Alan Lee - Forgotten 45's (For Lovers Only, WQSR Radio Segment)

Alan Lee - Forgotten 45's (For Lovers Only, WQSR Radio Segment)_Mp3 Mixtape

-- The Danleers - One Summer Night [1958]
-- The Metallics - I Need Your Love [1962]
-- The Royalettes - I Want To Meet Him [1965]
-- Harvey Fuqua & The Spinners - She Loves Me So [1962]
-- The Duncan Brothers - Things Go Better With Love [1966]
-- Percy Sledge - It Tears Me Up [1966]
-- The Four Fellows - Please Play My Song [1956]
-- Dinah Washington - Unforgetable [1959]
-- Donnie Elbert - My Confession Of Love [1958]
-- Lillian Leach & The Mellows - Smoke From Your Cigarette [1955]
-- The Dells - Oh, Oh, I Love You [1967]
-- The Vibrations - All My Love Belongs To You [segment] [1961]
-- Richard Barrett & The Valentines - Don't Say Goodnight [1957]
-- Roy Rodgers & Dale Evans - Happy Trails To You

Alan Lee hosted a 5-hour Sunday [RARE!!] Oldies show (40s, 50's, & 60's only) on Baltimore's WQSR before the station re-formatted. The last hour [11-midnight] was dedicated to rare love songs - primarily group vocals. This segment is extracted from a random taping of one of his shows. More of these mixtapes to come...
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Rock history stops rolling as radio tunes in to profits
May 16, 2005|By MICHAEL OLESKER - The Baltimore Sun

FOR 20 YEARS on WQSR-FM, Alan Lee hosted a Sunday night radio program of forgotten oldies. Now, according to the brilliant thinkers in radio, and the ratings numbers and actuarial charts they employ in place of human hearts, Lee becomes a forgotten oldie himself. He is one of those banished in the recent purge at WQSR. And the songs he kept alive now slip deeper into rock 'n' roll's dustbin.

While many publicly lament the loss of WQSR's morning gang of Rouse & Company, as they should, Lee was always the true keeper of the flame for that primitive era when rock 'n' roll was first crawling onto dry land. You want Danny and the Juniors doing "At the Hop" for the 700th time, or Pat Boone doing an embarrassing white-bread cover of Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti," you didn't listen to Lee's show.

But if you wanted the Van Dykes doing "King of Fools," or The Royalettes doing "It's Gonna Take A Miracle," then Lee was your man. If you wanted Tommy Vann and the Echoes doing "Too Young," or Chuck Jackson wailing, "I Don't Want to Cry," then you tuned in to Lee's program every Sunday night.

He was the one who dug out all those primordial rock 'n' roll miracles that you dimly recalled from steamy adolescent nights when you were taking your date out to Liberty Dam "to watch the submarine races," or lying in your room wishing you were.

Two weeks ago, management at WQSR gave up the station's longtime oldies format and sacked all their on-air people. Steve Rouse and his morning companions got most of the attention, since they were the station's heavy hitters. But their show was carried more by its cheery patter than its music selection. It was Lee who pulled in loyalists by the strength of his play selection.

The Sunday night gig, which started in March 1985, was sponsored by and tied into Lee's longtime Ritchie Highway store, Roadhouse Oldies in Brooklyn. The store's still open. But when you telephone for operating hours, a tape of Lee's voice answers, "If you're calling about Sunday night Forgotten 45's on the radio, I'm afraid it's all over. WQSR, and the oldies, and the air staff are history."

Contacted the other night on the phone, Lee sounded a little more hopeful. He's put out feelers to local stations. But he understands what he's up against: The medium's changing. Satellite radio's coming in, pulling listeners from AM and FM stations (and setting off new rounds of hysteria among the talk shows, whose hosts babble ever more shrilly in a bid to hold on to listeners' diminishing attention). Disc jockeys' careers are bobbing like corks in the tide.

And, like movies and television, radio's reaching for a young audience. Nervous executives know that advertisers want those demographics -- and never mind that the over-55 set has more spending money than the teens. The change at WQSR, and the plight of the oldies mavens such as Lee, tells us the simple truth that radio's no longer very interested in that long-coddled generation known as the baby boomers (not to mention the boomers' elders.)

"Radio's not programming for us any more," said Lee, 55. "They figure the only advertisers trying to reach us are funeral homes and hospitals and the makers of little purple pills. You would think sponsors would want those who have grown kids, houses mostly paid for, and a little money to spend. But it doesn't seem to be working that way.

"Commercial FM radio wants to appeal to the masses. But the truth is, the masses have become very fragmented. They're going to satellite radio's special programming, or they're getting in their cars and playing their CDs. And here's the irony of the thing: At WQSR, air staff kept telling management that the regular play list was too repetitive. They were playing the same songs over and over.

"Last week, management finally listened. They broadened the music base. They finally heard the message. But they shot the messenger."

Rock 'n' roll's rich past takes another hit, and so do the local disc jockeys. Once more, radio goes about making itself blander, less idiosyncratic, less local. In a market with dozens of stations, a Baltimore generation finds itself cut off from a mother lode of music in broadcasting's continuing, futile attempts to be all things to all listeners.

It's one more way we measure the changing of the generations. Along the AM and FM radio dials now, where can you find Sinatra or Nat "King" Cole, Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan? With the demise of WQSR's format, we had WLG (1370 AM) last week trumpeting itself as Oldies Radio in an attempt to fill the WQSR void.

Only a few years ago, WLG was still playing songs from the pre-rock 'n' roll '40s and '50s. Now they're doing Barry Manilow and the Carpenters.

What made Alan Lee different was the "forgotten" part of his oldies. Most of the standard oldies play lists have been played to death. They're not oldies so much as hardy perennials, played so repetitively that they became bland audio wallpaper. Lee's disappearance means the real oldies are not only forgotten, but gone. - Olesker
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Money walks, and bullshit talks...