When American Top-40 had to guess …

My sister Susan — the weirdest one in the family — called recently to tell me of something she just heard – that Casey Kasem did a “fake” American Top-40 countdown — to be explained momentarily —  in the Summer of 1974, due to the fact that he needed to be in Hawaii for the filming of a Hawaii Five-O episode in which he had landed a guest roll.

No way, I thought. I remember the week that Humble Harve Miller was the guest host of AT40, and he spoke of the filming. Why would Kasem do a fake show when he could just have Miller do another guest week?

To find out for sure, I asked my friend Jeff Leonard, former assistant programmer of the original KRLA (1110 AM) and KBZT (now KNX-FM, 97.1). Leonard had once worked at Watermark, the company that produced AT40 (though after the time in question), so perhaps he had inside information. Besides, Leonard knows everything about radio.

“Never heard that,” he initially told me. “Doubt it’s true.” But he promised to check.

As it turns out, the story is true. “I learned something I didn’t know!” he told me later the same night. Here are the details:

“Yes, the June 29, 1974 show was based on an ‘estimated’ chart,” he said. “Due to Casey’s schedule, they guessed the top-40 singles because the staff needed to record the show in advance.”

But Kasem was filming in Hawaii for three weeks. Miller guest-hosted the countdown on July 13th. What happened July 6th? “It was a special edition of American Top-40,” Leonard explained. “A review of the best artists of the 1970s. It was recorded using a certain date as a cutoff for tabulating the chart stats, so it could have been used any time.”

As to that June 29th show … Being a guess, it turns out the show had some … “interesting” results. Leonard told me of the announcement that ZZ Top’s “LaGrange” made its AT40 debut at number 33. But, says Leonard, “according to Billboard’s Hot 100, the song never even reached the top-40!”

I had to find out more. As it turns out, James A. Bartlett, wrote of this show back on July 3, 2015 and again on July 4, 2024 — dates, by the way, commemorating the launch of American Top-40 on July 3, 1970 — on his website “The Hits Just Keep on Comin’” available at https://thjkoc.net.

“Of the 40 records on the chart, the AT40 staff predicted the exact positions of just three— but they did hit #2 and #1 on the nose,” he wrote at https://bit.ly/AT40A. Those songs would be “Billy Don’t Be a Hero” by Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods and “Sundown” by Gordon Lightfoot, respectively. “The staff got nine of the top 10 right, only keeping ‘The Streak’ (on the list) at the expense of  ‘Annie’s Song.’”

Confirming and adding to what Leonard told me, Bartlett wrote that ‘they put only two records in the Top 40 that didn’t belong: ‘La Grange,’ which would never make it, and ‘Keep on Smilin’,’ which would get in the next week. The two songs dropped prematurely were Three Dog Night’s ‘The Show Must Go On’ and ‘Oh Very Young’ by Cat Stevens, which hung on at #36 and #38 on the Hot 100.”

If you’re interested, Bartlett lists all the songs played on AT40 that day, along with the actual true positions according to Billboard. Just click on the link above.

If you want to expand your knowledge on the subject, head over to https://bit.ly/AT40B, where even more background is presented … such as the fact that the June 29th show was recorded way back on June 13th. That’s half a month! No wonder some of the guesses were off.

“The only hint to listeners that it is not based on the official Billboard chart comes right at the end, when Casey says that the list was ‘tabulated by the AT40 staff based on their opinions and estimate of probable chart positions for the week ending June 29, 1974.’” wrote Bartlett, adding “As daring as it was for AT40 to use an estimated chart, it was especially ballsy to use the jingle ‘Billboard‘s number one’ before (playing) ‘Sundown.’ 

“Even if Billboard gave AT40 a hint as to what the #1 song might be two weeks hence, it would have been almost as big a crapshoot on Billboard‘s part as it was for AT40 to guess on their own hook. In the end, everybody got lucky.”

This is, by the way, not the only time the Billboard chart didn’t match the AT40 countdown. June 9, 1973 was a week in which Billboard changed the methodology used to calculate the Hot 100 and released a revised chart, after the show had been recorded and distributed to stations. Too late to do anything, and in the end, it probably really didn’t matter.

And now, on with the countdown! Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.

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