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The 'Long and Winding Road' traveled on by millions of fans since 1964 with the advent of Beatlemania came to an end in 1970. By that point, the Beatles split up was merely a formality with each of the members having pursued their own musical agendas for some time. The aptly titled, 'Let It Be' was nearly the biggest song of the year on the WPGC Top 100, eclipsed only by the Guess Who's, 'American Woman', all the more remarkable in that the latter never hit #1 on the WPGC Good Guys Super Hit survey at any time during the year. Yet it racked up enough points to top the year-end tabulation.

Motown came back with a vengeance as the five brother group, the Jackson 5 replaced the Supremes as the label's biggest act, scoring four consecutive songs that hit #1 nationally in the period of 12 months. Smokey Robinson & the Miracles finally got their first #1 Pop hit with, 'Tears Of A Clown' while Edwin Starr's timely anti-Vietnam protest song, 'War' reflected the rising tensions domestically as opposition to the War rose to new heights. Ironically, the Temptations had originally recorded the song which appeared on their, 'Psychedelic Shack' LP, the same one which yielded the hit record of the same name for them that year.

The dawn of Soft Rock emerged with acts such as the Carpenters and Bread garnering a sizeable share of the record buying public's coin. This despite a pronounced Rock lean in 1970 at WPGC with artists such as Frigid Pink who heretofore had never enjoyed the mass exposure a blowtorch like 1580 and 95.5 could provide. But it was the Shocking Blue who led the short-lived Dutch Invasion with other acts from Holland like the Tee Set and George Baker Selection charting that year.

The 'Great White Way' provided more fodder for hit tuneage with Murray Head & the Trinidad Singers with, 'Superstar', and Norman Greenbaum's ode to a Higher Power, 'Spirit in the Sky' launched 'Jesus Rock'. This while music from the movies included B.J. Thomas', 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head' from 'Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid' and the Paul McCartney penned, 'Come And Get It' by Badfinger from, 'The Magic Christian'.

Remakes made their presence known with Joe Cocker's covers of the Beatles', 'She Came In Through the Bathroom Window' and the Boxtops', 'The Letter' as well as the Who's re-do of Eddie Cochran's, 'Summertime Blues' gained nearly as much airplay as the originals did. Simon & Garfunkel would pick up more Golden Gramophones for their then-final work together as a duo in 1970 with their milestone, 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' LP that won the Grammy for 'Album of the Year' while the title track picked up honors for both 'Song of the Year' (for songwriter, Paul Simon) and 'Record of the Year' (for the duo). Nine years later, the song would be ranked as #2 on the WPGC Top 50 of the '70's, surpassed by only Debby Boone's, 'You Light Up My Life'.

 

(Special thanks to Walt Bailey for the audio above).

 

This aircheck shows 'Good Guy' Davy Jones just a few years after his arrival at WPGC in May of 1967 as a much hipper 'Dave Jones', paralleling a discernible lean toward more rock material (e.g., Liquid Smoke's 'I Who Have Nothing'). He would leave the station within a few months for cross-town WMAL-FM, (AOR).

The station's adventuresome spirit with new adds led to numerous songs on the countdown which while popular locally, barely made the Hot 100 nationally (e.g., Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell's 'The Onion Song').

The Washington area had suffered a major blizzard the night before, explaining why Morning Man, Harv Moore can be heard doing a newscast in the afternoon - he was still at the station with nowhere to go!

 

 

Following Davy that night (1/1/71) as he did every night was 'Jim Madison', a house name long used on the station. This was at least the fourth guy to use the name, better known today as Joel Denver, former CHR editor of 'Radio & Records' and founder of the 'All Access Music Group' in LA. It was Davy who got him into the station the year before at age 19 from suburban WINX in Rockville, Maryland.

Other things to listen for:

- A Soundoff featuring 'Mr. Soundoff' (General Manager, Bob Howard), complaining about the Draft (not the beer kind!).

- A live spot for A&M Records, sponsor of the countdown.

- The abrupt ending of the Beatles 'Long & Winding Road' at 5:15PM, the January sign off time for the AM daytimer (the FM only ID follows immediately).

- A spot for Sears' record dept., featuring Three Dog Night.

- A Casey Kasem tease for 'American Top 40'. WPGC was one of the original 8 stations to carry the show on July 4th, 1970.

 

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