Found!  In the book Wall of Pain, the Biography of Phil Spector by Dave Thompson (2003):  The story is about the song “To Know Him is to Love Him” by the Teddy Bears, Spector’s first group.  It was originally a B side, but even released as an A side the feeling was that it was “under-produced, under performed.  The girl had a nice enough voice, but where was the music, where was the ‘ooomph’?  You couldn’t sell a record unless it has some ‘ooomph.’

Not in Los Angeles, anyway.  Although one or two courageous DJs had flipped the record over under their own steam, the city itself seemed to leave the Teddy Bears on the shelf.  Way out in Fargo, North Dakota, however, KFGO’s Charlie Boone couldn’t get enough of it.  By the beginning of September [1958], listeners to his daily Boone in the Afternoon show were hearing ‘To Know Him is to Love Him’ every day.  (Boone himself would become an international name six months later, as host of the last ever Buddy Holly concert.)  The first orders for the single began trickling in.

Days later, KDWB Minneapolis followed suit, only this time it was the station’s programme director, Lou Riegert, who fell in love with the record, and made sure that all his DJs gave it a spin.  More orders came in, a handful at first, then more and more.

By the middle of the month the song had reached the top 100, based on regional sales alone.  The song eventually made it to #1 in the first week of December.