Tonight I happened to catch a few minutes of the legendary disk jockey Bruce Morrow on WABC’s Saturday Night Oldies with Mark Simone. Cousin Brucie talks about meeting the Beatles.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/MAR07/CousinBrucie.mp3]
If you haven’t checked out my tribute to New York radio in the 60’s, click here. The picture above of Bruce Morrow interviewing the Beatles in 1965 is amusing, because the boys appeared bored and disinterested. Maybe they were stoned. Or perhaps they’d had their fill of New York DJ’s. Murray “The K” Kaufman had leveraged his contact with The Beatles during their first visit to shamelessly further his own career.
Excellent point! Remember a bit later, Perry Como had a big hit with “It’s Impossible?” Also, even our short, limited TV commercial air-time had ads for adults (“Mother, I can do it MYSELF!” Excedrin headache number 666), and for kids: “Hey, Louie, wanna try a nice Hawaiian Punch?”
The mid-to-late 60’s had a lot of songs that catered to adults. Dennis and I often comment on what a great mix of stuff there was back then. “A Taste of Honey” by Herb Albert (NY Jewish guy pretending to be a Mexican) and “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” are two examples that come to mind. All good. Elvis Costello was one of the first of the New Wave/Punk generation to come out about his admiration and appreciation for MOR/AOR songs in the 60’s.
Wow! Simone mentions Petula Clark! Synchronicity! Speaking of Pet, I was waiting for my Rx to be filled at CVS, and wandering around the store, when I came to a wire basket filled with drastically marked-down CDs. I reached down without looking and pick one up. What is it? “The Best of Petula Clark!” Only $5.00. I didn’t buy it, because of course, I’ve already got all of her songs downloaded on Napster. Cousin Brucie sounds exactly the same! He still sounds excited about his work and his part in bringing fame to the Beatles in the U.S. His comment about the press pandering to the adults was interesting. Nowadays, it’s sort of the opposite! At least, there are factions that are targeted toward the youth, and those ads play on MTV, etc, and the ads for Metamucil play during reruns of Matlock, if you get my drift.