Oct. 17, 1970: WKBW picks the hits
A return to one of my favorite interests – how records
got played on the radio. Plus it gave me a chance to connect in person
with a guy I loved to listen to in the early ‘60s when I was a folkie at
Oct. 17, 1970
They Want Only
The Biggest Hits
By the time the weekly music meetings rolled around at WKBW
last week, program director Jeff Kaye was frazzled.
In addition to what he normally does, Jeff had spent a month
looking for two new disc jockeys (“Two long-haired hippy freaks that can make
the night time cook,” the ad in Billboard read).
Plus he was filling the evening show himself and he had a
cold.
Now, WKBW is
So, for record promotion men whose careers depend on creating
hits, the music meetings in Jeff’s cramped office are THE event of the week.
They’re also the next-to-last stop in choosing which new records will break
into the station’s playlist at 3 p.m. each Friday.
* * *
THE PROMO
men were joking and jostling like mod athletes in the station’s tiny waiting
area while Jeff was becoming an hour and a half late. His wife figured he
needed the sleep, he explains as he pushes into his office.
“That music is SO soft,” Jeff says, shuffling through a stack
of last week’s singles on his desk. “The past four nights I have just GROUND
out the music on there. The classics are the only place you can get any tempo.
This week we gotta look for a couple records that ROCK.”
* * *
FIRST IN is
Frankie Nestro, wearing a purple suit.
“All right,” Jeff prompts. “let’s go, 15 minutes, what’ve you
got for us this week, Frankie?”
“How about ‘Heed the Call’ by The First Edition,” Frankie
offers. “RKO in
Jeff takes it, puts it on the stack.
“What else?” Jeff inquires. “Joe Cocker? Too cacophonous. I
don’t like that album. Sandy Beach does, but I don’t. Herb Alpert? You gotta be
kidding.”
“Here’s the new Arlo Guthrie,” Frankie says. “‘Valley to
Pray.’” He plays it. Slow and mournful.
He puts on the new Arlo Guthrie album and plays “I Could Be
Singing.”
“Reilly played this the other night between 12 and 1 and the
switchboard went pshew. That’s a hit. Let me know if your people want us to
work on it.”
* * *
WHEN JEFF,
34, came to KB from WBZ,
What he did was divide the playlist into three sections and
gave each disc jockey a sheet which told him when to play certain kinds of
records. There’s the A list, the B list, C list, Klassics and albums.
The A list records can be played almost any time. B list
songs have reached their fullest hit potential. C list items are rockers,
prohibited in the morning. Klassics and album cuts are free choices.
The deejays have to fill in those sheets and Jeff compiles a
day-by-day tally of what they play.
“The jocks hate them,” Jeff says, “but they guard against
payola and without them you wouldn’t have a consistent sound. Before them,
there was no form, no cohesiveness.”
Essentially, Jeff wants the station to give people what
they’ve tuned in for. More news and gentler music in the morning. More Klassics
for the midday housewife. More action for the evening teenagers. More
progressive rock for the late night crowd.
* * *
JEFF’S
specialty is production and promotion and he’s good at it. His wall is covered
with national awards he’s won for spot announcements for the Cancer Society,
Highway Safety, Children’s Hospital.
If KB has a “sound,” a corporate image, it’s because Jeff
plans it that way. In some ways, KB is a Jeff Kaye Production.
* * *
CARROLL
Hardy comes in next. “Here,” Carroll says.
“‘
“Here’s one from Gene Chandler,” Carroll says. Jeff stacks
it.
“Here’s an instrumental produced by El Chicano,” Carroll
proposes. “I promise you, you won’t find the lyrics offensive. Here’s ‘Our
World’ by Blue Mink. It’s showing up around the country. And here’s a Canadian
thing.”
The song is “Corinna, Corinna” by King Biscuit Boy. It’s a
catchy, rhythmic piece.
“A good record,” Jeff says.
“Here’s Elvis,” Carroll continues. Both sides are good. And a
ballad by Mitch Ryder. He plays it.
“Nobody ROCKS any more,” Jeff complains, stopping Mitch Ryder
in mid-moan. “We can’t use this. We’re looking for tempo this week.”
* * *
KB HAS
what’s called a “tight” playlist – just 20 records. Record companies howl
regularly about tight playlists hurting business, but Jeff’s own charts will
show you that the more records you play, the more flops you get.
* * *
“IN THIS
town right now,” Jeff says, “you’ve got five stations playing the same music.
People want to hear hits. So you’ve got hits up and down the dial. We want to
play not just the hits, but the BIGGEST hits.”
“The musician and the deejay may hear them a lot and get sick
of them,” music director Dan Neaverth says, “but the listener isn’t searching
for that many new avenues. It amounts to the fact that people are more
comfortable with familiar things.”
This doesn’t mean that KB won’t take an occasional plunge on
a record it believes in. And there are the Beatles and Rolling Stones
exclusives. And “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida,” which Sandy Beach picked up after a kid
called in.
* * *
THAT FRIDAY,
KB stopped playing “Lola” by The Kinks (10 weeks on the list), Mike Nesmith’s
“Joanne” (nine weeks) and “I Stand Accused” by Isaac Hayes (four weeks).
KB started playing “Our World” by Blue Mink, “Heed the Call”
by The First Edition and “I Think I Love You” by The Partridge Family.
“I’d say we got a couple that have some uptempo movement,” Jeff says later. “There’s not a slam-bang rocker, but all things being equal, I think we made out OK.”
The box/sidebar:
An ‘Exam’ Every Week
After WKBW’s weekly music meetings, Jeff Kaye and Dan
Neaverth sit down, go over the last three weeks and wind up with “pretty much a
seat-of-the-pants judgment.”
What goes into their decisions is something like preparing
for an exam. If there’s a record out, they have to know about it. They have to
know what it’s doing in
* * *
LOCALLY,
they call 20 record outlets every week to find out what’s selling. The stores
rate records on a one-to-five scale and KB adds up the totals. The station also
keeps track of what telephone callers are asking for – except it’s usually old
records that have just fallen from the list.
Nationwide, they collect radio station surveys “not so much
to see what they’re playing, but to see what they’ve added” and pore through
Billboard and Cashbox, the major trade journals.
* * *
TO TOP IT OFF,
they get advance proofs of the national surveys. Plus the $135-a-year Gavin
Report – the granddaddy of “hype sheets” – and the $120-a-year Bob Hamilton
Report – a new sheet valued for its honesty.
Then, of course, come the deejay meeting and the music
meetings.
“What we wind up looking for,” Jeff says, “is a record that
stands the least chance of being a bomb. It’s still a gamble.”
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