The Gavin Report airplay charts

Curiously, were the Gavin charts ever considered to be in the league of Billboard or R&R? I've heard all these stories about how influential Bill Gavin was in the music industry, but at any time in my career they seemed to be one of those charts that wasn't particularly choosy about who they accepted as reporters and thusly were populated with lots of stations in not-very-important markets.

Now that we've covered the history of the Radio & Records
Top 40 charts, I'd LOVE to do a complete (or even partial)
history on the Gavin Report. The problem is, nobody seems
to have the old issues. We have every issue starting with
March 27, 1981. If you guys know of ANYBODY with ANY
issues prior to that, please let me know! Doesn't even
have to be the full issue, just a copy of the Top 40 chart
would be sufficient.

Bill Gavin lined up music weekly for The Lucky Lager Dance Time radio program circa 1955 until that program folded later in the 50s. Does anybody know any of these music program sheets logs cues can be found?

Edited by C J Brown

Thanks to Kerry Jackson, we have now tracked down about
120 issues from the 1970s (including all but one issue
from 1976). At first glance, I'm noticing a lot of
agreement, but also some major differences with the Radio
& Records charts from the same period. Come on, I know
there's GOT to be somebody with some more issues out there
somewhere!

Edited by Paul Haney

Paul - Have you ever seen any of the charts or playlists
Gavin did for the Lucky Lager Dance Time radio program?
This show ran circa 1954 - 1959 or so. The beer company
Lucky Lager supplied stations the music with mandatory to
mention charts and the copy for the beer ads. The station
would supply the DJ.

The entire program would run two to four hours daily. This
was a "sponsored" broadcast that meant revenue to cash
starved stations in need of programming. Budweiser and
Coke had similar programs the same era.