[78-L] More on Mitch Miller

[Malcolm Rockwell]

Actually by the time I taped WBAI it was a classical station by day and 
the loonies came on at midnight one or two days a week. But you are 
right that was probably c. 1963.
But the station I taped and listened to most was WINS 1010 beginning 
around 1957. And where I got WMCA from I haven't a clue - probably meant 
WMGM, thanks! Oddly I just heard an obscure song on my local community 
supported radio station, KEAO-LP,  "And That Reminds Me" (aka, If There 
Could Be No Roses...) by Della Reese that dates from around that time 
which is on one of the tapes. What a strange piece of music.
Anyhow, armed with my trusty "Magic Eye" Webcor I discovered that if I 
ran a lead from my radio's speaker, added in a resistance bridge to 
attenuate the signal (yes, I was building my own mostly passive 
electronics by the time I was 12) that I could plug it into the input of 
the Webcor and get a clean recording. Much to my father's chagrin this 
also worked well with the phone lines. Unfortunately nothing with dad's 
voice on it has survived. I've looked.
Mal

*******

On 8/3/2010 11:31 AM, Michael Biel wrote:
>    I also grew up in NYC, and I think you will find that you are
> remembering the 60s, not the 50s.  WBAI was free-form hippie in the
> mid-60s and was commie talk prior to that.   WOR-FM did not go rock
> until 1967 -- the absolute first rock FM in NYC, and it was album
> oriented rock -- and WOR (AM) never did play any rock (except for a
> little on Martin Block's Make Believe Ballroom in the 60s after he left
> WABC.   WMCA didn't really go rock till around 1960.  Same with WABC.
> Post-payola scandal.  Other than the Negro stations high up on the dial,
> the 50s rock stations -- pre-payola scandal -- were WINS 1010 and WMGM
> 1050.  The prime time jocks were respectively Alan Freed and Peter
> Tripp.  Freed was no longer Moondog, and was much tamer.  These two
> competitors were playing as many slow dance numbers as fast rock.  While
> Freed would not play a Pat Boone cover of Fats or Little Richard, he did
> play April Love, Love Letters In the Sand, etc.  Since we are talking
> about the rise of rock 55-59, those are the years that air-checks would
> show what was REALLY being played.
>
> Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com
>
> On 8/3/2010 2:02 PM, Malcolm Rockwell wrote:
>    
>> Yes and no.
>> I grew up in NYC in the 50s and 60s and we evidently had a much wider
>> variety of rock n roll to choose from, as did the popular jocks. Yes,
>> all the pop artists you mention were there, and more, but we also had
>> material from as far away as Philadelphia (!) and New Orleans as well as
>> all that early R&B. I still have tapes I made of the air from WOR (I
>> think),  WMCA and WBAI. The WBAI stuff is esoteric, and so outside the
>> scope of this thread, but the other two were mainline rock/pop. I
>> specifically remember Murray The K (and his Swinging Soiree) and I guess
>> he musta been progressive because a lot of the stuff out of New Orleans
>> showed up there. Don't know how much Memphis material showed up in NY,
>> though.
>> Hmm, I'll have to dig up some of the play lists of my tapes and see
>> who's right here. Could be different views from different sources.
>> Mal
>>
>> *******
>>
>> On 8/3/2010 7:13 AM, Michael Biel wrote:
>>      
>>> If you listen to REAL rock station air-checks from the 50s and look at
>>> their published charts, you will find to your amazement that usually
>>> less than 25% of the records played on these formats were really what we
>>> now consider to be rock 'n' roll.  There was a LOT of Perry Como, Doris
>>> Day, Johnny Mathis, Pat Boone, Four Aces, Four Lads, Kingston Trio, and
>>> even Yellow Rose of Texas, and very LITTLE of Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck
>>> Berry, Little Richard, etc.  We are remembering the era thru the filter
>>> of oldies stations in the 70s and 80s, and those Oldies But Goodies LPs,
>>>
>>> Mike Bielmbiel at mbiel.com
>>>
>>>        
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