Rick Dees’ Weekly Top 40
Weekend Show heard on 350 Affiliates. Approximate Weekly Listening Audience of P12+ 70 million
Dees is best known for his syndicated radio show Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 and for the novelty song “Disco Duck.” Rick Dees does mornings at the new Movin’ 93-9 FM in Los Angeles.
Dees worked in various radio stations throughout the southeastern United States, including WSGN in Birmingham, Alabama. Along with his ‘Cast Of Idiots’, Dees recorded “Disco Duck” in 1976 while working at WMPS-AM in Memphis, Tennessee, but he was expressly forbidden from playing the song on the air by station management (rival stations refused to play it for fear of promoting their competiton). He was later fired on-the-spot simply for talking about the song on the air one morning- the station manager claimed conflict of interest.
Following a 45 day mandatory hiatus after his time at rival WMPS, he went on to WHBQ-AM in Memphis and took the station to #1. The single Disco Duck sold over two million copies and reached number 1 on Billboard magazine’s Hot 100 chart on October 16, 1976. The song can be heard in the movie Saturday Night Fever, in a brief scene in which a group of older people were learning to “move their feet to the disco beat”, but the song was not included in that movie’s enormously popular soundtrack album, thus depriving him of a Grammy award that the artists on the record received (for 1978’s Album of the Year). In 1979 Dees moved to Los Angeles and did mornings on KHJ (which was at the time WHBQ’s sister station) during its final years as a Top 40 station. When KHJ flipped to a country format, Dees left the station.
In 1982, Rick Dees moved to crosstown Top 40 outlet KIIS-FM, where he served as host of Rick Dees in the Morning until 2004, when Ryan Seacrest replaced him in that timeslot. Dees began his weekly Top 40 show, still currently in syndication, in 1983. Rick Dees’ Weekly Top 40 is currently heard on over 350 radio stations in the United States, as well as in 37 other countries. The chart show is available in three different versions, Hit Radio (for contemporary hit radio stations), Hot Adult (adult contemporary radio stations) and Rhythmic. Previously, there was a version for Latin music radio, Con Sabor (Spanish for “with flavor”), which was canceled after a few months streamed online.
Dees was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1999 and has also received the People’s Choice Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.