The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The History of Top 40 Radio

by Ben Fong-Torres

This lively blast from the past peels back the many layers of the Top 40 the DJs, fans, singles, jingles, dedications, contests, requests and more. The book features interviews with such renowned radio personalities and programmers as Casey Kasem, Dick Clark, Wolfman Jack, “Cousin Brucie” Morrow, Gary Owens and many others, and includes a link to exclusive online audio of “airchecks” – rare recordings from 16 legendary DJs on actual Top 40 broadcasts – so that readers can hear the crazed, creative and compelling voices that made Top 40 so memorable. Also includes lots of fantastic black-and-white photos to help readers put faces to the voices they know so well, a bibliography and index, and a special Top of the Pops section featuring the Number One records of Top 40 radio from 1957 through 1997 as calculated by the staff of Gavin.

Genres: Music

Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Benjamin Fong-Torres (Fāng Zhènháo) is an American rock journalist, author, and broadcaster best known for his association with Rolling Stone magazine (through 1981) and the San Francisco Chronicle (from around 1982).

Due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, Fong-Torres' father, Ricardo Fong-Torres (born Fong Kwok Seung), changed his surname to Torres and posed as a Filipino citizen in order to emigrate to the United States. His family later adopted the hyphenated surname, Fong-Torres. He is the brother of Shirley Fong-Torres.

He was portrayed in the 2000 film Almost Famous by actor Terry Chen. The fictional version of Fong-Torres was character William Miller's editor at Rolling Stone.

In real life, Fong-Torres was a writer and senior editor of Rolling Stone from almost the magazine's inception. He conducted interviews for Rolling Stone of entertainment figures including Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, comedian Steve Martin and Linda Ronstadt's first cover story in 1975. A Fong-Torres interview with Ray Charles was awarded the Deems Taylor Award for Magazine Writing in 1974.

Fong-Torres was also a rock DJ for San Francisco radio station KSAN-FM in the 1970s. On television, he is the Emmy Award-winning co-anchor of the Chinese New Year Parade broadcast on KTVU (Fox) in San Francisco. In recent years, he has published Hickory Wind, a biography of Gram Parsons; The Rice Room, a memoir; The Hits Just Keep on Coming, a history of Top 40 radio, and two compilations of past articles, Not Fade Away and Becoming Almost Famous (published in May 2006). His book with The Doors (The Doors By The Doors) was published by Hyperion in November 2006. Since July 2005, he has written the bi-weekly column "Radio Waves" in the San Francisco Chronicle's Sunday Datebook. He is also a contributing editor to Parade magazine, and the music editor for TONEAudio, a web-based audio publication. He is now the host of "Backstage" which is aired from 7-9 am and 7-9 pm on San Francisco's KFRC-FM.

Reviews

[Howling Rabbit]

An incredibly tedious read filled mostly with overly-detailed biographies of mid-century AM radio "personalities" from around the country... who would only be remembered by those who lived in that particular city in the country at the time... while only providing occasional lame and confusing attempts describing what "Top-40" radio (the sub-title of this book, remember?) was all about. I defy any reader to keep track of the myriad of names and radio stations call letters permeating through out this mess... especially when they are all laid out with a too small font size and too narrow leading.

[Billy Wiggins]

The author has an obvious love and affinity for the subject, but the book loses steam with profile after profile of people I'd never heard of, whose stories were interchangeable and of little interest to those who weren't fans. I might have preferred a release more about programming trends and cycles, and less about "star" DJs.

[Darin]

Outlining some of the major players and station in the history Top 40 radio. It does a good job with these subjects, but drifts into some fluff from time to time.

[Russ Bertetta]

I was excited to read this after a friend told me about it because I'd always been a fan of Top 40 music since I was about 8.
Over-all this book was OK but I was basically disappointed. There were parts I really enjoyed but there were a lot more that I found repetitive and boring.
Since Ben Fong-Torres is from San Francisco, I thought this book would focus more on the City's Top 40 stations: KYA, KFRC, and KEWB. Alas, that was not the case. While there was a lot about those stations of my youth, that paled in comparison to the coverage of the the LA scene and around the country.
The stories about the DJ's were pretty crazy, but similar from one guy to the next. Their crazy on and off the air stories, their gypsy-like movements from one city and market to the next. Their lives were not easy and that is conveyed that 19 of the guys written about committed suicide and a few others were murdered.
The side bars about the dj's and their on-air crazy riffs-especially the ones on Wolfman Jack were my favorite parts of the book. Also loved the addendum full of the lists of the Top 40 songs from 1957 to the 1990s . That was a hoot-a musical memory lane!