Our Era - Movies, Music, Radio and TV, 6th Edition

Our Era - Movies, Music, Radio & TV, 1950‟s and 1960‟s.Courtesy of 790WAKY.com — http://www.79waky.com/1958 & moreWAKY RadioTop 40 radio was radio based on the rock 'n' roll charts, radio with fast-talking deejays, radio with goofy commercials, radiowith songs meant to be played with the volume cranked up and the windows rolled down as you cruised Fourth Street or thecurb-service area of Frisch's or Ranch House.To put this cataclysmic change in perspective, consider the radio landscape at the time. The medium was largely live musicprograms, often performed by staff musicians. WHAS radio was still featuring local talent, including daily shows withRandy Atcher and Tiny Thomale. CBS radio network shows that had been running for years were still on the schedule aswell, including "Amos 'n' Andy," "Ma Perkins," "The Second Mrs. Burton" and "Mary Noble, Backstage Wife."WAVE radio was still carrying NBC radio network shows like "People Are Funny," "One Man's Family" and "Woman inMy House." WINN offered middle-of-the-road music – Sinatra, Patti Page, Jo Stafford, Mantovani. WLOU was part religion,part rhythm and blues with deejay Cliff Butler, shows like "Gospel Train" and "Hive of Jive," and a signoff at sundown.WKLO featured a bit of rock and roll, some country music and deejays Wilson Hatcher and Paul Cowley.But until that day, no Louisville station exclusively presented the hottest radio-programming format in the country, the plattersthat mattered, the stacks of hot wax, the rock that rolled.It was so hot because Top 40 radio wasn't only about music. It was also about being young. Being a teenager, specifically –a Brylcreemed, bouffanted, Clearasiled high schooler with time on your hands, the opposite sex on your mind and cash inyour pocket.More affluent than the teenagers of a generation before, the middle-class adolescents of the 1950s were raised by parentswho'd lived through a depression and a World War and were now enjoying a period of peace and prosperity. That their childrenwould never know poverty was a huge source of pride for them. And in 1960, the baby-boom kids – ones born from1947 on – began turning into teenagers. They were the first wave in a 17-year-long demographic bulge of teens, movingthrough American society like a rabbit swallowed by a python.This well-fed, well-scrubbed economic force had money on hand from a job, from the folks, or both. It was a river of revenue,and Elvis Presley was the first phenomenon to successfully tap into it. Teenagers bought Presley records, souvenirs,lipstick, record players, hair tonic, anything endorsed by the King. They turned his debut film, "Love Me Tender," into oneof 1956's biggest hits and gave record ratings to "The Ed Sullivan Show" when it featured Presley. They gave the samewarm welcome to Elvis' contemporaries – Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Bill Haley, Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry – and tothe more clean-cut idols who followed, such as Pat Boone, Ricky Nelson and Paul Anka. They were watching Dick Clark's"American Bandstand" each afternoon and Boone and Nelson on their weekly TV shows.Rock 'n' roll represented youth, fun, freedom, possibilities. It was a reaction to the saccharine ballads and smarmy instrumentalsso popular in the earlier 1950s – to teenagers, Frankie Laine singing "I Believe" was no match for Little Richardshouting "A-whomp-bomp-a-loo-bomp a womp-bam-boom" in the intro to "Tutti Frutti."No, by 1958 rock 'n' roll was here to stay, and the money was following along behind. No one understood this better thanGordon McLendon, co-owner of radio station KLIF in Dallas. By the mid-1950s, deejays like Alan Freed at WINS in NewYork were making a name for themselves playing rock 'n' roll, but by then McLendon had already built an entire stationaround it.By 1954, KLIF was the highest-rated metropolitan radio station in the country. It got that way through a structured formatof the latest music, urgent-sounding newscasts and what one trade journal called "razzle-dazzle promotion." Like Elvis'manager Colonel Tom Parker, McLendon was part genius, part flim-flam man. (He was also a ham actor – in the late 1950she produced two low-budget horror movies, "The Killer Shrews" and "The Giant Gila Monster," and had a starring role inthe latter.)The KLIF logo was a cartoon parrot because a real parrot had been trained to say the station's call letters on the air. Toboost interest in KLIF news coverage, McLendon placed ads in Dallas newspapers that "apologized" for the raw languageaccidentally included in the station's live coverage of breaking news events. In late 1956, the "Great KLIF Treasure Hunt"sent listeners scrambling all over Dallas to find a $50,000 check inside a buried bottle. In the KLIF "Money Drop Giveaway,"dollar bills were tied to balloons and thrown out the window of a Dallas hotel to waiting teens below. A KLIF schoolspirit contest in which students signed petitions disrupted so many classrooms that the promotion was dropped. Listenerswere asked to identify KLIF "Mystery" voices, students, locations and telephone numbers. One promotion gave away a livebaby – pig. In a 1959 contest, tickets to the moon were prizes, redeemable on March 15, 1987. (Some winners actuallyshowed up at the station that day, though the era of McLendon's ownership had long passed.)In between the contests – one running seamlessly into another, so that those crazies at KLIF always seemed to be up tosomething – there were incessant musical identifications with the call letters sung and shouted.Clearly, this profit machine fueled by goofy stunts, the clatter of the latest platter and the faint, only-slightly-better-than-the-lottery possibility of winning cash just for listening was a template that would work on other stations in other cities. SoMcLendon began gathering them – in Milwaukee, San Antonio, Atlanta and Shreveport. And Louisville.