I have been planning a new web station called ‘Not the Same Oldies’, which will be launching early next year. There are examples, such as “Different Drum,” by The Stone Poneys featuring Linda Ronstadt, that were modest hits in America but did nothing in the UK and the rest of the world. We have picked 67 of what we think are the great lost 45s from the 60s, and we suspect that many of you will not have heard the vast majority of them. No sales, no chart success no chart success, no enduring memory of many of the songs on our list. In the ensuing decades, radio stations have usually programmed their “oldies” playlists based on chart success.
The result of all this? Lots of great 1960s music slipped through the radio sifting process, and have become lost over time. The pirate radio stations helped a little to redress the balance, but there have always been 24 hours in a day, and that means only so many 45 got played across the world. In Britain, the weirdness of needle time, which, up until 1967, prevented the BBC playing too many records, in order to protect musicians’ jobs (go figure), meant that even fewer records got played. Success depended on getting a single on the radio, and then getting it on heavy rotation to convince people to go out and buy it. Hundreds of millions of singles were sold every year in the 60s, and while there was a great deal more million-sellers back then, there were also many more records released.
By the time The Beatles came along, the 45 was selling in vast numbers – at least for some artists. The 78rpm shellac discs competed for much of the 50s, but finally lost out to the 45 in the early 60s, as every home, seemingly, had a record player on which you could stack seven or eight 45s to play in sequence.
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