Sunday, August 20, 2006

KFXM Marathon Of Hits

If you've listen to oldies station on a regular basis, you have heard a Top 300, 400, or 500 of all time on holiday weekends such as the 4th of July or Memorial Day. KRTH in LA had a Firecarcker 300 for about 10 years that was based on listeners votes back in the 80s and 90s. Back staring in May of 1962 KFXM asked their listeners to vote on their favorite oldies but goodies by send in a list of their favorite 15. They played them during the 4th of July holiday.
Here's a copy of their current survey, and on the back their Maraathon Of Hits. They had of course 59 of them. I don't know if they played more than 59 during their marathon. I guess 300 would have been overdoing it in 1962.
#1 The Mountains's High-Dick & Dee Dee
What is interesting is that Theme From A Summer Place - Percy Faith was #9, and for the next 20 years has been near the top on most of the Top 300 I've seen.
K/MEN did a Sound-A-Thon of the Top 129 of all time towards the end of 1963, but KFXM beat them by a year and a half.
If anyone knows of an earlier "all time hits" survey, let me know.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's interesting that no records were from 1962 and only a handful were from 1961. In fact the most recent songs on the list were "Runaround Sue" "Sad Movies" "The Mountain's
High"(which was the #1 song on the list.)All from the second half of '61.
Everything else was at least a year
old.

Anonymous said...

Back then, an oldie was not an
oldie unless it was at least
6 months old. Thus, the
absence of the stuff from
62 when this was done in 6/62.

Then in the early 70's I would
hear an "oldie" that just
dropped out of the charts
only 2 months earlier.
The idea changed, I guess.

IE radio fan

Anonymous said...

In the early '70's songs that were
6 months or less off the chart were
called re-currents. They were in regular rotation for about a year.
Two of these songs per hour at least were on the format clock.
These were really the most familier
songs you could play. The DJ's all
hated these the most because they've been playing them for months.