#4 | “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot me Down)” by Cher
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Debuted #75 week-ending March 12, 1966, “Bang Bang” peaks at #2 (1 week) on the Hot 100, week-ending, April 23, 1966. Having charted 11 weeks overall — on its final week on Billboard the single drops out at #31 for the week-ending, May 21, 1966.
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Source: The Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles Charts [1966]
#5 | “The Ballad Of The Green Berets” by Ssgt. Barry Sadler
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Debuted #87 week-ending February 5, 1966, “The Ballad Of The Green Berets” peaks at #1 (5 weeks) on the Hot 100, week-ending, March 5, 1966. Having charted 13 weeks overall — on its final week on Billboard, the single drops out at #20 for the week-ending, April 30, 1966.
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Source: The Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles Charts [1966]
Newly restored! This selected audio recording was digitally enhanced by Motor City Radio Flashbacks.
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Tom Howard, shared his comments (April 4): Jim, this 30 minutes aircheck from March 20, 1970 was sent to me from CKLW PD Paul Drew. This recording was from the master open reel to reel tape and was taped directly from a studio board feed, that’s why it sounds so good.
March 17, 1970 was on St. Patrick’s Day, and my grandmother, on some days, began recording CKLW just before 6 AM the Todd Wallace show, getting the day started, and also that of my good friend Big Jim Davis (Edwards). It was taped on a C90 cassette tapes. Later in the afternoon, it was Duke Roberts . . . also, recorded — unedited and unscoped — both the same day. It was great listening to CKLW in the late ’60’s and ’70’s. My grandmother would then mail the tapes to me here in Orange County, in Southern California. My friend, Charlie Ritenburg, a dear friend of mine living in Toronto, restored many of my recordings, including this one as well.
Enjoy this stellar, CKLW Duke Roberts memory from 1970. On the radio once again like it was only yesterday . . . 54 years ago. –T. Howard
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NEW! A special THANK YOU to our friend, Tom Howard, of Riverside, California, for this recent contribution for our Motor City Radio Flashbacks airchecks repository.
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THE BEATLES break all American chart records when the latest Billboard chart (April 4, 1964) shows them with the ‘Top Five’ records in the country simultaneously with: #5: “Please Please Me,” #4: “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” #3: “She Loves You,” #2: “Twist And Shout,” #1: “Can’t Buy Me Love.” The Beatles had similarly dominated Canada and Australia’s Top Ten earlier in the month. 50 years ago. The Beatles made music history this month, according to Billboard, week-ending, April 4, 1964.
“Can’t Buy Me Love”, #1 this week by The Beatles, debuted at #27 on Billboard, week ending, March 28. Just one week later, the single jumps all the way to #1. The Capitol single would remain #1 for five consecutive weeks, from April 4 through May 2. Thereafter, “Can’t Buy Me Love” began its weekly drops to #5, #11, #23 and #42 (final week on the chart), for the week-ending, May 30, 1964. The Beatles’ “Can’t Buy Me Love” is the second best-selling single in 1964, behind the group’s #1 single for the entire year, “I Want To Hold Your Hand”.
Besides holding an incredible top 5 position on the Billboard chart, it bears noting there are 7 other Beatles’ singles peppered throughout this chart, including two new Beatles singles having been added to the Hot 100, for the week-ending, April 4, 1964.
And there you have it. This week in April 1964. Find ’em. Count ’em. Make it a dozen. TWELVE!
Audio digitally remastered by Motor City Radio Flashbacks
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Choreographers have brought the latest dances to the homescreen on “Hullabaloo,” “Shindig,” and “Hollywood a Go-Go”
HIP AND EXCITING. The hippest, the wildest, the most exciting and most avant garde dancing being done on TV-and perhaps anywhere else today-takes place every week on the rock and roll TV shows. We are talking about “Shindig”, “Hullabaloo,” “Hollywood a Go Go,” The Lloyd Thaxton Show, and local shows in large cities like New York, and Hollywood.
It’s true of course that TV has always featured dancing on the big time shows, starting way back with the old Sid Caesar-Imogene Coca show, the Jackie Gleason Show, and the Perry Como Show, for example. Gleason opens all his shows with the June Taylor tap dancers. But the choreography on these shows is old hat compared to “Shindig” or “Hullabaloo,” almost like comparing the Busby Berkley dances in the old Dick Powell movies to the Jerome Robbins dances in “West Side Story.”
It’s doubtful if even “Shindig” producer Jack Good envisioned the effect that the “Shindig” dancers would have on TV, and TV critics, when the pioneer live TV show kicked off last September. Up until then rock and roll TV shows, like the old Dick Clark daily bandstand show, featured youngsters doing the latest dances in a casual, almost amateur-like way.
“SHINDIG” STARTED IT. “Shindig” was different from rock & roll TV shows that had preceded it in many ways. It featured a large band, smart camera work, and a lineup of a dozen attractive young girls who performed up-to-date dances behind the singers and instrumentalists on the show. This was similar to the rock and roll TV shows that Good had put on in London for both the BBC and commercial TV.
“Shindig’s” success inspired “Hullabaloo,” a slightly different show in some respects but still adhering generally to the rock and roll format. “Hullabaloo” however, went “Shindig” one better. It not only featured a lineup of dancers, but the dancers were featured themselves in one or two routines each evening. And the premiere “Hullabaloo” show spotlighted a dramatic young lady named Joey Heatherton, whose dancing that night created press comment for the show from coast-to-coast!
While “Shindig” and “Hullabaloo” have their dance fans (and they are not all youngsters-the number of young adults who watch both to see the latest dances is huge) there is another show, “Hollywood a Go Go,” that is all out on the modern dance kick. This show, choreographed by Oscar Williams is also on the rock and roll format. It brings viewers up to date on the latest steps with a young group of dancers who may be the wildest yet. “Hollywood a Go Go” is really a swinging TV discotheque scene, presided over by young TV deejay Sam Riddle.
INSPIRED BY ROBBINS. The main inspirational force behind both “Shindig” and “Hullabaloo” derives, in a sense, from Jerome Robbins, who is almost universally acknowledged as the top modern choreographer, but he wasn’t too happy with the job. of the Broadway stage (“West Side Story”) and ballet theater (“Ballets, U.S.A.”). The choreographers of “Shindig”, Andre Tayir, and “Hullabaloo”, David Winters, both danced in the stage and film versions of “West Side Story,” and both are ardent Robbins disciples.
Winters describes his choreography for “Hullabaloo” as “A combination of jazz ballet and the Watusi,” and he says that his staccato style is strongly influenced by Robbins. The 25 -year -old perfectionist auditioned 700 dancers before he selected the chorus of boys and girls currently featured on the show. He thinks all 10 are great but is particularly enthusiastic about the “standout talent” of Donna McKeckney.
BORN IN LONDON. Winters was born in London, England, and came to this country when he was 13. The sandy-haired dancer, who looks considerably younger than 25, has the likable, pugnacious features of a young James Cagney (also a chorus boy in his youth.)
After appearing in 140 TV shows as an actor and nine Broadway productions (including “Gypsy” and “West Side Story”) Winters opened a dance studio in Hollywood. One of his pupils was Ann-Margret and it was due to her recommendation that he landed his first film choreography job on the Elvis Presley picture, “Viva Las Vegas.”
Today, Winters is probably the best known choreographer in the rock and roll field. His numerous movie credits include Doris Day’s “Send Me No Flowers,”Presley’s “Get Happy” and “Tickle Me” and the highly successful teen-musicals with Annette and Frankie Avalon.
He won particular praise for his exciting dance routines on the TAMI “Teen Age Command Performance” in Electronovision. In addition to choreographing the show, writing songs, and being a recording artist, Winters appears on “Hullabaloo” himself every few weeks to perform a special dance interpretation of a best-selling tune. Winters was “Shindig’s” first choreographer, but he wasn’t too happy with the job. “I got bored,” he says. “All they wanted was somebody to do the Pony every week. Only a kid could choreograph that show.”
WOULD DISPUTE WINTERS. Andre Tayir would undoubtedly dispute that statement, and with justification. Tayir puts in almost 50 hours a week working up routines for “Shindig’s” 10 chorus girls and visiting guests.
“As soon as one show is in the can, I have to forget the dances we did and come up with new routines for the next,” says Tayir. “It requires a great deal of work, but it’s not a chore. Everything moves at such a furious pace-no set routine to restrict you. Something new to work with every week.”
Tayir, a native of Alabama, dances solo on the show occasionally, but his “first love is still acting.” He first impressed “Shindig” producer Jack Good when he did the choreography for Good’s “Around The Beatles” special. When Winters moved over to NBC, Good had Tayir waiting in the wings.
POLISHED OR CASUAL. The principal difference between the choreography on “Hullabaloo” and “Shindig” is that the former is exciting in a polished, disciplined fashion, while the latter is equally exciting in a frantic, off-the-cuff style.
The “Shindig” dances appear to be more simple than those on “Hullabaloo.” However, this could easily be a case of artful deception. “Shindig’s” fast moving, near-chaotic pace was carefully conceived by Good, and it is possible-in fact quite probable-that he shrewdly decreed the chorus not appear too professional lest they make the young disc artist-guests look unduly awkward.
Winters rarely has this problem on “Hullabaloo,” because the show’s sizeable budget enables him to work with such show-wise stars as Sammy Davis, Paul Anka, Jack Jones, Trini Lopez, and Joey Heatherton.
THAT DANCE! Winters created a special “Hullabaloo” dance (“an extension of the Jerk”) for Joey on the first show. It was that dance-or rather Miss Heatherton’s uninhibited interpretation of it-that sparked some of the wild comments from TV critics, and viewers. The dancing on “Hullabaloo,” “Shindig,” even the Lloyd Thaxton TV Show, have now replaced the Rolling Stones as the favorite target of the TV critics.
In a way it’s like the old days when Elvis Presley showed off the Presley Twist an the Jackie Gleason and Ed Sullivan Shows. That caused nervous indignation among many TV viewers. The dancing on the swinging rock and roll TV shows is doing it again.
David Winters takes it all in his stride. He says of TV critics and their dance comments, “That’s their problem. Evil is in the eye of the beholder. Adults are doing the same dances now in Clubs. Maybe it’s just the shock of seeing it on the TV screen.”
Actually the dancers on the rock and roll TV shows are all young and attractive, and their dancing usually expresses jubilant high spirits, not the near -orgy suggested by some TV critics. A lot of viewers too think that the dances are exciting and personify today. And more than that, they’re fun to watch. END
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MCRFB NOTE: You can double-click over the two photo images for largest PC detailed view. Or tap, then stretch the photos across your mobile device screen for detailed view.
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Information, credit, and news source: Music Business, April 3, 1965
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Program recording audio remastered 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.
The above WXYZ 03/29/1965 chart survey was digitally restored complete in its entirety by Motor City Radio Flashbacks.
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By mid-January 1965, the Detroit Sound Survey charts was no longer printed for the public in general. The WXYZ charts, as featured above, were instead published solely for Detroit record retailers, music outlets, one-stop jobbers, and distributors only.
These Radio 1270 top 40 charts was the largest of the WXYZ Detroit Sound Survey charts ever printed, having measured 17.5″ W x 22 L” inches in size. These charts were primarily used for weekly record rank based by popularity, position, retail sales, and were used for record retail rack displays as well.
For the very first time, Motor City Radio Flashbacks will be featuring a dozen or so — as chart dated — of these extremely rare WXYZ 1965 surveys throughout the year, 2024.
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ON YOUR MOBILE DEVICE? Tap over WXYZ chart image. Open to second window. “Stretch” chart across your device screen to magnify for largest detailed view.
ON YOUR PC? Click on chart image 2x for largest detailed print view.
Audio digitally restored by Motor City Radio Flashbacks
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Monitor was an American weekend radio program broadcast live and nationwide on the NBC Radio Network from June 12, 1955, until January 26, 1975. It began originally on Saturday morning at 8am and continued through the weekend until 12 midnight on Sunday. After the first few months, the full weekend broadcast was shortened when the midnight-to-dawn hours were dropped since few NBC stations carried it.
The program offered a magazine-of-the-air mix of news, sports, comedy, variety, music, celebrity interviews and other short segments (along with records, usually of popular middle-of-the-road songs, especially in its later years). Its length and eclectic format were radical departures from the traditional radio programming structure of 30 and 60 minute programs and represented an ambitious attempt to respond to the rise of television as America’s major home-entertainment medium.
The show was the brainchild of Sylvester (Pat) Weaver, whose career bridged classic radio and television’s infancy and who sought to keep radio alive in a television age. Believing that broadcasting could and should educate as well as entertain, Weaver fashioned a series to do both with some of the best-remembered and best-regarded names in broadcasting, entertainment, journalism, and literature taking part. Monitor and the Sunday-afternoon TV documentary series Wide Wide World were Weaver’s last two major contributions to NBC, as he left the network within a year of Monitor’s premiere.
When Monitor began on June 12, 1955, at 4pm, the first hour of the program was simulcast on NBC-TV. That initial June 12 broadcast lasted eight hours, from 4pm through 12 midnight. Following the Monitor beacon, Morgan Beatty was the first voice ever heard on Monitor. After an introduction by Pat Weaver, news headlines by Dave Garroway and a routine by Bob and Ray, Garroway cued Monitor’s opening music remote: live jazz by Howard Rumsey and the Lighthouse All-Stars at the Lighthouse Café in Hermosa Beach, California. It was the first of many jazz remotes in the weeks to come.
On the following Saturday, June 18, Monitor began broadcasting 40 consecutive hours each weekend, from 8am on Saturday to midnight on Sunday. Monitor aired from a mammoth NBC studio called Radio Central, created especially for the program, on the fifth floor of the RCA Building in midtown Manhattan (the same space which is now home to MSNBC). NBC unveiled Radio Central to the national television audience during a segment in the October 16, 1955 premiere of Wide Wide World, including a Monitor interview with Alfred Hitchcock (seen through glass in an adjacent studio and minus audio) and a Monitor newscast (with audio). Built at a cost of $150,000 the glass-enclosed studios of Radio Central were described by Pat Weaver as “a listening post of the world.”
The enduring audio signature of the show was the “Monitor Beacon” — a mix of audio-manipulated telephone tones and the sound of an oscillator emitting the Morse code signal for the letter “M”, for “Monitor”. It was described by one source as “a tape loop made from a sequence of 1950s AT&T telephone line switching tones generated by analog oscillators”.
The Beacon introduced the show and was used in transitions, for example, to station breaks, accompanied by the tag line: “You’re on the Monitor beacon.”
The innovative approach of Monitor made it a profitable success for NBC Radio over many years, helping to sustain the network in an era when network radio was collapsing. Its strong start and high popularity led the show to air on Friday nights from 8pm to 10pm in 1957, followed by an expansion to weeknights in 1959, all in addition to its 32 weekend hours (reduced from 40 in late 1955).
By 1961, the weeknight Monitor was gone and the weekend schedule cut in half – from 32 to 16 hours each weekend. This was not quite as drastic a cut as it seems, as some programming that had been counted as part of Monitor’s 32 hours—such as Sunday morning religious broadcasts and the radio version of Meet the Press—continued to air on NBC outside of the Monitor schedule. This was further shortened in 1974 to only 12 live weekend hours (plus nine repeated hours).
Radio stations, especially in large markets, had increasingly adopted personality-driven formats featuring local disc jockeys and sought to establish a clear-cut musical or talk identity for themselves. Because of this, Monitor’s “something-for-everyone” programming often did not fit in with schedules and viewpoints of stations, and fewer affiliates carried the program in major markets. Due to this, many of the show’s sponsors also pulled away, requiring a shortening of the schedule to keep costs low.
About 125 stations still carried the program on its last day, with few in major markets. After 20 years of broadcasting, Monitor signed off after airing it’s last program on January 26, 1976. Source: Monitor (Radio Program) Wikipedia
On Sunday, March 28, 1965, the presented NBC Monitor program aired on WWJ 950 (Detroit) at the top of the 5:00 p.m. hour, according to the Detroit Free Press radio guides, as dated, and published that year [Detroit Free Press Newspaper Archive, copyright 2024].
In this Monitor segment, the guest speaker was 1964 Nobel Prize winner and ’60s civil rights activist, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The program panelists and the voices you will hear are those of James K. Kilpatrick (The Richmond News Leader), Tom Wicker (The New York Times) John Chancellor (NBC News), and Lawrence J. Spivak (Producer; Meet the Press). Program was moderated by Ned Brooks.
The panelists queried Dr. King for answers and his views of the civil rights movement under his leadership.
Dr. King provided direct responses to inquiries and remarks, alongside those of other panelists. The discussion encompassed topics such as racial segregation in Southern states, the Supreme Court’s stance on racial justice and injustices, the administration of Governor George Wallace in Alabama, the historic march from Selma to Montgomery, and the tragic death of Viola Liuzzo in Alabama (originally from Detroit; for further details, refer to the newspaper insert).
Also addressed were Dr. King’s consistent appeals for “moral” and “non-violent” demonstrations, the organization of additional Southern economic boycotts, and the movement’s future prospects, with a focus on contemporary topical debates at the time.
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This recording was made possible, and is the property (and courtesy) of the Past Daily website, from the incredible collection of it’s owner, Gordon Skene.
This featured audio recording, in its presented form, was at one time freely available and downloadable (as all their recordings were) from the Past Daily site, early on. This author obtained dozens of Past Daily historic recordings when they were available, many years ago. Motor City Radio Flashbacks has, and to his credit, featured several of Gordon Skene’s period recordings, such as we have presented here today, in the past. Founded in 2012, Past Daily still thrives on the internet today.
For support, and more on Past Daily, please click on the link in our menu column at the left of our site’s home page. Or, you may go, HERE.
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NOTE: Double-click over newspaper clipping for largest PC detailed view. Or tap, then stretch clipping across your mobile device screen for expanded read.
