Sounds of the 60s
Encyclopedia
Sounds of the 60s is a long-running Saturday morning programme on BBC Radio 2
that features recordings of popular music made in the 1960s. It was first broadcast on 12 February 1983 and introduced by Keith Fordyce
who had been the first presenter of the TV show Ready Steady Go!
in 1963. Since 1990 the presenter has been Brian Matthew
.
, Eddie Grant
, Herb Alpert
, Graham Nash
, Frankie Valli
& Bob Gaudio
, Tom Jones
, Neil Sedaka
, Donovan
, Mike Stoller, Bruce Welch
, Duane Eddy
, Bill Medley
, Roy Wood
, Mike Berry
, David Crosby
and many more. "I Love SOTS" car stickers were given free to listeners.
In December 1988 the then producer Stuart Hobday re-discovered Simon Dee
the first voice to have been heard on Radio Caroline
in 1964, and persuaded him to present a listeners’ all-time-favourite Top 20. The response from the public was so great that Dee was booked for a three month run early in 1989. His success led to another three month contract later in the year, but his constant demands for the show to go live and to move from Bristol to London, along with a growing list of complaints to BBC top management, meant that his contract was not renewed.
Subsequently Brian Matthew, who had introduced Saturday Club on the BBC Light Programme until 1967, took over as regular presenter
and BBC Radio 1
disc jockey Johnnie Walker
(and, during Walker's own absence in December 2006, by three guest presenters: Sandie Shaw
, Joe Brown
and Suzi Quatro
). Matthew returned on 10 February, revealing that his prolonged absence had been due to a viral infection
contracted while in hospital for a routine operation. Brian also took two weeks off in October 2011 because of illness and Sir Tim Rice sit in for him on both weeks.
' "Foot Tapper
" (1963). However, in later editions (particularly after the return of Brian Matthew in 2007) Foot Tapper has not been played at the beginning of the show and has such a short snatch at the end that it is not always shown on the 'Music Played' page of the BBC website.
Since July 2007 the show's producer has been Phil Swern
, whom Matthew has nicknamed "The Collector".
It was during Phil's time on the show that the "Playing Hard To Get" feature was introduced. Listeners who want a copy of a record they have lost over the years can request a CD of that song and, if successful, are sent a special "SOTS" CD of the track after it's been played on the show.
. In the 2000s there was also Sounds of the 70s, a title first used in 1970 for a daily late-night show of "progressive" music on Radio 1. Radio 2's version of Sounds of the 70s was presented by singer songwriter Steve Harley
and latterly by Johnnie Walker.
BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2 is one of the BBC's national radio stations and the most popular station in the United Kingdom. Much of its daytime playlist-based programming is best described as Adult Contemporary or AOR, although the station is also noted for its specialist broadcasting of other musical genres...
that features recordings of popular music made in the 1960s. It was first broadcast on 12 February 1983 and introduced by Keith Fordyce
Keith Fordyce
Keith Fordyce was an English disc jockey and former presenter on British radio and television. He is most famous as the first presenter of ITV's Ready Steady Go! in 1963, but was a stalwart of both BBC radio and Radio Luxembourg for many years.-Career:Born Keith Fordyce Marriott in Lincoln, he...
who had been the first presenter of the TV show Ready Steady Go!
Ready Steady Go!
Ready Steady Go! or simply RSG! was one of the UK's first rock/pop music TV programmes. It was conceived by Elkan Allan, head of Rediffusion TV. Allan was assisted by record producer/talent manager Vicki Wickham, who became the producer. It was broadcast from August 1963 until December 1966...
in 1963. Since 1990 the presenter has been Brian Matthew
Brian Matthew
Brian Matthew is a veteran English broadcaster, who became well known in the 1960s. He is still broadcasting on radio for the BBC, having presented Sounds of the 60s since 1990, often employing the same vocabulary and the same measured delivery he used in previous decades.-Early life and...
.
Presenters
In the mid ’80 the format changed and each week the programme was presented by a different artist from the Sixties. Many famous names were involved, including: Alvin StardustAlvin Stardust
Alvin Stardust is an English pop singer and stage actor.-Career:...
, Eddie Grant
Eddie Grant
Edward Grant may refer to:* Edward Grant * Edward Grant , , English cricketer* Eddy Grant , Guyanese-born musician and record producer...
, Herb Alpert
Herb Alpert
Herbert "Herb" Alpert is an American musician most associated with the group variously known as Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass, or TJB. He is also a recording industry executive — he is the "A" of A&M Records...
, Graham Nash
Graham Nash
Graham William Nash, OBE is an English singer-songwriter known for his light tenor vocals and for his songwriting contributions with the British pop group The Hollies, and with the folk-rock band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Nash is a photography collector and a published photographer...
, Frankie Valli
Frankie Valli
Frankie Valli is an American musician, most famous as frontman of The Four Seasons. He is well-known for his unusually powerful falsetto singing voice...
& Bob Gaudio
Bob Gaudio
Robert John "Bob" Gaudio is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer, and the keyboardist/backing vocalist for The Four Seasons.-Early career:...
, Tom Jones
Tom Jones (singer)
Sir Thomas John Woodward, OBE , known by his stage name Tom Jones, is a Welsh singer.Since the mid 1960s, Jones has sung many styles of popular music – pop, rock, R&B, show tunes, country, dance, techno, soul and gospel – and sold over 100 million records...
, Neil Sedaka
Neil Sedaka
Neil Sedaka is an American pop/rock singer, pianist, and composer. His career has spanned nearly 55 years, during which time he has sold millions of records as an artist and has written or co-written over 500 songs for himself and other artists, collaborating mostly with lyricists Howard...
, Donovan
Donovan
Donovan Donovan Donovan (born Donovan Philips Leitch (born 10 May 1946) is a Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist. Emerging from the British folk scene, he developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia, and world music...
, Mike Stoller, Bruce Welch
Bruce Welch
Bruce Welch OBE, is an English guitarist, songwriter, producer and singer, best known as a member of The Shadows.-Biography:...
, Duane Eddy
Duane Eddy
Duane Eddy is a Grammy Award-winning American guitarist. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he had a string of hit records, produced by Lee Hazlewood, which were noted for their characteristically "twangy" sound, including "Rebel Rouser", "Peter Gunn", and "Because They're Young"...
, Bill Medley
Bill Medley
William Thomas Medley is an American singer and songwriter, best known as one half of The Righteous Brothers....
, Roy Wood
Roy Wood
Roy Adrian Wood is an English singer-songwriter and musician. He was particularly successful in the 1960s and 1970s as member and co-founder of the bands The Move, Electric Light Orchestra, and Wizzard. As a songwriter, he contributed a number of hits to the repertoire of these bands.-Career:Wood...
, Mike Berry
Mike Berry
Mike Berry is an English actor and singer, best known for his appearances as Mr. Spooner on the British sitcom Are You Being Served?.-Career:...
, David Crosby
David Crosby
David Van Cortlandt Crosby is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. In addition to his solo career, he was a founding member of three bands: The Byrds, Crosby, Stills & Nash , and CPR...
and many more. "I Love SOTS" car stickers were given free to listeners.
In December 1988 the then producer Stuart Hobday re-discovered Simon Dee
Simon Dee
Cyril Nicholas Henty-Dodd , better known by his stage name Simon Dee, was a British television interviewer and radio disc jockey who hosted a twice-weekly BBC TV chat show, Dee Time in the late 1960s...
the first voice to have been heard on Radio Caroline
Radio Caroline
Radio Caroline is an English radio station founded in 1964 by Ronan O'Rahilly to circumvent the record companies' control of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom and the BBC's radio broadcasting monopoly...
in 1964, and persuaded him to present a listeners’ all-time-favourite Top 20. The response from the public was so great that Dee was booked for a three month run early in 1989. His success led to another three month contract later in the year, but his constant demands for the show to go live and to move from Bristol to London, along with a growing list of complaints to BBC top management, meant that his contract was not renewed.
Subsequently Brian Matthew, who had introduced Saturday Club on the BBC Light Programme until 1967, took over as regular presenter
Brian Matthew
Matthew first presented Sounds of the 60s on 31 March 1990 and was still doing so in 2011 21 years after he took over , his place being taken temporarily between September 2006 and February 2007 by former Radio CarolineRadio Caroline
Radio Caroline is an English radio station founded in 1964 by Ronan O'Rahilly to circumvent the record companies' control of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom and the BBC's radio broadcasting monopoly...
and BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock...
disc jockey Johnnie Walker
Johnnie Walker (DJ)
Johnnie Walker MBE is a popular British veteran radio disc jockey and broadcaster....
(and, during Walker's own absence in December 2006, by three guest presenters: Sandie Shaw
Sandie Shaw
Sandie Shaw is an English pop singer, who was one of the most successful British female singers of the 1960s. In 1967 she was the first UK act to win the Eurovision Song Contest...
, Joe Brown
Joe Brown (singer)
Joe Brown, MBE is an English entertainer.He has worked as a rock and roll singer and guitarist for more than five decades. He was a stage and television performer in the late 1950s and a UK recording star in the early 1960s...
and Suzi Quatro
Suzi Quatro
Susan Kay "Suzi" Quatro is an American singer-songwriter, bass player, and actor.She scored a string of hit singles in the 1970s that found greater success in Europe and Australia than in her homeland, and had a recurring role on the popular American sitcom Happy Days.-Music:Quatro began her...
). Matthew returned on 10 February, revealing that his prolonged absence had been due to a viral infection
Nosocomial infection
A nosocomial infection , also known as a hospital-acquired infection or HAI, is an infection whose development is favoured by a hospital environment, such as one acquired by a patient during a hospital visit or one developing among hospital staff...
contracted while in hospital for a routine operation. Brian also took two weeks off in October 2011 because of illness and Sir Tim Rice sit in for him on both weeks.
Features of the show
Matthew, who made the programme very much his own, turned it into something of a cult, one aspect being its very own slang: "SOTS" (acronym of the title); "avids" (listeners); "the Vocalist" (the show's producer, Roger Bowman). The two-hour programme is divided into one-hour "A" and "B sides" and the names of those listeners whose requests are to be played used to be announced at the start of each "side". Now the names of the artists requested are announced instead. There were also well-researched features, such as an "A to Z of the Beatles" (recordings of which were repeated during the shows from which he was absent, to maintain his presence in the programme), and initially "SOTS" T-shirts for listeners whose record requests were played. Later, "SOTS" baseball caps and "SOTS" sweat shirts were given to successful requesters, but as of 2009 this practice ceased. Although the playlist was almost entirely restricted to music recorded in the 60s, space was found for a time for so-called "roots" records from the 1950s, while recordings from that or earlier decades that re-entered the sales charts in the 60s were also eligible. Throughout the show's run, its theme tune has been the ShadowsThe Shadows
The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as 'The Shadows' and 34 as 'Cliff Richard and the Shadows', from the 1950s to the 2000s. Cliff Richard in casual conversation with the British rock press frequently refers to the Shadows by their nickname: 'The Shads'...
' "Foot Tapper
Foot Tapper
"Foot Tapper" is an instrumental by the British guitar group, The Shadows. It went to number one in the UK and was the Shadows' last UK number-one hit...
" (1963). However, in later editions (particularly after the return of Brian Matthew in 2007) Foot Tapper has not been played at the beginning of the show and has such a short snatch at the end that it is not always shown on the 'Music Played' page of the BBC website.
Since July 2007 the show's producer has been Phil Swern
Phil Swern
Phil Swern is an English radio producer and music collector. He was formerly a record producer and songwriter, plus he has also written for television. He currently produces Pick of the Pops and Sounds of the 60s and formerly produced the Bob Harris Show for BBC Radio 2...
, whom Matthew has nicknamed "The Collector".
It was during Phil's time on the show that the "Playing Hard To Get" feature was introduced. Listeners who want a copy of a record they have lost over the years can request a CD of that song and, if successful, are sent a special "SOTS" CD of the track after it's been played on the show.
Related shows
For several years Radio 2 carried a complementary show of music from the 1950s, Sounds of the 50s, which was presented by singer and entertainer Ronnie HiltonRonnie Hilton
Ronnie Hilton was an English singer and radio presenter. According to his obituary in The Guardian newspaper, "Hilton was one of those 1950s vocalists whose career coincided with rock and roll's 1956 onslaught on the ballad dominated hit parade...
. In the 2000s there was also Sounds of the 70s, a title first used in 1970 for a daily late-night show of "progressive" music on Radio 1. Radio 2's version of Sounds of the 70s was presented by singer songwriter Steve Harley
Steve Harley
Steve Harley is an English singer and songwriter, best known for his work with the 1970s rock group Cockney Rebel, with whom he still occasionally tours .-Biography:As a child, Harley suffered from polio, spending four years in hospital up to the...
and latterly by Johnnie Walker.