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The Beatles were on Top 40 radio in Detroit in the summer of 1963. Lee Alan, then 7-12 DJ on WXYZ played two Beatles' records (one was Please, Please Me) in July (I think) on his Make It or Break It segment. Both were broken, but WKNR, CKLW, WJBK and other stations played them. By the end of 1963, the Beatles were on rotation at every station.
Couple of points that haven't been raised here
Frankie Avalon, Bobby Darin, Fabian (Forte) and all the other "teen idols" of the early sixties were modeled upon Frank Sinatra's phenomenal success of twenty years before. Sinatra himself tried the same with Frank, Jr. (not very successful) and Nancy (did mostly C&W, and did somewhat better). Ozzie Nelson, who was a swing-era bandleader, had somewhat more success with Ricky.
The Beatles didn't actually displace an American act from the top of the record chats until the first week of February, 1964. The last American single to top the list was Bobby Vinton's There, I Said it Again. They were to hold the top position until mid-May, when Motown released Mary Wells' My Guy -- possibly the best example of the fully-assimilated "slick soul" of the day.
I have no direct connection to Metro Detroit; have never lived there. But growing up in rural Pennsylvania, CKLW was always my favorite AM station -- with a strong signal due to no obstacles between Detroit and us save Lake Erie; It played a somewhat higher proportion of British artists, probably due to its Canadian ownership, but you also heard a lot of Southerners, white and black. And the management had to keep an eye out for possible regulatory interference from the Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC).
Two examples of this effect I can cite from the playlists in the spring of 1967 were Tom Jones' cover of Bobby Bare's Detroit City, and the Beach Boys' Heroes and Villains (released as a single in Europe, but not in the United States -- I don't know what its status was in Canada).
The mid-Sixties were an amazing time for popular music.
Last edited by DOUBLE H; 01-10-2019 at 08:28 PM..
Reason: spelling correction
If The Beatles were not an overnight success in the US, then you're applying a definition by which there is no such thing.
Very few people had any exposure to them until at least late '63, if not early '64. I was 14 in the Twin Cities area at that time, never out of radio range for very long. I don't recall hearing anything of them until very close to the Ed Sullivan appearance. Once they were widely known, you bet your life they were an overnight success - literally - for many millions. There hadn't been anything quite like Beatlemania before and there hasn't been since.
The answer to the thread question is very few.
You completely misunderstood. Yes, they got famous after their stint on the Ed Sullivan Show, but that was not their first US appearance or US exposure. Louise Harrison worked very hard plugging her brother's band to get airplay in the mid-west and they did get some airplay. They also had exposure on the Jack Paar show making the adults aware of this crazy phenomenon in England at that time. I had asked some NYC DJs if they were aware of The Beatles before Ed Sullivan and they told me yes, they were aware of them. Some had seen them in England. Afterwards, they all jumped on the bandwagon to make money off of them. Brian and George Martin came to the US first, scouting around for a US record deal. They had a record deal with VeeJay and Swan records long before they made it big in the US and those records were floating around. I have a VeeJay record from 1963. So no, there was a lot of hard work to promote them, way before their Ed Sullivan premiere. Also there's a whole thing about Sid Bernstein booking them at Carneigie Hall and yes, I knew Sid too. Although I was not working in the recording business at the time, I heard all of the stories first hand from the parties involved years later and I did have some involvement with the Beatles' business.
The Beatles were on Top 40 radio in Detroit in the summer of 1963. Lee Alan, then 7-12 DJ on WXYZ played two Beatles' records (one was Please, Please Me) in July (I think) on his Make It or Break It segment. Both were broken, but WKNR, CKLW, WJBK and other stations played them. By the end of 1963, the Beatles were on rotation at every station.
Yes, a lot of that had to do with Louise Harrison, who lived in the midwest at the time, traveling to radio stations and getting the stations to play Beatle records. They did start to catch on. They also got airplay in Washington DC, where they slowly started to get requested. The DJs knew what was going on in England at the time. They already had a lot of followers by the time they got on the Ed Sullivan Show. There were articles about Beatlemania in the newspapers that the "grown-ups" read. It was almost impossible, unless you had a contact, to get a ticket to their first performance on the Ed Sullivan Show in Feb. 1964. After that broadcast, the rest of the US knew about who they were.
At the end of the '50s the following things happened:
1957: Little Richard gives up rock and roll and turns to religion.
1958: Jerry Lee Lewis blacklisted after news comes out that he married his 13 year old cousin.
1958: Elvis joined the Army and never really returns to rock and roll music.
1958: Payola scandal takes down Alan Freed and other prominent rock promoters.
1959: Buddy Holley, Richey Valens, and the Big Bopper die in a plane crash.
1959: Chuck Berry arrested on Mann Act charges.
1960: Eddie Cochran dies.
After all this, the record companies chose to switch to safe, pretty boy types of artists. Ricky Nelson, Fabian, Frankie Avalon, etc. And surf music and girl groups take off in a big way.
Agreed with most all of this, except the observation above. Elvis did have a down period of about two years after he joined the army, but to say he never really returns to rock and roll music after that is a dubious observation. He did get away from the style with some frequency, which was a new development, but singles like “(Marie’s the Name) His Latest Flame,†“Little Sister,†“Return to Sender,†“(You’re the) Devil in Disguise,†“Bossa Nova Baby,†“Suspicious Minds,†and “Burning Love†showed he could still rock when he wanted to.
I agree. Elvis was always a true and pure rocker til the day he died.
You completely misunderstood. Yes, they got famous after their stint on the Ed Sullivan Show, but that was not their first US appearance or US exposure. Louise Harrison worked very hard plugging her brother's band to get airplay in the mid-west and they did get some airplay. They also had exposure on the Jack Paar show making the adults aware of this crazy phenomenon in England at that time. I had asked some NYC DJs if they were aware of The Beatles before Ed Sullivan and they told me yes, they were aware of them. Some had seen them in England. Afterwards, they all jumped on the bandwagon to make money off of them. Brian and George Martin came to the US first, scouting around for a US record deal. They had a record deal with VeeJay and Swan records long before they made it big in the US and those records were floating around. I have a VeeJay record from 1963. So no, there was a lot of hard work to promote them, way before their Ed Sullivan premiere. Also there's a whole thing about Sid Bernstein booking them at Carneigie Hall and yes, I knew Sid too. Although I was not working in the recording business at the time, I heard all of the stories first hand from the parties involved years later and I did have some involvement with the Beatles' business.
I don't think so....and stand by my comment. Much of the US had zero exposure to the promotional efforts you're talking about. And teens didn't watch Jack Paar.
They were an overnight success, if there ever was one.
Frankie Avalon, Booby Darin, Fabian (Forte) and all the other "teen idols" of the early sixties were modeled upon Frank Sinatra's phenomenal success of twenty years before. Sinatra himself tried the same with Frank, Jr. (not very successful) and Nancy (did mostly C&W, and did somewhat better). Ozzie Nelson, who was a swing-era bandleader, had somewhat more success with Ricky.
The Beatles didn't actually displace an American act from the top of the record chats until the first week of February, 1964. The last American single to top the list was Bobby Vinton's There, I Said it Again. They were to hold the top position until mid-May, when Motown released Mary Wells' My Guy -- possibly the best example of the fully-assimilated "slick soul" of the day.
I have no direct connection to Metro Detroit; have never lived there. But growing up in rural Pennsylvania, CKLW was always my favorite AM station -- with a strong signal due to no obstacles between Detroit and us save Lake Erie; It played a somewhat higher proportion of British artists, probably due to its Canadian ownership, but you also heard a lot of Southerners, white and black. And the management had to keep an eye out for possible regulatory interference from the Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC).
Two examples of this effect I can cite from the playlists in the spring of 1967 were Tom Jones' cover of Bobby Bare's Detroit City, and the Beach Boys' Heroes and Villains (released as a single in Europe, but not in the United States -- I don't know what its status was in Canada).
The mid-Sixties were an amazing time for popular music.
Aaahhhh....that no doubt explains the early Detroit airplay. Minneapolis didn't have it.
CKLW quickly became one of my favorite stations after I moved to upstate New York in mid-'65. It was very directional to the East. Didn't get it at all in Minnesota.
The mid-Sixties were, indeed, an amazing time for popular music
Facebook has at east five separate pages dedicated to the "late, great 'Big 8' "
Nothing there for me but for a This page isn't available
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