The Story of Pop

 

Part Two: On the air 

The early 70s was a time of 1950s revivalism in pop music. The styles and clichés of an earlier decade began to resurface in contemporary hits from bands like Wizzard, Showaddywaddy and even artists like Elton John – his 1972 hit “Crocodile Rock” was the first time I’d ever heard the clichéd arpeggiated guitar pattern that had been part of the 1950s’ musical DNA (originating in songs like Paul Anka’s 1957 hit “Diana” and Buddy Holly's "Heartbeat"). I decided I rather liked these sounds, but it would be a while before I got to hear any authentic period pieces.

In early 1974, spurred on by the resurgence of interest in rock and roll, Bill Haley’s seminal hit single “Rock Around the Clock” was reissued (and not for the first time). This, at least, was a bona fide 1950s artefact, and more to the point, I liked it. I liked that Haley was weilding a huge semi-acoustic Gibson guitar, which by the early 70s was totally unhip; and I liked the sounds his band produced.

As to Elvis, I’d known next to nothing about him during the 1960s, when his visits to the British charts were infrequent. In fact, when his single “In the Ghetto” charted in 1969, I thought he was a new arrival on the scene. “In the Ghetto” was a long way from the likes of “Hound Dog” and “Heartbreak Hotel”, and I didn’t care for its maudlin production. For the moment, however, the earlier Elvis remained out of reach.

It was in the Story of Pop book (see previous entry) that I first began to get an idea about what had been happening in the pop charts of the 1950s. If I’d listened to the radio more often, I’m sure I’d have picked up on various golden oldies getting airplay, but in the early 70s my radio listening in musical terms was confined to the weekly chart rundown. Then, in 1975, another programme came along that was to change everything.

The Double Top Ten Show had in fact been running since the autumn of 1973, its arrival quite likely inspired by the contemporaneous Story of Pop broadcasts. Forming the first hour of Jimmy Savile’s Sunday lunchtime show, it did exactly as the title suggested, playing the top tens of two different years. Typically, a late 50s chart might be paired up with one from the mid to late sixties, and whilst nostalgia was the name of the game, some of the featured charts were, at the time, only a couple of years old. 

A school friend tipped me off about the programme, and it first merited an entry in my diary on Sunday 6 July 1975. It must have taken some persuasion on my part to convince our mum to retune from Radio 2, thus usurping the perennial Two Way Family Favourites from its time honoured position of Sunday lunchtime listening in our house. Once established, The Double Top Ten Show became essential listening. I was slightly put off by the fact that it was presented by Jimmy Savile, whose weird mannerisms never held any appeal for me, but at the time he came across as merely laughable or embarrassing rather than creepy and dangerous. 

Savile’s schtick included awarding imaginary points to listeners for knowing the precise title of a disc as it appeared on the centre of the record. For instance, you might think that Zager and Evans’s 1969 number one hit was called “In the Year 2525” whereas the title on the disc was in fact “In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)”. Savile loved trying to catch out listeners with stuff like this, and would award himself points for a particularly obscure item. The programme usually went out live, and often purported to be going on in a club rather than a radio studio. I could never work out if this was just a bit of studio verité – some of the crowd sounds came from Savile's signature tune, Ramsey Lewis’ 1965 live instrumental version of “The In Crowd”:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsFST-7Hx-Y 

On the days when the show had been recorded in advance, Savile referred to himself as ‘Herbert Hologram’. Records were always 'zoom-zooming up the charts' or 'on their way down slowly as befits a good record.' Aside from this nonsense, the only memorable bit of his drivel I remember was when he referred to Peter Sarstedt as “Doctor Vinegar” (I’m sure you can work that one out…)

From the very first week that I heard it, The Double Top Ten Show threw open the doors on music that I would never have got to hear anywhere else. Fitting two top tens into an hour meant that a few tracks had to be omitted, with priority accorded to the week's climbers and new entries. Occasionally, the show found room for records that had failed to chart, such as Marty Wilde's 1968 release "Abergavenny", while discs that had formerly been subjected to airplay bans were now deemed acceptable listening, including Serge Gainsbourg’s notorious pop musical orgasm “Je T’Aime (Moi Non Plus)".

Perhaps the best aspect of the show was the fact that we got to hear these vintage hits in context, and after a few weeks of hearing the charts of, say, 1959, I could almost imagine I’d been alive at the time. Each ‘Double Top Ten’ was played in rotation, so that one week we might get to hear the charts from 1967 and 1970 – then, after a few weeks, the same pair of charts turned up again. This really helped to give an idea of how pop music had developed as various fads came and went. It was here, on the DTTS (as my diary constantly referred to it) that I got my first exposure to some of pop’s undisputed classics – Johnny Kidd and the Pirates’ “Shakin’ All Over”, Cliff Richard’s “Move It”, and countless discs by the Shadows, whom I barely knew at this point in time.

By the end of 1975, I knew for a fact that I preferred the music of the late 50s to anything I was hearing in the contemporary charts. From jumble sales, I began to pick up old singles that I’d heard on the DTTS, from artists including Adam Faith, Conway Twitty, Anthony Newley and Lord Rockingham’s XI (I may never have heard their hogmanay hit “Hoots Mon” if it hadn’t been for the DTTS). I even found myself a copy of Charlie Drake singing “Splish Splash”. I was vicariously living the charts of the 1950s at a remove of almost two decades...

More critically, those 50s charts regularly included hits from the likes of Elvis, Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly, whose careers I could read up in the Story of Pop book. Another artist I discovered through the DTTS was Lonnie Donegan. Up to this point in time, I knew next to nothing about skiffle music, and whilst I was already familiar with Donegan’s 1960 comedy hit “My Old Man’s a Dustman”, his earlier, 'straight' skiffle numbers like “Cumberland Gap” were new to me. I wasn’t just widening my own musical horizons, I was beginning to understand where artists like the Beatles had come from – those charts of 1957, 58 and 59 contained the music that had inspired them.

I kept up with the DTTS over the coming years, picking up not only on music that pre-dated my lifetime, but also filling in various gaps when, for one reason or another, I’d stopped following the charts. From January 1978, the programme was billed as 'Jimmy Savile's Old Record Club' in the Radio Times, although the listing still referred to 'The Double Top Ten Show'. The programme now extended over two hours, bringing an end to Speakeasy and Savile's Travels (some would say not before time).

Eventually, Savile moved on, and the show, now re-christened Pick of the Pops, was picked up by Alan Freeman, who brought along his old signature tune “At the Sign of the Swinging Cymbal” replacing the old Ramsey Lewis theme. The show had by this time been moved to Saturday lunchtime, where it would become a fixture for over twenty years, with the presenter baton passed along to Dale Winton, Tony Blackburn and Paul Gambaccini before ending up with Mark Goodier.

“Pick of the Pops” still exists today on Radio 2 and has recently been relocated to the Sunday teatime spot that was once occupied by the chart countdown – a reflection, perhaps, of how little interest there is in today’s chart music. Sadly, it rarely ventures back further than the 1980s, and only a selection of the chart is played, with much of the show given over to info dumps and listeners’ reminiscences. Back in the 70s, we might have had to put up with Jimmy Savile, but we had more and better music from a show that was, for me at any rate, a genuine musical education. There’s not a lot we can thank Jimmy Savile for, but I’ll grudgingly allow him that much.