Tom and Others:

When I was a kid growing up near London, Ontario, my dad owned a
Hallicrafters SX-28A with a huge speaker cabinet and my mother used to
listen to WJR regularly. Your mention of Bud Guest was timely, as she would
listen to him on a daily basis.

My personal favourite station was CKLW in Windsor. I'd listen to that
station 24 hours a day if allowed. I really began seriously listening to it
during the summer of '65 when I went away to Army Cadet Camp at Ipperwash
Ontario on the south shore of Lake Huron. It was one of those stations that
the whole base listened to at the same time. There were certain songs that
had every cadet reaching for the volume control when they came on, and the
whole barracks would be shaking. One of those songs was "Satisfaction" by
The Stones. Every volume control was cranked fully clockwise when it came
on.

When I got into radio 2 years later, I started listening to understand the
format and why the jocks did what they did. Three years after that, I
joined "The Big 8" as a Transcription Operator and ran all the jingles,
music, commercials, etc. for all the Big 8 Jocks. It was a real power-trip
to be the one at the controls of that 50,000 watt clear channel powerhouse
when it was the fifth highest rated station in North America during the
spring of 1970 and we were pounding out the hits with the Drake Format under
the direction of PD Paul Drew.

In my opinion, CKLW was the finest station to ever feed audio down a
broadcast line to a transmitter site.

Golly I miss it!

I also listened to WLS and "Big 10 WCFL" a fair amount too, but "The Big 8"
played more soul hits, and I ate that stuff up.

Regards,
Lee Smith