America’s Greatest Hits

On Saturday 27 September 1975 Radio 1 introduced a new programme to the schedule, presented by Paul Gambaccini in concentrated on the latest music Stateside. As the DJ told the Radio Times ‘The American pop charts are the best and most forward-looking in the world, and bringing the new pop and soul hits from across the Atlantic to Radio 1 listeners should give them a chance to hear the acts they will be listening to in the future’. That show, which became known as America’s Greatest Hits, comes to an end tonight on Greatest Hits Radio.

In 1975 the US Billboard charts were significantly different from the UK ones. In that week’s Hot 100 half of the songs in the top ten never charted in the UK, records by John Denver, The Isley Brothers, Janis Ian, David Geddes and Freddy Fender. The US number one was a British artist, David Bowie with Fame, which only got to number seventeen in the UK. The show would be a mix of album tracks, classic hits from previous charts and the Top 30 singles of the week.

Radio Times billing for Paul's first
regular Radio 1 show on 27
September 1975

When the new series started in 1975 Gambo had already been broadcasting on the BBC for two years. Prior to that he’d made his first broadcast in December 1966 for Dartmouth college-owned WDCR and subsequently worked at WBZ in Boston. In 1973 he was studying at Oxford and also freelancing as British correspondent for Rolling Stone magazine. Attempting to grab an interview with Elton John he encountered Helen Walters, the press officer for Elton’s record company. Helen was married to John Peel’s producer John Walters. Walters told him that later that year he would be starting a weekly rock magazine programme on Radio 1. He wanted to include a ten minute look at the London rock scene from the perspective of an American and asked Paul “Would you be interested in writing and presenting this piece?”

Gambo takes up the story: ‘In late September 1973, I ventured to the BBC near Oxford Circus to record my pilot piece. Rolling Stone had run my Elton and Bernie interview as a cover story to coincide with John’s summer tour of the States, so there was no embarrassment in greeting Walters. He turned me over to producer Tony Wilson and in the third floor studio of Egton House, home of Radio 1, I read my written piece. It included four or five brief breaks for topical tunes, including Al Green’s You Ought to Be With Me and Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman. At the end I waited, expecting measured criticism from Wilson. “Fine,” he said. “That’s it.” And that was it. The pilot piece was broadcast in the first edition of Rockspeak the following week. I was on the radio again.’

That first report aired on 5 October 1973. You can hear that recording plus other clips and reminiscences in this Radio 2 programme Paul Gambaccini: The Way It Was broadcast to celebrate his 40^th year on BBC radio, It was broadcast on 4 October 2013.

In 1974 Paul worked on researching, writing and presenting a series for Radio 1 on All American Heroes. Broadcast weekly from November that year to January 1975 it featured Carole King, Steve Wonder, Roy Orbison, Aretha Franklin and eight other major performers. In 1975 he was working on Radio 1’s documentary strand Insight and also started to make his first appearances on Radio 4 presenting the arts magazine Kaleidoscope. He was given a tryout on a couple of Saturday afternoons in August covering John Peel’s show before launching his new series on 27 September. The idea for the show with an American slant came from producer Stuart Grundy, who’d worked with Paul on the All American Heroes series. It had been agreed in principle with executive producer Teddy Warwick but BBC cutbacks – the loss of the 2 hour late-night show which meant the dropping of Rockspeak and Bob Harris and the sharing of David Hamilton’s afternoon show with Radio 2 – meant the start date was delayed.  

Radio work for both Radio’s 1 and 4 continued and there were major series such as The Elton John Story (1977) star interviews and depping for Peel, Anne Nightingale and others. TV work followed and, of course, nearly every reader of this blog will have had a copy of one of the editions of the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles on their shelf.   

The American chart show ran on Saturday afternoons on Radio 1 for just over ten years. In the 70s it was sandwiched between Alan Freeman’s rock show and In Concert. It benefitted from being heard in stereo as Radio 1 borrowed the scarce VHF/FM resource on Saturday afternoons whilst Radio 2’s Sport on 2 on beaming out long wave (later on medium wave). Paul would always sign off the same way: “Until next week’s Paul Gambaccini show plays next week’s American hits Joan Jett and the Blackhearts are still number one with I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll”, to take an example from 27 March 1982.    

America’s Greatest Hits of the Radio 1 era ended on 15 February 1986. The following week it was replaced by The American Chart Show hosted live from New York by Gary Byrd.

Many ILR stations carried the American Chart Countdown
including Viking Radio (Autumn 1987)

Paul had left the BBC to work for Piccadilly Productions, a production arm of Piccadilly Radio under the direction of Simon Cole (later at Unique), set up to develop a market for sponsored network programming for ILR stations. Paul would present two shows, the Network Album Show and the American Countdown Show. His first commercial radio US chart show was on 1 March 1986 and by the following year twenty ILR stations were taking the Pepsi-sponsored show. His American Countdown programmes ended in 1989 by which time many stations were taking the Benny Brown fronted US chart show. During this time (1984-89) Paul was also presenting an American Charts show for BFBS. In 1990 he presented a retro US chart countdown for Capital Gold.

The America’s Greatest Hits show would return in 1998 but in the meantime Paul was on Classic FM, made a brief return to Radio 1, Radio 3 with Morning Collection, regularly presenting Kaleidoscope and on the TV-am and GMTV sofas.

Radio Times 18 April 1998

On 18 April 1998 Radio 2 revived two shows as part of their Saturday afternoon schedule. After Fluff’s Pick of the Pops Johnnie Walker was back at 3.30 pm with album tracks and sessions not dissimilar to his Radio 1 Saturday Sequence programme. At 5.30 pm Paul was back with America’s Greatest Hits playing music from the current US chart and from the past four decades, though the chart rundown element had now been dropped. His first record was Springsteen’s Born to Run, the same record that had book-ended his shows on Radio 1. Paul would go on to open his last Radio 2 show with it as well as his first Greatest Hits Show so it safe to assume it’ll feature tonight.

Here’s that first Radio 2 version of America’s Greatest Hits.

The last Radio 2 show aired on 2 July 2016 as Paul was to take over Pick of the Pops the following week. But it was revived by Greatest Hits Radio on 15 February 2020. Here’s an aircheck for the show on 14 March 2020.

Earlier this month it was announced that Paul would stop presenting the show, the last one airs tonight. He’ll continue to work for GHR and from next Monday will present a daily Paul Gambaccini Hour on Greatest Hits Radio 60s. And of course you can still hear Gambo on Radio 2’s The Paul Gambaccini Collection on Sunday nights and asking the questions on Radio 4’s music quiz Counterpoint.