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Traveling . . . but don’t go away! Already uploaded and pre-scheduled for publication, all next week, Motor City Radio Flashbacks will feature two ‘Decades Memories’ Pop ’60s Videos, daily, beginning Monday, October 17 through October 21.
This site will resume its regular daily operations on Monday, October 24.
As was published in the September 6, 1966 issue of LOOK magazine. The featured WJBK ad was digitally re-imaged and restored by Motor City Radio Flashbacks.
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This list is selected each week by WXYZ Radio reports of records sales gathered from leading record outlets in the Detroit area and other sources available to WXYZ.
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A special THANK YOU to Larry Good, of Saline, MI., for contributing this featured WXYZ chart — October 13, 1964 — to Motor City Radio Flashbacks.
The above WXYZ chart was digitally restored by Motor City Radio Flashbacks
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FIFTEEN WEEKS overall on the singles pop charts, “Sugar Shack” by Jimmy Gilmer & The Fireballs peaks this week at #1 (5 weeks) on the Billboard Hot 100. Beginning October 6 through week-ending November 9, 1963.
Source: Joel Whitburn’s Pop Annual
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For our previous Billboard Number One 1963 U.S.A. Hits go HERE
This list is selected each week by WXYZ Radio from reports of record sales gathered from leading record outlets in the Detroit area and other sources available to WXYZ.
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The above WXYZ chart was digitally restored by Motor City Radio Flashbacks
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A special thank you to Jim Heddle of Tuscon, Arizona, for having contributed the above WXYZ 1270 playlist chart featured for the site’s archives.
ON YOUR MOBILE DEVICE? Tap over chart image. Open to second window. “Stretch” chart across your device screen to magnify for large detailed view.
ON YOUR PC? Click on chart image 2x for largest detailed print view.
It’s fun being a success,” say the Motown stars. But success hasn’t changed them too much. They still live at home, date old boyfriends, and like to talk about clothes.
TIGHT PANTS. Should a girl wear tight, tight pants, like some of the fashions seem to dictate these days?” I think it’s all in how a girl acts when she gets them on,” says Mary Wilson, of the smash-hit Detroit group, the Supremes. Mary made the observation during a break in the group’s recent appearance at the Brooklyn Fox Theater, with jockey Murray “The K” Kaufman.
“For one thing,” Mary continued, “Those tight-fitting pants are particularly good when you’re on the road, because you don’t have to press them so much. But we’re all quite petite and we like flare-outs (dresses) too and we often wear
them in our shows. But really, it seems to be that the tight things are the favorites and we often have to wear them, sort of by demand, if you know what I mean.
“Like with Dick Clark. We were out on his tour for 48 days this past summer. We had silver pants for our act on that show, and I must say, he just loved them. In fact, he just about insisted that we wear them all the time. He would getup- set when we would try something else. We’re getting a lot more clothes for our wardrobe now and we plan them all ourselves too.”
Want more than rock. Obviously, the Supremes are interested in more things than clothes-musical styles for instance. “Nobody seems to get anywhere these days without a hit record,” Mary continued.” We started singing over seven years ago. For most of that time, we’ve been making records, on a lot of different labels. Then with a good rock and roll sound, after all these years, we get a hit and things start to happen. People notice us. The trouble is that they think rock and roll is all we can or want to do, and that isn’t true. We hope to do an album soon with songs like ‘People’ and ‘I Am Woman’. ‘Those ballads are a long way from ‘Where Did Our Love Go.’
“We hope to get into the nightclub field and we’re working at it right now. We just appeared for a while in the20 Grand Club in Detroit and we tried out our new act recently in a Bermuda Club called the Clay House. We seemed to go over real big there but I know there’s a lot more work left to do before we’re really ready for the big time.
“In a way we’re old-timers already. We’re all about 21 now, but we started singing when we were all in school at 14. We knew the fellows in the Temptations and we got to be like a sister act to them, doing shows with them. We were all from the same neighborhood.
STILL LIVE HOME. “We still live in the same neighborhood at home with our Moms. One of them usually goes on tour with us. When we’re home, between tours and one-nighters and record dates, we sometimes still go out with old friends on dates. We all like to go bowling and Diane (Ross) loves to swim. She won some prizes when she was on her high school team.” (The third member of the trio is Florence Ballard).
It’s no secret that such Britishers as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones have openly dug the artists from the Tamla- Motown group, and the Supremes have often been mentioned as among the top favorites. But it’s really a mutual admiration society, trans-Atlantic style, since the Supremes have just recorded a new album of Beatles and other British group hits.
LIKE BRITISH ACTS. “When those fellows first got started here in America, we all just asked, who are they and what have they got. Now I think the Beatles, and the Dave Clark Five, especially, get better with each record. I like their songs. The other night, a couple of us saw the Animals and I can tell you that they were a terrific group too. “We’re having a ball right now our- selves. It’s fun being a success and it’s even fun going on tour. It means a lot of bus riding but the groups are all swell and we have a lot of fun flirting, in a nice way, on the bus with all the fellows. I know we’re going to have great fun in England too (the group was due to appear on British TV Sunday, October11). I hope they’ll like us, even though we haven’t had a chance to take Berry Gordy upon his offer to send us to drama school yet. He thought we had a lot of promise and wanted us to get that training for TV work. I guess things have just been too good for us. We haven’t had time to study. We’ve been too busy working.” END
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Information, credit and news source: Music Business, October 10, 1964
WJBK Drops, WKNR Tops, WXYZ and CKLW Remain in Motor City Top 40 Race
DETROIT — The Motor City will soon lose its distinction of being the only city in the U. S. with four full-time contemporary music formatted radio stations.
WJBK, the Storer-owned station, will drop its rock-pop music format on Aug. 16 in favor of an all-album, conservative music format.
The post-TV situation saw a battle for the pop market between WXYZ, the ABC-owned outlet, WKMH with Robin Seymour leading the way, and WJBK.
Six or seven years ago, the 50,000-watt CKLW, just across the river in Windsor, began to feature a younger deejay line-up and more of the current pop singles. The RKO General station with its big wattage has been effectively carving an important niche for itself in the Detroit market as well as in secondary markets in Ohio, Michigan and Indiana.
The next significantly important change in the contemporary station line-up was the switch of WKMH to a standard, no rock policy, leaving the field to WXYZ and WJBK, with CKLW contributing its share to the hot pop scene, but not to the same degree.
ENTER WKNR
The most exciting change in the status quo took place in November of last year when WKMH pulled a complete 360– degree switch in music format and call letters. With its new call letters, WKNR, came a 30 plus 1 contemporary music format, promotions galore, razzle dazzle and several new swingin’ air men.
The impact of WKNR greatly altered the market picture, rating-wise and pop music-wise. The tight play-list formula and concentrated on and off-the-air promotion drove the station’s ratings from obscurity up to a position of prominence.
Although many factors must be taken into consideration in reasoning why a station decides to change its format, many programmers label any format changes as a certain sign of defeat. Industry observers opinion that the mitigating factor in the forthcoming WJBK change was brought on primarily by the impact of WKNR on the market, along with the solidifying of WXYZ’s influence on its pop music audience and coupled with increased competition in the same area from CKLW.
Other important factors to be taken into consideration is the affinity of the Storer Broadcasting Company for conservative and subdued music formats. WJBK will, along with WGBS, Miami; WHN, New York City; WJW, Cleveland and KGBS, Los Angeles, be programmed musically from Storer head quarter’s music department in Miami. At present Storer’s 50,000–watt station in Philadelphia is the company’s foremost and highly successful exponent of contemporary music. Top-rated Storer station. WSPD in Toledo, also features a pop music, news and personality format.
CURRENT RESEARCH
WJBK is presently in the survey of the listeners in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties to keep in touch with their tastes, desires and preferences in radio. “Although we have only completed approximately half of the current survey we are learning that a majority of the people polled are desirous of the type of format we will be launching in August,” said John Grubbs, WJBK program manager.
According to Billboard’s May 16 Radio Response Rating for Detroit, WQTE and WWJ reported conservative music formats. WCAR and WJR features music of the standard variety, culled primarily from albums. “WJBK’s ‘Sound of (Just Beautiful) Music’ and ‘Total Information News’ format is being designed to incorporate all members of the staff,” said Grubbs. “Our air personalities are all top pros and are capable of handling any format.”
WJBK staffers include Marc Avery, Clark Reid, Bob Lee, Robin Walker, Bob Edgington, and Bob Layne. Grubbs scotched rumors circulating in the trade in recent weeks that he is being transferred to WIBG in Philadelphia as program manager replacing William Wheatley. “The rumors circulating to the effect that I am being moved to WIBG or any other station are not in any way based on fact,” emphasized Grubbs. END
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Information, credit and news source: Billboard, August 1, 1964
Motown Founder Berry Gordy, Esther Edwards, Barney Ales Head to UK and Europe to Set Up the Tamla-Motown Label
DETROIT — Berry Gordy, Jr., President of Motown Record Corporation, will fly to London, England, Oct. 5 to meet with officials of EMI Records and to arrange for overseas exploitation and distribution for the diskery’s product on a Tamla-Motown label. He will be accompanied by Mrs. Esther Edwards, Vice–President-Director of the firm’s International operations; Barney Ales, Exec Vice-President and Sales Director, and George Schiffer, Motown Legal Counsel.
The foursome will spend two to three weeks abroad visiting other licensees distributing Motown’s products. A sharp up-swing in popularity in Europe of Motown’s disks is currently evidenced by top chart position of America’s The Supremes, recipients of the coveted Shooting Star Award from England for their recording of “Where Did Our Love Go,” plus strong airplays on Radio Caroline, England and Radio Veronica, Holland.
Records by such other Motown Artists as Marvin Gaye, The Miracles, Martha and The Vandellas, The Four Tops, The Marvelettes, The Temptations, Mary Wells, The Contours, Kim Weston and Brenda Holloway have been registering solid reaction overseas, label reports. More than half the aforementioned are currently represented on national charts in the United States.
The Supremes, who currently have two hit singles on the Motown label, the most recent, “Baby Love,” and also an album entitled, “Where Did Our Love Go,” will arrive at London Airport, England, 8 a.m., Tuesday, Oct. 6 for a one-week whirlwind tour of radio and TV engagements. Should time permit, The Supremes will visit Holland, Germany and France for a day in each country.
Mrs. Edwards plans, while overseas, to setup TV, theater and nightclub engagements, as well as personal appearance and promotion tours for the artists.
Motown, in the record business less than six years, has experienced a meteoric rise under Gordy’s direction. Last year the company had 32 hits on the major charts. Now in an expansion pro gram, Motown is increasing its album output and plans to place heavier emphasis on jazz, country and folk, states VP Ales.
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Information, credit and news source: Record World, October 10, 1964
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DETROIT FREE PRESS | Monday, September 30, 1991 —THE TIGERS WERE ELIMINATED in the American League East race Sunday — but because of Cal Ripkin, Jr., it happened gracefully.
The Orioles shortstop hit two homers, good for four runs, to beat Scott Aldred, 7-4, in front of 17,925.
Ripkin has made these last three days at Tiger Stadium the most productive series of his brilliant career. He has driven 11 runs — his most RBIs ever in one series. This virtuoso completes his current Detroit engagement in the Tigers’ home finally tonight.
The Tigers, who trailed from the time Ripkin hit a three-run homer in the third inning, fell 7 and a half games behind the Toronto Blue Jays with one week left. Even if the Tigers win their remaining seven games and the Jays lose their remaining six, the Tigers can’t tie them — something they did for three days that marked the peak of their season.
On August 24-26, the Tigers were completing the seven-game winning streak and the 18-7 burst that allowed them to catch, but not pass, the Jays. Then the Tigers immediately slumped and never got hot again. (See article below for more; click on, tap or stretch article for larger detailed read).
Detroit Free Press, 09/30/1991 | Copyright 2022. Newspapers.com
BASEBALL REFERENCE: For the complete Baltimore Orioles vs. Detroit Tigers September 29, 1991 game-day box score and stats — click HERE
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This official Record Review survey was tabulated overall by each record’s popularity and its appeal, sales, listener requests and record airplays based on the judgement of WJBK Radio 1500 (1963).
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The above WJBK chart was digitally restored by Motor City Radio Flashbacks
ON YOUR PC? To fully appreciate this WJBK Radio Record Review chart for the week of September 27, 1963 click on image 2x and open to second window. Click image anytime to return to NORMAL image size.
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A SPECIAL THANK YOU
A sincere, thank you, Mrs. Patti Griggs. This featured presentation would have not been possible without your generosity, dedication, and your continuous support.
Above WJBK music chart courtesy of Mrs. Patti Griggs and the George L. Griggs estate.
