CHARTS 1967
KTKT published charts on a weekly basis during 1967. The 1967 charts were the same style that debuted with the January 29 1965 edition. This design was a single page of paper about four inches wide and six inches long. Different colors of paper were used each week alternating between blue, green, yellow and a pale tan color. One side of the chart displayed the weekly top 40 tunes. The long running “Album Sound Of The Day” is now gone from the chart at the start of the year. Later on - during November 1967 - a short list of Best Selling Albums makes its first appearance. The other side of the published chart – as first seen during 1966 - showed a variety of different subjects ranging from paid ads for hair care products, Wrigley chewing gum, White Levi’s, Delaware Punch and an ad for The Arizona Mining Association featuring “Copper Quickies”. Various KTKT contests and promotions are also depicted from time to time. These include the Chickenman radio series along with a related “Win the Chickenman Chick Mobile” contest, concerts at the VIP Club, a James Brown concert and a couple of photos of the KTKT Treasure Van (the van reminds me very much of the KTKT mobile news unit). DJ photos and DJ line ups would show up from time to time but no longer on a regular basis as in years previous. For the first time ever some KTKT charts would be printed on one side only with the rear cover blank. I have noted most of these editions in the chart album display. Several of the weekly charts in 1967 have the wrong dates printed on them. I have made note of this as needed on the chart display. During 1967 the KTKT weekly charts continued to debut on the air at Saturday and run until midnight the following Friday. At some point during 1967 the weekly top 40 countdown show on Saturday mornings went away. So did the popular blocks of KTKT Klassics heard late Friday nights and Saturday mornings. Weekend programming now was entirely “Wonderful Weekends” featuring alternating current hits records and recent oldies. Music wise during 1967 the Beatles and Stones kept on topping the charts frequently. But the popularity other “first wave” British Invasion groups started to wane. One hit wonder American garage groups found on independent record labels so popular during 1966 began to give way to more established bigger label groups such The Bryds, The Loving Spoonful and Paul Revere and The Raiders. Thanks to both TV and radio exposure The Monkee’s continued to grow in terms of their popularity and chart success. Other than a couple of acts - The Dearly Beloved and The Lewallen Brothers local groups seem to disappear from the KTKT charts. The big music event on record for 1967 was the Beatles release of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heats Club Band. Albums would never be the same again. Albums would be an art form all of their own. This album also touched off a “psychedelic revolution” influencing not only our music but many other forms of popular culture such as clothing, art work and even our manner of speaking. A big concert in Monterey California became the first rock festival. This show was attended by more than 90,000 people. This June 1967 event brought many new acts to the forefront of our awareness. By the end of 1967 new acts with names like Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Janis Joplin, The Doors and many others would point to many new directions and trends our music and culture would take in the near future. During the late summer or early fall of 1967 KTKT – in addition to the weekly chart - began to publish and distribute a bi weekly tabloid style newspaper/ magazine called “Beat”. Weekly magazines of this nature with lots of music and artist related articles and photos aimed at teens first surfaced in Los Angeles during 1964. Radio stations looked at these magazines as a promotional tool and a method to improve a stations image. Rapidly gaining in popularity several stations in other markets (San Francisco - Denver – Dayton) jumped on the weekly newspaper bandwagon in order to get a leg up on the competition. Other stations joined in just to keep up with the competition. At first these weekly or bi weekly publications were a result of work done at the local stations. The early editions of the KRIZ (Phoenix) Bossline from 1965 or the KFIF (Tucson) Boss Greensheet Tucson during 1966 are good examples of a locally produced paper. But due to the tremendous amount of time and expense needed to put out a quality publication on a weekly basis stations soon started turning to a couple of national syndications for help. KTKT turned to a Los Angeles area station – KRLA the station that originated Beat – for a Tucson edition. Each issue usually ran about a dozen pages. About 8 or 9 pages would be music and artist content designed for a nation audience leaving 3 or 4 pages for KTKT to run local ads and local Tucson content. I think the KTKT Beat ran to some point during late 1968. During this same time period cross town rival KIKX distributed a similar style weekly tabloid called “Go”. This magazine was published by New York City celebrity Robin Leach. This publication included the weekly KIKX chart and DJ line ups along with ads and articles local to Tucson. The front and rear covers – (along with the only page devoted to Tucson content) of the September 9 1967 edition of the KTKT Beat can be viewed at the end of the KTKT 1967 chart exhibit.Once again a big thank you to my friend Jim Chrisman for saving and sharing images from his KTKT chart collection. Several of the 1967 charts images are from his collection while others are scans from charts I have obtained over the years. Most of the 1967 charts are scans of the original charts but a few are scans of color photocopies. Some of the fonts used make the songs and artists very hard to read. The magnify feature really helps here. The first chart of the year – January 6 1967 - is full of what looks like digital artifacts that are usually created during the copying or scanning process. In this case this is the way the real original chart looked right off the press. Another viewing issue concerns the November 11 1967 chart. A poor choice of using both red paper and a red ink make reading this issue very difficult. Using the magnify option also helps here.
If anyone has KTKT charts to scan or loan for use on this web site (with full credit) please contact us at: colorchannel99@yahoo.com
KTKT Charts 1967
To view a slide show of the charts from 1967, click on the button below. As it appears, you can stop, start, fast forward, or go back by using the controls at the bottom of the page.
