Jazz As Bumper Music on AM Top 40 Stations - A Common Practice?

[JSngry]

As a kid, the local (Longview, Tx) AM Top-40 station always went to network news on the top of the hour. They also always used jazz(y) records as bumper music to fill up the airspace resulting from having a few seconds or more that they couldn't fill with a regularly programmed record. The only ones that I remember w/absolute certainty are "Windy" by Wes Montgomery & "Watermelon Man" by Mongo Santamaria, although I know that there were several organ jams in the mix as well, jams that I don't remember specifically. Probably some Jimmy Smith Verve things like "Walk On The Wild Side", etc. But I'm not certain about that.

The more urban-based Top 40 stations I listened to had in-house news, and were significantly more tightly programmed, so the need for bumper music never arose. So what I'm wondering is if the use of jazz as bumper muisc was sort of an "industry standard" for Top 40 stations of the day who had need for such, or did Longview's KLUE (1280 AM) just have a programming director who saw fit to throw it in there?

As always, thanks in advance!

[GA Russell]

In New Orleans in the 60s, instrumentals were used because they could easily be faded out at precisely the top of the hour.

As I recall in August of 1964, The Ventures' Walk Don't Run '64 was played every hour.

The New Orleans stations played the jazz songs that were hits like In Crowd, Hang On Sloopy, Hard Day's Night (all by Ramsey Lewis), Mercy, Mercy, Mercy by Cannonball, Misty by Groove Holmes, and The Batman Theme by Ronnie Kole (a local musician). But most of the instrumentals were rock and r&b numbers.

In regard to elsewhere, I never noticed any jazz other than the hit singles when I would listen to rock stations when I would travel; and I think I would have noticed because I preferred the instrumentals to the vocals.

Sounds like you were lucky, if only for thirty seconds at a time!

[7/4]

Not in NY. What I remember is pop instrumental music like Classical Gas and that synth hit, Popcorn. It was the only time they would play instrumentals!

[Chuck Nessa]

Damn kids.