Rare Treasured Memories of My Youth: Sunday Afternoons with the Radio, 1973-1979

WARNING: Boomer nostalgia.

I look out the window at the Sunday afternoon light bronzing the trees and find myself thinking of Sunday afternoons over 40 years ago when I read books on my bed or built models at my desk while listening to American Top 40 with Casey Kasem from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. on WCOS 1400 A.M. It was a great way to fill the time on the dullest day of the week. From afternoon to early evening, once it was done you were ready for Monday and everything after, fortified with the knowledge of what the most popular songs in America were up to that time. 

That timeless afternoon light, the same in any decade or century and yes, I can attest. Of course, in winter it was dark by the time Casey got us to Number One on the Billboard charts.

A.T. 40, as Kasem sometimes abbreviated it, occupied my Sundays from my middle to late childhood throughout the 1970s. I was in the latter half of sixth grade in 1973 when I made a habit of listening to it. I remember listening to the two-part year-end show in 1978. I might have heard the one in 1979, but I’m struggling to remember that. I’m certain I didn’t hear it at all after 1979. As of 1980 my radio listening went entirely over to F.M. radio with the rest of the world.

My fogginess in recalling my last time listening to American Top 40 reminds me of that meme, “And then came that day when you went outside to play with your friends for the very last time and didn’t know it.” By the time I’d quit listening to A.T. 40 I’d been following it for nearly half my life. I was 18 and the lesser dramas of high school were already a year behind me. 

The pop music scene itself was also changing. I remember when Deep Purple’s single “Smoke on the Water” played for the last time on A.T. 40, as it had slipped from its peak to somewhere at number 37 or 38, and feeling like a corner was turned. In 1973, it most certainly was. And 1979 was light years away in time and sensibility from 1973—as far as it is from age 11 to age 18 for most children. Despite a few good songs by New Wave acts, disco had also made pop radio insufferable.

All in all, it ended when it had to end, at least for me. Casey Kasem’s lively, friendly voice “countin’ down the hits to Number One!” belongs to a childhood that needed all the lively and friendly it could get.