One of the coolest features on the ’66 Mustang was a player for 8 track tapes. It was also available on the Thunderbird and Lincoln models, but the Mustang was still the height of cool and the 8 track was as cool as it got. from the Auto Parts store. By ’67, 8 tracks were available on all Fords, home units and 8 track boom boxes were available, and you could buy 8 track tapes from most of the record companies at your local record store.
8 Track Tapes Design
8 track tapes are an unusual design. Also known as Stereo 8, eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, or simply eight-track, instead of being reel to reel like most other tapes, 8 tracks had only 1 reel. Tape was pulled out of the center of the reel to play and wrapped back on the outside afterward. A piece of foil was spliced onto the end of the tape and, as the tape was playing, when the foil passed by, the play heads shifter to the next tracks. There was a “clunk” or “carunk” sound and the music kept on playing. Since it was 8 tracks, and 2 at a time were needed for stereo, the tape heads could move 4 times before they were back at the beginning. At 11 minutes a run through, that gave you 44 minutes total play time. Sometimes the track switch fell between songs, but often songs had to be broken in two or padded with extra filler to help the track switch gap fall in the right place.
Inside of an 8 track cartridge
The splice was the weak point on 8 track tapes. It held up for a while, but the heat of storing the cartridges in a car would dry up the lubricant and make the splice slip. They were repairable, but it took a lot of work if too much tape was unspooled. It wasn’t unusual to see broken 8 track cartridges with tangles of tape on the side of the road.
Add another factor of cool, the 8 track players were initially sold as the Lear Jet Stereo 8 and were invented and designed by the company that made Lear Jets. Rights to the technology was eventually sold to other manufacturers. An enhanced version, Quadraphonic 8 track was released in 1970. It sounded great with 4 separate audio tracks, but it was very expensive and used by very few car companies.
8 track usage faded out slowly through the 70s giving way to the cassette. Cassettes were smaller, easier to store than 8 track tapes and took advantage of newer tape technology to produce a higher quality sound. Cassettes were in turn replaced by CDs in the mid 80s. Ughhh, writing this article makes me realize how many times I’ve spent $ on the same music.
Payola wasn’t new to the music industry when Rock and Roll arrived. Several factors seemed to come together at the same time, leading to a blowup that radically changed the course of Rock and Roll.
The term Payola is a contraction of the words pay and Victrola, a popular brand of record player. Sometimes called Pay To Play It’s the illegal practice of record companies paying money for the playing of records. This made a record appear more popular that it might have been, giving the artist more exposure, a better rating on the charts, and influencing other radio stations that might be on the lookout for the next hot record. It’s not as common or outright now as it was in the past, or maybe it’s just hidden better. The law prevents record companies from paying directly, but still allows payments through intermediaries.
At most radio stations now, a music director or manager selects the songs to be played and, frequently, the order and time where they will be played. It was mentioned earlier that the Payola scandal arose due to several factors that came together at the same time. Consider these cultural changes:
Rock was new, popular with the kids, and generally disliked by their parents.
The two large music licensing companies, ASCAP and BMI were at odds. They were always competitive, but ASCAP had a slow start in the Rock and Roll business and possibly saw a way to get even with rival BMI. One can only guess that they saw Rock and Roll as a passing fad!
Technology was giving power to the independent radio stations. Radio was previously confined to the home where family standards controlled the dial. Introduction of personal radios, clock radios, and the portable transistor radio gave teens their own dial to control.
By the late 50s, the post-war baby boomers were a sizeable economic force, and advertisers found that Top 40 radio was a good way to target them, leading to a boom in independent stations.
The inexpensive, newly introduced 45 rpm single allowed teens to purchase popular hits on a limited budget. Also, consider that the Payola scandal came along at a time that elected officials were just learning how to get free publicity from holding high profile hearings. This was the time of the McCarthy Hearings, and the Payola inquiries were carried out by the same commission that was working on the television game show investigations.
The Payola Congressional Hearings
Twenty-five witnesses were called, the most famous being Alan Freed and Dick Clark, and the list included other notables such as Les Paul, Bobby Darin, and Murray the K. Ironically, at the time, Payola wasn’t actually against the law, although Alan Freed was eventually convicted on 2 counts of commercial bribery.
Much has been written about the difference between Freed and Clark. Alan Freed resisted testifying on principle, claiming that he never played a record he didn’t actually consider worthwhile, no matter what was given to him. His attitude didn’t play well with the industry, and he was essentially blackballed, ending his DJ career. Freed died a few years later, broke, alcoholic, and depressed in 1965.
Dick Clark, on the other hand, testified freely and even brought a statistician with him to prove that payola had not affected the sales of records with which he was affiliated. He had sold his music related interests before the hearings.
His testimony included “I have not done anything that I think I should be ashamed of or that is illegal or immoral,” Mr. Clark said, “and I hope to eventually convince you of this. I believe in my heart that I have never taken payola”. At another point in the hearing, Representative Steven B. Derounian quipped “You say you did not get any payola, but you got an awful lot of royola”.
Others caught in the fray include Les Paul and Bobby Darin, both charged with paying to perform on Freed’s ABC television show, and DJs Joe Niagara (WIBG, Philadelphia), Tom Clay (WJBK, Detroit), Murray “The K” Kaufman (WINS, New York), Arnie “Woo Woo Ginsberg WMEX, Boston), and Stan Richards (WILD, Boston).
Shindig, Hootenany, and Hullabaloo were early TV rock music programs. Hootenany was first to air on ABC from April 1963 to September 1964. It was a variety show format and featured mostly folk music type acts. Early 1963 shows were 30 minutes, expanding to 60 minutes when the new season started in the Fall.
Hootenany was a big hit and by 1964 it was ABC’s second most popular program. In the TV industry, that’s a sure sign that there will be spin offs and copycats, and there were. Hootenany magazine and ABC-TV Hootenany were soon on store shelves.
As a side note, Hootenany ran into some controversy when it was rumored that they blacklisted Pete Seager and his group The Weavers. At the time, Seaver Seager had been convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to testify at the House Un-American Activities Committee (which was later overturned). This was the same committee that subpoenaed Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman of the Yippies in 1967 and 68.
Hootenany taped many of their episodes at college and university campuses. Frequent guests included The Journeymen, The Limeliters, the Chad Mitchell Trio, The New Christy Minstrels, The Brothers Four, Ian & Sylvia, The Big 3, Hoyt Axton, Judy Collins, Johnny Cash, The Carter Family, Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, The Tarriers, Bud & Travis, and the Smothers Brothers.
Shindig logo
Shindig was next. As the folk music scene faded out, Shindig was brought in as a replacement in 1964. Shindig was more rock oriented. Popular repeat performers included Lesley Gore, Bo Diddley, Sonny and Cher, The Beach Boys, James Brown and The Ronettes. There were several shows at the beginning of the British Invasion taped in Britain that included The Who, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles.
House band and performers included many artists that went on to be stars on their own. Shin-digger dance troupe regulars included Teri Garr and Toni Basil. The house band Shindogs included later to be famous Glen Campbell, Billy Preston, James Burton, Delaney Bramlett, Larry Knechtel, Leon Russell , and Glen D. Hardin. Regular vocalists also included some young talent: Donna Loren, Jackie DeShannon and Bobby Sherman. Darlene Love was one of the back up singers.
Next on TV was Hullabaloo, a NBC musical variety on in prime time. It had a bigger budget and more polished look. There was a different host every week, usually a top name artist, singing a couple of their own songs and acting as MC for the show.
Hullabaloo was a broadcast in color for those lucky few that had color TVs in the 60s, but most of the surviving footage is in Black and White. Many of the Hullabaloo and Shindig shows are still available on DVD and some streaming services.
I guess it’s time now. When I first wrote the material that ended up on this website, the Woodstock concert was considered the beginning of the time after The Golden Age of Rock. Now, time has blurred a bit, and I’m adding it to the site. So here’s the story of the greatest concert of all time.
The Promoters
Woodstock started with four young men with money but little experience as promoters. John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld, and Mike Lang originally planned to build a recording studio and artist’s village. The Woodstock area was already home to several famous musicians and seemed like a good choice.
Their plans included a rock concert to generate publicity and finance the studio. Their original location was an industrial park in Wallkill, on the other side of Poughkeepsie, and about 50 miles south of Woodstock. But the people of Wallkill weren’t happy with the idea of stoned concert-goers invading their town and passed an ordinance that banned it less than two months from the concert date.
Tickets had already been sold, and the promoters were in a bind. Their savior was Max Yasgur, a dairy farmer in Woodstock who offered 600 hundred acres of his fields in Bethel for a reported $75,000. That was a lot of money in 1969 when a full-size Chevy only sold for $2,650. Max made out ok; it was the equivalent of over half a million dollars today.
The Move to Bethel
The move to Bethel saved the concert, but the promoters didn’t have time to reorganize all of the support and vendors that the concert needed for their planned 50,000 people. As the concert dare approached, the anticipated attendance grew to 200,000, and their plans collapsed. When some 500,000 showed up, they were overwhelmed.
The rest is history. Half a million concert goers showed up. Many more of us baby boomers wished we were there. Probably ten times as many as were actually there claimed to have been there. The weather was lousy; it rained; everything was mud. The poor planning meant very few toilets and almost no food vendors. Yet, the concert lived up to it’s billing as 3 days of Peace and Music.
The press had a field day, reporting on the mud, drugs, beer, nudity, and sex. Us rock fan baby boomers loved it; our parents looked at it in shock.
The Bands
Woodstock Poster
Many of the top bands were there, and we heard several of rock’s most memorable performances.
The Who were about an hour into their Rock Opera “Tommy” and had just finished “Pinball Wizard” when left activist Abbie Hoffman jumped on to the stage and started shouting. Pete Townshend grabbed the mic shouting “F* off, F* off my F*ing stage,” “the next f*ing person that walks across this stage is gonna get f*ing killed!”. Looking back at it, maybe Abbie Hoffman made a poor choice in interrupting a bunch of rockers that liked to end their performances by smashing their guitars.
Carlos Santana went to Woodstock as a relatively unknown. He left as a guitar legend. His drummer, Michael Shrieve, put out a drum solo that is still considered one of the best of all time.
Jimi Hendrix closed the show and lit up the stage with what is remembered as one of the greatest performances ever. His Star-Spangled Banner was a one-person symphony, stretching his guitar strings and notes in amazing ways. Remember, this was the height of the Vietnam War, just playing The Star-Spangled Banner was controversial.
The Aftermath
Two people died at the concert, one from a drug overdose and one that was run over by a tractor while sleeping in a field, and it was reported that there were two births.
When it was all over, the farm owner Max Yasgur said to the crowd at Woodstock on August 15, 1969: “This is the largest group of people ever assembled in one place, and I think you people have proven something to the world: that a half a million kids can get together and have three days of fun and music and have nothing but fun and music and I God Bless You for it!”
The Woodstock concert film was released the following year, and Woodstock became synonymous with flower power, the hippie culture, and peace protests common to the 70s. The concert site and surrounding land was purchased in 1997 and has become the Bethel Center for the Arts. It opened on July 1, 2006, with the New York Philharmonic playing (quite a difference, huh!).
The four young men who started it all ended up almost a million dollars in debt and burdened with dozens of lawsuits. Income from royalties and the movie took care of some of it, but they still ended up deep in a hole. Yet, we have to thank them. They may not have done a good job of running the concert, but they gave us some of the greatest times that rock and roll have ever seen.
The End of An Era
It was probably a combination of the times and the bands of Woodstock that built the festival into the mega festival of all time. The Golden Age of Rock had been growing since the mid-50s, had already captured most of the baby boomer generation, and was still growing. Woodstock’s success was a signal that the Rock revolution was coming to an end. It was a hard-fought battle pitting the older generations against the baby boomers. As it wrapped up, it was clear that rock won and we look at the lead into the Woodstock festival as the end of The Golden Age of Rock.
Woodstock celebrated the victory. Many of the best bands were all there and they were pure rock and roll. All of Rock’s flavored were present …everything from folk-rock to acid rock. And the crowd was heavy-duty into all of it.
[ays_quiz id=’4′]
Woodstock Lineup
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Richie Havens
Country Joe McDonald
John Sebastian
Sweetwater
Bert Sommer
Tim Hardin
Ravi Shankar
Melanie
Arlo Guthrie
Joan Baez
Quill
Keef Hartley
Santana
The Incredible String Band
Canned Heat
Credence Clearwater Revival
The Grateful Dead
Janis Joplin
Sly and The Family Stone
The Who
The Jefferson Airplane
Joe Cocker
Max Yasgur
Country Joe and The Fish
Swami Satchidananda
Ten Years After
The Band
Blood Sweat and Tears
Johnny Winter
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young
Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Sha-Na-Na
Jimi Hendrix
Probably the best known of the early disk jockeys, in the early 50s Dick Clark was a DJ at WFIL in Philadelphia where he filled in for the host Bob Horn on Bob Horn’s Bandstand at the station’s television affiliate. By 1956, Clark had taken over as the full time host. The show was picked up by ABC and went national on August 5, as American Bandstand. American Bandstand was shown daily until 1963, then weekly until 1989.
American Bandstand featured real kids dancing to Top 40 rock music, sometimes with lip-synched performances by the artists themselves. It is joked that Dick Clark taught the generation how to dance, the girls watched the show and learned the newest dance steps, then they taught the boys (sometimes unwillingly!).
Clark got caught on the fringes of the Payola scandal in 1959 as the U. S. Senate investigated the practice of music producing companies paying broadcasting companies to favor their product. Clark, who had business intersts in music publishing, was investigated and testified before Congress in 1960. Clark was not charged with any illegal activities but he was required by ABC to divest his publishing and recording interests.
He later went on to be involved in a number of other television series and specials as producer and performer including Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, The $10,000 Pyramid (later $20, 000, $25,000, $50,000, and $100,000), TV Bloopers & Practical Jokes, American Dreams, and The Other Half. In 1973, Clark created and produced the American Music Awards show. Originally intended as competition for the Grammy Awards, in some years it gained a bigger audience than the Grammys due to being more in touch with popular trends.
Perhaps the biggest hero in the story the Rock and Roll revolution was Alan Freed. Freed wasn’t a musician, but a disc jockey and promoter who earned the name “Father of Rock and Roll”. Keep in mind that rock was originally known as Race music or African-American Rhythm and Blues and was very rarely played on white radio. Freed wasn’t the first to play rock on the air, but he was a skilled promoter and by calling it Rock instead of Rhythm and Blues, and by playing mostly white covers of black songs. In doing so, he became a pioneer in racial integration at a time when segregation was rampant.
Originally known on the air at radio station WJW in Cleveland, Ohio, as “Moondog”, he set up what was probably the first rock and roll concert and called it “The Moondog Coronation Ball” on March 21, 1952. The event was attended by a racial mix which was unusual for the times. It drew a large crowd but had to be ended early due to overcrowding.
Later concerts were much more successful and continued to draw large mixed crowds. Within a few years, he moved to the big market in New York City where he turned WINS into a rock and roll radio station. Later, he would go on to record programming for Radio Luxembourg whose broadcast covered all of Eastern Europe. It’s interesting to picture The Beatles as youngsters listening to Freed’s show and playing along with the music.
More success followed, as Freed went on to star in several motion pictures featuring many of the new Rock Stars that he helped to create.
Alan Freed at WABC
Television followed his movie success, but problems soon arose with the IRS, questions about royalties, and the Payola scandal. His series was cancelled, but interestingly, as Freed left television, the void that was created was filled by another DJ named Dick Clark.
The final blows to his career came as a result of the Payola investigation, when he was accused of accepting bribes for playing records, coupled with accusations that he had been given credit as a co-writer for some songs. As a co-writer, he was able to receive royalties, and this encouraged him to heavily promote the song. Chuck Berry’s Mabeline was a notable example cited.
Freed ended up pleading guilty to commercial bribery and was given a suspended sentence along with a fine. Although the punishment was relatively light, his tarnished reputation prevented the top stations from hiring him and interfered with his concert promotions. Alan Freed died young in 1965 before he was able to fully re-establish his reputation.
In 1978, the motion picture American Hot Wax was released, inspired by Freed’s contribution to the rock and roll scene, leading up to a concert that was held in New York City in 1959. In 1986, Freed was part of the first group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which was built in Cleveland in recognition of his involvement in the birth of Rock. In 1988, he was also posthumously inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame and was later recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.
Gather ’round everybody, for you’re about to hear,
The show that’s gonna make you, grin from ear to ear,
It’s Arnie Ginsberg, on the Night Train Show.
He plays the old and new, the swinging and the blue,
He plays all the records, especially for you,
It’s Arnie Ginsberg, on the Night Train Show
Hey, Arnie Woo Woo Ginsburg was good, he wasn’t a great up in the same class as some of the others here, but he was my disk jockey growing up in greater Boston. Every major market had a DJ like Arnie, he was hyper, fast talking, and knew his music inside and out.
Every night, we’d crank up WMEX on our radio tubes and listen to his bells, horns, whistles, and “Adventure Car Hop is the place to go for food that’s really great”….and if you said “Woo Woo” when you ordered, you’d get 2 burgers for the price of one!
Mixed in with his chatter was top 20 music, and if you wanted in on the buzz the next day, you had to listen to Arnie at night.
Murray the K worked as a promoter and producer through the 50’s, but he caught his big break in 1958 when he signed on with WINS in New York to do the all-night show. This was just as WINS’s star disk jockey, Alan Freed, was indicted for tax evasion and forced off the air. Freed’s spot was briefly occupied by Cousin Bruce, Bruce Morrow, but Murray was quickly moved into the time period and remained there for the next seven years.
When he left WINS, his next stop was at WOR-FM where. As program director and primetime evening DJ, he created the first FM rock station, setting the pattern for countless other stations that followed, including WNEW-FM and WCBS-FM.
Kaufman reached his peak of popularity in the mid 60s when, as the top-rated radio host in America’s largest market, he became an early supporter of The Beatles. Later, Murray was referred to as the “Fifth Beatle,” by George Harrison during a train ride from New York to the Beatles’ first U.S. concert in Washington, D. C. Their friendship was renewed when they came to NYC in February, 1964 and met again. He was invited to the set of A Hard Day’s Night in England and made several treks to England during 1964, giving WINS listeners more Beatle exclusives.
Following Alan Freed’s lead, Murray produced several concerts each year. Those shows featured the top performers of the era and introduced new acts, such as Dionne Warwick, Wayne Newton, Bobby Vinton (who was the leader of the house band when he asked for a chance to perform as a singer), The Lovin’ Spoonful, Cream, and The Who. Murray the K left WINS in the mid-60s when they switched formats, and worked at stations in Toronto and Washington D.C. before returning to New York to team with Don Imus and Wolfman Jack on WNBC.
Don Steele, often promoted as “The Real Don Steele” to distinguish himself from another DJ with the same name, was one of the most popular disc jockeys in the United States, from the mid 60s until his retirement in the 90s.
Steele first fame came as a DJ on Los Angeles radio station KHJ with the “top-40 Boss Radio format” in the 60s. He also appeared on TV in his own programs called Boss City and The Real Don Steele TV Show, a show which ran from 1965 to 1975 on KHJ-TV channel 9 in Los Angeles. When FM stereo radio gained popularity in the 1970s, Steele made the switch and continued his popularity.
In a 1995 interview, his description of Boss Radio was, “Look, you take the Motown sound and the British Invasion and you throw in Elvis and Roy Orbison, and you have a music mix that’s hard to beat at any time or any place”.
In the early days of rock, when all that we had was AM radio, Wolfman Jack taught us how to rock.
Clap for the Wolfman
He gonna rate your record high
Clap for the Wolfman
You gonna dig him til the day you die
These words are from the opening of the song “Clap for the Wolfman” by the Guess Who….and it’s not just any DJ that gets songs written about them!
Bob Smith, aka Wolfman Jack, borrowed some strong style ideas from the king of DJs. Alan Freed. Freed had used the name Moondog at the start of his Rock and Roll career; Smith used the moniker Wolfman. Freed used a howl in his broadcasts, Smith borrowed the howl and took it further adding his low gravely voice.
The Wolfman gained fame while broadcasting from XERF-AM, a super power radio station in Mexico, just over the border at Del Rio, Texas. AM stations in the US were limited at the time to 50 KW, XERF in Mexico was broadcasting at 500 KW and could be received across the US and into Canada. He played a wild mix of music, mixing in rockabilly, blues, doo-wop, zydeco, rhythm and blues, and jazz. These styles were all the parents of rock. And of course, he played rock and roll. Wolfman Jack’s nightly show brought them all together and introduced fans of each style to the new rock.
His music selections led many listeners to assume that he was Afro-American, and he did his best to hide his true identity. Some say that if it were known that he was a white boy from Brooklyn, the frequent howls and sexually suggestive persona wouldn’t have had the same effect. The Wolfman passed away in 1995, but reruns of his shows are still being played.
Wolfman Jack’s Honors
The Wolfman is a member of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.