Yesterday while I was sitting in the dentist’s chair I heard “The Heart of Rock and Roll” come on the radio. Sitting there with nothing else to do while the dentist poked and prodded around in my mouth, my mind began to wander, so while this song was playing I noted the cities that are mentioned in the song:
New York, Los Angeles (along with Hollywood and its Sunset Strip), Washington D.C., San Antonio, Philadelphia (the “liberty town”), Boston, Baton Rouge, Tulsa, Austin, Oklahoma City, Seattle, San Francisco, Cleveland, Detroit (the last two don’t appear in any of the lyrics sites I checked, however).
What I thought was interesting was how Oklahoma gets two of its cities mentioned, while more prominent cities such as Chicago aren’t mentioned. I know that two of the cities are in California, but those are major cities. I thought Mr. Lewis’ apparent affinity for Oklahoma was because he might have been born there, but he wasn’t (it’s New York, according to Wikipedia).
I don’t have any objections to his choice of cities, but I just wanted to share my thoughts and my observations.
I think the list of cities varied per market. Some are in all the versions, but others were changeable. I lived in Atlanta when the song was a hit, and the version I heard on the radio included Atlanta. I’ve never heard that version on the radio outside of Atlanta, though.
According to a local DJ, he did different versions for major markets. So when their station would play it and “Nashville!” would be in there, it wasn’t in every version.
Strangely, this song was stuck in my head this weekend while I was mowing the lawn. At the time, I reflected how awful it was for Tulsa and Oklahoma City to be mentioned in the same breath as Austin, Seattle, and San Francisco. I think he put them in there because they fit the meter(?) well.
The only rock and roll connection I can think of in Oklahoma is Wanda Jackson, AKA the Queen of Rockabilly. Her stuff from way back at the dawn of rock is catchy and fun, if a bit of a ‘novelty act’. She unfortunately became a Jesus freak and gave up rock music for decades, making gospel music instead. Lately, she has re-embraced the secular music world. Met her, she’s a nice lady. There’s a recent documentary out about her.
However, I doubt Mr. Lewis had her in mind when he wrote the song.
I had the album (“Sports”). That version ended with: …in Cleveland… Detroit! Uhh, heart of rock & roll… then faded out on the instrumental.
Cleveland and Detroit remained on the various radio-market versions, and they added the final pair of cities over the fade-out. Chicago was paired with Kansas City, if my aging memory serves.
(Edit: I gotta get me to Tulsa. It’s the only city in the song I’ve never visited.)
Yes the names of the last cities mentioned changed with the market. I remember hearing several different versions in the west including Portland Oregon, Seattle, Boise. Great marketing strategy.
Harry Chapin did a similar thing. I heard the Morning DJ song in Champaign with the name of the campus radio station in place of WOLD. I suspect he did that for other markets also.
I grew up in Chicago and heard the song on the radio. In every case, it was the album version. Chicago was never mentioned.
The only rational explanation, in my 14-year-old mind, was that Chicago had merited an entire third verse that had been deleted to shorten the airtime, and someday would become known to the world.
In Milwaukee (and I assume in Minneapolis) Huey said “Minneapolis! Milwaukee!”. I heard the song on the radio today (in Milwaukee), but it wasn’t there. Of course, the 80’s were analog and the stations probably got the personalized versions on a reel-to-reel tape, which was transferred to a cart. Now it just comes into the station automation as-is. A shame- it would be cool to hear the local stations still play that version. And Geenius…it sucks that Chicago was left out (very surprising) but I do remember a personalized version of “Fire” by the Pointer Sisters. The lyrics went “I’m riding in your car/ you turn on WLS” instead of “you turn on the radio”. So Chicago wasn’t ignored by every artist…
In 1959, Tommy Facenda recorded 28 local versions of “High School USA,” which consisted almost entirely of high school name checks. It (they) became a top forty hit nattionwide.
Loosely related to ongoing theme. 80s German synthpop/europop group Modern Talking had a local hit with “Japanese Girls”. When they toured in Hong Kong and Taiwan, they sang it as “Chinese Girls”.
The Canadian version added “Toronto! And Montreal!” at the fade out in a way that sounded just different enough to make it really obvious they were pandering to the market.