600 WLOF Chart Hits That Missed the Hot 100

Music Director Bill Vermillion, playing the hits — and the “should have been hits” on WLOF Radio. Photo from Dick Camnitz & cflradio.net.

Anyone who sees Bill Vermillion as just another music director, or WLOF as just another Top 40 station, probably sees the Beatles as just another pop group, or Muhammad Ali as just another boxer.  WLOF played the hits, but constantly kept things moving so that local records and anything else that sounded great could get played.  Songs tended to stay on the station’s survey for a shorter period of time than most, but that doesn’t mean they then faded into oblivion.   Here’s how Vermillion explained it, a few years before his death.

“At WLOF we figured that if a song got into our “A” rotation — basically the top 10 — it should be kept in airplay, not hidden away for months on end.  So once it went from the “A” stack, it went to the “D” stack.  We played one “D” record per hour, and I don’t recall how long a record stayed in “D” — it was somewhere between 4 and 8 weeks.   Once out of “D,” it went directly to the oldies “file cabinet” (it was a standard 4-drawer file cabinet, with the oldies filed by first letter.)  There were probably 2500 oldies in that cabinet, right next to the jock… and they could pick anything they wanted.”

Take a moment to ponder that last thought.   WLOF kept around 2500 oldies in their file cabinet.   Tight playlists?   Not on your life!   Once “A” rotation songs moved to the “D” file, that cleared space for Vermillion’s new discoveries.   Some would become smash hits;   others would miss completely.  The list of songs that were charted by Vermillion and WLOF between late 1965 and early 1972 is simply staggering.   As you peruse the list that follows keep a few things in mind:

— Only records that missed Billboard’s Hot 100 are listed here.   That means some great garage and psychedelic classics that made the station’s top 10 — from “It’s-A-Happening” by the Magic Mushrooms (#6 on 11/5/66), to “The Little Black Egg” by the Nightcrawlers (#2 on 10/29/65), to “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine” by Country Joe and the Fish (#4 on 7/29/67) — won’t be found on this chart.

–What about the 13th Floor Elevators, Clefs of Lavender Hill, Davie Allan & the Arrows, and those other great WLOF charters that aren’t on the list?   Sorry, they made the Billboard Hot 100.

— Records that “bubbled under” the Billboard Hot 100 are included.   Obviously, a song that only reached #117 or so is NOT a hit record, and therefore it’s worth noting that WLOF gave it a spot on its 40-song chart.

— This list is limited to songs that missed the Billboard Hot 100.   Chart positions in Cashbox and Record World were not taken into consideration at this time.   Perhaps at a future date…

–WLOF played  many, many extras that never hit their actual printed surveys.  Only songs that were assigned a number and appeared on printed charts are included here.  I do plan to publish a list of some of the local records that were played as extras, but at a later date.

–I have very few WLOF surveys from prior to October 1965.  I would love copies of any older WLOF charts that anyone might have.   If enough older charts surface, I’ll be glad to update this list to include those earlier charted songs.   It would also be great to do a similar list for rival station WHOO, but right now I don’t have nearly enough surveys to do such a project justice.

Now here’s that list, sorted by artist, title, peak position, and date of peak position.   Artists whose names are followed by an asterisk were based in Florida, though not necessarily in Central Florida.  This list took months to compile, so when quoting information from it, please give a shout out and link to this site.

WLOF Go Magazines, each containing WLOF’s weekly music survey

Before I go any further, I wanted to mention that the station’s surveys from March 1967 through August 1969 were printed in Go Magazine.   The folks at Go would occasionally take it upon themselves to “correct” something they thought was wrong.   A case in point:  “The Ballad of Bonnie & Clyde”.  Bill Vermillion was told that Georgie Fame’s version was not going to be released as a single in the USA, so he decided to program a version on Buddah Records by Chicago Prohibition – 1931.   After that version became a hit on the station, Epic Records went ahead and released Georgie Fame’s rendition, which quickly became the national hit.   Go Magazine, believing that a mistake was made, would change Vermillion’s listing of Chicago Prohibition to a listing for Georgie Fame.   There was also a screw-up involving “Long Hair Soulful” by Bhagavad-Gita, and probably more that I’m not aware of.  WFUN in Miami also ran into some issues with Go, but that’s another story.

This was the version of the Georgie Fame smash that WLOF played.  Note the “B” rotation sticker on the label, and the changing chart positions written next to the giant B.

I also wanted to mention a few more songs that charted in 1964 and 1965.   I don’t have enough surveys from those years to determine the exact dates that they charted, but we know from rotation stickers on the 45s that they reached the positions that are listed.

In the next installment, I am going to break down the 13 or 14 non-charters that made it all the way to number one on WLOF… and will look at four additional records that peaked at number two.   Who knows, I might even decide to extend it through the number 3’s, 4’s, and 5’s as well.

If you enjoyed this list, please leave a comment… and be sure to check out the other posts on the Savage Lost blog.

Also see:
WLOF #1 Hits That Missed The Billboard Hot 100

Where Did WLOF Get Its Records?

WLOF & Bill Vermillion:  Florida Top 40 Legends