OT: The Ray Ford Show
Printed From: Top 40 Music on CD
Category: Top 40 Music On Compact Disc
Forum Name: Chat Board
Forum Description: Chat away but please observe the chat board rules
URL: https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=9681
Printed Date: 11 May 2025 at 2:33pm
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.07 - https://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: OT: The Ray Ford Show
Posted By: vanmeter
Subject: OT: The Ray Ford Show
Date Posted: 20 September 2021 at 7:35am
|
With Pat's blessing I'm posting a link to a new live365 station my wife and I launched over the weekend, The Ray Ford Show.
I wanted to emulate the sound of 50s/60s music on AM radio as I used to hear it when I was a kid off in the distance, down to plate reverb and static, which I think we mostly pulled off. Plus, there are vintage jingles, commercials, and a huge playlist—I'm trying to keep this as varied as charts were back in the day, although that's the one pushback I'm already getting ("Too much pop!" "Too many ballads!" etc...or the exact opposite!) Anyway, I'd appreciate your thoughts. I'm trying to move towards at least the hits being from mono sources and the correct versions but there are a few outliers still as I'm just transferring vinyl as I can, and there are already a ton of disc dubs. My wife inherited a slew of late 50s hits on really clean vinyl from her grandmother, whose husband ran a repair shop 60+ years ago - they were all in her basement, which was the real genesis of the idea of doing this. Anyway, please let me know what you think! https://therayfordshow.com/ - The Ray Ford Show on live365 |
Replies:
Posted By: C J Brown
Date Posted: 20 September 2021 at 3:47pm
| Are you related to radio veteran Ray Ford from Nebraska? |
Posted By: vanmeter
Date Posted: 20 September 2021 at 6:38pm
|
Heck no, this is a West Virginia Ray Ford. We’ve never been up the
holler and over the mountain which is why it sounds like 1962 still. We hear he was a great broadcaster, though. |
Posted By: C J Brown
Date Posted: 21 September 2021 at 3:24pm
| Heh Heh very good. Thank you. |
Posted By: Kevin711
Date Posted: 21 September 2021 at 4:04pm
|
I've been listening to your station for about ten
minutes. I love it. It really is like listening to AM radio back in the day. Good luck with things going forward. |
Posted By: vanmeter
Date Posted: 21 September 2021 at 5:09pm
| Excellent! Can Ray play you anything? |
Posted By: Kevin711
Date Posted: 21 September 2021 at 7:00pm
|
No, nothing in particular. But thanks for asking. I
wound up listening for about 45 minutes and loved every minute of it. |
Posted By: crapfromthepast
Date Posted: 21 September 2021 at 8:05pm
|
Been enjoying the station! I have it playing in the background while I work on some artwork scanning. I know only about one-third of the songs you're playing, which is great - I like hearing "new" material in the context of stuff I already know.
Great work! How many songs in the library? ------------- There's a lot of crap on the radio, but there's only one http://www.crapfromthepast.com" rel="nofollow - Crap From The Past . |
Posted By: vanmeter
Date Posted: 21 September 2021 at 8:47pm
|
There are thousands and thousands, as you might expect...I'm a lifelong collector like many of you. The sources are all over the place...a lot of vinyl, plus CDs, an occasional cassette, and even 8-track for a cut or two. The real genesis of this was my wife finding a cache of really clean late 50s 45s in her grandmother's basement a couple of years ago, as her grandfather had run a repair/sales store at the time and apparently had rack jobber service at some point and just kept samples. I thought, "What can we do with these?" That's her on all the female voicers, so it's really a project for the both of us, down to her supplying a bunch of the 45s of the hits. I have a ton of vinyl I'm still adding as I have time to dub it, as well. I appreciate the comment as I have some radio friends telling me this should be only the top 15 and all that crap...I tell them we are going to try to cause people to actually listen to music again.
|
Posted By: crapfromthepast
Date Posted: 21 September 2021 at 9:27pm
|
I'd advise: Go deep. As deep as you can.
I was born in '68, and two-thirds of your current tracks are unfamiliar to me. If *I* don't know them, I doubt that anyone younger than me will know them. And since they're already unfamiliar, you may as well add in the lesser hits. Sonically, I'm impressed with the imaging and the absurdly tight segues. I wonder if actual early '60s radio stations were that tight. ------------- There's a lot of crap on the radio, but there's only one http://www.crapfromthepast.com" rel="nofollow - Crap From The Past . |
Posted By: Hykker
Date Posted: 22 September 2021 at 5:07am
Well, I graduated high school in 1968, so 60s radio was very much the background to my formative years, and I can say that for the most part 60s radio was anything but tight. Stopping down for a commercial, weather report, or just general jabber between almost every record was pretty much the rule. Even major market stations like WBZ, WABC or WLS rarely played more than 2 songs back to back, and never without DJ chatter between them. Things got tighter by the late 60s, largely due to the influence of Bill Drake's formatics and the success the stations he consulted acheived. We didn't think much of it at the time because there really weren't any alternatives. |
crapfromthepast wrote:Posted By: vanmeter
Date Posted: 22 September 2021 at 6:43am
|
Thank you so much for taking the time to write up such comprehensive and thoughtful feedback. What can I say? Ray is a hyper old man who drinks a lot of coffee, hence the quick segues. There were some stations doing the faster pacing early on as evidenced by airchecks, and we just kind of prefer it that way, although the point is taken.
In all reality, this is meant as an homage and more of a pastiche than an exact replica. We use the word "emulate" a lot as that's really what we're trying to do...just imitate the essence as opposed to bringing it back exactly. We also say "Imagine it's 1962" on our web copy and then play The Casinos and Petula Clark, so some liberties are definitely being taken. The station's been live for less than a week so we're taking in all the feedback and will consider it all after a few more days have passed—any input is always appreciated good or bad! |
Posted By: Paul Haney
Date Posted: 22 September 2021 at 9:38am
| I listened for a bit this morning. Nice to hear some of that '50s stuff especially. |
Posted By: vanmeter
Date Posted: 22 September 2021 at 10:26am
| Good to hear! |
Posted By: vanmeter
Date Posted: 26 September 2021 at 9:11am
|
Goldmine just posted a nice article for anybody interested in reading:
https://www.goldminemag.com/interviews/return-to-the-golden-age-of-radio-with-the-ray-ford-show - Return to the golden age of radio with The Ray Ford Show |
Posted By: LunarLaugh
Date Posted: 26 September 2021 at 10:57am
|
Fantastic station you have going here. I can tell a lot of
love and care went into this. I've had an urge to do something like this myself but focusing on the familiar late 50s to early 70s oldies format that's become all but extinct from the airwaves (at least in my neck of the woods, it is) but I've been putting it off until I have ample time to "get it right", so to speak. Whenever that time will be is anyone's guess. ------------- https://thelunarlaugh.bandcamp.com/ - Listen to The Lunar Laugh! |
Posted By: vanmeter
Date Posted: 26 September 2021 at 12:32pm
| Well at least here we just had to pick away at it for literally a year before we had anything ready to share. We both have full-time jobs plus two special-needs children so by pacing ourselves (which I'm not always the best at) we eventually got over the finish line to the point we could share, although I have other things I want to do to it soon to enhance the experience a bit, like giving her the overnight voicers and pre-programming the news and such. Right now I'm still adding it by hand every morning. But I have to give credit to my wife as I'd still be tweaking the processing and wondering which pressing of "Venus" sounded best or whatever if she didn't push me to keep moving it forward. |
Posted By: PopArchivist
Date Posted: 27 September 2021 at 5:00pm
I take it you have the view that CD released don't sound as great as the original vinyl? Just had a listen. Nice job! Just curious but do you source some stuff from CD or is everything a vinyl dub in your playlist? I do have to commend you I'm fairly familiar with the Top 10 from 1954 onwards so I did have it on for a little bit. I'll ask since it has not come up, but no Beatles or Rolling Stones? ------------- Favorite two expressions to live by on this board: "You can't download vinyl" and "Not everything is available on CD." |
Posted By: vanmeter
Date Posted: 27 September 2021 at 6:02pm
|
No, not that at all really - especially since we're lowering the fidelity and adding reverb and static! More just that there are some cases where the CD releases don't really match the vinyl so as I can I'm switching out disc dubs. Elvis especially; a lot of the CD reissues seem much closer to the masters, but the records themselves had added reverb and compression (like "I Got Stung") so I'm trying as I can to make sure anything I know is different is correct. But there are still some that aren't...it'll just be an ongoing project.
There is some early Beatles (including some of the Beat Brothers material) and right now no Stones but I might put in some of the earliest material. I'm on the fence about the British Invasion stuff...some of it feels right to me and some of it doesn't mix well at all. There's no real rule to any of this in my mind, just whatever seems to work together. |
Posted By: Ringmaster_D
Date Posted: 29 September 2021 at 8:02am
|
Hey Ray! I finally got around to checking out your station
and I am loving it! Although I was born in 1969 I was raised listening to my Dad's favorite station WCBS-FM out of NYC. Your station is like WCBS-FM with a playlist extending into the Bubbling Under charts and album cuts. I can't get over the great one-hit (and no-hit) wonders that you're digging up. I'm pleased to say that my Dad is still with us. He is going to love this. Thanks for keeping this music alive. |
Posted By: vanmeter
Date Posted: 29 September 2021 at 2:59pm
| So good to hear! Let me know what you dad thinks! |
Posted By: vanmeter
Date Posted: 01 October 2021 at 5:51pm
|
We are taking requests tonight if there’s anything of the era you want to
hear in AM fidelity! Let me know here! |
Posted By: AdvprosD
Date Posted: 02 October 2021 at 7:44pm
|
I haven't had a chance to "Tune-In" much more than a half hour or so, so far. From what I hear, it's a truly authentic sounding radio show from the era. I'm at least old enough to remember
listening to music on AM radio in the mid 60's before FM was in full control. Aside from the background distortion and reverb added in, I'd be pleased to hear some of the AM effects of the day, like tuning whistles occasionally, or 60 cycle buzz from appliances that were nearby your radio making interference. I read that you intentionally put the recordings in lo-fi to make the experience sound more authentic. So, those are my suggestions. At any rate, it sounds like dropping into a time machine. I hope that's what you were aiming for. :) ------------- <Dave> Someone please tell I-Heart Radio that St. Louis is not known as The Loo! |
Posted By: vanmeter
Date Posted: 03 October 2021 at 7:56am
|
I'm not sure if you are being tongue-in-cheek or serious, but that's really the basic idea...just to recreate the experience. I feel like there are so many places to hear high quality music we wanted to go the opposite direction, especially since we both grew up hearing music in this manner!
|
Posted By: AdvprosD
Date Posted: 03 October 2021 at 2:53pm
|
Totally tongue-in-cheek!
I was making comment of a few things I don't miss about AM radio. Though, now that I hear your show, I kind-of miss that too. Weird! ------------- <Dave> Someone please tell I-Heart Radio that St. Louis is not known as The Loo! |
Posted By: vanmeter
Date Posted: 03 October 2021 at 8:16pm
| I’m crazy enough I liked your ideas!!! |
Posted By: vanmeter
Date Posted: 25 November 2021 at 6:34am
|
Just bumping as we are playing traditional Christmas stuff all day long,
much of it from vinyl - thought that might appeal to a few people here. https://streaming.live365.com/a02808 |
Posted By: vanmeter
Date Posted: 23 December 2021 at 5:02pm
|
Bumping again as we both have changed our name to WIWS and are
again playing vintage holiday music in Am sound for the next couple of days…I figured this might appeal to a couple of people here. https://streaming.live365.com/a02808 |