Yesterday, my friend Mark Evanier wrote a piece about a 1967 song he liked, “The Letter” by The Boxtops. I thought it was pretty good, too, but for a different reason.
In my early days doing morning drive at the classic rock station WCXR in Washington, I was supposed to play eight songs an hour. So, the shorter the better, because it gave me more time to talk. “The Letter” was 1:57 long. Perfect. British invasion bands were good, too, including early Beatles, Beach Boys, or the Dave Clark Five. I could do a double shot of “All Day and All Of The Night” or “You Really Got Me” by the Kinks in under five minutes!
I still played plenty of songs that were three and a half or four minutes long. But there was never time for Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird,” or practically anything by Yes. If you heard those during my show, it meant I was in the bathroom with severe gastric distress. Otherwise, they stayed on the shelf in favor of “Gimme Some Lovin'” by the Spencer Davis Group or Janis Joplin’s “Mercedes Benz.”
You may wonder why management put up with this. The answer is the guy who did mornings at WCXR before me offered lots of music, but no personality. That combination led to low ratings.
Before accepting the job to replace him, I told the General Manager and Program Director they’d have to give me the leeway to be myself. That included segments like Knuckleheads In The News, the Harris Challenge, and the Marching Weathermen, plus topical conversations with my newsman, sports guy, traffic reporter, producer, and lots of listeners. The formula had led to big success in my prior morning radio gig at WHCN/Hartford, so the GM and PD agreed.
I gave them a big return on their support when I tripled my predecessor’s numbers in the first year.
And that’s why so many people in the DC area became familiar with not only “The Letter,” but also a certain 1969 micro-ditty by Crazy Elephant. There’s no video of them performing the song, but here are some young British women dancing to it on “Top Of The Pops”…