I was on the air at Gulf 104 in Tallahassee when Elvis died in August of ’77. Today, I don’t remember which song I played after making the announcement about it. The station was CHR with an Album Rock edge and we didn’t normally play Elvis. But this was certainly a cultural event it and it made sense for us to do something for our listeners in remembrance. I put a handful of his earliest, raunchiest hits in the control room and we played an Elvis song every hour for the next 36 or 48 hours, if memory serves.
When Don Everly passed a few weeks ago, on my Oldies-based station, I quickly moved the pioneering Everly Brothers hits into hot/hourly rotation. Here’s a three minute video showing how you can do something similar when you get an idea for a fast “special” like this.
