THE SPORTS DOPE

When Harvard football, soccer, and cross-country teams all take the trek--nigh impossible except by Mohawk charter--to Cornell, fans are generally left twiddling their thumbs in Cambridge. But not this weekend. WRKO-AM and FM is leaping noisly into the breach with a three-day program of New England's All Time Top 300 that is designed to turn thumb-twiddlers to foot-stompers.

No one group in Boston is as involved in rock 'n' roll gold as the current college population, and RKO, in its one year on the air, has easily captured the student audience, so this upcoming extravaganza seems perfect--in theory. But in actuality, what has happened? The R-KO list is based on cards sent in by listeners last spring. And not only were voters limited to their top three, choices, but a prize was offered for the voter whose list coincided with the final tally. As a result, almost all the 5,000 ballots coalesced around 15 teenybopper standards of the past three years.

Votes got pretty thin around 50, let alone for number 300, so R-KO experts Arnie Ginsberg, (yes, the Wood lives!), J. J. Jeffreys, and Mel Phillips beefed up the list. But the final tabulation (printed on a fold-out sheet and sent to all voters and contest entrants) remains distressingly modern and far from definitive.

Top Three

It is not the purpose here to break the top three. They were labelled number one songs for the years 1964, '65, and '66, respectively, by at least some New England stations. To hear the top ten, tune in when you wake up tomorrow. The countdown starts at four this afternoon with the Newbeats oft-overlooked party starter of '65, Run Baby Run, and will proceed in order at the rate of 17 songs an hour to the king, a "record which served to key the current movement in mindbending music" (according to the official program).

After the list is gone through once, the disc jockeys will pull songs from the list as they wish. To get the full impact of the list then, a Friday night all-nighter is necessary. Before you bother to consider such a step, however, bear in mind some of the following items, culled from an advance list graciously supplied by promotion director Harvey Mednick.

Seventy-eight per cent of the songs are from the years '64-'67, and 1966 alone is responsible for 108. The 23 records from the pre-1960 era, led by "Hound Dog" at No. 21, are songs that "belong" on such a list, and are probably not popular choices of old-timers. "Rock Around the Clock," dating from 1955, is correctly the dean of the triple century, weighing in inconspicuously at No. 74. The single true vein among the mounds of pyrite will come along around 6:30 tonight. Numbers 246 to 253 include the only two songs from 1959, two from '58's bumper crop, and four of the five that rate from the '57 vintage. This gold mine is preceded by one half of the 1961 total and one of the four '60 discs on the list. When Tom Jones follows the Diamonds "Little Darlin," however, you know that the deluge of modernity is on again.

Stream of Consciousness

Parts of the list that most people wil miss appear to be compiled in stream-of-consciousness style. "Tobacco Road" follows "Poor Side of Town" at 208; "California Girls" and "California Nights" are linked at 194, behind "Blue Suede Shoes" and "Blue Velvet;" and the Critters "Mr. Dieingly Sad," No. 156, is in its appropriate follow-up position to their previous hit, "Younger Girl," No. 155.

If you don't listen the whole way through, you won't notice that Martha and the Vandellas' "Heat Wave" is both #102 and #263. You also wouldn't know that the Beatles make the list 19 times, the Beach Boys 12, Rolling Stones 8, and Monkees 7.

While any list that claims "Somewhere My Love" by the Ray Connill Singers is the 88th all-time great hit is ludicrously far from being authoritative, still the WRKO programming this weekend will keep you on your toes and will have less than normal Nancy Sinatra. I just may be irrationally disappointed because, despite the obvious junk in the lower depths, not one of the three songs I voted for made the list.