Approaching the Half-Century Mark

It was a decade ago that I retired and began my first blog. It was about a radio program that had begun forty years before. Let’s see…10 + 40 = 50. So, yes; it’s been fifty years since that rock and roll radio thing started in February, 1968. Seems like an occasion to mark. You like cake?

There are two ways I intend to celebrate the half-century mark. I co-host a television program (with the audio running on local radio too), and one of the other hosts thought we might do a half hour conversation “sometime” about my radio ministry from ages ago. When the second Sunday of February comes, I suggested we use that week’s “show” to do that interview. I know that it’s what some would call (including me) a “conceit,” that is, having one host interview another about his anniversary. But, as I told myself, the 50th anniversary only comes around once every, y’know, so often. So, yeah, let’s talk about me.

Actually, it’s not all about me. It’s about the people who had the idea for the program in the first place. It wasn’t my idea. And it’s about a faith community that went out on a limb and stuck with a progressive, eventually creative media ministry geared toward youth, a radio program that played the young generation’s music and shared some ideas about how Jesus’ life and teachings could lead to a celebration of new life. And certainly, the interview in February will focus on the music itself. I didn’t just sit there and talk for an hour each week. I, um, jockeyed discs. Lots of them. Some the little records with big holes; many the big records with little holes. Hits and album cuts.

Besides the TV interview, there’s another event planned for that second Sunday in February. The church my wife and I attend will have a dinner after worship, and I’ll play (and speak about) “Fifty Years of American Popular Music.” I’ve done that presentation many times. But not for quite a while. I won’t be starting in 1968, but with the first music I remember: my parents’ old 78 rpm big band era recordings from the “war years.” That would be WW2. And I’ll play the hits (mostly excerpts– we don’t have all day) up to 1992 when I left radio behind for a small Vermont church pastorate. That’ll make it 50 years worth.

The music of my parents’ days was not just dance music, and not solely love songs. I’ll probably sample Glenn Miller’s “Don’t Sit under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else but Me)” which was the plea of a soldier that his girl back home would remain faithful. Another Miller tune was “That’s Sabatage,” which includes wartime references such as “When you hear sirens screamin’
Those ‘be-alert’ alarms
Don’t run helter-skelter
There’s a bomb-proof shelter
In my arms.”

We’ll jump to the 1950s and enter the rock and roll era with Bill Haley and the Comets, hit the 60s with the British Invasion, and then I’ll share some of the music of my “Celebration Rock” years, beginning with the songs that reflected the pivotal year my program began: 1968, with a soundtrack that accompanied protests over Viet Nam and pleas for racial harmony, along with the pyschodelic flight that provided escape for many. In the early 70s came the Jesus Movement with the Savior making the charts: “Jesus is a Soul Man” and “Put Your Hand in the Hand of the Man from Galilee,” among many hits. Yes, hits.

Followed by disco. And then I’ll move to the 80s and play some songs by story tellers and musical pundits and poets. By the time we reach the early 1990s, I’ll wrap things up with U-2 and Michael Jackson. Or, not. I’ve still got a couple of weeks to pin this down and convert vinyl to MP3.

I wish I could do all this back in Richmond, Virginia where my radio ministry took root. But instead, I’ll be in my orginal hometown, and in the church where my parents were married and where I was ordained to that media ministry 15 months after the rock show started. One or two people in the “audience” that day will be actual “Celebration Rock” listeners from back in the early 1980s when the program was syndicated and the big FM rocker broadcast my voice to my hometown. A nostaligic celebration. So be it.