” (song) 107, 117 Franklin, Aretha 82 Frankovich, Mike 76–7 Free (musical group) 117 “free form” radio 13–14, 24, 65, 92, 102–3, 105–12, 120, 122, 124–5, 133–4, 151, 161, 173, 196, 200, 210, 217, 220, 243, 249

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“Free Ride” (song) 117 Free Speech Movement 23 Free to Be . . . You and Me (album) 75 Free Your Mind . . . And Your Ass Will Follow (album) 149 Freed, Alan 12, 99–101, 130, 215 freedom rides 131 Freud, Sigmund 96 Friday Morning Quarterback, The (FMQB) 5, 38, 62, 195, 231, 242 Friedan, Betty 73–4, 77, 212, 239 Friend, Arnold 96 Frith, Simon 78, 98–9, 105, 107, 128, 204, 210–12, 215–17, 220–1, 223–4, 235, 241 Fromholz, Steven 187, 230 Fruit Jar Drinkers, The (musical group) 156–7 Frum, David 4, 45, 72, 198, 203, 206, 208, 211, 235 funk (musical genre) 50, 148–9 Funkadelic 148–9 “Funny Face” (song) 183 Furedi, Frank 207, 235 Future of Marriage, The (book) 30 Gaillard, Frye 227 Gaines, Donna 119, 218, 235 Gaines, Ken 86 Gallery (musical group) 192 Galloff, Katie 15 Gallup polls 10, 58 “Galveston” (song) 176 Gamble, Kenny 140, 145, 149–52 garage rock 25 Garcia, Gilberto G. 230, 235 Gardiner, Jack 161 Garofalo, Rebee 122, 201, 212, 215, 220–1, 233, 235 Garraty, John A. 212, 234 Gavin Report (publication) 5, 199 Gavin, Bill 5, 62, 88, 214, 249 gay liberation movement 119 gay pride 150 Gaye, Marvin 125, 138–9, 148 Gaynor, Gloria 149 gender 4–6, 55, 70, 117–20, 196 generation gap 20, 23–4, 34, 55–6, 123, 201, 248 “Gentle on My Mind” (song) 176 “George Jackson” (song) 135–6 George, Nelson 126, 143, 148–9, 151, 221, 223 George-Warren, Holly 204, 206, 209, 218–21, 224, 232, 234, 238 Georgia 189 “Geronimo’s Cadillac” (song) 185, 187

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260 Gibson, Don 160 Gilbert, Eugene 100 Gilbert, James 214–15, 235 Gilett, Charlie 129 Ginsberg, Allen 21 girl groups 70, 81 Girl Talk (radio program) 83 Girls Like Us (book) 82, 213, 239 Gitlin, Todd 101, 216, 235 glam (musical genre) 117–20 Glaser, Milton 102 Glaser, Tompall 229 Gleason, Ralph J. 142, 178, 229, 249 Glen Campbell’s Goodtime Hour (television program) 175–6 Godspell (musical) 58 Goffin, Gerry 81 Golden Gate Park 21 Goldsboro, Bobby 46, 48–9, 183, 206–7 Goldstein, Richard 113, 167, 218, 227, 243 Good Luck Charlie (television program) 52 “Goodbye to Love” (song) 61 Goodenough, A. 215, 243 Goodman, Dickie 42–3, 205 Goodman, Paul 20 “Goodnight Sweetheart Goodnight” (song) 128 “Goodnight Tonight” (song) 150 Goodwin, Andrew 204, 212, 215, 220, 223–4 Gordy, Berry 129, 138, 144, 223 Gorme, Eydie 20 Gortikov, Stan 64, 210, 243 gospel (musical genre) 43, 58, 133, 158, 181 Gottschalk, Louis Moreau 127 Gould, Jack 176, 216, 228, 243 Graduate, The (film) 93 Graebner, William 243 Graff, Harvey J. 51, 207, 235 Grammy Awards 77, 87, 209, 213 Grand Funk Railroad (musical group) 64, 91, 111–15, 117, 196, 218, 236, 243 Grand Ole Opry, The 8, 156–7, 166, 170–2, 175, 184, 194, 199, 225, 228–9, 240, 248 Grand Rapids, Michigan 23 “Grandma’s Feather Bed” (song) 57 Grandpa Jones 175 Grateful Dead, The 21 Graves, Earl G. 148, 224, 243 Grease (musical) 66 Great Britain 11, 40, 95, 111, 114, 118, 120, 173 Great Depression, The 137 Great Funk, The (book) 4, 192, 198, 236 Green Acres (television program) 175 Green, Al 147

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Index Green, Robin 205 Greenbaum, Norman 43, 58 Greenwich Village 119 Greer, Rosie 75 Groovie Goolies, The (television program) 27–8 Gross, Mike 204, 208, 213, 244 Grossman, Albert 29 Grossman, Gary H. 202–3, 205, 235 GRT Records 34, 56 Guiding Light (radio program) 67 Guralnick, Peter 165, 226, 229, 235 Guterman, Jimmy 43 Guthrie, Woody 59 Hag (album) 165 Haggard, Merle 164–8, 174, 226–7, 229, 243 “Hair” (song) 202 Haley, Bill 95, 128 Hall, Barbara 13 Hall, Claude 5, 11, 13, 15, 28, 102, 163, 194, 199, 200–1, 204, 208, 210–11, 213, 216, 221, 223, 225–6, 228, 231, 235, 248 Hall, G. Stanley 47, 93, 206, 214, 235 Hall, Tom T. 166, 186, 226 ham radio 98 Hamilton, Bob 5, 38, 88, 186, 204, 214, 244 Hamilton, Charles 222 Hampton, Fred 136 Hance, Bill 228, 244 Handy, W. C. 127 Hannah Montana (television program) 53 Hanoi 71 “Happiest Girl in the Whole USA” (song) 183 “Happy” (song) 117 Happy Days (television program) 42, 65–6 Hard Day’s Night, A (film) 27 “Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” (song) 59 Harden, Arlene 168, 227, 246 Hardin, Tim 59 Hardy Boys, The (television program) 27–8 Hare Krishna 58 Harlem 132 Harper Junior Books 34 Harper’s (magazine) 98, 166 Harris, William J. 222, 232 Harrison, George 58 Harrison, Harry 67–78 Harrison, Jim 162 Harrison, Mike 121, 220, 244 Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration 143 Harvard Report, The 142–4 Harvard University 21, 142–3

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Index Haskell, Molly 76 “Haunted House” (song) 156 Have a Nice Day series 43, 206, 243 Hawaii Five-O (television program) 31 Hawkins, Edwin, Singers, The (musical group) 58 Hay, George D. 8, 156–7 Hayden, Tom 222, 244 Hayes, Isaac 138–9, 143 Head, Murray 58 Hearst, Patty 211 “Heartbreak Hotel” (song) 96 Heavy Metal (book) 119 heavy metal (musical genre) 3, 67, 116–19, 218, 219–20, 234, 239 Hebdige, Dick 212 Heber, Shelly 146, 224, 244 Hee Haw (television program) 174–6, 178, 228, 244, 247 Heine, Paul 231, 244 Heiskanen, Benita 15 Hell’s Angels 22 “Hello Vietnam” (song) 164, 226 Help! (film) 27 Henderson, Fletcher 128 Henderson, Jocko 130–1 Hendler, Herb 204, 210, 219, 235 Hendrix, Jimi 60, 64, 101, 105, 107, 109 Henke, James 204, 220, 224, 234 Henson, Jim 45 Here Come the Brides (television program) 27 Herman, Woody 128 Herman’s Hermits (musical group) 81 Herndon, John 186, 230 heroin 116 Hershey, Lewis 21 Hick Flicks (book) 178 Hickey, Neil 228, 244 Hicks, Michael 15, 205 Higbee, Lynn 162 High School Musical (film) 53 hillbilly radio programs 8 Hilliard, David 106–7 Hilliard, Robert L. 213, 235 Hillis, Craig 184 Hilmes, Michelle 67, 210, 213, 215, 221, 236 Hine, Thomas 4, 192, 198, 231, 236 hip-hop (musical genre) 152–3, 220, 239 Hippies 64, 66, 176–7, 120, 229 History of Rock and Roll, The (radio program) 66, 194 Hits Just Keep on Coming, The (book) 13, 199–200, 209–10, 213, 216, 221, 223, 235

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“Hocus Pocus” (song) 107 Hoeveler, J. David, Jr. 4 Hoffer, Jay 162 Hoffman, H. R. 202 Holbrook, Graeme 15 “Hold Your Head Up” (song) 115 Holden, Stephen 87, 213, 244 Holly, Buddy 101 Hollywood film industry 39, 76, 80, 93–4, 138–9, 214, 234 Holmes, Clint 47 homosexuality 34, 39, 50, 79, 117–20, 123, 150, 219, 232 “Honey” (song) 46 honky-tonk (musical genre) 157, 174 Hoskyns, Barney 219, 236 Hot Butter (musical group) 107 “Hot Rod Lincoln” (song) 187 “Hot Smoke and Sassafras” (song) 219 House on Fire (book) 145 House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) 94 housewife demographic 2, 6, 11–12, 55, 67–70, 73–5, 83, 85–7, 130, 196, 210, 213, 245 Houston Astrodome 58 How the Other Half Lives (book) 47 How to Be Your Own Best Friend (book) 57 How to Parent (book) 33, 203, 234 How to Raise a Human Being (book) 33, 203, 234 How We Got Here (book) 4, 45, 72, 198, 203, 206, 208, 211, 234 Howard University 21, 133, 151 Hoyer, Mike 179 Huff, Leon 140, 145, 149–52 Hughes, Richard J. 132 Hulbert, Maurice 130 Hull, Robert A. 43, 192, 206, 231 “Human Be-In” 21–2 Human Sexual Response (book) 39, 205, 237 Humperdinck, Engelbert 83, 105 “Hungry Eyes” (song) 168 “Hustle, The” (song) 149 Hyatt, Wesley 208, 236 Hyman, Lester 211, 244 “I Am a Pilgrim” (song) 184 “I Am Woman” (song) 73, 76–80, 82, 212, 240 “I Believe the South Is Gonna Rise Again” (song) 189 “I Can Help” (song) 183 “I Can’t Believe That It’s All Over” (song) 170 “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” (song) 77

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262 I Don’t Know How to Love Him (album) 77 “I Don’t Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door, I’ll Get It Myself)” (song) 132 “I Feel Love” (song) 150 “I Feel the Earth Move” (song) 81 “I Found My Dad” (song) 145 “I Never Said Good-bye” (song) 213 “I Shot the Sheriff ” (song) 146 “I Think I Love You” (song) 38 I Wanna Be Sedated (book) 193 “I Was Made for Loving You” (song) 150 “I’ll Be Around” (song) 145 “I’m Eighteen” (song) 117–18 “I’m Into Something Good” (song) 81 I’ve Got a Tiger By the Tail (album) 174 “I’ve Got a Tiger By the Tail” (song) 174 “If I Were a Carpenter” (song) 59 “If Not for You” (song) 183 “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” (song) 145 Illinois Crime Commission 109 “Immigrant Song” (song) 117 Impressions, The (musical group) 133 Imus, Don 123 “In the Ghetto” (song) 183 In the Night Kitchen (book) “Indian Giver” (song) 26 Indian Health Service (HIS) 136 “Indian Lake” (song) 202 Indiana University 21 inflation 3, 109 “Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler)” (song) 138 Instruments of Desire (book) 119, 218, 239 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) 137 interracial marriage 168 Intruders, The (musical group) 145 Invisible Man (book) 125 iPod 197 Iraq War 170 Ireland 73 “Irma Jackson” (song) 165, 268, 227, 249 Iron Butterfly (musical group) 218 “Iron Man” (song) 117 Isley Brothers, The (musical group) 133 It Changed My Life (book) 77, 212, 235 “It Don’t Worry Me” (song) 178 It Seemed Like Nothing Happened (book) 4 It’s Alive (film) 45 “It’s All Right to Cry” (song) 75 “It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll (But I Like It)” (song) 117 “It’s Too Late” (song) 81

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Index “It’s Your Thing” (song) 133 Ivery, Laura 208, 214 Jack FM (radio format) 121 Jackson 5, The (musical group) 27–8, 35, 48, 122, 125, 149 Jackson 5, The (television program) 27–8 Jackson State University 136 Jackson, Andrew 167 Jackson, George 135 Jackson, John A. 145 Jackson, Michael 48, 153 Jackson, Stonewall 165 Jacobs, Ron 36, 120, 133, 194, 219, 247 Jacobsen, Erik 45 Jagger, Mick 81, 105 Jahr, Cliff 219, 245 Jakobs, John 70 “Jam Up and Jelly Tight” (song) 38 “Jambalaya” (song) 163 James, Billy 218, 236 Jancik, Wayne 206, 219, 236 Janov, Arthur 59 Jarrell, Wadsworth 137 jazz (musical genre) 9, 95, 103, 127–8, 137, 151, 187 Jefferson Airplane, The (musical group) 108–9, 217 Jennings, Waylon 182, 185, 187 Jensen, Joli 173 Jerome, Jim 209, 233 Jesus Christ Superstar (musical) 58, 77 “Jesus Christ Superstar” (song) 58 Jethro Tull (musical group) 111, 121 “Jim Dandy” (song) 117 John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (album) 59 John, Elton 118–20, 146, 151, 219, 245, 249 “Johnny B. Goode” (song) 174 Johnny Cash Show, The (television program) 175–6 Johns, Sammy 43 Johnson, Douglas W. 208, 233 Johnson, Lyndon B. 21, 44, 132, 188, Johnson, Nicholas 109, 141, 217 Johnson, Virginia E. 39, 205, 237 Johnstone, J. W. C. 203 Jones, Bill 171–2, 228 Jones, George 182 Jones, Jack 63 Jones, Joe 125, 221, 231, 245 Jones, LeRoi (Amiri Baraka) 132, 136, 151–2, 222, 224, 235, 241 Jones, Robin 52

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Index Jones, Tom 83, 105 Jong, Erica 86 Joplin, Janis 109, 144, 185 Joplin, Scott 127 Jordan, Amy B. 207, 237 Josie and the Pussycats (television program) 27–8, 35, 48, 125, 149 “Journey to the Center of the Mind” (song) 219 jukebox 10–11, 24–5, 94 Julia (film) 76 “Jungle Fever” (song) 43 Jurek, Martin 211, 245 “Just Once in My Life” (song) 81 juvenile delinquency 7, 23, 93–7, 115, 214–15, 239 KAFM-FM (Dallas) 186 Kahn, Ashley 206, 209, 232 Kamerman, Sheila 31 Kansas City, Missouri 11 Kantner, Paul 217 KASE (Austin) 186 Kasem, Casey 36, 194, 199, 204, 232 Kasenetz, Jerry 25 Katz, Elihu 203 Katz, Jeff 25 Kaufman, Murray (Murray the K) 12, 65, 99, 102 KBBQ (Burbank) 155 KBOX (Dallas) 161 KCKN (Kansas City) 169 KCMD (Kansas City) 162, 180 KDAV (Lubbock) 157 Keats, Ezra Jack 33 “Keep on Pushin’” (song) 132 “Keep the Flag Flying” (song) 164 Keith, Michael C. 13, 104–5, 190, 198, 213, 216–17, 228, 230, 239 Kendall 14 Kennedy, John F. 45, 106, 164, 188 Kennedy, Robert F. 45 KENR (Houston) 180 Kent State University 61, 114 KFOX (Long Beach) 162 KFWB (Los Angeles) 67, 83 KFWD (Dallas) 53 KGB (San Diego) 36, 45, 120 KGBS (Los Angeles) 45, 83, 186, 213 KHJ (Los Angeles) 29, 36, 66, 104, 222, 236 Kick Out the Jams (album) 113 “Kick Out the Jams” (song) 113 Kienzle, Rich 228 Kimmell, Michael S. 201, 215, 236 King, Bobby 96

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263

King, Carole 61, 71, 81–2, 213, 239 King, Florence 227, 245 King, Freddy 184 King, Martin Luther, Jr. 45, 131–2, 135, 164 Kinks, The (musical group) 120, 149–50 Kirshner, Don 27, 39, 202 Kiss (musical group) 50, 149–50 Kittross, John Michael 203, 216, 239 KLAC (Los Angeles) 179 KLIF (Dallas) 53, 83 Klosterman, Chuck 119 Klute (film) 76 KLWW (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) 38 KMPX (San Francisco) 24, 103, 108, 133 KNEW (San Francisco) 83, 86 Knight, Terry 112–14 KNOK (Dallas) 134 Knot, Hans 210, 245 KNUS (Dallas) 122 Koch, G.G. 202, 241 Kodak 62 Koedt, Anne 39, 205, 245 Kofsky, Frank 137, 222, 236 Kohn, Howard 211 KOKE-FM (Austin) 184–8 Kooper, Al 91 Korean War 137 Kortchmar, Danny 60 Kosky, Joe 140 Kot, Greg 231, 245 Kovaric, P. 207, 244 KOWH (Omaha) 11, 67 KRAK (Sacramento) 157, 162, 225 Kramer, Rita 203, 238 Kristen 14 Kristofferson, Kris 166, 182, 226 Kruse, Holly 70, 211 KSAN (San Francisco) 24, 103–4, 106, 108, 110, 133 KSOL (San Francisco) 141 KSON (San Diego) 161 KVIL (Dallas) 53 KVOV (Las Vegas) 141 KYA (San Francisco) 103 KZEW (Dallas) 53, 124 Ladd, Jim 108, 217, 236 Lamb, Becky Little 37 Lane, Chris 158 Lane, Sara 210, 245 Lanham Act of 1942 32 Lanson, Snooky 199 Lanza, Joseph 70, 209, 211, 220, 236

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264 Lardner, George, Jr. 217, 246 Lasch, Christopher 30–1, 203, 240 Last Tango in Paris (film) 86 “Last Train to Clarksville, The” (song) 29 latchkey children 32 Latino radio formats 195 Latinos 123, 195 Lavong, Reggie 141–2, 223, 245 Lawrence, Jay 179, 229, 245 “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)” (song) 43 Lead Belly 137 Leaf, David 15 Learning to Labour (book) 212 Leary, Timothy 21 Leave It to Beaver (television program) 47 Led Zeppelin 64, 87, 91, 98, 114–17, 121, 196, 218–19, 245 Led Zeppelin IV (album) 115 Lees, Gene 199, 236 Lemish, D. 203, 249 Lemon Pipers, The 25–6 Lennon, John 59–60, 72–3, 211, 218, 240 Lenz, Elinor 56, 208, 236 Lester, Richard 27 Let’s Get It On (album) 148 Levin, Ira 74–5 Levine, Joey 38, 191 Levine, Richard 208, 247 Levy, Allen 212, 219, 245 Levy, Len 34, 56 Lewis, Gary, and the Playboys (musical group) 214 Lewis, George H. 227, 236 Lewis, Jerry Lee 101, 225 Lewis, Smiley 127 Liberace 120 Life (magazine) 34, 58, 96, 164, 204, 208, 215, 252–3 “Life Is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)” (song) 191, 231 “Like a Rolling Stone” (song) 59 Lil’ Abner (comic strip) 163 Lincoln, Abraham 24 Listening In (book) 13 Lite FM (radio format) 87–8 “Little Becky’s Christmas Wish” (song) 37 Little Eva 113 “Little Green Apples” (song) 46 “Little Lost Child, The” (song) 47 Little Richard 100–1, 128 Lizzie McGuire (television program) 53 Lockwood, Bob 158 “Locomotion, The” (song) 113

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Index Logan, Utah 92 “Lola” (song) 120 Lombardo, Guy 62 “Long Haired Lover from Liverpool” (song) 41 “Long Tall Sally” (song) 100 Long, John 38, 204 Lont, Cynthia 79, 212 Look (magazine) 132 Looking for Mr. Goodbar (film) 76 Loomis, Opal 215, 245 “Lord’s Prayer, The” (song) 58 Lorenz, George 130 Los Angeles, California 29, 36, 45, 67, 71, 77, 83, 88, 103, 111, 129, 133, 136, 177, 179, 186, 224, 229, 245 Los Comancheros 136 Lott, Eric 127, 221, 236 Loudermilk, John D. 167–8 Louvin Brothers, The (musical group) 184 love (radio format) 120 “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)” (song) 192 “Love to Love You Baby” (song) 150 “Love Train” (song) 145 Love Unlimited Orchestra, The (musical group) 149 “Love’s Theme” (song) 149 Loviglio, Jason 210, 236 Low, Buddy 140, 223, 245 LP (long-playing) record albums 2, 19, 24–5, 120–1, 143, 149 LSD 21–2, 242 Lucas, George 65–6, 191 Lund, Jens 164, 226 Lundberg, Victor 23, 43–4, 106, 201 Lydon, Susan 212, 245 Lyle, J. 202 Lynyrd Skynyrd (musical group) 184 Lyon, Richard D. 203, 245 MacColl, Ewan 76 MacDonald, Dwight 95, 214, 236 MacGregor, Byron 44 Mack, The (film) 139 MacKenzie, Gisele 199 Madison Square Garden 58 “Magic Carpet Ride” (song) 219 Magic FM (radio format) 87 Magid, Beverly 202, 210, 213–14, 245 Magnavox 98 Maharaj Ji 58 Maier, Thomas 203, 236 “Make It With You” (song) 34

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Index Malcolm X 132, 135 male audiences 7, 69–70, 76, 84, 91–124, 149, 196 Malone, Bill C. 166–8, 181, 225–7, 229–30, 236 “Mama Tried” (song) 168 Mandell, Steve 177 Manson, Marilyn 118 Marchand, Roland 67, 210, 237 Marconi, Guglielmo 12 Marcus, Greil 11, 137, 139, 199, 222, 237 marijuana 22, 51, 108, 113, 115–16, 165, 170, 177, 184, 186 Markon, Jerry 201 marriage 30–1, 47, 74, 78, 86, 168, 207 Marsh, Dave 79, 200, 212, 237 Martin, Dean 161–2 Martindale, Wink 44, 83, 206 Martino, Al 161 Marty, Martin 208, 233 Mary Hartman, Marty Hartman (television program) 76 Mary Tyler Moore Show, The 30, 75 masculinity 7, 75, 81, 92, 97–8, 105, 107, 120, 196 M*A*S*H (television program) 85 mass media 37, 45, 74–5, 85, 95 Massachusetts 136 Masters William H. 39, 205, 237 Maude (television program) 30, 75–6 May, Elaine Tyler 207, 237 Maybelline 100 Mayberry RFD (television program) 175 Mayfield, Curtis 131–2, 138–9, 146, 152, 224–5, 245 Mayflower 136 Maynard, Lillian 229 Maynard, Lorrie 229 Maysles, Albert 201 Maysles, David 201 MC5, The (musical group) 71, 113, 218 MCA Records 182 McCall’s (magazine) 98 McCartney, Paul 60, 149–50 McClary, Susan 211, 237 McClinton, O. B. 181 McConathy, Dale 212, 237 McCoy, Van 149 McDonnell, Evelyn 216, 240 McDonough, Kevin 75, 208–9, 212, 230, 234 McEwen, Joe 221 McFadden, Jack 176 McGavren Guild Media 124, 155, 220, 245 McGovern, George 71–2, 177, 211, 237

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265

McGovern, Maureen 82 McGrath, James B. 209–10, 216, 220, 238 McGrath, Nancy 203, 245 McGuire Sisters, The (musical group) 128 McGuire, Barry 37, 106, 216, 226 McIntyre, Brian 55 McKinnon, Dan 161 McKuen, Rod 83 McLaurin, Melton 163, 167, 226–7, 237 McLendon, Gordon 122, 220 McNamara, Robert 21 McNeil, Alex 203, 207, 237 McRobbie, Angela 78, 80, 98–9, 105, 211–12, 215–16 “Me and Mrs. Jones” (song) 145 “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo” (song) 43 Mead, Sister Janet 58 Meade, Marion 81, 212 Meikle, Jeffrey 15 Melanie 43, 58, 205 Melodyland Records 184 Melvin, Harold, and the Blue Notes (musical group) 145 Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen (book) 74 Memphis, Tennessee 130–1, 147, 253, 221 “Memphis” (song) 174 Mencken, H. L. 188 Menconi, David 237 Mendelsohn, John 218, 245 “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” (song) 138 Merser, Cheryl 207, 237 Metromedia 85, 103, 111 Mexico City 135 Meyer, Ruth 68 M.F.S.B. (musical group) 149 MGM Records 109–10 Miami, Florida 11, 65, 161, 210, 245 Mickenberg, Julia 15 middle-aged audiences 6–7, 10, 42, 55, 75, 129 Midler, Bette 81, 98, 151, 213, 240 Midnight Cowboy (film) 93 Mike Curb Congregation, The (musical group) 110 “Mill Valley” (song) 45 Millard, Steve 8, 199, 246 Miller, Glenn 128 Miller, Jim 145, 221, 224 Miller, Karl Hagstrom 15 Miller, Mitch 18, 48 Mills, C. Wright 20, 97 Mills, Joshua E. 13, 102, 202, 216, 235 Milton Berle Show, The (television program) 96 Milwaukee, Wisconsin 37, 111

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266

Index

Mind of the South, The (book) 163 Minneapolis, Minnesota 11 Minority Business Development Agency 148 minstrel shows 127 Minstrels (musical composition) 127 “Minute Men Are Turning in Their Graves, The” (song) 165 Miss Abrams and the Strawberry Point School Third Grade Class (musical group) 45 “Miss You” (song) 150 Mississippi 117, 131, 164, 177 “Mississippi” (song) 164 “Mississippi Queen” (song) 117 Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (television program) 30 Mitchell, Chad, Trio (musical group) 182 Mitchell, John 72 Mitchell, Joni 59, 79, 81–2, 98, 213, 239 Mitchell, Willie 147 Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music (album) 160 “Mona Lisa” (song) 10 “Money” (song) 117 Monkees, The (musical group) 26–7, 29, 36, 202 Monkees, The (television program) 26 Monroe, Bill 158 Monroe, Willa 130 “Monster Mash” (song) 42 Moon, Keith 114 Moon, Sun Myung 58 Moore, Morgan 84 MOR (middle of the road) format 6–7, 14, 17, 19–20, 34–8, 45, 49, 51, 55–65, 70–89, 92, 104, 121–2, 124, 140–1, 146, 150, 161–3, 179, 182–3, 195–7, 210–12, 214, 223, 226 Mormonism 41 “Morning After, The” (song) 82 “Morning Glory” (song) 59 Morris, Chris 231, 246 Morrison, Jim 109 Morrow, Bruce (Cousin Brucie) 12 Morrow, Vic 95 Morthland, John 158, 225, 237 “Most Beautiful Girl in the World, The” (song) 182 “Mother of Mine” (song) 41 Motherhood 32–3, 48, 52 Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) 34, 109 Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) 94 Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 109 “Motor City Burning” (song) 113

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Motown Records 125, 129, 138, 140, 144–5, 148, 184, 221, 223, 235 Mott the Hoople (musical group) 118 Mountain (musical group) 117 Moving Target, The (book) 69 Moynihan, Daniel 135 “Mr. President” (song) 42 Mr. Youth 214 Ms. (magazine) 74, 81, 212–13, 237, 240–1, 245, 248–9 MTV (Music Television) 27, 153, 190 Munich massacre 61 Murder Incorporated (comic book) 94 Murdock, Tina 14 Murphey, Michael Martin 185–7 Murphy, Audie 167 Murray, Albert 152, 225, 237 Murray, J. P. 202, 241 Murray, N. 207, 246 Murrow, Edward R. 99 Music Census Network (chart) 9 Music City News (magazine) 5, 14, 161, 168, 171–2, 174–6, 179–82, 226–9, 242–9 Music in Industry (pamphlet) 62 Music in the Air (book) 13 Musical Appreciation Hour 8 Muskie, Edmund 72, 211, 244 Muzak 61, 122, 149, 209, 236 “My Ding-a-Ling” (song) 43 “My Drum” (song) 41 My Fair Lady (musical) 223 “My Green Tambourine” (song) 25–6 My Lai massacre 44, 172 “My Maria” (song) 187 “My Sweet Lord” (song) 58 Myerhoff, Barbara 56, 208, 236 Mystery Train (book) 11 “Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm, The” 39, 205, 245 NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) 131, 139 Naipaul, V. S. 230 Naked Lunch, The (book) 116 Nashville (film) 177–8 Nashville Skyline (album) 174 Nashville Sound, The 159–60, 173, 197 Nashville, Tennessee 77, 138, 142, 159–62, 166–8, 170, 178–9, 182, 186, 229, 231, 249 Nation’s Business, The (book) 148 National Association for the Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) 209

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Index National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) 83 National Association of FM Broadcasters (NAFMB) 111 National Association of Secondary School Principals 51–2 National Organization for Women (NOW) 74, 77, 85 Native Americans 136 “Natural Woman, A (You Make Me Feel Like)” (song) 81 Naylor, Jerry 184 NBC 8 Neal, Larry 136, 222, 246 Neal, Mark Anthony 151, 221, 237 Near, Holly 79–80 Neer, Richard 104, 106–7, 216–17 Negus, Keith 211, 237 Neil, Fred 59 Nelson, Terry 44, 172 Nelson, Willie 182, 184–7 Nervous Norvus 42 Nesmith, Michael 202 “Never Can Say Goodbye” (song) 149 Nevins, Al 39 Nevins, Elliott “Biggie,” 65 New Hampshire 72 New Jersey 102 New Left, The 22, 33, 64, 101 New Mexico 136 New Orleans, Louisiana 11, 127, 186 New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll, The (book) 116 New Voices (book) 136 New York (state) 188 New York Dolls, The (musical group) 118 New York Radical Women 205, 237 New York Times 57, 73, 81, 96, 104, 109, 176, 203–4, 206–9, 213–17, 228, 230, 241–6, 249 New York, New York 58, 65, 67–8, 72, 77, 88–9, 92, 100, 102–3, 107–8, 111, 112, 120, 123, 129, 139, 151–2, 179, 209–10, 215, 224, 229, 237 Newark riots of 1967 131–2 Newark, New Jersey 131 Newman, Sy 141 Newsweek (magazine) Newton, Wayne 47 Newton-John, Olivia 182–3 “Nice to Be with You” (song) 192 Nisker, Scoop 108 Nite Spot (radio program) 130 Nixon, Pat 209

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267

Nixon, Richard M. 7, 26, 29, 62, 64, 71–2, 92–3, 107–10, 134–5, 147–8, 166–9, 171, 191, 196, 217, 222, 224, 226, 246, 248–9 Nixon, Richard M., first inauguration of 62, 224 Nixon, Richard M., second inauguration of 147 “No More Mr. Nice Guy” (song) 117 Nolan, A.M. 205, 215, 237 nonduplication ruling 13, 102 Northern United States 22, 189, 227, 247 Nova Express (book) 116 novelty songs 6, 10, 17, 20, 38, 42–4, 46, 48, 52, 118, 169, 191, 204–5, 237 Nyro, Laura 81 O’Donnell, Owen 43 O’Hair, Thom 106, 110, 216 O’Jays, The (musical group) 137–8, 145, 222 O’Sullivan, Gilbert 46 Oates, Joyce Carol 96, 215, 236 Obama, Barack 152 Ocean (musical group) 58 Ochs, Ed 125, 140, 142, 221, 223 Office of Minority Business Enterprise 135 Oh Babe What Would You Say” (song) 213 “Oh Girl” (song) 226 “Oh Happy Day” (song) 58 “Oh Susanna” (song) 126 “Ohio” (song) 114 Ohio Express (musical group) 25–6, 38, 191, 204 Ohio National Guard 114 “Okie from Muskogee” (song) 165–7, 169, 187, 226 “Old Folks at Home” (song) 126 oldies radio formats 52, 65–6, 196, 210, 241, 246 Omaha, Nebraska 11 Omen, The (film) 45 “On the Cover of Music City News” (song) 176 “Once You Understand” (song) 44 One Day at a Time (television program) 30 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (film) 62 “One Night of Sin” (song) 127 “One Night with You” (song) 128 “One on the Right Is on the Left” (song) 169, 228 “One Toke Over the Line” (song) 43 “One 2,3 Red Light” (song) 25–6 “Only the Strong Survive” (song) 134 Ono, Yoko 73 OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) 3, 60, 191 “Open Letter to My Teenage Son, A” (song) 43 Open Marriage (book) 30 Oracle, The (newspaper) 21

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268

Index

Original Dixieland Jazz Band (musical group) 128 Orpinas, Pamela 207, 246 Osmond, Donny 17, 19, 27, 36, 38, 40–1, 48, 52–3, 98, 200, 205 Osmond, Jimmy 41 Osmonds, The 19, 27, 35, 38, 40–1, 48, 110, 204–5 Otfinoski, Steve 204–5, 236 “Outa Space” (song) 107 Ovens, Don 142, 223 Owens, Bonnie 168 Owens, Buck 158, 166, 174–6, 226, 228 Owens, Gary 83 Ozark Mountain Daredevils, The (musical group) 184 Ozzie and Harriet (television program) 48 Pach, Chester J. 215, 237 Packard, Vance 50, 207, 237 Page, Jimmy 87, 115, 218 Page, Patti 62 Paid My Dues (periodical) 80 Paige, Earl 211, 231, 246 Paik, Haejung 202–3 Palladino, Grace 214–15, 237 Panapet 193 “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” (song) 140, 145, 223 “Paranoid” (song) 117 parenting 31–7, 41–2, 44, 46–52, 94, 192 Parikhal, John 208, 214 Parker, Martin 11, 199, 215, 246 Parliament (musical group) 50, 149 Parnes, Sid 5 Parsons, Gram 229 Partridge Family 2200 A.D. The (television program) 28 Partridge Family, The (musical group) 35, 38, 40, 42, 48, 122, 203–4 Partridge Family, The (television program) 19, 26, 28, 30–1, 144 Paul, Billy 144–5 Payday (film) 177–8 Payne, Freda 137 Payola scandal 12, 101, 130, 200 “Peaceful” (song) 79 Pearl, Minnie 175 Peck, Abe 215, 220, 224, 237 Pecknold, Diane 173 Pentagon, The 21 “People Get Ready” (song) 131 “People Let’s Stop the War Now” (song) 112 “People Make the World Go Round” (song) 138

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Perkins, Carl 225 Peter, Paul and Mary (musical group) 109 Peterson, Richard A. 172–3, 176, 223–6, 228, 237 Peterson, Richard G. 143 Petigny, Alan 205, 248 Petticoat Junction (television program) 175 Petty, Tom 149 P-Funk 149 Philadelphia International Records 145 Philadelphia soul (Philly soul) 140, 142, 145, 147 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 40, 99, 103, 131, 134, 140, 141, 145, 168 Phillips, Sam 158 Phonoscope, The (magazine) 9 Pichaske, David 29, 188, 202, 215, 222, 230, 238 Pickett, Boris “Bobby,” 42 Piercy, Marge 74, 101 Pincus, Walter 217, 246 Pink Floyd (musical group) 117, 121, 149–50 Pittman, Bob 190 Pittman, Nick 226, 246 Plan, The (album) 205 Play It as It Lays (book) 74 Play Misty for Me (film) 76 “Playground in My Mind” (song) 47 Plymouth Rock 136 Poco (musical group) 184 Pointer Sisters, The (musical group) 184 Poison (musical group) 118 Poitier, Sidney 138 politics 3–4, 6–7, 18, 22–3, 34, 44, 47, 51, 55–6, 60, 64, 70–3, 75, 84, 92–3, 101–2, 104, 106, 109, 112–16, 118, 124, 126, 130–1, 133–4, 136–7, 147–8, 151–2, 156, 158, 161, 164–5, 167–71, 176, 191, 194, 196 Pop! Goes the Country (television program) 189 “Popcorn” (song) 107 Possum Hunters, The (musical group) 156–7 Postman, Neil 20, 50–1, 201, 207, 242 Postmodernist Turn, The (book) 4 Powers, Ann 105, 216, 240 Precious and Few (book) 3 premarital sex 51 Premium Stuff (radio program) 130 Prescott, Norm 39 Presley, Elvis 10, 40, 47, 63–4, 96–7, 100–1, 127–8, 158–9, 163, 172, 182–3, 197, 204, 206, 215, 225, 248 preteens 2, 6, 14, 17–20, 25, 27, 29, 30, 33–7, 39–40, 42, 50, 105, 195, 200 Pride, Charley 181 “Prisoner’s Song, The” (song) 156 “Private Wilson White” (song) 165

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Index program directors 5, 11–12, 36–8, 53, 55, 64–5, 67–9, 70, 77, 82–3, 87–8, 101, 104–5, 111, 120–2, 124, 133–4, 140–1, 143, 151, 153, 157–8, 161–4, 168–9, 180, 186, 192, 195 progressive country (radio format) 155, 184–8, 190, 197 progressive rock (musical genre) 7, 91, 111 progressive rock (radio format) 6–7, 19, 35, 62, 64–5, 70, 91–3, 107–11, 120–2, 124, 142, 146, 161, 195–6, 200, 216–18, 220, 244, 246 Pruett, Jeanne 182–3 psychographics 53, 69 psychotherapy 57 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) 30, 45 “Puff the Magic Dragon” (song) 109 Pugh, John C. 180–1, 227, 229, 246 “Puppy Love” (song) 36 “Put Your Hand in the Hand” (song) 58 Quaker Oats 100 Queen (musical group) 118, 149–50 Quicksilver Messenger Service (musical group) 21 quiet storm (radio format) 152 Quinn 14 R&B (rhythm and blues) (musical genre) 126, 128–30, 133, 140, 142–4, 147, 150–2, 158–60, 179–80, 184, 196, 220–1, 223–4, 233, 239, 241 Rabbitt, Jimmy 179, 186 racism 45, 109, 127, 131–2, 164 Radio and Records (magazine) 5, 151, 198, 219–20, 230, 240 Radio and Television News Directors Association 99 Radio Code of 1929 109 Radio Cultures (book) 13 Radio Disney 52 radio doctors 111 Radio Format Conundrum, The (book) 121 Radio in the Television Age (book) 13 radio industry 2, 4–9, 19, 53–5, 58, 61–2, 64, 80, 82, 88–9, 91–2, 98, 104, 108, 110, 121, 124, 130, 142, 153, 159, 161, 169, 173, 190, 193–6, 226 Raggedy Ann 39 “Rain, the Park and Other Things, The” (song) 202 Rainbow People Party 113 “Rainy Days and Mondays” (song) 61

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“Ramblin’ Rose” (song) 218 Randolph, Lewis A. 147, 224, 249 Rankin, Kenny 79 rap (musical genre) 124, 153 Raposo, Joe 46 Ray, Nicholas 215 RCA Corporation 98 RCA Records 96, 106, 159, 181, 205–6, 208, 216, 231 Reagan, Ronald 110 “Reason to Believe” (song) 59 Reb Rebel Records 164 Rebel Without a Cause (film) 95, 96, 215 Rebel, Johnny 164 recession 61 Record Changer, The (magazine) 98 record industry 24–5, 44, 62, 64, 80, 98–9, 158, 200, 204–5, 209–10, 217, 220, 238, Record World 1, 4, 5, 14, 68, 75, 81, 88, 103, 105, 147, 161, 179, 202, 204, 210, 212–14, 217, 219, 224, 226, 229, 241–5, 247–9 Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) 64, 210 Reddy, Helen 73, 77–9, 98, 163, 212, 245 Rednecks and Bluenecks (book) 170 Reed, Ishmael 137 Reed, Lou 120 Reeves, Del 158 Reeves, Jim 159–60, 164–5, 174 Regan, Ros 146 Reid, Jan 184, 230, 238 Reiss, Ira L. 39, 204 religious movements 57–8, 61 Renshaw, Simon 194, 231, 247 REO Speedwagon (musical group) 122 RepNation Media 214 “Requiem for the Masses” (song) 102 Reservoir Dogs (film) 192 Reunion (musical group) 191, 231 Rhinehart, Luke 208, 238 Rhino Records 43, 228, 231, 246 Rhodes, Lisa 105, 216, 238 Rice, Tim 58 Rich, Charlie 160, 182–3 Richardson, Elmo 215, 237 Riesman, David 20, 36, 95, 128, 204, 214, 221, 238, 247 Righteous Brothers, The (musical group) 81 Riis, Jacob 47, 207, 238 Ringgold, Faith 137 “Riot in Cell Block #9” (song) 137 Ritter, Tex 228 Rivers, Johnny 71, 211

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270

Index

Robbins, Marty 165 Roberts, Donald F. 202 Roberts, Roderic J. 227, 247 Robins, The (musical group) 137 Robinson, LeRoy 146, 224, 247 Robinson, Smokey 152 rock (musical genre) 7, 13, 20, 22, 25, 27, 29, 32, 35, 38, 40–4, 47–8, 53, 55–89, 91, 91–125, 128, 134, 136, 141–2, 146, 149–53, 155–6, 158–9, 161, 173, 177, 179–80, 182, 184–7, 190–7, 205, 217 rock ’n’ roll (musical genre) 7, 10, 12, 18, 71, 80, 91, 97, 99–101, 103–4, 113–14, 117, 122, 124, 127, 129–30, 142, 155, 158, 173–4, 184, 190–1, 197 “Rock and Roll” (song) 218–19 “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo” (song) 117 Rock ’n’ Roll Is Here to Pay (book) 122 “Rock and Roll Lullabye” (song) 47 “Rock and Roll Soul” (song) 117 “Rock Around the Clock” (song) 95 rock criticism 43, 91, 105, 112 “Rock Me Baby” (song) 42 rockabilly (musical genre) 158–9, 173, 228 “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu” (song) 71 Rodgers, Jimmie 156 Rodnitzky, Jerome L. 212, 238 Roe v. Wade 73–4 Roe, Tommy 38 Rogers, Kenny, and the First Edition (musical group) 227 Rolling Stone (magazine) 24, 42–3, 71, 103–5, 114, 116, 120, 142, 147, 178, 193, 201, 204–6, 208–9, 211, 216, 218–21, 224–6, 228–9, 231, 232, 234, 240–5, 247–9 Rolling Stones, The 22, 40, 98, 101, 117, 149–50, 161, 185, 214, 226 Romanowski, Patricia 219, 238 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 10 Roosevelt, Theodore 93 Roper Organization 203, 238 Rose, Wesley 161, 226 Rosemary’s Baby (film) 45 Rosen, Craig 198, 208, 238, 247 Ross, Diana 57, 75, 125, 144 Roulette Records 140 Routt, Edd 121, 209–10, 216, 220, 238 Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In (television program) 175 “Rubber Duckie” (song) 17–18, 20, 45, 49, 200 Rubin, A. M. 202, 247 Rubinstein, E. A. 202, 238

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“Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town” (song) 227 Rucker, Darius 181 Rudder, Randy 228 Rudman, Kal 5, 38, 82, 88, 204, 213–14, 219, 223, 247, 251 Rumble, John 14 Rumours (album) 89 Run–DMC (musical group) 220 Running with the Devil (book) 118 Rusk, Dean 21 Russell, Bobby 46 Russell, Leon 79 Ryan, John Fergus 228, 247 Sabo, Walter 88, 214, 242 Sacramento, California 157 Sadler, Barry S. Sgt. 106, 165, 216 Salaam, Kaluma ya 222 Sales, Grover 9 Salk, Lee 33, 203, 238 San Diego, California 36, 120–1, 161 San Francisco Chronicle (newspaper) 142 San Francisco, California 13, 21–2, 24, 58, 83, 86, 102–4, 110, 120, 141, 178, 224 San Quentin State Prison 135–6 Sanjek, David 15 Sanjek, Russell 62, 201, 209, 221 “Santa and the Satellite” (song) 42 Santana (musical group) 144 satellite radio 195, 197 “Satin Sheets” (song) 183 “Saturday Morning Confusion” (song) 46 Saturday Review of Literature (magazine) 94 Savage, Ann M. 212, 238 “Save the Land” (song) 112 “Save Your Kisses for Me” (song) 46 “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud” (song) 132 Schacher, Mel 112 Schaffner, Nicholas 202 Schatz, Thomas 15 Schickel, Richard 202, 247 Schiffman, Marc 231, 247 Schlessinger, Laura 88, 214 Scholastic Magazine’s Institute of Student Opinion 25 “School’s Out” (song) 117 Schulman, Bruce J. 4, 156, 188–9, 198, 230, 239, 247 Schwartz, Walter A. 111 Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? (television program) 30

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Index Scott, Jessie 179 Scott, Rosemary 68–9, 210–11, 238 Scott, Stan 158 Scruggs, Earl 186 Sculatti, Gene 29, 202, 204 Sea, Johnny 165 Seale, Bobby 135 Seduction of the Innocent (book) 94 Seeger, Pete 59 Selective Service System 21 self-help movements 57 Self-Portrait (album) 59–60 Selvin, Joel 201, 238 Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency 97 Sendak, Maurice 33 September 11, 2001 170 Sesame Street (television program) 17–18, 29, 33, 45–6, 206, 232, 247 Seventies, The (book) 4, 230, 238 Seville, David 42 sex radio 84–7 sexual revolution 39, 56, 86, 205, 246 sexual talk shows 6, 56, 83–6, 88, 196, 213 sexuality 4, 6, 17, 83–6, 88 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (album) 25, 173 Sha Na Na (musical group) 42 Shaft (album) 139 Shaft (film) 139 “Shake, Rattle and Roll” (song) 128 Shana 104 Shane, Ed 105, 133 Shank, Barry 185, 230, 238 Shannon, Bob 216, 238 Shannon, Larry 15, 230, 247 Shattuck, Roger 230 Shaver, Billy Joe 186–7 Shaw, Allen 106, 216 Shayon, Robert Lewis 214, 248 “Sh-Boom” (song) 128 Shea Stadium 112 Shelton, Robert 209, 238 Shepherd, Jean 13 Sherman, Bobby 27 Sherrill, Billy 160, 226, 248 Shider, Garry 50 Shirelles, The (musical group) 81 shock jocks 84, 123, 214, 241 Shulman, Alix Kates 74 Sievert, Bill 201, 247 Simmons, Jumpin’ Gene 156 Simon and Garfunkel 65, 180

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271

“Simon Says” (song) 25–6 Simon, Carly 49, 82, 89, 207, 213, 239 Simon, Joe 134, 145 Simon, Paul 59, 174 Simpson, Maisa 14 Simpson, Ron 14, 209 Sinatra, Frank 20, 62–4 Sinclair, Charles 210, 247 Sinclair, Gordon 44, 206 Sinclair, John 73, 113 “Sing” (song) 46 “Sing Me Back Home” (song) 164, 229 Singer, Dorothy G. 202 Singer, Jerome L. 202 singer-songwriters 6, 58–9, 64, 71, 81–2, 98, 121, 182, 196 singles (45 rpm records) 2, 18–19, 24–5, 104, 149, 165, 173, 201, 219, 247 Sippel, John 217, 247 “Six White Horses” (song) 164 “Sixteen Candles” (song) 100 Skillet Lickers, The (musical group) 156–7 Sklar, Rick 29 Sklar, Robert 210, 247 Sledge, Percy 180 Slick, Grace 109 “Slipping into Darkness” (song) 138 Sly and the Family Stone (musical group) 146, 149 Small Changes (book) 74 Smay, David 201–2, 204, 233 “Smiling Faces Sometimes (Tell Lies)” (song) 137, 222 Smith, Huey, and the Clowns (musical group) 71 Smith, Hurricane 213 Smith, Joe 64 Smith, Paul Chaat 222, 239 Smith, Tom W. 201, 248 Smith, Tommie 136 “Smoke on the Water” (1944 song) 167 “Smoke on the Water” (1973 song) 117 “Smoky Mountain Boogie” (song) 163 Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The (television program) 45, 175 Smucker, Tom 123, 220, 224 Sniffen, Allen 210, 248 Snow, Hank 164 Snowy Day, The (book) 33 “So Far Away” (song) 81 Soelberg, Paul W. 161, 163, 226, 252 Soft Machine, The (book) 116 soft rock 6, 20, 35, 38, 55–7, 61, 64, 70–3, 76, 78–83, 87, 89, 196

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272

Index

“Softly Whispering I Love You” (song) 46, 206 Some Time in New York City (album) 73 Something Happened (book) 4, 198, 234 Something in the Air (book) 13, 108, 220, 231, 234 “Sometimes You Ain’t No Fun to Love” (song) 156 Sonderling Broadcasting Corporation 85 soul (musical genre) 7, 20, 107, 125–6, 131–4, 137–8, 140, 142–53, 161, 173–4, 180–3, 196, 197, 198, 220–4, 226, 231, 233, 237, 240, 241, 244–9 soul (radio format) 6–7, 125–6, 132, 134, 141–7, 151–3 “Soul Makossa” (song) 107 “Soul Song” (song) 183 Soul Train (television program) 149 Sound Stage (television program) 96 SoundScan 5 Sousa, John Philip 127 South Philadelphia High School 40, 99 Southern United States 4, 7, 127, 131, 136, 155–6, 161, 163–4, 167, 176–7, 184, 188–9, 197, 226–7, 230, 233, 240, 247 Southern University 136 Southern, Eileen 221, 239 Soviet Union, The 148 Sovine, Red 155 “Space Oddity” (song) 118 Spaniels, The (musical group) 128 Spanish–American War, The 167 “Speak to the Sky” (song) 58 Spector, Phil 29, 171 Spektor, Jack 179 Spinners, The (musical group) 145 “Spirit in the Sky” (song) 43, 58 Split Image (book) 131, 221, 225, 233 Spock, Benjamin, Dr. 33, 203, 236, 239, 243, 245 Spokesmen, The (musical group) 37, 106, 216 Spotlight (radio program) 130 Spragins, Ellyn 207, 248 Springfield, Rick 58 Squier, George Owen 61 “St. Louis Blues” (song) 127 “Stairway to Heaven” (song) 121, 219 Stallman, Lou 44 Stampley, Joe 183 “Stand By Your Man” (song) 79, 160 Stand Up and Be Counted (film) 76–7, 212, 248 Stark, Phyllis 231 Starr, Edwin 137 “Stateside” (song) 165 Stax Records 130, 144

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“Stay with Me” (song) 117 Steele, Allison 104 Steely Dan (musical group) 149 Steinberg, Martha J. 130 Steinem, Gloria 74 Stepford Wives, The (book) 75–6 Stepford Wives, The (film) 75–6 Steppenwolf (musical group) 116, 219 Sterling, Christopher H. 203, 216, 239 Stern, Howard 123 Stern, Jane and Michael 213, 230, 239 Stern, Mike 231, 248 Steve Allen Show, The (television program) 45 Stevens, Dodie 204 Stevens, Ray 43, 46, 206 Stevenson, Adlai 98 Stevenson, B.W. 187 Stewart, Bill 11–12 Stingley, Roy 158 Stipp, Horst 202 Stockdell, Richard P. 225, 248 Stokes, Geoffrey 201, 202, 205, 214, 218, 220, 225, 239 Stone, “Pappy” Dave 157 Stone, Sly 223 Stone, Vernon, A. 215, 248 Stonewall riots of 1969 119–20 Stories (musical group) 43 Storz, Todd 11–13, 67 “Strangers in the Night” (song) 63 Strasburger, Victor C. 207, 237 Straw, Will 122, 220 “Streak, The” (song) 43 Street, Dusty 104 Streets of San Francisco, The (television program) 31 Streisand, Barbra 71 Studebaker 100 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) 22–3, 64, 101 Stylistics, The (musical group) 138, 147 Styx (musical group) 122 Subculture (book) 212 “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (song) 59 “Sugar Sugar” (song) 27 Sugarhill Gang, The (musical group) 124 suicide 51 Summer, Donna 150 “Summertime Blues” (song) 100 Sun Records 130, 182 Super Friends (television program) 30 Super K Records 29, 34 Superfly (film) 139

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Index “Superstar” (song) 61 Supremes, The (musical group) 129 Suransky, Valerie Polakow 51, 207, 239 Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior 32, 203, 239 Susser, Bobby 44 Swan, Billy 183 Sweet (musical group) 117 “Sweet and Innocent” (song) 17, 41, 200, 205 Sweet Baby James (album) 59–60 “Sweet Dreams” (song) 159 Sweetheart of the Rodeo (album) 184 swing (musical genre) 94, 187 syndication 194 Szatmary, David P. 200, 239 T. Rex (musical group) 118 “Take Me Home, Country Roads” (song) 182 talk radio 6, 12, 85, 88, 213 Tan Town Homemakers (radio program) 130 Tapestry (album) 81 Taylor, Arthur 32 Taylor, Chuck 208, 231, 237, 248 Taylor, Dan 179 Taylor, James 20, 34, 59–61, 71, 163, 209, 245 Taylor, LeBaron 134, 141 Taylor, Sonny 134 “Teach Your Children” (song) 50 teach-ins 21 technology 5, 7, 51, 97–8, 107, 149, 190 teen idols 17, 39–41, 52, 98–9, 101, 122 Teenage Wasteland (book) 119 “Teenager in Love” (song) 100 teenagers 2, 6–7, 9, 12, 17–20, 23–6, 36, 44, 51–2, 58, 92, 94, 101, 115, 123, 191, 192, 207, 214–15, 238, 241, 245 Teenagers and Teenpics 94 Telecommunications Act of 1996 193 television 9, 12–13, 26–33, 38, 45, 48–9, 51–2, 57, 64–5, 67–8, 75–7, 83, 85, 94–6, 99, 108–10, 122, 153, 164, 174, 176, 197, 200, 202–4, 207, 210, 214, 216, 233, 235, 237–9, 241–2, 247–8 Television Code of 1951 109 Temptations, The (musical group) 125, 129, 140, 145, 223 “Tennessee Saturday Night” (song) 164 terrestrial radio 195 Texas 14–15, 156, 183–6, 188, 230, 238, 242 “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” (song) 57, 182 That ’70s Show (television program) 192 “That’s All Right” (song) 158

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273

“That’s the Way I Always Heard It Should Be” (song) 49 “There’s a Star Spangled Banner Flying Somewhere” (song) 167 “(They Long to Be) Close to You” (song) 18 Think (musical group) 44 This Business of Radio Programming (book) 6, 13, 202, 204, 211–12, 216, 221, 235 “This Is My Country” (song) 132 “This Masquerade” (song) 79 Thomas, B. J. 47 Thomas, Don 172, 228 Thomas, Marlo 75 Thomas, Patrick 228, 248 Thomas, Rufus 130 Thompson, Hunter S. 210 “Three Coins in the Fountain” (song) 63 Thriller (album) 153 Thunderkloud, Billy, and the Chieftones (musical group) 46 Thurmond, Strom 72 Tiegel, Eliot 146, 217, 224, 252 Tiger Beat (magazine) 19, 27 Till, Emmet 131, 164 Tillis, Mel 165 Tillotson, Johnny 40 Time (magazine) 20–1, 23, 25, 30, 38–9, 59–60, 200–1, 205, 208–9, 222, 226 “Time Is Tight” (song) 134 Time-Life 192 “Times They Are A-Changin’” (song) 59 Tin Pan Alley 61, 137 tip sheets 5, 82, 88 Title IX (Title XV of the Education Amendments of 1972) 73 Today (television program) 209 Too Young (album) 19 Toole, K. Ross 23, 201 Toomey, Jenny 231, 249 Toot-A-Loop 193 Top 40 format 2–3, 6, 8, 11–14, 17–20, 24–5, 29, 34–8, 41, 43–5, 48–51, 55, 58–9, 61–2, 64–5, 67–70, 77, 79, 81, 83, 88, 91–2, 96–7, 99–101, 103–4, 106, 111, 113–15, 117–22, 125, 130, 133–4, 137–8, 140, 142–4, 146–8, 150, 152, 155, 157–9, 161, 163, 170, 173, 182–5, 187–8, 191, 193–7, 199–201, 204, 206, 208, 210–12, 213, 215, 219, 223, 225–6, 228–9, 231–2, 236, 238–40, 243–5, 248, 250, 252–3 topless radio 82, 84–5 Topps baseball cards 36 Torn, Rip 177

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274

Index

Tosches, Nick 206, 239 Transcendental Meditation 58 Transformer (album) 120 “Transfusion” (song) 42 transistor radio 67, 91, 96, 102, 193 Travis, Mawry M. 97, 215 Travis, Merle 184 “Troglodyte” (song) 43 Trotter, John 158 Troubadour, The 144 Trouble Man (album) 139, 148 Trout, Robert 99 “Truck Driver’s Blues” (song) 179 “T.S.O.P. (The Sound of Philadelphia)” (song) 149 Tucker, Ken 121–2, 201–2, 205, 209, 214, 218, 220, 225, 239 Tucker, Tanya 160, 189 “Tumblin’ Dice” (song) 117 Turner, Big Joe 128 “Tutti Frutti” (song) 100 TV Guide (magazine) 31, 39, 175, 228, 248 Twisted Sister (musical group) 118 Twitty, Conway 182 Tyler, T. Texas 44 Tyner, Rob 113 underground radio 7, 24–5, 29, 84, 92–3, 99, 101–11, 120–1, 124–5, 133, 155, 179–80, 216, 228, 236, 243 Undisputed Truth, The (musical group) 137, 222 “Uneasy Rider” (song) 177, 187 unemployment 109, 115, 131 United Airlines 100 United States Army 22, 97, 101, 132, 172, 184 United States Congress 131–2 United States Department of Defense 109, 167 United States House of Representatives 73 United States Marine Corps 168 United States National Guard 114, 131–2, 164 United States Senate 73, 94–5, 97 United States Supreme Court 73, 193 United States Treasury 106 United States Veterans Administration 167 United States War Production Board 62 University of Chicago 69 University of Mississippi 131 University of Wisconsin 22 Unmarried Woman, An (film) 76 “Up on the Roof ” (song) 81 Uriah Heep (musical group) 117 US News and World Report (magazine) 73–4 U.S. of Archie (television program) 28

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Valens, Ritchie 101 Variety (magazine) 9, 65, 157 V-Chip 51 Vee, Bobby 40, 101 Victorian era 93–4 “Viet Nam Blues” (song) 164, 226 Vietnam War 3, 7, 17, 21, 30–1, 37, 44, 60, 93, 106–7, 109, 137, 155, 164–7, 169, 171, 188, 191, 196–7, 201, 211, 226–7, 232, 238, 244, 249 Village People, The (musical group) 50, 150 Village Voice, The (newspaper) 102, 105, 112 Vincent, Gene 100 Vinton, Bobby 40 Virginia 188 “Visions of Johanna” (song) 59 Voegel, Peter 15 Voice Over (book) 131, 221–2, 232 Voices in the Purple Haze (book) 104–5, 216–18, 220, 222, 228, 236 Von Doviak, Scott 178, 228, 239 WABC (New York) 29, 120 WABX-FM (Detroit) 103 Wain, Bea 199 “Wake Up Everybody” (song) 145 Waksman, Steve 119, 218, 239 Wald, Jeff 77 “Walk Like a Man” (song) 117 “Walk on the Wild Side” (song) 120 “Walk This Way” (song) 220 Walker, Billy 161 Walker, Jason 229, 239 Walker, Jerry Jeff 186–7 Wallace, George 164, 168, 178, 188 Wallace, Jerry 162–3 Walser, Robert 118–19, 219, 239 Walt Disney Company, The 52 Walters, Barbara 209 Waltons, The (television program) 48, 207, 228 Wandersee, Winifred D. 212, 239 Wang, Jennifer Hyland 68, 210 War (musical group) 138, 146 “War” (song) 137 War on Drugs 7, 92–3, 107–9, 196 War on Poverty 44, 167 “War Pigs” (song) 116 Ward, Bill 155 Ward, Ed 201–2, 205, 209, 214, 218, 220, 225, 239 Warner Bros. Records 45, 64, 208–9, 215, 219 Warrior, Robert Allen 222, 239 Wartella, Ellen 203, 249

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Index Warwick, Dionne 105 Washington Post, The 13, 201, 208, 211, 217, 246, 250 Washington, DC 131–3 Washington, George 24 “Watching Scotty Grow” (song) 17, 46, 48–9, 183, 200, 206–7 Watergate scandal 3, 30–1, 60, 166, 191, 205 “Watergrate” (song) 42 Watson, Carlotta Stewart (Aunt Carrie) 130 Watts 140 Watts Band, The (musical group) 134 WB (Warner Bros.) Television Network 51–2 WBAI (New York) 108 WBCN-FM (Boston) 103 WBLS (New York) 139, 151–2 WDAS (Philadelphia) 134, 141 WDIA (Memphis) 130, 221, 233 “We Don’t Want Niggers in Our Schools” (song) 164 “We’re a Winner” (song) 132 “We’re an American Band” (song) 113, 117 “We’ve Only Just Begun” (song) 61 Weather Underground Organization 17, 23 Webb, Jim 176 Webber, Andrew Lloyd 58 Weems, Robert E. 147, 224, 249 Weinberg, Louise 15 Weinstein, Deena 119 Weir, David 211 Weisbard, Eric 15 Weiss, Fredric A. 209–10, 216, 220, 238 Weissberg, Eric 107, 177 Weisstein, Naomi 81, 212, 249 “Welfare Cadilac” (song) 44, 167–9 Weller, Sheila 82, 213, 239 Wells, Kitty 161 Wendell, Bud 170 Wenner, Jann 71, 211, 229, 249 WENO (Nashville) 179 Werner, Craig 224, 239 Wertham, Fredric 94–5, 214, 241, 249 West, Sarge and Shirley (musical group) 181 western swing (musical genre) 157–8, 173 Westheimer, Ruth 88 Wexler, Jerry 140–2, 144, 223 WGKA (Atlanta) 141 WGLD (Chicago) 84–5 WGRT (Chicago) 134 “What Is Truth” (song) 17, 169–70, 200, 228 “What the World Needs Now/Abraham, Martin and John” (song) 44–5, 49 “What Time of Day” (song) 46

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275

“What We’re Fighting For” (song) 44, 164, 226 What’s Going On (album) 138, 148 “What’s Going On” (song) 138 Wheately, William 161 Wheelin’ on Beale (book) 131, 221, 233 When You Gonna Send Our Boys Back Home” (song) 171 Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” (short story) 96 Whiskey a Go Go 144 Whistle for Willie (book) 33 Whitburn, Joel 36, 199, 201, 204, 206, 220, 225, 239 White House, The 62, 72, 108, 110, 166–7, 169, 171, 222, 226–7, 242, 244 White House Conference on Drugs for the Radio Industry 108–10 white male teenagers 7, 91–2, 115 White Panthers 113 “White Rabbit” (song) 108 White, Barry 149 Whiteman, Paul 128 WHN (New York) 179 WHO (Des Moines) 179 Who, The (musical group) 114 “Who’s Gonna Mow Your Grass” (song) 174 Whole Earth Catalog, The (publication) 188, 230 “Whole Lotta Love” (song) 117 WHUR (Washington, DC) 133–4, 151–2 Whyte, William 20, 97 WIBG (Philadelphia) 103 “Wichita Lineman” (song) 176 WICU (Santa Fe) 70 Wiener, Jon 211, 240 Wilburn Brothers, The (musical group) 164 Wild One, The (film) 95–6, 215 “Wildfire” (song) 185 “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” (song) 81 “William’s Doll” (song) 75 Williams, Andy 41, 63 Williams, Curly, and the Georgia Peach Pickers (musical group) 157 Williams, Hank 163 Williams, Nat D. 130 Williamson, Cris 79–80 Willis, Paul 212 Willman, Chris 170 Wills, Bob 158 Wilson, Barbara J. 207, 237 Wilson, Charles R. 227, 233 Wilson, James R. 227, 240 Winn, Marie 50, 204, 207, 240 Winter, Edgar 107, 117, 121

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276

Index

Winterland Ballroom 144 Winters, Audrey 227, 249 WIOD (Miami, Florida) 65 “Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman” (song) 150 “Witch Doctor” (song) 10 “With a Little Help from My Friends” (song) 108 WJJD (Chicago) 158 WJW (Cleveland) 100 WKGN (Knoxville) 161 WKON (Nashville) 142 WLOL (Columbus) 55 WLS National Barn Dance, The (radio program) 156 WLUP (Chicago) 123 WMAQ (Chicago) 190 WMAX (Grand Rapids, Michigan) 23 WMCA (New York) 67 WMMR-FM (Philadelphia) 103 WMMS-FM (Cleveland) 103 WNOE-FM (New Orleans) 186 Wolfe, Charles K. 199, 225, 228, 240 Wolfe, Tom 30–1, 58, 203, 209, 244 Wolfman Jack 130, 194, 221, 240 Wolfman Jack Show, The (radio program) 194 Woman in White (radio program) 67 “Woman Is the Nigger of the World” (song) 73 “Woman’s Got Soul” (song) 132 Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (WITCH) 73 women’s liberation movement 7, 34, 55–6, 73, 75–9, 81–2, 119, 196, 205, 249 women’s music 79–80 Wonder, Stevie 125, 144 Wood, Frank 108 Woods, Georgie 130–1 Woods, Scott 193 Woodstock Music and Art Fair, The 22, 60, 65–6, 112, 186, 188 WOR-FM (New York) 65 working women 32, 69, 74 Works Progress Administration (WPA) 10 “World Is a Ghetto” (song) 138 World War I 94, 128 World War II 32, 94, 163, 167 Worst Rock-and-Roll Records of All Time (book) 43, 206, 235 Wounded Knee 136 WPLO-FM (Atlanta) 105, 133 WPTR (Albany) 68, 70

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Wren, Christopher 227, 249 Wright, Bradford W. 214, 240 Wright, Johnny 164 Wright, Nicky 214, 249 WSM (Nashville) 8 WSM Barn Dance 8 WSOK (Nashville) 179 WTOS-FM (Milwaukee) 111, 217, 243 WVOL (Nashville) 179 WWOK (Miami) 161 WWRL (New York) 139 Wynette, Tammy 78–9, 160, 182 XM 195 “Yakety Yak” (song) 100 Yankelovich, Daniel 115, 203, 219, 240 Yarrow, Peter 109 Yasgur, Max 188 “Yellow River” (song) 156 Yes (musical group) 111 “Yes, I’m Lonesome Tonight” (song) 204 yoga 58 Yom Kippur War 61 York, Alvin 167 Yorke, Jeffrey 231, 248 Yorke, Ritchie 115, 213, 218, 231, 249 “You Ain’t Gonna Have Ol’ Buck to Kick Around No More” (song) 176 “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” (song) 214 “You Could Have Been a Lady” (song) 117 “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim” (song) 180 “You Talk Too Much” (song) 221 “You’re So Vain” (song) 49 Young, Cal 179 Young, Roland 106–7 Your Erroneous Zones (book) 57, 203 Your Hit Parade 9–11, 199, 234 “Youth Is Life’s Time of May” (song) 47 Youth Marketing Co. 100 “Yummy Yummy Yummy” (song) 25–6, 38, 43, 191, 204 Zeidenberg, Len 213, 249 “Ziggy Stardust” (song) 118 Zolotow, Charlotte 34 Zoom (television program) 29–30 Zuko, Danny 66

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