countdown was: "As If"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Tue, 21 Jun 2005 15:00:32 -0400, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
wrote:

>Right, that's the one I was noting below, along with the lack of any
>entry or documentation for the pop music "countdown".  Does anyone
>have a date for that?  As I mentioned, I remember the music
>countdowns themselves from the mid-1950s (top 40 of the week, top 400
>of the year, even one for the decade--probably on 12/12/59), but I
>can't remember when the word itself was introduced.

Surprisingly, I can't find any examples predating the British Invasion--
the earliest "countdowns" I've come across are from 1965.  WCFL in Chicago
had a "British Countdown" on the Jim Stagg show that year (featuring a
real live British DJ, Paul Michael), and KYW/WKYC in Cleveland had a
similarly titled feature on the Jerry G. show.  You can hear an aircheck
for the latter on this site:

http://www.reelradio.com/bt/index.html#jgkyw65

The Reel Radio site and several others have many airchecks from Top 40
shows, so an earlier "countdown" can likely be found in one of the audio
archives.


--Ben Zimmer