Record World

Dede Dabney

Dede Dabney was from Philadelphia. She, the daughter of a pharmacist, came on board in 1972. She had a weekly column called "Soul Truth". She communicated weekly by phone to major figures in radio programming to get and give information. These figures included Frankie Crocker of WBLS-FM, New York, E. Rodney Jones of WVON, Chicago, and Joe "Butterball" Tamburro of WDAS, Philadelphia. When an artist or group's record was mentioned in "Dede's Ditties to Watch", it was one that was watched.^[7]

Marie Ratliff

Marie Ratliff hailed from Missouri. Following a weekend visit to the Grand Ole Opry, she moved to Nashville. She started out in the music business in a part-time role, handling the mail for artists Skeeter Davis and Ralph Emery. Not too long after that role, she got a job at Key Talent and Newkeys Music as office manager.^[8] She was pictured with other Newkeys staff in the 9 July 1966 issue of Record World.^[9] She also worked with Tom T. Hall.

Later at some stage, she was employed at Record World and at some stage became the country chart manager. Her role there was selecting and maintaining the reporting panels for radio and retail.^[8] It seems that her name appeared as a columnist on 23 June 1970.^[10] It was Country Hot Line By MARIE RATLIFF & CHUCK NEESE. Prior to that the magazine didn't name the contributor.^[11][12][13]

In 1982, she was working as VP for MAF Advertising, which was the in-house publishing company for the group Alabama.^[8] In 1986, she joined the staff of Billboard as country charts manager.^[14][8] Her column at Billboard was called Country Corner.^[15] In 1991 she was working for Amusement Business as the manager at Boxscore / Touring database manager. By 1998 she had retired.^[8]

Others

Other staff included writers Vince Aletti (later of The New Yorker); Marc Kirkeby (he went on to CBS/Sony Records); Jeffrey Peisch (later of MTV and independent producing); Dave McGee (later of Rolling Stone); Laurie Lennard (later as a talent booker on The Late Show, then wife of comedian Larry David, and producer of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth); columnist Sophia Midas; chart editor and assistant editor Fred Goodman (later editor of Cash Box and current managing editor of Pro Sound News and a songwriter/music publisher; radio director Neil McIntyre; and art director David Ray Skinner, who also contributed a weekly cartoon from 1978 until the magazine's demise in 1982 (www.RWCartoons.com).^{[citation needed]}