CRUISIN' 1967
CRUISIN' 1967
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Dr. Don Rose
SIDE ONE (21:30):
Dr. Don Rose Theme
Judy In Disguise (With Glasses) - John Fred & His Playboy Band (2:47)
WQXI Hole-In-One Contest Plug
Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie - Jay & The Techniques (2:41)
1967 Ford Commercial
Happy Together - The Turtles (2:56)
WQXI Secret Student Announcement
Society's Child - Janis Ian (2:59)
Morgan Cleaners Commercial
I Think We're Alone Now - Tommy James & the Shondells (2:08)
Dr. Don's Birthday Book
Gimme Little Sign - Brenton Wood (2:20)
SIDE TWO (21:25):
WQXI Station I.D. & News
(We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet - The Blues Magoos (2:10)
WQXI 'Tenna Topper Contest Promo
Snoopy VS. The Red Baron - The Royal Guardsmen (2:43)
1967 Rambler Commercial
98.6 - Keith (2:45)
The WQXI Atlantan Of The Day
Little Bit O' Soul - Music Explosion (2:18)
John Smith Chevrolet Commercial
The Rain, The Park & Other Things - The Cowsills (2:57)
Falcon Factbook Announcement
Incense And Peppermints - Strawberry Alarm Clock (2:37)
WQXI "Good, Good Morning" Jingle
1967 is the CRUISIN' year when "Haight-Ashbury" and "hippie" became household words, when the Human Be-In was followed by Monterey Pop...But first, a word from our guide, Dr. Donald D. Rose of WQXI in Atlanta, known to its listeners as "Quixie in Dixie," a station that personified East Coast Top 40 AM radio and probably used more echo than any other during that period. Rose was the early morning jock (6 to 9 a.m.) and believed the best way to get things cracking was to load up the airwaves with groaning puns and corny jokes, punctuated by the sound of a mewling cow named "Lulu-Belle." If you asked him where he got the "Dr." in his name, he'd answer: "I studied medicine in Cairo...I'm a chiropractor. I could probably be a pretty good bone doctor...people say I have the head for it. But I've always specialized in psychoceramics...crackpots!" Mooooooo. "My voice reassures everybody that everything is okay and that we made it through the night," the Doctor explained. "My motto is: Smile even though it kills you, and you'll die with a silly grin on your face." Of course it wasn't all smiles in 1967, for this was the year fire killed three astronauts on the Cape Kennedy launch pad, the year of the six-day Israeli-Arab war, the year 66 were killed and 3,500 injured in racial rioting in Newark and Detroit. Still, it was also when Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first black Supreme Court justice, Dr. Christian Barnard performed the first successful human heart transplant, and 35,000 Vietnam protestors marched on Washington in a gallant attempt to levitate the Pentagon. Down in Pop Cultch Gulch, meanwhile, "Bonnie & Clyde," "Blow-Up," "Don't Look back" and "The Graduate" were among the favorite "youth" films released, and the year's top three albums also were linked to Hollywood too: "Dr. Zhivago," "Sound of Music" and "A Man and A Woman." North, in San Fransisco, everything was incense and music and dope, paisley, flower-power, lightshows and, for a short while, banana peels. This was the Summer of Love, LSD Not LBJ, and Take a Hippie to Lunch. And Rolling Stone (the magazine) was born. In the music world, Aretha Franklin recorded Respect, A Natural Woman and I Never Loved A Man...Jimi Hendrix released his first album, "Are You Experienced?"...Jim Morrison sang Light My Fire...Jefferson Airplane cut "Surrealistic Pillow"...Janis Joplin and Otis Redding were "discovered" at Monterey...the Beatles blew all minds with "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"...and don't forget Bobby Gentry's saccharine Ode to Billie Joe. Was it any wonder that record sales passed the $1 billion mark for the first time? Radio was changing, too, with the birth of the "underground" FM sound, also in San Fransisco. But, oh, the abundance of one-hit acts, groups that failed to make it into the Seventies and usually played for the youngest listener. For instance, whatever happened to the Happenings, the Casinos, the Soul Survivors, Don and the Goodtimes, Every Mother's Son, the American Breed, the Blades of Grass, the Lemon Pipers, the Love Generation, the Candymen, and the Fifth Estate - all of whom made debuts on the '67 charts, and departed shortly afterward? In CRUISIN' 1967, Dr. Don Rose's show presents several of the whatever-happened-to's, showing clearly the year's teeney-weeny appeal.
John Fred and his Playboy Band attracted more than pre-pubescents, of course - if for no other reason, their No. 1 smash, Judy In Disguise, was a clever take-off of the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky. It was also a danceable rocker in the southern white R&B category that should have earned John Fred and his Louisiana pals more than the predicatable follow-up hit.
In 1965 they were a southern California surfing band called the Crossfires. Then the Byrds hit with a Dylan song. So they changed their name to the Turtles and recorded It Ain't Me Babe. By 1967 the group was firmly established, but still hadn't had a No. 1 record. That came with Happy Together, a song as buoyant as its title, with impressive two-part harmony by the two largest Turtles, Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, who would later join Frank Zappa's Mothers and then become Phlorescent Leach and Eddie.
I Think We're Alone Now is one of those impassioned little ditties aimed at the innocence of the pre-teen, with a slap-bass rhythm added for boogie-ability. It went to No. 4 and was the fourth consecutive chart record for Tommy James and the Shondells, the archtypical bubblegum band that hit in 1966 with Hanky Panky and would hit again in 1968 with Crimson and Clover. In high school Brenton Wood ran the 100-yard dash in 9.5. His sprint through pop was similarly rapid and included the soulful Gimme Little Sign, a sound-alike follow-up to his curiously titled The Oogum-Boogum Song. In a year's time he was teamed with Shirley of Shirley and Lee, becoming the deeper-voiced half of Shirley & Alfred. (Brenton's real name was Alfred Jesse Smith.) The Blues Magoos got their hair cut at Vidal Sassoon's, had a stage wardrobe that glowed in the dark, were produced by Longhair Productions and probably were the first to use the word "psychedelic" in an album title. One of the songs on "Psychedlic Lollipop" was the first chart record for these well-groomed boys from the Bronx, (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet. One of the least imaginative groups in all of rock was something called the Royal Guardsmen. Snoopy vs. The Red Baron was a certified million-selling single in just three weeks, but what would the Guardsmen have done without all the pre-selling by Charles Schulz and his Peanuts comic strip? Later singles from this band included The Return of The Red Baron, Snoopy's Christmas and in 1968, an election year, Snoopy for President. Charlie Brown said it first: "Rats!" In the Fabian/Donovan tradition there came in 1967, Keith, whose real name wasn't Keith at all, but James Barry Keeper. Like Fabian, Keith was a Philadelphia boy. His No. 7 song of the year took its title from "normal" body temperature, 98.6. "Hey, 98.6, it's good to have you back again/Her lovin' is the medicine that saved me..." A thematically similar record was Little Bit of Soul by another one-hit act, the Music Explosion. In this song, little more than a series of rhyming couplets, soul was the patent medicine: "When you're feeling low and the fish won't bite/You need a little bit o' soul to put you right...when your girl is gone and you're broke in two/A little bit o' soul will see you through..." On with the bubblegum hit parade and listen to the Cowsills' initial hit, the awkwardly titled The Rain, The Park & Other Things. Seems the mortgage was due on the 20-plus-room mansion in Rhode Island, so dad put mom and the kids to work. The harmonizing was slick, but nothing was any ballsier than the American Dairy Association this family later went to work for. "The Cowsill refrigerator is always full of milk," said Mama Cowsill in all the magazine ads. So, presumably, were the Cowsills. The Dr. Don Rose morning show comes to a wide-awake close with Incense and Peppermints by a Los Angeles-based band that seemingly took its name from an elephant joke, the Strawberry Alarm Clock. (Others of the period: Moby Grape, Jefferson Airplane, the Electric Prunes.) They were heavily into paisley Nehru shirts and sitars in their publicity photos, and the music was vaguely jazzy, vaguely raga-ish, vaguely "psychedelic." Incense went to No. 1 and was featured in Dick Clark's myopic movie about hippiedom, "Psych-Out." Dick Clark? In 1967? CRUISIN' THE FIFTIES & SIXTIES: A History of Rock and Roll Radio. Conceived and recreated by: Ron Jacobs/Production and Research: Ellen Johnson, Jere Alan Brian, Sandy Gibson, Sharon Weisz, Lyn Layce/Engineering: Bill Hergonson/Art Direction: Paul Gruwell/Cover Art: Mike Royer/Executive Producer: Tom Bonetti/Dedicated to Wacco/All selections are the original performances as released on the following labels: Blimp Productions/White Whale: The Turtles/Double Shot: Brenton Wood/Jewel: John Fred/Laurie: Music Explosion, The Royal Guardsmen/MCA (Uni): The Strawberry Alarm Clock/Mercury: The Blues Magoos, Keith, Jay & the Techniques/MGM: The Cowsills, Janis Ian (Verve Forecast)/Roulette: Tommy James/Special thanks to the Radio Advertising Bureau and John Leader, WQXI Radio. I.D. jingles coutesy of TM Productions, Inc., Dallas/Produced by RON JACOBS for Increase Records, Los Angeles, California. (P) & © 1973 Increase Records/GRT Music Tapes
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Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie was another song that straddled the adult-teenybop line. The chorus was little more than children's verses run together ("Ready or not, here I come"...), but Jay and the Techniques, two black singers backed by five white musicians, presented a pleasing mix of soul and joy.
At first nearly every station in the country refused to play Janis Ian's composition Society's Child because of its controversial plot-line: white girl meets black boy, girl loses boy, girl blames society. Then Leonard Bernstein presented Janis - just 16 years old and a 4-foot-something - on a television special and Janis became a star.
