![]() ![]() Since music sounded 100% better on FM, ratings for AM Top 40 stations starting declining. ![]() Courtesy of the WROV History Website/Pat Garrett. The emergence of FM radio in the late 60s and early 70s created challenges for existing AM radio stations.Īudio aircheck Bart Prater WROV Roanoke May 1973. Most Top 40 stations were still on the AM band at the beginning of the decade. This survey actually mentions WROV playing “Rocky Raccoon” from the Beatles “White Album.”įorward to the 70s. WROV Roanoke Fabulous Forty Musicard for February 16, 1969. Featured on this audio clip: “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” & “Back in the USSR” from the “White Album.” Two of my four favorite Beatles songs of all-time. Since Capitol Records didn’t release any singles on the Fab Four album, there were no songs from the LP regularly played on Top 40 outlets.Ībove is an audio clip when I was a guest DJ for a My Fab Four segment on SiriusXM’s the Beatles Channel. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” by the Beatles. The biggest album from the 1967 “summer of love” was “Sgt. When I started listening to the radio 55 years ago, I quickly realized that Top 40 stations aired only songs that were released as 45-rpm singles by record companies. On most nights that summer, I would tune in 50,000-watt, clear channel AM radio stations, such as WLS 890 Chicago and WABC 770 New York. Then in the summer of 1967, I commandeered a desk-top tube radio from our kitchen and permanently kept this device in my bedroom. Photo courtesy of WROV History Website/Pat Garrett. WROV Roanoke DJs Fred Frelantz and Jack Fisher in 1967. I quickly discovered WROV and was hooked on their Top 40 format. My regular radio listening started in the spring of 1967 after my parents gave me a transistor radio. With this latest music blog message, I will be revealing my top selections based on these factors: Growing up in Roanoke, Virginia, listening to WROV 1240 AM and then being employed by the legendary top 40 station, starting in 1974. If I asked the above inquiry to 100 folks, I would surely receive one hundred different responses.Ī framed WROV 70s poster owned by Barry Michaels, a 1978-1981 WROV DJ. Obviously, there are no definitive answers to my question. What are the best songs played on Top 40 radio during the 70s that were not released as singles by record companies? Thankfully, the Elvis spot that I recorded was among my saved airchecks and can be heard below the commercial I created for Presley’s Roanoke show that never happened. When I recorded the spot, I used two Elvis songs for a musical bed which I felt like our WJLM listeners would recognize: “Moody Blue” which had been a number 1 hit at my station earlier that year and Presley’s 1956 hit “Don’t be Cruel.”įorward to August 16, 1977: I was on vacation in Northern Minnesota visiting relatives, when my grandmother Agnes Burt shared tragic news with me: “Elvis had left the building.” Obviously stunned, I couldn’t believe that Presley had died at the young age of 42.īack in 2017, I had my friend David Hollandsworth digitize some of my old WJLM DJ airchecks from reel-to-reel tape to computer files. Cooper handed me text for a commercial that he wanted me to create for an upcoming Elvis Presley Roanoke concert, that was scheduled for August 24, 1977. In early June that year, WJLM program director Gary E. I was employed as a DJ by country formatted WJLM 93.5 FM Roanoke, Virginia in 1977. ![]()
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