"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.

From: "Mike Terry"
Date: 12/13/2004 11:10 AM Mountain Standard Time
Message-id:

"What AM Station do you miss the most?


WOKY, Milwaukee, way back 50 years ago. Johnny "Mad Man" Michaels, Luck
Logan and of course Jim "Shamus O'Hara" Lawler.

And to Jay Scott -- you're mention of Clark Weber brought back memories of
working with him at a small Wisconsin station. He had a great sense of
humor and his success in Chicago was no surprise.

--
Dave

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


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