If you've ever wondered what it was like to be a music director at a Top 40 radio station, this article by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Arnold Zeitlin from December, 1960, takes you through a typical music day for KQV's Music Director Larry Aiken. 

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
December 5, 1960
By ARNOLD ZEITLIN

   MONDAY IS the day at KQV radio when the record merchantes drop by to peddle their hottest wax.  And the sounds of the station, which normally ebb and flow with the relentless tribal beat of rock 'n' roll, takke on a startling dimension with the addition of the insistent wail of salesmanship.  The effect can only be recaptured by imagining Dick Clark's "Bandstand" running wild in a Persian marketplace.
   "This record broke in Detroit ... large," implores the salesman on a typical Monday.  He puts the disc on the record player and out comes the old favorite, "Cherokee."  Those among the listeners can recognize it.
* * *
   THE SALESSMAN march Indian file to the announcer's lounge at KQV, each man bearing his weekly offering, of maybe 20 new records, all tailored with the beat guaranteed to flip the KQV listener ("We play modern music ... for the majority," exults disc jockey Dave Scott. "If the majority wanted classics, we'd play the classics ...").
   The pluggers ... Bob Murphy, Jack Shook, Fred Katz, Lou Walker, Nick Cenci, Lee Levine, Jack Armstrong ... make their obeisence before a table at which sits disc jockey Larry Aiken.  He keeps a list of all the music, or better, the treatments, he hears.  He also keeps two piles of records before him, one designated Possible, the other Impossible.  It is difficult to tell one from the other.

* * *

   FURLAN HUSKEY goes on and off the turntable and the salesman bubbles, "Reaction has been good ..."
   And Aiken puts the record atop the Impossible file.
   "... up until this instant."

   "We brought this out a year and a half ago," the indefatigable plugger says between the pitch and sway of the treatment. "One Million Years." ... "It's starting to make it."

   The disc rests with the Impossibles.
   "I'm getting calls for it." he continues undaunted "WAMO's all over it. ..."

* * *

   HE STRIKES a responsive chord.  The record moves from Impossible to a Possible.

   "I've heard that three weeks running."  Aiken cries out in self defense at another record drummer who waves "Celebrity Party at him and Sternly insists:
   "I'll play it every week until I get it on the list."

* * *

   "THAT IS complete, unadulterated .  "  Another word follows.  You're surprised a person would use it in company.

   "It's starting to happen in Cleveland,"  another salesman implores.  The lyrics seem to carry their own criticism.  The discussion in the tiny lounge is whether the chorus really is repeating over and over, "Shovelitup, shovelitup, shovelitup   ."

* * *
   THE CONCLUSION is no ... the lyric merely sounds that way.  The assessing continues while one Buddy Clinton wails on wax, "Take me to your ladder .. I'll see your leader later."  And Larry Verne meets a chuckling monkey on a treatment called "Mr. Livingston" and shouts:
 
   "Will you turn your head a minute, I think you got a bad banana ..."

   They are lyrics, like the description of "The Gunslinger." another entry: "A gun on his hip and a rose on his chest."
   "I have a stomachache."
   That's not a lyric.  That's an announcement from score-keeper Aiken who gets up and leaves.  You don't doubt him for a minute.