THE RECORD VERSION — From the Tom Clay album,“What The World Needs Now Is Love,” MoWest Records (Motown Record Corporation) 1971. (Click album image 2x for detailed view).
“What Ever Happened To Love,” was the follow-up single to Clay’s “What The World Need Now Is Love”(Billboard No. 8; 8/14/1971). It was released by MoWest Records on 11/24/71.
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THE RADIO VERSION — In 1964, whenever Tom Clay read his “Whatever Happened To (Love)” on CKLW radio, he used instead for background music an instrumental track, entitled, “More.” A beautifully arranged score recorded by the (Italian) Ritz Ortolani Orchestra, the selection Clay originally used was from the 1962 motion picture soundtrack album, “Mondo Cane.” — M O T O R C I T Y R A D I O F L A S H B A C K S
“Whatever Happened To Love.” From the 1971 Tom Clay LP, “What The World Needs Now Is Love.” On MoWest Records. (A Motown Records subsidiary).(Click on image 2x for detailed PC view)
Detroit’s Tom Clay Suggests Single Broadcast Day Themed With Music’s Past; Day’s Events
DETROIT — Tom Clay, WQTE, Detroit, suggest that stations utilize a program idea he calls “Flashback.”
He writes: “You turn back the pages of time . . . say October 27, 1944. For one whole day you broadcast as you would have on that day. Your copy department writes hypothetical commercials or — better yet — you local sponsors turn back their prices to that day.
TOM CLAY photographed during a live remote show, WQTE-AM 560, 1960.
For info as to and events of the date check your local library (one week prior date chosen). Find out what movies were playing, info on sugar, rationing stamps, car pools, etc. Your news and sports of that particular date should be pre-recorded.
If you want some fantastic news inserts get the album ‘Hear It Now,’ with talks by the late F.D.R., etc. Your jocks should read requests from the boys overseas . . . play the music that was popular then. You’ll get a kick out of playing a record by Frank Sinatra and quipping: ‘Just a fad with the kids. He’ll never last.’
On my show, during ‘Flashback,’ I read off lists of names of boys who were killed in action. Then I said: ‘I wonder how soon we will forget — 5, 10 or 15 years from now? Our switchboard lit up like a Christmas tree.” END
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(Information and news source: Billboard; October 31, 1960)
ADDENDUM: A previous MCRFB June 2, 2012 post on Tom Clay, ‘CLAY LEAVES WQTE-AM POST September 26, 1960 has been updated. To view update (see post Addendum), gohere.
A TOM CLAY photograph (Credit: Bonnie Dater Jay). Taken of the former legendary radio deejay from Detroit, WJBK, WQTE, CKLW, WWWW. Tom Clay passed away, November 22, 1995. KPPC (1971), San Diego, California. 1971 Press Photo. (eBay; 2012)
NEW YORK — Now that the payola crises has abated, many displaced deejays have relocated — and at least one — Tom Clay of Detroit — is aggressively rooting for the old days when a disk jockey was king and could make or break a record.
In a letter to the trade, Clay (fired from WJBK, Detroit, last November on payola charges and now spinning records at WQTE, Detroit) lamented, “What’s happening to the day when we were really deejays and we would really make rounds of distribs for new records, get exited and predicted overnight smashes, make the charts instead of following them, play a record seven times in a row, and get people to buy the record the same day? So we had a little trouble in our biz. Are we going to crawl up in a shell and sit on our fat fannies and let the deejay die?”
Famed controversial Detroit deejay Tom Clay, pictured here in 1964.
Clay addressed special pleas to top jocks like Bill Randle, WERE, Cleveland; Howard Miller, WIND, Chicago; and Frank Ward, Atlanta. “You could tie the city in knots again,” he told Randle, “Forget teaching school. Teach the Cleveland deejays what real deejays are.” To Miller he said, “Remember when you got kicks doing shows? Are you getting too much rich making what you are doing now?”
Addressing the trio as a whole, he added, “Let’s swing again — a bunch of deejays that made their mark going out on a limb, predicting records. Now wait for it to show up on a chart… Forget your pretty voices and prestige — let’s get some excitement back in radio.”
Clay, who apparently evinces no sensitivity over his payola-headline days, concluded his letter to the trade (headed “Detroit’s No. 1 Deejay Has His Say”) with the following line: if you have any records you’d like auditioned send them. Remember, I too, was a “record consultant.”“Am I being funny? No.”
Although WQTE had said it was taking programming out of the hands of the deejays when it launched it’s new “Fabulous 56” format this June, Clay claims he is programming his own show. At any rate, he said he played Tommy Leonetti’s Atlantic waxing of “Without Love” for “45 minutes straight,” and predicted it would be “a smash hit.”
Clay exudes complete confidence in his ability to predict hits, undaunted by the fact that in a recent newsletter he informed Colonel Tom Parker that Elvis Presley’s second post-GI single was a complete bomb. The disk in questioned — released three weeks ago — is now No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Meanwhile, other displaced deejays have also relocated, but are somewhat more reticent about the whole thing. Alan Freed and Mel Leeds, ex-WINS, New York program directors, are at KDAY, Los Angeles. Chuck Young, ex-KYW Cleveland music librarian, is presently working for Cosnat Distributors in Cleveland.
Stan Richards, ex-WORL, Boston, is at WINS in New York. Joe Smith, another ex-WORL spinner, is sales promotion manager for Hart Distributors in Los Angeles. Joe Finan, ex-KYW, Cleveland, is rumored to be returning to that city at WHK. Peter Tripp, ex-WMGM, New York, is reportedly set to go to KFWB in Hollywood. END
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(Information and news source: Billboard; August 8, 1960)
WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO LOVE
