78: Odyssey, "Native New Yorker"

By Wm. on February 23, 2025

I spent the Saturday evening following my 14th birthday the way I did so many weekend nights from those early teen years, hanging out with Casey as he counted things down. By this point I had discovered AT40 was played on Saturdays at 8pm on WLAP, an AM station in Lexington, roughly 60 miles south of my home. This night I had something extra going on, though--I was recording the show as it played on my portable radio, the tape player my sister and I had placed next to its speaker. (Of course I still have that recorder and the tapes--why wouldn't I?)

Instead of tuning in to Premiere's rebroadcast of 2/18/78 this weekend, I've listened to that tape for the first time in decades (I played it back any number of times before I left for college). Here are a few highlights of and impressions from the experience.

--I missed the first few seconds of the "Shuckatoom" opening theme, but did catch a local announcer reading over it that the broadcast is being sponsored by Fayette Mall and the Pepsi Bottling Company.

--A poster on an AT40 message board noted a few days ago that the show kicked off with the first week ever on the show by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers ("Breakdown") and the last time that War made an appearance ("Galaxy"). On the intro, Casey mistakenly says War is debuting, but corrects himself on the other side, noting that they're climbing one position.

--The recorder I used had the ability to pause using a toggle switch, so I don't have to press stop during commercial breaks. That led to a number of awkward moments of the form, "Casey's Coast.../...-ican Top 40," as I paused too early and came back a little tardily.

I 100% regret not including the commercials now, though. It was through them that I learned about Lexington and some of its businesses in those years before I wound up there for college. Among the frequent advertisers were Phillip Gall's, a sporting good/outdoor clothing place, and Dawahares, a small department store chain. Both are long gone now, of course.

--Three months later I recorded 5/20/78 in much the same way. Several songs are present on both shows, but one, Natalie Cole's "Our Love," sits in the same spot--#35--on each of them.

--Leading into Leblanc & Carr's "Falling" at #32, Casey answered a question about duos hitting #1 on the album chart. The staff was surprised to learn that only the Carpenters and Simon & Garfunkel had accomplished that feat. Should I be disappointed to learn that Amy and I didn't propel the Captain & Tennille's Song of Joy to the top when we bought it in the spring of '76?

--Recording the show required more than one tape, of course. The first has #40-#29 on side one, and #28-#17 on side two. Apparently I'm carefully noting when I get close to the end of a side so as not to have to eject and flip in the middle of a song.

--WLAP was a CBS Radio affiliate then. I believe they had newsbreaks at the top of each hour, even during the show, and they ran other CBS programming during the week. There's an accidental reminder of this about thirty seconds into Hour #2's opener, the Little River Band's "Happy Anniversary" at #26. Someone in the studio hit the wrong button, and over Glenn Shorrock's vocals we suddenly hear, "The CBS Radio Mystery Theater presents..." (complete with creaking door). The mistake is caught before we learned what they were presenting.

--Because it's AM radio, because I was miles away from the signal, and especially because it's after dark, there's lots of interference from other stations with the same or nearby frequencies. I absolutely love this feature of my recording--I'm suddenly an early teen again, flipping through the dial at night, straining for signals such as those of WLS in Chicago.

The interference is more pronounced during the second hour. While I should listen to these tapes another time or two to see what I can pick out from the background, it's easy to discern a distinct bit from "Jive Talkin'" going on while Casey intros #25, Meco's version of the theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

--The recording speed of the GE player must have been just a bit off. Listening this weekend, everything sounds a touch slow. Note: I did not try to play the tapes on that machine this time--I know from experience in somewhat recent years that it plays much more slowly now. I'm sure it needs either an overhaul or to be pitched.

--As he's about to spin "Native New Yorker" at its peak position of #21, Casey told a story about sisters Lillian and Louise Lopez, two-thirds of the group Odyssey, meeting Duke Ellington as teenagers after a show where both they and Ellington performed. They credited the encouragement they received from the jazz legend in that chance encounter with helping them persist in the music business. This tale also is mentioned in Odyssey's blurb in Casey Kasem's American Top 40 Yearbook for the 1978 chart year.

What I didn't realize until I scoped Odyssey's Wikipedia page is that chat with Ellington must have occurred around 1950--Casey completely elided the fact that the Lopez sisters were already in their 40s when "Native New Yorker" was riding the charts. (Then again, they probably weren't anxious to have their ages disclosed, having worked so hard for this moment.) All I can say is, good on them for continuing on and eventually finding some success. While "Native New Yorker" was Odyssey's only pop success in the U.S., it and four other songs of theirs made the Top 10 in Britain. Both Lillian and Louise passed away over a decade ago, but Lillian's son Steven Collazo is still carrying on the Odyssey name with two other female singers.

--I didn't record the whole show, stopping after #11, when Eric Clapton finished telling Sally to lay down. Was it getting too late? (Am I misremembering the show's start time--could it have actually been 9:00pm?) Did I get tired of flipping the pause switch? Did I already know the Top 10 somehow? Regardless, the start of 5/20/78 follows immediately; I'll have to give that one another listen soon. But I will want to be careful--the tape with #40-#18 from 2/18/78 broke at one end as I gave it one more quick try this morning.