(Pictured: the Fifth Dimension.)

I have been writing a lot about 1969 lately, and here I go again. (If you think this is overkill, wait until it’s 50 years since the 70s.) What follows are some odds and ends from Billboard magazine 50 years ago this week:

—KLAC and KMET-FM in Los Angeles are coping with an engineers’ strike, as DJs and newsmen who are members of AFTRA won’t cross the engineers’ picket line. The strike began one day before KLAC was set to change format from talk to contemporary middle of the road music, but parent company Metromedia went ahead with the change anyhow. The strike is over Metromedia’s desire to have KLAC and KMET DJs run their own turntables, as they do at some other Metromedia stations. Currently, engineers start the records at the DJs’ direction. The company stresses that engineers will not be losing their jobs. They will still run the control boards. Metromedia managers with on-air experience are filling in for the regular DJs, some having to be flown in from other cities. It’s a method that was used in New York City earlier this year during a brief strike at Metromedia’s WNEW and WNEW-FM. Billboard says that the subsitutes are being “told to keep their chatter to meaningful comments, and to know such production values as how long the introductions and endings of the cuts run.”

Fifty years later: the “record turner” remained a presence at major-market stations long after 1969, although as this item indicates, that person often was responsible for running the control board, too.

—Bobbie Gentry is working on Christmas songs in hopes that they can be packaged as part of a TV special. She is just about to leave Nashville for London, where she will tape six episodes of Bobbie Gentry Presents for the BBC. When she returns, she will finish her second album with Glen Campbell. Her future plans include a Spanish-language album; she’s already recorded a version of “Fool on the Hill” in Japanese for Capitol Records to release over there.

Fifty years later: Best I can tell, the Bobbie Gentry Christmas special never happened. Neither did a full-blown Christmas album, although a 1969 Capitol Records Christmas compilation marketed by tire company B. F. Goodrich includes her performances of “Away in a Manger” and “Scarlet Ribbons.” (Both appear on the new box set of Gentry’s music, released last year.) The Spanish album never came to pass either, although she did record a single featuring “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” and “Here, There, and Everywhere” in Spanish.

—Buck Owens will star in a new TV show to premiere in June as a summer replacement for the Smothers Brothers. The show, titled He Hah, will showcase major country stars and be produced by former Jonathan Winters Show producers John Aylesworth and Frank Tiatt.

Fifty years later: Billboard got a lot wrong here. The show was titled Hee Haw, was hosted by Owens and fellow country superstar Roy Clark, and its producers were John Aylesworth and Frank Peppiatt, veteran writers and producers on both Canadian and American TV. The Laugh-In-inspired Hee Haw was successful enough during its summer run to get a regular slot on CBS, but it would last only two seasons on the network, becoming a victim of the “rural purge.” It returned in syndication in the fall of 1971 and ran for 22 seasons, often in an early-Saturday-evening timeslot. (It also got a brief late-90s reboot on the Nashville Network.) Everybody who was anybody in country music appeared on Hee Haw, and a number of the recurring comedy bits became iconic. Repeats of Hee Haw are still running on the RFD cable channel, and it’s surprising how well they hold up.

—Atop the record charts:

Rhythm and Blues Singles: “It’s Your Thing” by the Isley Brothers
Rhythm and Blues LPs: Cloud Nine by the Temptations
Classical LPs: Switched-on Bach by Walter Carlos
Hot Country Singles: “Galveston” by Glen Campbell
Hot Country LPs: Galveston by Glen Campbell, with Campbell’s Wichita Lineman at #2 and Gentle on My Mind at #5; Bobbie Gentry and Glen Campbell is at #9.
Easy Listening: “Galveston”
Jazz LPs: Fool on the Hill by Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66
Hot 100: “Aquarius”/”Let the Sunshine In” by the Fifth Dimension
Top LPs: the original cast recording of Hair

Fifty years later: [We apologize, but the proprietor is unable to get his mind around this stuff being 50 years old. Regular programming will resume as soon as possible. —Ed.]

(Pictured: Rod Stewart in the studio, 1979.)

Here’s a look inside Billboard magazine for the week of February 24, 1979.

—In Bowling Green, Ohio, music store Schoolkids Records has launched a new program. Owner Thom Abbott says, “I try to deliver records like pizzas—within 30 minutes after the order is phoned in.” Abbott’s target customers are the students at Bowling Green State University. “The store-to-door gambit isn’t as decadent as it appears,” Billboard says. “Usually Bowling Green winters are so fierce that only musical die-hards battle the icy stretches between the campus’ main dorm complex and the record stores.” Customers pay a buck or two over the in-store price per delivered album, but Abbott offers a price break for orders of two or three albums.

—Toto’s first single, “Hold the Line,” is at #98 on the Hot 100 this week, its 21st week on the chart. A review of the band’s February 8 club debut at the Roxy in Los Angeles is highly complimentary of the group’s musicianship, as befits a group of LA’s top session cats, but it doesn’t compliment much else. Ed Harrison writes, “None of Toto’s songs have any guts, all lacking that certain depth that separates them from the countless other songs churned out each year. Fortunately, ‘Hold the Line’ has such an engaging melody, coupled with multiple lyrical and instrumental hooks, that radio programmers couldn’t help but take notice. The remainder of Toto’s material is average, relying on intentional commercial devices and trite lyrics.” Harrison concludes by saying, “Until the band grows, which it does show potential to do, it will remain only a lightweight outfit with marginal depth, despite any success it achieves.”

—A full-page display ad touts a contest sponsored by A&M Records, the grand prize of which is a $20,000 customized Styx van, “loaded inside and out,” with the band’s logo on the hood and album covers painted on the sides. (See it on page 18 of the PDF at the link above.) Other prizes include Toshiba 5310 Beta-format video units, $1500 home stereo systems, Styx tour jackets, and Styx picture discs. The contest is apparently aimed at retailers and not consumers.

—Among the top-grossing bills currently on tour: Rose Royce with the Bar Kays, Michael Henderson, and Evelyn “Champagne” King; Steve Martin with Steve Goodman; the tripartite Parliament, Funkadelic, and Brides of Funkenstein; Heart with Firefall; and the J. Geils Band with Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. (Note from the present: sweet mama that last one would have been one hell of a show.) Heart is also doing some dates backed by Wet Willie. Santana is on the road with a couple of different openers, Sad Café and Seawind.

(Further note from the present: Sad Café, which featured future Mike and the Mechanics singer Paul Young, who is not the “Every Time You Go Away” Paul Young, was just ending a seven-week chart run in this week with “Run Home Girl,” a generic light-pop single. My college radio station had been playing the vastly different and far-better “Strange Little Girl.”)

—Bob James’ Touchdown is #1 on the Jazz LPs chart. “Bustin’ Loose” by Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers is #1 on Hot Soul Singles. C’est Chic is atop the Soul LPs chart. C’est Chic was recently repackaged for release in the UK as Tres Chic, with a new cover and the addition of two earlier Chic hits, “Dance Dance Dance” and “Everybody Dance,” but Atlantic Records apparently did so without the consent of Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards. For that reason, the album has been withdrawn.

—Eddie Rabbitt’s “Every Which Way But Loose,” from the Clint Eastwood movie of the same name, is #1 on Hot Country Singles. The Gambler by Kenny Rogers is #1 on Hot Country LPs. “I Just Fall in Love Again” by Anne Murray is #1 on Easy Listening.

—Rod Stewart and the Bee Gees are dominating the main singles and album charts. “Do You Think I’m Sexy” is #1 on the Hot 100 for a third week, and “Tragedy” is #6, up from #19 last week after debuting on the Hot 100 at #29 the week before. Stewart’s album Blondes Have More Fun is #1 on Top LPs and Tape, but the Bee Gees’ Spirits Having Flown is up to #2 after debuting last week at #4.

Forty years ago this week, I was only a few weeks removed from my first real live radio shift the past December. I had a regular gig on the campus radio station, but all was not entirely rosy there. That story will appear here on Friday.

You knew we’d be going back to 1976 sometime this month. Here’s what’s inside the issue of Billboard dated October 2, 1976.

Among the front-page headlines: “Disco Music Sounds Undergoing Changes.” Labels and artists have been stung by accusations that “emphasis on basic rhythms and marginal lyric content were mindless and insulting to the intelligence of audiences.” As a result, Billboard contributor Tom Moulton says, “The disco record is no longer all rhythms and a bunch of drums. . . . Consequently there is no longer a single, readily identifiable disco beat but a kaleidoscope of sounds that are melodic and danceable.” Among the artists mentioned as trendsetters of the new sound: Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, the Bee Gees, Lou Rawls, Donna Summer, Double Exposure, and Vicki Sue Robinson.

(Commentary from the present: Moulton’s contention interests me, as I’ve always believed disco, at least the stuff on the radio, was more interesting pre-1977, and that as time went by, the beat got more mindless, not less.)

The magazine’s Disco Forum includes a feature on the growing popularity of mobile discos, which can take the party anywhere. Twenty-one-year-old Bill Alan operates Apollo Disco, a mobile in Minneapolis, and says that when he entertained at a nursing home, he brought his parents’ Longines Symphonette albums, but the residents didn’t want to hear Dorsey, Dean Martin, or Sinatra. “They wanted Earth, Wind and Fire and Van McCoy,” Alan recalls.

Former CBS Records executive Clive Davis has been fined $10,000 for tax evasion but will not receive jail time. Two men and a woman have been arrested in the kidnapping case involving producer Lou Adler, who was held for eight hours early in September. A report by the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy says radio broadcasters could lose up to 15 percent of car listeners to “CB crosstalk” by 1980. The study also predicts chaos if the FCC goes ahead with plans to expand the citizens band without increasing its ability to regulate use of the new channels. A Christian music publisher is suing five Catholic churches in the Chicago archdiocese for using pirated hymnals. In recent years, publishers have stepped up efforts to collect royalties from individual churches, especially since the reforms of Vatican II changed the primary language of the Catholic mass from Latin to English.

A canvas of retail stores in the northeastern United States reveals that despite a standard list price of $6.98, albums are most frequently sold for $3.99. Stores based in malls and discount or department stores tend to sell at higher prices than retail record and tape stores and freestanding stores not connected with a mall. Prices in the New York and Philadelphia metro areas are the highest. The average price across the region is $4.94, although some stores in outlying areas sell $6.98 albums for as little as $2.99. In a related story, retailers would like labels to release more product at a price point of $4.98.

In the Marketplace section, readers can buy spray incense and velvet posters, FCC exam study guides for first- and second-class operator’s licenses, and several different radio comedy services. One guy advertises his service by saying, “Absolutely none can top my original, sophisticated material. Make listeners think you actually finished high school!”

On the record charts, the most-added singles on playlists across the country are “Muskrat Love” by the Captain and Tennille, “A Dose of Rock and Roll” by Ringo Starr, and the Bee Gees’ “Love So Right.” Albums getting the most adds to station playlists are Long May You Run by the Stills-Young Band, Year of the Cat by Al Stewart, Modern Music by Be Bop Deluxe, and Robin Trower’s Long Misty Days. Most-requested albums at radio stations are Linda Ronstadt’s Hasten Down the Wind, One More From the Road by Lynryd Skynyrd, and self-titled albums by Boston and the Funky Kings.

Rack jobbers report that 12 of the nation’s 40 best-selling albums are compilations of hit singles; Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 by the Eagles and Greatest Hits by War rank in the Top 10 of all albums sold. The jobbers’ best-selling albums are Frampton Comes Alive! and Fleetwood Mac. Frampton Comes Alive! is #1 on Top LPs and Tape; Silk Degrees by Boz Scaggs is #2. “Play That Funky Music” by Wild Cherry leads the sales chart for singles; it’s also #1 on the Hot 100 for a second week. “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight” by England Dan and John Ford Coley holds at #2, while Walter Murphy’s “A Fifth of Beethoven” and “Disco Duck” by Rick Dees make strong moves to #3 and #4. Both will eventually reach #1, Murphy next week and Dees the week after that.