Remember Johnny Horton’s massacre of “Battle of New Orleans”? Jimmy Driftwood wrote a perfectly nice song, about how “we really gave 'em hell”, so Horton covered it within days, sang “really game 'em … . . Well,” He also cut out more than half the lyrics entirely, and just kept repeating the same clean verses over and over again. Made him a millionaire.
Cutting the song from nearly four minutes to under three. As the Piano Man says, “If you’re gonna have a hit, you gotta make it fit.”
DJ’s had to pee, too, you know. They always made sure there was at least one 3:20 song in the Top 40.
What, exactly, do DJ bio breaks have to do with Johnny cutting a minute from Jimmy’s original? Is there any way of knowing whether or not that cut was even up to Johnny?
I thought that was why FM deejays played eight minutes plus album cuts.