I’m not sure about what I did every Memorial Day weekend when I was a kid.
Heck, I’m not sure what I’ve done with most of those weekends since I’m an adult.
But I do remember that I loved when local radio stations that decided to do a Memorial Day weekend countdowns:
Of the biggest hits of all time…
… or “listeners favorites”
… or whatever the category was.
The cynic in me realizes they did this to give time off, and maybe save having to pay the on-air talent for three days.
But the kid in me remembers them as being lots of fun.
I’m not sure exactly when and where the tradition started.
Maybe it was inspired by the annual Indianapolis 500 car races (as I vaguely recall, it did seem the countdowns were of the top 500 songs under some category). All I know is that it seemed like many stations did have a Memorial Day weekend countdown at least by the 1980s, both locally and when my family went out of town during the holiday.
And not all the countdowns were the same. Billboard reported in its Sept. 6, 1980 issue that several stations were counting down their top 500 rock album tracks.
Nowadays of course, you can listen online to countdowns across the country. And the choices are plentiful to the point of overwhelming to consider. Here are some notable upcoming ones to consider:
The HitOldies Top 500 of All Time
https://hitoldies.net/index.php/hitoldies-salutes-dick-ervasti/the-hitoldies-top-500-of-all-time-schedule/
HitOldies is a hybrid U.S. and Canadian online station. Their list will blend US and Canadian chart songs. That promises a diverse collection including some hits from the 1960s through 1990s, that most Americans probably haven’t heard before. If that’s not enough for you, some deejays will be doing shifts introducing various portions of the countdown.
A terrestrial radio station out of Michigan will have its Top 500 countdown once again this upcoming weekend. It mainly consists of 1960s and 1970s oldies:
The Pride of Otsego, Michigan is Cool 101, and this weekend, they’ll present their Memorial Day 500. WQXC will play the hits in various six- to 12-hour shifts starting Friday through Monday. Based on last year’s selections, this will likely heavily feature hits from the 1960s and 1970s.
If you want to hear real old school, this countdown is it: from Des Moines, Iowa, KAZR-HD2, aka Pure Oldies 104.5 will spin the “500 Greatest Oldies of All Time.” This one looks to lean really heavily into the pre-Beatles rock and roll sound.
And for fans of satellite radio: Sirius XM has a lot of great options:
And for fans of satellite radio: Sirius XM has a lot of great options:
I must confess that I only know about these countdowns, and haven’t listened to all of them. Has anybody heard any of them? Anybody planning to listen this weekend?
Or do you just have some favorite Memorial Day weekend countdown memories to share?
Whatever the case, please comment below.
And as you enjoy the weekend, take a little time to remember those who served the United States of America and are no longer with us.
Let Freedom Ring!
Let the author know that you liked their article with a “Green Thumb” Upvote!
Thank You For Your Vote!
Sorry You have Already Voted!
Beautiful post, Ozmoe.
One of my earliest memories is listening to a 500 countdown on my mother’s favorite Oldies station. They mostly played British Invasion and Motown. It was that visceral, real response to that music that may have started it all for 5-year old me.
I’m pretty sure (other Philadelphians might remember better than I) that WMMR 93.3 would run a Top 500 as well. If I recall, listeners would send in their Top 10 list and the station would count the votes.
Now, MMR was a classic rock station, so imagine my surprise when at #500 one year “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang was played.
Too funny, thegue. As soon as I started reading this I was like – oh yeah, like MMR would always do when I was a kid!
Great post, and good research finding the shows. I’m afraid to listen to the Oldies countdowns because what’s considered an Oldie today is probably from after my kid graduated high school.
Tommy Sands used to do our top 40. After the advent of the Internet, I learned that he was a celebrity. I had no idea. I remember being pleased by the high placement of The Kinks’ “Destroyer”(and Kraftwerk’s “Numbers”). Also, if a local artist covered a national hit, you never got to hear the original version. Today, whenever I hear “Here I Am”, I hear The Ali’is version playing beneath the surface. Apropos of nothing, it amazes me that Air Supply covered Bruce Springsteen’s “4th of July, Asbury Park(Sandy)” with the truncated title “Sandy”.
The Air Supply cover is news to me. Not sure if I’m brave enough to search it out.
Glad to see you here Ozmoe, I’m not related to listening countdowns on my local radio back in the day. Good article.
KROQ in L.A. used to do this for years, but now they’re part of some massive conglomerate and don’t bother.
WLS in Chicago did this as well. Here’s a neat site that pulls together several of their countdowns: http://www.wlshistory.com/RHOF/
Nice nostalgia trip there ozmoe, totally forgot about those super countdowns. And the fact that it would also be tied in to the unofficial first weekend of summer in the States helped stations sell it too.
Oddly enough, I only recall classic rock stations doing them over the years….
[Does quick search online]
Yep, Big 100 here in DC is doing their countdown again!
https://wbig.iheart.com/
Ok, so driving around on errands this morning, one of the stations in the area is doing a run through their library from A-Z instead of a countdown. Didn’t VH1 do that as well? A-Z videos for an entire holiday weekend?
Our local “80s and more” station in the early part of this century (WPOI 101.5, which flipped to CHR in 2011) used to do an annual A-Z thing, I believe it was on Memorial Day weekend. Their “Z” song was always Billy Joel’s “Zanzibar”, which was never in regular rotation but I guess they had to pick something to play to end the list…
These countdowns were a goldmine for home taping! I was glued to these in the early ’90s so I could tape all the ’80s songs I loved but didn’t own. I filled entire cassettes in a weekend. It was great to hear 500 different songs, whereas now the ’80s stations play the same few songs over and over again.
Definitely a plus to be guaranteed no repeats for an entire weekend.
The COOL FM sounds, well, cool — so I might take in at least parts of it this weekend. Thanks for the tipoff, Ozmoe!
I managed the sales room of a farm winery in western New York state for several years in the 1990s. We were open 10 AM to 6 PM everyday, and I worked just about every single weekend.
When things were slow, which they often were, I would listen to CKOC, an AM radio station out of Hamilton, Ontario. It was one of the few stations with a clear signal – the old barn I worked in was lined with steel fencing, but somehow that AM signal fought through (the signal strength would drop at 6 PM each night during daylight savings time, 7 PM the rest of the year). It offered a peculiar but charming mix of oldies, heavy on Canadian artists due to CanCon laws. Not only did I regularly hear Joni Mitchell, the Band, and Neil Young, but I heard a few records by the Poppy Family, Lighthouse, and April Wine, over and over. To me, it sounded like they had a shoebox of 45s to choose from.
On Memorial Day weekend of each year, CKOC would play their Big 500. After a couple of years of listening I came to the conclusion that it was all a ruse to allow the station to play any old records they had. Maybe CanCon restrictions did not apply to charts? I’d stick around until 6 PM on nights when there was no business just to hear Number One.
One year, the top spot was taken by Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman.” Now, I love Roy Orbison, and his music has deep emotional resonance for me, from memories of visiting a Dutch record store to by his Greatest Hits for Oma, to talking to Roy’s manager back stage in the mid-80s when he was just starting his comeback. But “Pretty Woman” is not the All-Time Number One ANYTHING. I imagined a couple of CKOC DJs in a den with a 6-pack of Molson’s creating a list based on their own whims. Surely, one of them promised their wife that they would put Roy on top.
In researching for this post (yep, I did), I found this site dedicated to the CKOC Big 500. It seems that the chart did reflect viewer feedback until 1991, so the charts here are more believable. But not much more – that numbers two and four rank so high is so random, they could have been put there by Bob and Doug MacKenzie.
https://kaseygraovac.tripod.com/CKOC/CKOCBig500/1989/Big5001989_1.html
Growing up in Indiana, I assumed that the local stations did the top 500 because of the race. I didn’t realize until later that it was a nationwide phenomenon. Of course, so was the Indianapolis 500 at the time, so it might still have been the inspiration.
The race seems to have waned in importance in more recent years, but it lives on in the annual Memorial Day Countdowns.
I remember in 1991 being in the middle of nowhere rural southeastern Utah and visiting with an acquaintance (outside of Moab, UT) and he was listening on AM radio to the time trials (qualifications) for the Indy 500 the weekend before the race. I knew the race was big, but I was surprised that qualifications were on rural radio 1000+ miles away. Being from Indy, that made me feel right at home.
Back then on race day the TV feed of the race was blacked out in Indy, because they wanted you to attend in person. So we all listened to it on the radio. Sounds weird, but I heard way more races that watched growing up. You could walk down the road in our neighborhood on race day and hear the race coming from radios in everybody’s back yards and garages. A fun memory.
I remember right when I started getting into FM album rock stations in my mid-teens, the flagship album rock station in Indianapolis, Q95, played a Top 500 rock songs countdown over Memorial Day weekend. It was fun to listen to over a 3 day period and I learned a lot of songs that they didn’t play very often. Of course, “Stairway to Heaven” was #1. The great thing was that we could pick up a printout of the 500 songs (in very small font) at the local record store.
A lot of these countdowns don’t seem to have a lot of rhyme or reason. I remember a fellow 25 years older than me commenting on a 50s/60s countdown that he listened to. “Earth Angel” by the Penguins was #1. Similar to Archie Leech’s statement, “Earth Angel” was not the All-Time Number One ANYTHING. But they’re still fun to listen to.