My first Top 40 summer

In Columbus, Ohio in June of 1969 when I was 12, I became hooked on top 40 radio. Though I was well versed in the Beatles from the tender age of 7, having watched them on Ed Sullivan in 1964, I didn't much listen to current pop music until a few years later. Between 1964 and 1968, if I owned records, aside from Beatles albums, they would have been Broadway cast albums or soundtracks--yes, I was a theater kid that early on. But somehow by 1968, I was listening casually to pop radio. The first non-Beatles 45 RPM singles I bought were Daydream Believer by the Monkees, Chewy Chewy by the Ohio Express, Those Were the Days by Mary Hopkin, and Bang-Shang-A-Lang by the Archies. By the summer of 1969, I had a transistor radio which was tuned permanently to WCOL-AM, 1230 on the dial. I was earning an allowance by doing dishes and I would prop my radio up near the sink and listen; soon I was putting it under my pillow and listening at night. This was also the age when I started going downtown on the bus all by myself, and I would spend much of my allowance at the Lazarus department store on singles. Below is the very first WCOL "hit line" list that I ever brought home--they were free in the record department.

Columbus was a fairly vibrant top 40 market back then. WCOL was the biggest youth oriented station at the time, aside from WVKO which played "soul music", the genre name for Black R&B music, and at the far end of the dial, it was sometimes difficult to tune in. WCOL would often break records before they became national hits. For example, the week of June 2, "Good Morning Starshine" by Oliver was #1 in Columbus, but only #57 on the Billboard Hot 100. It would eventually make the Billboard top 5 in mid-July. Other top 10 hits on WCOL that week that were just getting going nationally include "Israelites," "Medicine Man," and "I Can't Quit Her." "Ruby Don't Take Your Love to Town: by Kenny Rogers, #10 in Columbus, didn't even appear on the Hot 100 until a week later, down at #98, though it would eventually hit #6 weeks later.

Almost all the songs on that chart are still ones I can conjure up over fifty years later; I don't remember "Medicine Man" by the Buchanan Brothers or "Marley Purt Drive" by Jose Feliciano. But I was the kind of listener who would turn off the radio or switch to another station if I didn't like the song that was on the air. With car radios, I was a constant button-pusher, jumping from station to station, something I do to this very day when I listen to Sirius XM. I try to resist the temptation to be a boomer who claims that his music from back then is better than the music of today; I know that tastes change, and today's music isn't being made for this 69-year-old. But the music of the late 60s and early 70s will always have a special place in my ears, my head, and my heart. I plan on posting and briefly commenting on other WCOL charts from those early years frequently on my blog.