Censoring...As American As Apple Pie

Here’s a song that was forbidden at the li’l ol’ Hillbilly station where I first started working in radio…the title track from Conway Twitty’s 1973 album “You’ve Never Been This Far Before.”  The owner got a call from the owner of a big regional discount store in town, the dude threatening to pull his advertising dollars if he heard the song being played again on the station.  The station owner pulled the song but imagine his surprise when he went to the store one day and found the 45 single for sale in the record department….

  This past Saturday was a grand day for yard saling.  The Lady of the House and I picked up some bargains including a whole stereo system with big-ass speakers in great condition for just $20 and thirty Conway Twitty LPs for 10 cents apiece.

  

  Sunday evening I sat down with my newly acquired vinyl along with the Conway albums I already had checking condition, setting duplicates aside to take to the thrift store.

  

  One of the 10 cent Conway albums I bought was his 1975 album “This Time I’ve Hurt Her More Than She Loves Me.”  I already had a copy.  I pulled out the first copy I had to discover two sticky dots stuck to the tracks “She Thinks I Still Care” and “Jason’s Farm.”

See the two sticky dots?

     I had gotten this album out of the dumpster out back of the radio station where I worked in Amarillo back in 1993.  The boss had ordered all vinyl tossed in the dumpster as the station switched over to all CDs.  I think I must’ve gotten about 300 albums crammed in the back of my car that day.

  

  I had never had this album out since I got it out of the trash all those years ago, otherwise I would’ve remembered those two sticky dots.

  So once upon a time some dude in charge at the station had decided that Conway’s covers of a country standard and a popular song of the day by Cal Smith weren’t to be heard by Amarillo listeners.  The sticky dots signified this.

  Sometimes radio station bosses were just satisfied with telling DJs to NOT PLAY certain songs.

  Then there were those who wanted to make DAMN SURE no one played a song the boss didn’t want played.

  I had a boss like that long ago and far away…

  My first real DJ job was at a country station in a small Virginia town. I had gotten familiar with the station’s music library after being on the air for a couple of weeks. Strange, I thought to myself, I couldn’t find Johnny Paycheck’s big hit “Take This Job and Shove It,” so I brought it from home. The next morning I gave it a spin.

  The song was halfway through when the door to the radio studio exploded open.

BOOM!

  It was Dave the station owner, bursting in, shoving the door open with both hands.

“Where’d you get that song?” he yelled, red-faced.

  “I … I brought it from home.”

  “Turn it off,” he yelled. He stood with one hand on his hip, pointing at me with the other. “Two things. You don’t bring your own music here and ‘Take This Job and Shove It’ is banned on this station.”

  “But it’s a big hit, Dave.” Wrong thing to say. I could tell, because his face got redder and his eyes were about ready to pop out of their sockets.

  “If someone doesn’t like their job they can quit and get another,” he yelled. He left, the door slammed behind him.

  At least I didn’t get fired, I thought to myself.

  A couple of weeks later the folks at the local supermarket called up and requested Charlie Rich’s “Big Boss Man.” I pulled it out of the collection and gave it a spin, not giving it a second thought.

  The next day I was working in the studio when …

  BOOM!

  Dave burst through the door.

  “I just got off the phone with Fred, the guy who runs the supermarket downtown,” he said, pointing at me, one hand on his hip.  “Did you play ‘Take This Job and Shove It’ yesterday?”

  “No sir,” I said. “I played ‘Big Boss Man.’”

  “Let me see it,” he said.

  I dug out the LP and handed it to him. Dave took out a pocket knife and carved little spokes in the vinyl. “There, nobody will be playing THAT again.”

  Christmas came that year and it was time to play some songs of the season. Among everyone’s favorites I played “Please Daddy, Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas” by John Denver.

  The song hadn’t even finished playing when …

  BOOM!

  The door exploded open.

  It was Dave.

  “What is that?” he yelled, red-faced, pointing at the record.

  “It’s a John Denver Christmas song,” I stuttered. “I think it has a pretty good message.”

  “I don’t,” he said. He went around, took the needle off the record, picked up the LP, pulled out his pocketknife and carved his trademark spokes in the plastic. “That’s my message for you.”

  I spent a few years working for Dave.  Then I started to wander in my radio career and ran across bosses who banned various songs for various reasons over the years.

  There was the boss who came roaring into the studio after I played Harry Chapin’s “Taxi.”  It seems he was upset over the line in the song:  “I go flying so high when I’m stoned.”  Nevermind that the song had been out for 16 years, nevermind it had been a hit…It was the time of “Just Say No to Drugs” and he wasn’t going to have a song making reference to drugs playing on his station.

  Or the fellow in Arizona who called me into the office because the morning guy had just played an “answer song” to Shania Twain’s “Any Man of Mine.”  Some dude had recorded a tune called “Any Gal of Mine.”  It wasn’t hit material, had no bad words, but it was tongue-in-cheek funny.  I was the operations manager at the place so I was kinda-sorta responsible for on-air content.

  Mr. GM sat at his huge ass desk in his office and jabbed his finger in my direction as he yelled at me, sitting across from him.

  “DID YOU AUTHORIZE HIM TO PLAY THAT SONG???” he yelled.

  “He asked me about it, I listened to it, it’s funny, I didn’t see any harm,” I said shrugging my shoulders.

  “OH, SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW BETTER THAN THE CONSULTANTS IN NASHVILLE!”

  “No sir, I didn’t see the song as such.”

  “THEN HOW DO YOU SEE IT?”

  “You know, chief, if you don’t want the song played I’ll tell him not to play it,” I said.  “Now with all due respect, sir, what are you REALLY angry about?”

  Mr. GM stared at me shaking.

  “Pull the God damned song,” he said with a lower voice.  “I better not hear it on my airwaves again.”

  There have been other times as the years have gone by, banned songs, mostly at the behest of listeners who took issue with risqué content.

  Just like there’s a list of books that have been banned in various places across the country for various reasons that would seem silly to people in other parts of the country so it is with music on the radio.

  Hell, even “Puff the Magic Dragon” by Peter, Paul and Mary was pulled off the air by overthinking radio management types who thought it could be construed as a song about smoking marijuana.

  But it’s like the Arizona GM told me in the course of me getting reamed out over that parody song:

  “YOU WANT TO PLAY CRAP LIKE THAT GET YOUR OWN DAMN RADIO STATION.”

  Okay, chief!

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