The term "oldies" has been applied to rock 'n' roll for almost as long as the music has been around. The first edition of the best-selling compilation-album series "Oldies But Goodies" came out in 1959 and featured rock 'n' roll, R&B and doo-wop songs that were just a few years old at the time, including the Moonglows' "Sincerely" (1955), the Penguins' "Earth Angel" (1954) and Buddy Holly's "That'll Be the Day" (1957).
The country really embraced the concept of oldies when George Lucas' music-drenched 1973 hit movie "American Graffiti" asked the question, "Where were you in '62?" The soundtrack, packed with '50s and early-'60s songs, became a top 10 album and provided a kind of template for the first wave of oldies radio stations, though some, such as Phoenix's KOOL-FM, already had launched such a format.
Now step back for a moment and imagine a current movie rewinding a mere 11 years to ask the question, "Where were you in 2000?" Can you envision a similar wave of nostalgia for the year that gave us Christina Aguilera's "What a Girl Wants," Matchbox Twenty's "Bent" and Vertical Horizon's "Everything You Want"
The oldies radio format peaked in the 1980s and thrived through the 1990s. Chicago's WJMK-FM became "Magic 104" in 1984 (and later "Oldies 104.3") to focus on oldies, which it came to define as rock, soul and R&B (oldies generally aren't country) from the mid-'50s to the early '70s. But by the mid-2000s the oldies format was flagging nationwide as advertisers supported stations that aimed for listeners younger than folks who were in high school in the '50s and '60s.
"You have radio stations that are trying to lower their demographic because advertisers are not buying baby boomers," said Ron Smith, WJMK's music director from 1984 to 1992 and DJ on "Real Oldies 1690" from 2003 to 2006.
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