The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The
History of Top 40 Radio by Ben Fong-
Torres
My Wife Liked This Book
This lively blast from the past peels back the many layers of the Top 40
phenomenon: 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 an exclusive CD with 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.

Personal Review: The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The History of
Top 40 Radio by Ben Fong-Torres
Ben Fong Torres' love and admiration for the early days of Top 40 radio
shows through in this book. He has crafted a wonderful history of how Top
40 began, features on numerous radio personalities (among them Tom
Donahue, B Mitch Reed, Robert W Morgan, The Real Don Steele, Alan
Freed, Dick Biondi, the list goes on and on). And the CD included with the
book featuring airchecks of some of these amazing personalities is wild.
Hearing DJ's like Gary Owens, B Mitch Reed, Casey Kasem or Tom
Donahue in their early days is a hoot. If the book has a West Coast slant
on personalities, perhaps that's only because Torres grew up in the Bay
Area. However, he does not give short shrift to anyone. He also goes into
great detail about the people who helped create this format: Chuck Blore of
"Color Radio" fame, Bill Drake and Ron Jacobs of "Boss Radio" fame,
Gordon McLendon and Tod Storz, among others. It's ironic in a way that
Torres' claim to fame came later as first a journalist for Rolling Stone and
as a DJ on KSAN in San Francisco (one of those "underground" FM
stations that loved to poke fun at the Top 40 stations).The book traces the
beginnings, development, and "growing pains" of this format. How at one
time it was hip, then became "square" when the underground FM stations
hit the airwaves, and how it now seems to have emerged again. And funny
how the underground stations developed as a kind of "antidote" to very
restrictive Top 40 formats, just as the Top 40 stations developed as
something different to the standard fare of that time.Amazing stories
abound in this book, and being an ex DJ myself I could relate to them. I
thoroughly enjoyed this book and I agree with another reviewer that this
book is must reading for any past or present DJ, or any student of the
media.
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