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What AM Station do you miss the most?
"What AM Station do you miss the most? Think broad: It could
be a station on the air currently, but you miss its prior format, or it could be a set of call letters long gone from the dial." IN THE 50's DALLAS TEXAS HAD SOME OF THE GREATEST RADIO. From 1950 to 1957, I had a 5 tube table model radio, with a long wire antenna, 30 feet high and 100 feet long. I logged 37 states and 15 countries on that little radio. In 1957 I got a Lafayette KT-200 and really started logging the stations. I miss the radio shows of the 40's and 50's. Fibber McGee and Molly on NBC, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy on the Chase and Sanborn Hour, Kate Smith, Abbot and Costello, Martin and Lewis; I was a Communist for the FBI; Damon Runyon theater; Superman; the Green Hornet; X-1; all these and more can be heard throughout the week WBBM-780, but it's not the same as was when I was a boy. Also every Saturday night KMOX- 1120 plays 4 hours of 'I Like Jazz' with Don Wolfe as host, followed by 2 hours of When Radio Was. KRLD 1080 in Dallas, TX. Comes to mind. They had American Airlines Music Till Dawn, where they played real music. This was from 1957 into the early 60's. None of this Lead Blimps falling from the sky stuff. They also had the Dallas Texans football in 1959, but dropped them for the new upstart team, the Dallas Cowboys, in 1960. WBAP 820 Ft. Worth, TX when they had real country and western, late 60's and into the 80's when Hal Jay and Dick Segal came onto the station in the mornings and evenings, along with Sam from sales. I miss KIXL 1040 in Dallas, TX. Real music, nothing but real music in 1950's. No rock 'n Roll stuff. They would have from time to time, the big movie stars of the day, like William Holden, come on as DJ's; their "Thought for the Day" was always something uplifting and inspiring, though not religious. Never any nasty jokes. Just good radio. I remember the commercials for Woosey. This was a local soft drink company. They had the best cream soda, strawberry, grape and root beer. WRR 1310 in Dallas, late 50's, with Jim Lowe, (also the voice of Big Tex) and his morning drive show with music, news and his Caravan. How about KLIF 1190 in Dallas, TX. When Gordon McLendon owned the station it was a top 40 station from about 1955 to 1963. But McLendon only played the good do-wop songs, never the trash that later became Mo-Town. In the late 50's Gordon would play the news from Radio Moscow and then give his commentary against communists. A lot of good it did, just look at the mess this country is in today. He was also running for political office at that time. From the late 40's, I miss the old WFAA radio on 570 from Dallas, TX. I can't remember the name of the program that was on from 0600 to 0900 each morning. But it was a local breakfast club style show with live talent and local events. My mother would always listen. One such person who sang on the show, from time to time, was Dale Evans. This was followed by Don McNeil's Breakfast Club from Chicago. In the afternoons, after school, on WFAA radio, I would always listen to "Big John and Sparkey" a great kids radio show. This was around 1951 or so. I remember in one week of episodes the two came upon a flying saucer. This was big stuff, and a hot topic in the early 50's. KSKY 660 Dallas, TX. I remember they were a Christian radio station through the 50's and 60's, and they gave their call letters as "K- SKY, 6-6-0 on your radio." KBOX-1480 "K-BOX 1480" In the late 50's and early 60's this was KLIF's opposite in the ratings. There are so many calls that come to mind. In the late 50's, I remember when WSM-650 and WLAC-1510 (both in Nashville, TN) were nightly visitors. WSM of course, had the Grand Ole Opry every Saturday night. And us'n and our neighbors, who lived in east Texas, would gather at our house to listen on the car radio. Do a little danc'n in the yard. WLAC had Randy's Record Shop. This was the sale of the worst recordings you would ever want to hear. But they sold. Also on WLAC, I remember the sales of baby chicks, to be shipped to your home. I just don't remember the name of the company. There are so many stations that were had great radio, I couldn't possibly write them all down. Kids today have no idea how great it was. I didn't intend to write an essay, but I did. Thanks for your time, and for letting me to take a trip back to the jungles of my memoirs. (Willis Monk, Old Fort, TN, NRC-AM via DXLD) |
"Mike Terry" wrote in message ... .. How about KLIF 1190 in Dallas, TX. When Gordon McLendon owned the station it was a top 40 station from about 1955 to 1963. But McLendon only played the good do-wop songs, never the trash that later became Mo-Town. In the late 50's Gordon would play the news from Radio Moscow and then give his commentary against communists. A lot of good it did, just look at the mess this country is in today. He was also running for political office at that time. KLIF became Top 40 in about 1953, right after the format popped out of KOWH in Omaha. It continued being Top 40 through the 70's. They definitely did play Motown, as their heyday was in the late 60's when they battled Balaban's KBOX for supremacy in the Dallas market (which did not include Ft. Worth at the time... KXOL was the big Top 40 there). |
"Mike Terry" wrote in message ... "What AM Station do you miss the most? Think broad: It could be a station on the air currently, but you miss its prior format, or it could be a set of call letters long gone from the dial." I miss the WLAC of the 50's and 60's. It was a rare source of blues and R & B music during the time. I know we can't go back. . . some of the personalities like John R. have passed on, and R & B has moved to FM. |
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JayScott16 wrote:
From: "Mike Terry" Date: 12/13/2004 11:10 AM Mountain Standard Time Message-id: "What AM Station do you miss the most? WCFL Chicago, re 1970, with Dick Orken producing "Chicken Man," "the Tooth Fairy," and a boatload of great promos. Plus the jingles. Plus Barney Pipp, Joel Sebastian, Clark Weber, et al. --Jay Scott That was good radio! |
Tom Betz wrote:
Without a doubt, WJR Detroit, "From the Golden Tower of the Fisher Building, The Great Voice of the Great Lakes". I heard it nearly every day from the 1960's through the early 1970's. It was a true full-service station, on the CBS radio network, when a radio network still meant something. As a kid, I preferred listening to Richard C. Hotelett's "The World Today" on WJR to watching any of the nightly news programs on TV, and Arthur Godfrey remained a staple there until 1972. Local personalities J.P. McCarthy, Jimmy Lantz, Bud Guest, Karl Hass (now syndicated by WCLV in Cleveland, his "Adventures in Music" program is largely unchanged from those days), gave WJR's programming a variety that just doesn't exist in radio today. WJR went downhill fast in the late 80s, when some manager failed to notice that you need some intelligence to host a show, and started putting on lightweights and displacing the good guys. Simultaneously, McCarthy lost it, coinciding with a Marconi award or whatever it was, so even that attraction was lost. The WTF moment for me was his noontime interview with the airline pilot that landed the DC-10 without hydraulic systems on throttle alone, and the pilot was building up to his crisis moment practiced in countless interviews, and J.P. intervened with the remark that he himself used to fly a Piper Cherokee, at which point the pilot lost interest in everything, saying in effect yeah whatever, and that ended that. So J.P. stopped thinking or seeing his job or something around then, or maybe coasting, or maybe he had a stroke, who knows. That cost WJR huge. Miss Pennypacker from the Blue Star Home supplied the only edge to his morning show at that point. So anyway, okay, people get old, but management has to know enough to replace them with actual talent, which they don't and didn't. I got a nice reply once from Jimmy Launce when I asked what the peaceful- moment music was he used to play once a month or so (Kiri Te Kanawa ``O mio babbino caro''), asked from a distance of more than a decade. They moved Launce from a great show in the evening to a morning show playing ``guess what I'm holding in my hand'' to hold the attention of droolers, which in fact is their audience today, long after the good guys are gone. I guess Clear Channel didn't help either, but they didn't start the decline. -- Ron Hardin On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk. |
KRTH AM 930 "Smokin Oldies". Boss Angeles Mid 80's I think. -- Philip de Cadenet Transmitters 'R' Us http://www.transmittersrus.com |
"What AM Station do you miss the most? 15-20 KOMA, 89 WLS (60s) 91X (80s) KPOP-AM 1360 San Diego (2004) Chris Carmichael dio. n e t |
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 |
MusicRadio.....WLS....Chicago!!!
My hero was Steve King. I tried to pattern my style after Steve. I miss "real radio." -George Carden, Minneapolis airwaves-digest wrote: airwaves-digest Thursday, December 16 2004 Volume 2004 : Number 302 "What AM Station do you miss the most? 15-20 KOMA, 89 WLS (60s) 91X (80s) KPOP-AM 1360 San Diego (2004) Chris Carmichael . n e t ------------------------------ End of airwaves-digest V2004 #302 ********************************* -- George Carden Instant Messengers: AOL: Gcrdbrd ICQ: Cardboard or 294-192-512 MSN: Yahoo: Cardboard1 |
On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 18:10:40 +0000, Mike Terry wrote:
"What AM Station do you miss the most? Think broad: It could be a station on the air currently, but you miss its prior format, or it could be a set of call letters long gone from the dial." If I had to narrow it down to one station, I'd have to say WLS/Chicago during the 1960s. Like most teenagers in mid-America I tuned in every night because they had the Top 40 hits days before my local stations; but as much as I enjoyed the music, I loved the disc jockeys even more! Those were the days of "personality" deejays who understood how to entertain the audience between records, but without forgetting that the music itself was the reason they were there. Dick Biondi, Ron Riley, Art Roberts, Clark Weber -- these were the heroes of my youth, and instrumental in my getting into radio myself. I suppose if I had grown up a little closer to New York I'd have felt the same way about the WABC Good Guys -- but WABC just didn't get into West Tennessee all that well, while WLS boomed in. -- Walter Luffman Medina, TN USA Amateur curmudgeon, equal opportunity annoyer When you see Dan Rather, you CBS |
Mecia Hack had written:
| | "What AM Station do you miss the most? My top two candidates: WLS from the early 1970s through the mid 1980s -- always creative, always just a little bit out of the box, always listenable. KRBE(AM) Houston when it was "Classic Rock 1070" in 1985-86. Imagine a station that would play the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. In C-QUAM stereo, indeed. ======== But that's AM. The FM stations I miss most are the Entercom-era KITS/Live 105 in San Francisco (until about 1997?) and the "Rock 40" KXXR in Kansas City (1989-90). Both stations were willing to bend the playlist and absolutely did not take themselves too seriously, with personalities who had just enough of a sarcastic edge to them. Both KITS and KXXR were both fun stations to listen to. The current KITS is a pale shadow of what it used to be. -- Mark Roberts | "Kansas City, named after Kansas, most of it's in Oakland, Cal.| Missouri. That's not right!" NO HTML MAIL | -- Jon Stewart (The Daily Show, November 17, 2004) |
"Music-Ray-Dee-Oh, Double-Ell-Ess, Chi-Caaaago!"
WLS, late 70s/early 80s. Though I grew up in Minneapolis, this station was my savior in the late 70s after we lost local Top 40 outlets WYOO, WDGY, and KSTP. John Landecker "Records truly is my middle name) from 6-10, then Jeff Davis from 10-2. Always looked forward to winter because it would get dark early enough so I could hear John's complete show & catch a bit of Lujack in the morning before school. -Drew in Sunny Central Florida- |
Nationally, WLS and WCFL were tops in my book. The 70's radio war between
these two giants was awesome. Later, I came to enjoy the "folksy-ness" of WOWO and Joe Donovan's Rock & Roll Revival (probably the first onscure oldies show anywhere) overnights on 84 WHAS. Locally, I miss Charleston, West Virginia's 95 WKAZ. Big time Top 40 radio in a smaller market. Their crosstown battle with 1490 WXIT was simply a local version of the WLS/WCFL duel, with both stations raising the bar in the market and creating some really great radio. Rick |
On 17 Dec 2004 18:09:15 GMT, BucketButt
wrote: On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 18:10:40 +0000, Mike Terry wrote: "What AM Station do you miss the most? Think broad: It could be a station on the air currently, but you miss its prior format, or it could be a set of call letters long gone from the dial." If I had to narrow it down to one station, I'd have to say WLS/Chicago during the 1960s. Like most teenagers in mid-America I tuned in every night because they had the Top 40 hits days before my local stations; but as much as I enjoyed the music, I loved the disc jockeys even more! Those were the days of "personality" deejays who understood how to entertain the audience between records, but without forgetting that the music itself was the reason they were there. Dick Biondi, Ron Riley, Art Roberts, Clark Weber -- these were the heroes of my youth, and instrumental in my getting into radio myself. I suppose if I had grown up a little closer to New York I'd have felt the same way about the WABC Good Guys -- but WABC just didn't get into West Tennessee all that well, while WLS boomed in. MEDINA??? I can't believe it. I just started reading this group again after being too busy for many months. I also was raised in west Tennessee, Crockett County. I was a musician as a teen and enjoyed late-night driving in west Tennessee after a gig. On clear nights, I would listen to this great station from Cincinnati, I think it was WLW. All easy-listening (AM) and no announcements regarding the music, just a station ID and an occasional spot. But for AM, WLW was VERY laid back in the late 1960s/early 1970s. The other station I enjoyed was WWL from the beautiful Blue Room, high atop the Roosevelt Hotel in downtown New Orleans. Similar music format. Great signal to west Tennessee. There was "Music 'Till Midnight" on WREC AM60 in Memphis. What a great show. The founder of the station, Hoyt B. Wooten, tried to give WREC the finest sound technology would provide. He was famous for his underground bomb-shelter, so large that he used to throw parties there. And WREC had a fabulous "sound" compared to other AM stations. Then...there was Dolly Holiday and "Holiday Inn's Nighttime" The first "rock" FM station in Memphis, FM-100 WMC would play the Beatles's "Good Night" at midnight, then ole Dolly Holiday would come on for the next 5 hours or so, playing Jackie Gleason, Bobby Hacket, Mancinni and all of the other slurpy, mushy music that I really loved. In the early 1970s, I did a few "live shows" with her for some group at the main Holiday Inn on Lamar in Memphis. One day, we went back to her office, down the hall in one of the buildings of the Holiday Inn headquarters. Before I knew where we were going, I looked up through the double glass windows of a "radio studio." It was her studio where she recorded the program. Looking back now, I kick myself for not nurturing that relationship, bringing a camera and taking some good photos. That was back in the day that 7/11 stores opened at 7am and closed at 11pm. Thinking out loud Gosh, I wonder where her record library is now? As far as that goes, I wonder where the WKBJ-FM record library is now??? /Thinking out loud I used to work at WKBJ-FM in Milan, easy listening from those wonderful LPs. AM played country-music with too many cheap commercials and sounded terrible!!! FM was "easy listening" and played only 1 or 2 spots per hour. This was in 1969, before they automated in 1970. Just a few weeks ago, I began experimenting with my own BEAUIFUL MUSIC Internet Radio station. Give it a listen. http://ct1.fast-serv.com:8314/listen.pls I have over 1000 LPs of just the easy-listening/beautiful-music genre. It takes a while to record them into the computer, in real time. But the music can't be beat. I am working on this project a little at a time. I have been in Dallas for 22-years and have seen a few changes even here. Occasionally (which is not very often) I will be away from the city at night, away from the interference and the thick, overloaded local AM band. Usually, that is on one of my trips back to Tennessee. I still try to tune in those good old stations. But radio is not what it used to be. I can never find an AM station, playing that type of music at night. So I listen to tape-delays of the talk-guys, still not too bad. But...even with digital, stereo satellite broadcasting static-free entertainment directly from the sky to your car radio, nothing will be quite the same as a summer-night's ride on the dark, rural highways, with the full-moon shining and music coming from far, far away, from WLW or WWL with their easy listening, or even the great jocks at WLS in Chicago. Duke, Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl, Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl, Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl, Duke Duke...well you get the idea. Check out Beautiful Music Radio, built by a Tennessean and enjoyed by the world! http://ct1.fast-serv.com:8314/listen.pls Nostalgic Don in Dallas www.airstreamfm.com www.calldon.com "We ain't gone be po no mo." - - Pastor Greg Powe, Atlanta |
On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 08:32:20 +0000, Don wrote:
MEDINA??? Yep, grew up here and moved back several years ago. I also was raised in west Tennessee, Crockett County. I was a musician as a teen and enjoyed late-night driving in west Tennessee after a gig. On clear nights, I would listen to this great station from Cincinnati, I think it was WLW. All easy-listening (AM) and no announcements regarding the music, just a station ID and an occasional spot. But for AM, WLW was VERY laid back in the late 1960s/early 1970s. The other station I enjoyed was WWL from the beautiful Blue Room, high atop the Roosevelt Hotel in downtown New Orleans. Similar music format. Great signal to west Tennessee. I listened to them back then too ... well, maybe a couple of years earlier, since I enlisted in the Army in 1968. Don't remember a lot about WLW, but I'll never forget those "King Edward cigar-time" timechecks on WWL. I listened more to WKYC (now WTAM) in Cleveland ... and WLS, as I mentioned earlier. There was "Music 'Till Midnight" on WREC AM60 in Memphis. What a great show. The founder of the station, Hoyt B. Wooten, tried to give WREC the finest sound technology would provide. He was famous for his underground bomb-shelter, so large that he used to throw parties there. And WREC had a fabulous "sound" compared to other AM stations. Like so many AM stations today, WREC is a Clear Channel-owned talker. Then...there was Dolly Holiday and "Holiday Inn's Nighttime" The first "rock" FM station in Memphis, FM-100 WMC would play the Beatles's "Good Night" at midnight, then ole Dolly Holiday would come on for the next 5 hours or so, playing Jackie Gleason, Bobby Hacket, Mancinni and all of the other slurpy, mushy music that I really loved. In the early 1970s, I did a few "live shows" with her for some group at the main Holiday Inn on Lamar in Memphis. One day, we went back to her office, down the hall in one of the buildings of the Holiday Inn headquarters. Before I knew where we were going, I looked up through the double glass windows of a "radio studio." It was her studio where she recorded the program. Looking back now, I kick myself for not nurturing that relationship, bringing a camera and taking some good photos. I had forgotten that FM100 aired Dolly Holiday's program! Following a progressive-rock format with "Holiday Inn's Nighttime" always seemed a bit strange, but somehow the people at FM100 kept the transition from being too jarring. Sadly, the riverboat-whistle ID hasn't been heard on that station in a long time. Scripps-Howard sold the WMC-AM/FM/TV operation a number of years ago; Infinity owns the two radios, and I think Raycom still owns WMC-TV5. (All three still carry the WMC call letters.) Gosh, I wonder where her record library is now? As far as that goes, I wonder where the WKBJ-FM record library is now??? I think Bill Haney and (the late) Larry Dunphy divided it between them. Wish I had been around to ask for Nancy Sinatra's "Sugar" album -- that album cover, with Nancy wearing the pink bikini, used to sit in the control room window when I was working FM. (Hey, I was just a teenager .... and Nancy Sinatra was wearing that pink bikini .... ) I used to work at WKBJ-FM in Milan, easy listening from those wonderful LPs. AM played country-music with too many cheap commercials and sounded terrible!!! FM was "easy listening" and played only 1 or 2 spots per hour. This was in 1969, before they automated in 1970. You had commercials? I was there in 1968, and we almost never had commercials on the FM side; just three breaks an hour for weather and one at the top for news. AM paid the FM's expenses most of the year, but FM made money each fall and winter with Milan High School football and basketball broadcasts. Today the old WKBJ-FM is all grown up. Changed owners in 1983; callsign changed to WYNU in 1984; went from an ERP of 28,500 watts at 160 ft. HAAT to the full 100kw at 1,050 ft. Current owner is Clear Channel, and it's playing classic rock. The AM is dark, sadly. -- Walter Luffman Medina, TN USA Amateur curmudgeon, equal opportunity annoyer When you see Dan Rather, you CBS |
Very easy. KYA 1260. They had the best jocks, promos and music (for
the most part. Even they fell into the Beatles-Beach Boys-Supremes trap when it came to oldies) during the 60's and 70's. KFRC was the copy-cat around here. Some people think the opposite is true but Bill Drake programmed KYA long before he consulted the RKO stations. The death knell happened on November 1, 1977 when King Broadcasting took over and ruined it. They even killed-off its sister station KYA-FM (Y-93). When they sold KYA-AM, the new owners even junked the call letters. I wouldn't drop a three-letter call for anything. Had I ever thought KYA would fall by the wayside, I would have taped hours of it. |
BucketButt wrote:
Today the old WKBJ-FM is all grown up. Changed owners in 1983; callsign changed to WYNU in 1984; went from an ERP of 28,500 watts at 160 ft. HAAT to the full 100kw at 1,050 ft. Current owner is Clear Channel, and it's playing classic rock. The AM is dark, sadly. Actually, the AM is back, kinda. It's moved to Lakeland (a Memphis suburb) and resurfaced as religious station WMQM with 50,000 watts daytime, 35 at night. Most winter days I can hear it here in Cheatham Co. all day long. -- Doug Smith W9WI Pleasant View (Nashville), TN EM66 http://www.w9wi.com |
Tom, 1950-1979 another great SF station Gene Autry's KFSO and in Los
Angeles one of the learders in MOR- personality radio KMPC, KEX Portland and KVI Seattle. roger carroll retired KMPC dj / ( Gene Autry's) Vice President Golden West Broadcasters |
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