One of the things that brings me the most happiness doing oldies radio is the time honored tradition of taking requests and dedications. That was the hallmark of the 50’s and 60’s radio experience and it was everywhere. We saw it at the drive in restaurants where entire evening programming from the local radio stations was aimed at the idea of taking requests and dedications.
I did it during “The Nightbeat Show” at Doug Broome’s Drive in on WCOS, my old buddy Hugh Munn did it on “The Blossom Street Beat” from Gene’s Pig and Chick on WNOK. Whenever we got together over the years, part of the conversation was about how much fun that was.
Fun and just a little bit dangerous. By the time I started doing The Nightbeat Show, I was not completely familiar with the local scene. So occasionally I would wind up in the General Manager’s office explaining that I didn’t realize that the name of a country club given to me in a request was really a dig at a local high school. Or that this one request was really a veiled invitation for a “rumble.” For those of you who are not of a certain age, a “rumble” was a fight between high schools or gangs. It didn’t take long for me to become educated in the local high school scene.
It wasn’t always high school issues. I’ve written here before about my infamous visit from the local Hells Angels chapter to request Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild”. As trite and corny as that sounds, that really happened. Sometimes there were unintended results from a request; such as when an ex boyfriend heard a request from a new love for “his” girl. There is nothing quite like a jilted lover full of teen-age hormones finding her in the arms of someone else. Never mind that he had a date sitting in the front seat of his car waiting for the scene to be over. More than once, the back of my booth became a refuge for one of the corners of a love triangle. Fortunately thanks to the diligence of the restaurant owner, keeping an off duty police officer on site most of the evening. Usually these eventsoccurred peacefully as I allowed the young lady the use of my phone to call her parents or brothers to come get her.
By far the biggest part of requests and dedications was aiding and abetting the growth of a young love. Typically it starts with a boy giving a shout out to a girl he has his eye on. If he is lucky, she will show up later and respond with a song of her own. Time passes and sure enough, they show up together on a Friday or Saturday night to share a late night burger, fries and milkshake after an evening at the movies. Believe it or not, I know married couples who got their start via a request and dedication on The Nightbeat Show.
Another way that folks met was via our “Instant 60 Request” feature. Later called the “Instant 40 Request” when our playlist shrunk to the Top 40 from the Top 60, this allowed listeners to call in live when they heard the jingle for the request on the air. We would put them on the air live and let them request a song from our playlist. We would then immediately play their request on the air.
Needless to say, whenever we did an “Instant 60”, the phone lines would light up and we would select one of the first three callers to be part of the feature. But there were literally hundreds of listeners trying to get on at the same time. All but the lucky one would get a busy signal. This was back in the analog phone days where the “Bzzzt bzzt bzzt” sound of the busy signal was generated by a “busy generator”, a black box at the phone company. It could easily generate a busy signal for dozens of simultaneous callers, but when hundreds called in at the same time, the busy signal would get softer and softer and callers began to realize that they were on a big party line and could talk to each other over the diminished busy signal. I know some married couples who met over this “party line” too.
Of course, Ma Bell was not too happy with this situation and about once a year they would send a junior executive over to argue with our management that we should stop doing “Instant 80 Requests.” By the way, we never caved to the pressure! The instant request died a natural death when radio changed.
We also became aware that some of our more avid listeners would dial all of the station’s request line but the last digit. They would hold their fingers in the rotary dial and release them when they heard the request jingle or the beginning of a contest event. When we got wise to that, we leveled the playing field by putting all of the request lines on hold and waiting a few seconds before releasing them and taking the second wave of calls. It is amazing at the change in callers that came from that process. No one had an advantage anymore. Sure we got complaints from the “finger holders” but we held our ground. The other thing we put in place was a 30 day moratorium for contest winners and “Instant 60” requesters during which they could not participate. It was all good; I still saw a lot of the same faces as contest winners came to the station to claim their prizes.
Sadly, due to changes in technology and the consequences for something untoward getting on the air, these instant features are long gone from radio. What you hear on FM radio is anywhere between 7 and 20 seconds behind what the air personality is doing. Most stations have a 10 second “delay and dump” device that allows the DJ to drop a comment made by a studio guest or a caller. This is to avoid the hefty fine that can be slapped on a station by the FCC for some profanity that got through.
Sadly the biggest source of this problem is the lyrics of many modern songs. Back in the day, a record promoter would never allow a song to get to a station that had one of the banned words in it. Hey, I’m not saying it was all clean, just look at Hank Ballard and the Midnighters’ “Work With me Annie” or Billy Ward and his Dominoes’ “60 Minute Man.” As risqué as those songs were they still did not meet the standards imposed by the FCC for banning them. I’m not going to even touch some of Clarence Carter’s songs. Hmmm, maybe our parents were right about the influence of rock and roll, but then again, most of us came out ok.
These days, during live shows, I still take requests over the studio phone line or over the internet. I personally feel that taking requests provides for a better “mix” in the music. Every time I do a show, I get a request that reminds me of a song that I haven’t played in a while. When that happens I give out a silent “YES!” and get it loaded into the queue as soon as possible. On special days, I get a request for a song that I don’t even remember. SCORE!
I may not be able to play that song on that show because I don’t have it with me, but I will certainly take a note and get it for my next show. Oh MY!
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