Crawling Back to ’65

In 1965 I was a bouncing baby boy playing on the linoleum. The kitchen was a playground for me on top of the Norge dryer or behind the oil stove in the corner. All locations were my imaginary farm fields. While I was busy in the make believe, the radio was playing in the background. I absorbed everything I heard and there were lots of great hits to listen for. In September of that year some of the big hits from the Beatles, Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Wilson Pickett, and Hermans Hermits were playing on the 3 inch speaker. One of the early songs I remember hearing was Down in the Boondocks by Billy Joe Royall. It was a hit that fall as was Hang on Sloopy by the McCoys (many mistakenly have believed over the years that it was a tribute to Snoopy). When I crawled to the living room, there were many brand-new shows debuting on the black and white set. The opening for Lost in Space always scared me. Green Acres is still a favorite. I always thought that Fred Ziffel looked like a guy that I saw at Keegan Feed Mill in Richland Center. The sci-fi Western The Wild Wild West, Hogan’s Heroes, and the Smothers Brothers all had new shows on the CBS network schedule. The Ed Sullivan show was in its 18th season and it was the first year that the program was broadcast in color. We did not realize this in Aubrey Corners. It would be 3 more long years before dad invested in a UHF antenna so that we could get programs from ABC and NBC on the brand new Curtis Mathes color set. I missed seeing the debuts of I Dream of Jeannie and Get Smart but they are still in reruns after all of these years so I have gotten caught up with them. WRCO FM 100.9 first went on the air that year to join WRCO AM 1450 (now WRCE) which debuted in 1949.

This week on Those Were the Days radio, I will spin a few of the biggest from this weekend in 1965 and all of your requests for tunes from the fifties through the early nineties will be fair game. Win one of six big trivia prizes during the broadcast. Thanks for all of encouragement through the years. Not that I need motivation to play all of my favorite records on the radio, but it is even better when you feel appreciated. I hope to take your call or text this Saturday night between six and midnight on WRCO FM 100.9, WRCO.com, or on the Civic Media app.

Phil