https://youtu.be/Fd2QANK6hYg
My birthday present from Turner Classic Movies.
Category: Music
In One Ear, In the Other
With an apology to the hearing-impaired, headphones are required for this audio recording quiz.
I heard the effect in the recording before he pointed it out, but with the expectation there was a technical problem, I assumed a microphone was out of phase with the other mics. This is his follow-up entry.
The Lennon Sisters Sing About Puberty
The Lennon Sisters sang this “coming of age” song on the Lawrence Welk Show in 1956. Kathy, on the left, was thirteen going on fourteen. Peggy, on the right, was fifteen going on sixteen. Eldest sister Dianne, aka Dee Dee, was sixteen going on seventeen, and Janet was ten.
“Thirteen Going on Fourteen” hasn’t aged well, but the Lennons, being girls singing about girls, made it a cute little song. I can imagine Welk thought it was perfect for them when he heard the single recorded by the Crew Cuts. Today, a quartet of men in their mid-20’s singing about a 13-year-old girl being “a pretty little flower, ready to bloom,” comes across as rather creepy.
Written by Al Hoffman and Dick Manning, what’s most interesting about “Thirteen Going on Fourteen” historically is that it predates Rodgers and Hammersteins’ “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” by three years.
Reminder: Today!
DJ Tom Hanks is coming to a streaming player near you.
Maybe even this one!
Here’s something to get us warmed up.
Songs! Laughs! Never a Cover Charge!
Your Master of Ceremonies DJ returns to Boss Radio 66 on TuneIn, one week from today.
No Static at All – 3
I think of the 1965 installation of the Master FM Antenna on the Empire State Building as another example of the 60’s being the most happening of decades.
“… for the first time multiple FM stations could operate at full power from a single shared antenna system…”
https://www.aes.org/blog/2019/7/empire-state-buildings-historic-alford
Three things happened in the 60’s that brought about the FM radio revolution. First, adding stereo sound.
https://www.radioworld.com/columns-and-views/roots-of-radio/how-fm-stereo-came-to-life
Second, as covered in a 2019 post, transistorized Japanese stereo receivers of high quality were being brought home by returning Vietnam vets. Which quickly transformed the home audio market.
Third, on January 1, 1967 the FCC’s non-duplication rule, written in 1964, finally took effect. Stations in larger cities that were licensed to operate both AM and FM transmitters had to offer unique FM programming. The easiest, and by far the cheapest, way to do that was to let kids from college stations bring free-form programming to commercial radio.
Three days after the FCC edict, there was an event of cosmic serendipity. The Doors released their first album. “Light My Fire” had a single version for AM stations…
… and the hippies who would soon be at the mics of newly liberated FM stations played the album version. Underground Radio was born.
In a few months there was Jimi Hendrix, the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Underground Radio ushered in the Summer of Love.
In Boston, as I have mentioned numerous times, we had the legendary WBCN. I was fortunate to listen to BCN during its first five years, while it was truly revolutionary.
A couple of FM engineering nods:
- A colleague and friend of Boss Radio 66 founder Debbie Daughtry is Steve Shultis, CTO of New York Public Radio. When the Master FM Antenna was being decommissioned, Shultis was one of the people who claimed dibs on an array element before it went on the scrap heap.
https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/news-makers/shultis-helps-put-radios-best-face-forward
- Closer to home, Christopher Kelly is the transmitter engineer for Boston Public Radio station GBH.