New York Radio — A Commentary

The next part of the video documentary about New York Rock and Roll radio will get into what is, for me, everything.  77WABC.  I don’t care if you grew up in Los Angeles and think you had great radio stations there in the 60’s.  You were getting second best.  There were top-notch voices in L.A., to be sure; including the superb Gary Owens, who became a TV celebrity on Laugh-In, and Roger Christian, who co-wrote songs with Brian Wilson.  But I feel that WABC in New York in its heyday remains unique.

WABC was the audio wallpaper of my childhood.  Away from the city, in Connecticut, WMCA’s 5,000-watt signal couldn’t compete with ABC’s 50,000-watt transmitter.  Thanks to my best friend, pop culture historian Dennis Rogers, who has many radio station playlists, I can now see that WMCA catered more to the inner-city audience, and was much less restrictive than WABC, which dominated the suburbs.

As conservative, in a sense, as WABC was, as the 60’s progressed, and the teen audience grew up — or at least got older — the music became increasingly wild.  WABC’s morning man, the incomparable Herb Oscar Anderson (affectionately known as HOA), held down the fort for the Adult Contemporary format as long as he could.  And as long as there were songs like “Strangers in the Night” topping the charts, he would also play “Satisfaction.”

By 1968 the shift had begun in the radio market from singles on AM to albums on FM.  The Summer of Love bands that had appeared in 1967, like The Doors and The Jefferson Airplane, pushed AM radio playlists pretty darn hard.  Too hard for HOA.  Still #1 in the ratings, he nevertheless left WABC in September, 1968.  By coincidence, my family left Connecticut a few weeks later.

Arriving in Massachusetts, my siblings and I heard the legendary Boston FM alternative station WBCN, which had been on the air for only six months, and that changed everything.  AM radio turned to a younger audience and The Archies appeared at pretty much the same time as Led Zeppelin.  Personally, I listened to both, and I liked both!

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Sounds/Wordpress/CousinBrucie.mp3,http://www.dograt.com/Sounds/Wordpress/HOA.mp3]

Here are two audio clips.  First, a brief air check of Cousin Brucie from September ’68, when HOA walked, playing the beginning of Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild.”  Then, for contrast, Herb Oscar Anderson’s self-penned and performed theme song, the Lawrence Welk-inspired “Hello Again.”  Is it any wonder that HOA could no longer bridge the Generation Gap?

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8 thoughts on “New York Radio — A Commentary”

  1. I haven’t seen my friend’s copy yet. I assume “Hello Again” was self-published by HOA. It’s a real Lawrence Welkish throwback, but I have such fond memories of it from WABC in the 60’s.

  2. If I am right the record was on a 78 rpm not on 45. Maybe it will help. And I also think it was on Columbia

  4. I did not see these comments until tonight! Remind me – I got a fairly nice copy of “Hello Again” on ebay a few years ago – put out by Royal Crown Cola! Clean it up and it should sound very nice.

  5. Oh, definitely, HOA was a class act. I listened to him between the ages of 8 and 13, and loved the guy. Ironically, when HOA gave up WABC in frustration, was the same time when FM was taking away the acid rock that bothered him. But what was left on AM in 1969 was pure kiddie bubblegum, so he wouldn’t have been comfortable with that, either.

    There are some videos you should watch on YouTube, including one of HOA making a very recent appearance.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSfEssgyBnQ

  6. Amazing memories for my wife and me. Shortly after we were married in 1969, we would wake up to HOA’s rendition of “Hello Again”. At the tail-end of every program he use to close his show with with him singing another beautiful song that included, as part of the lyrics, “time will take you away and I’ll be alone; time will make every day the longest I’ve known…” I’d love to get a copy of that recording as well as “Hello Again”.

    HOA was simply the class act of DJs of that era.

  7. That clip of “Hello Again” was the best copy I could find. It was trimmed out of an aircheck on the musicradio77.com Web site. I can send you the MP3.

    The WABC jingles I have that came from the master tapes were put out by Ken R., who is now out of the jingle CD business:

    http://www.kendeutsch.com/about.html

    Ken had access to the jingle tapes produced by PAMS in Texas, which wasn’t the source for HOA’s theme song. I’ve searched without success on ebay, etc., to see if there’s a 45 available or, better yet, a CD taken from HOA’s master tape.

  8. How do I get hold of a copy of “Hello Again” are there 45,s [ I had one once] available? Better yet a compilation cd with other themes .

    Thanks

    T.M.

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