Clear Channel Comment

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Clear Channel":

Part of the reason that Clear Channel and Citadel are making cuts is that they are going to more nationally syndicated shows.
This leaves the local person who has worked at a particular station for a number of years without a job.
There is two stations in Little Rock that are still locally owned and are located at 2400 Cottondale Lane. One of them is KKPT (The Point 94.1). All their DJ's are on live and are local people.
The only syndicated program is Flashback on Sunday mornings.
Most importantly, Sunday evenings from 7-midnight is Beaker Street.

Comment from a long ago KOTN Post

Brent Johnson has left a new comment on your post "KOTN":

I grew up in Pine Bluff in the 50's and 60's it was probably the best town in Arkansas to have been living in as a young person growing up. I always listened to KOTN (long before FM). I knew Steve Warren well as I graduated high school with him (60's DJ). I can still remember calling him and requesting "GO NOW" by the Moody Blues in 1965 for my girl friend and I. I live in Kansas now an I attended the Kansas State Fair in 1987 a DJ from my past was there, he was working for FM 105.3 in Wichita. I recognized him right off it was "Mike Miller/Mother Miller" very few were as good as Mike. I have no idea where he is now. I knew Mr. Buddy Dean and his family he was a fine man and was a plus to radio and radio broadcasting. Those days were the best days of my life thus far @ 61 years and KOTN and Pine Bluff was the greatest.

Clear Channel

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Current KAAY Changes":

I read an announcement in the paper
this morning that Clear Channel is cutting 1,850 jobs around the country. Clear Channel is the largest media market in the country.
They own radio stations in Little Rock, Fort Smith & Fayetteville.
They didn't comment on which jobs in Arkansas were cut.

Comment on Ray Lincoln KAAY

poppop09 has left a new comment on your post "Ray Lincoln KAAY":

ray was one of my best friends and was my sons godfather. i miss him alot.

tom gallagher
kaay (1977-1979)

Comment on KAAY Remembered

poppop09 has left a new comment on your post "KAAY Remembered":

glad u listened to kaay way back when. it was a kick working there.

tom gallagher

Dub Murry a//k/a Doc Holiday

David Lewis has left a new comment on your post "Greatest Aircheck Ever Revised":

You mention Dub Murry as the real name of the first Doc Holiday in Little Rock. Here in Nashville at WKDA, we had Robert Murray DJ'ing as Doc Holiday in '64 - '65. The similarity in real names leads me to believe Dub Murry and Robert Murray are the same Doc Holiday, though I haven't heard anything about him since 1969.
...........................................................................

I'm sure you are right David, since most of the original KAAY crew came from Nashville.
The Lin Station in Nashville at the time was WMAK. It makes perfect since to take a great jock from the competition and get him out of the market. The last I know of Dub he was selling cars in Texas. Any better updates would be appreciated.

I have been sick

I've been sick for the past several days. I hope to be back to posting soon.
Thanks for your prayers.

A.J.

Current KAAY Changes

From a reader:

The Citadel Corp., also the current owner of KAAY has made cuts. People have
either lost their jobs or been demoted. I don't know if you know this person or not,
longtime salesman Tom Longfellow, primarily at KARN was given a forced retirement.
Also, longtime traffic reporter Mike Willingham, also mainly at KARN, lost his job too.
John Scuderi is no longer managing KAAY, he is now working sales at the Citadel
stations.
................................................................................
I was surprised to see that Tom Longfellow was still working. I have known Tom for all these years. What a great broadcaster he is. I hope someone will write a profile on him for the blog.

More Beaker St.

A.J., I found these guys on the web:

http://beakerstreetbluesband.com/index.htm

I've also inquired about their association with Beaker Street and got a reply from Chuck:

"I also listened to Clyde Clifford on Beaker Street back in the 60's when I started out playing rock n' roll. Got exposed to a lot of good music.

Chuck"

I wrote back and told him about the KAAY blogspot. Hopefully, he & the guys will check in and visit and contribute! The more, the merrier, I say!

Have a great weekend...HAPPY FRIDAY!!!

"Safety-Courtesy-Responsiveness-Accuracy-Efficiency"...Service Is Our Passion!

Proud Dad Of A USCG Son!

For HIS glory,

Bud Stacey,

Beaker Theater Comment

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Beaker Theater":

A.J., if Randy will contact me, I have several links to FREE old-time radio shows I can send him in the meantime (same ones I sent you)to whet his appetite: melvin.stacey@cummins.com

Bud, Mobile, AL

Beaker Theater

Hi
I googled Beaker Theater and your link came up as possibly having recordings?
I'd love to get a copy if you do.
Randy Wood
Grew up in Iowa
50 years old
Remembering the Good Old Days
Let me know
Take it easy

Randy
..............................................................................
Some of the Beaker Street airchecks on this blog contain Beaker Theater episodes.
Beaker Theater came from George J.Jenning's collection of old time radio shows.
George was News Director and later Program Director/AM Drive team member.
George also provided the material for "The Breakfast Serial". For Breaker Theater he used a lot of BBC or South African material to try and make it different from "Breakfast Serial". He would cut 30 minute shows into 4 or 5 minute segments and make them serialized.

I have some of the original tapes and I have several Beaker Street airchecks that are still on reel to reel. I hope to have some time to transfer these to digital.

Very Early KAAY Clip

I was just listening to the early clip you posted. It really is very early. The song "Someday" hit the charts on September 22, 1962. I'm guessing the clip could have been from the first couple of weeks of KAAY. The song was by Bobby Vee and The Crickets. That song is a prime example of why somebody like me would listen to KAAY. I don't believe WJJD and WLS, our two big rockers in Chicago, ever gave that song much air play, yet KAAY played the heck out of it. After all, it was Buddy Holly's Crickets.

Sincerely,

Ron Henselman W9FT Melrose Park, IL

Ray Lincoln KAAY

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Were You at KAAY when Ray Lincolm did Mornings?":

A.J., I decided, "why not go to KBMR's website and see if I can find Bill Hickok?" and there he was, top of the list of personalities! Here's his bio:

http://www.kbmr.com/pages/bhickok.html

Bud, Mobile, AL

Phil North KAAY

Jay Marks has left a new comment on your post "Whatever Happened to KAAY's Phil North?":

As I recall Phil North a k a Phil Rowe left KAAY around 1972 for WHBQ in Memphis. He later worked at KNUS in Dallas, 13Q (WKTQ) in Pittsburgh, WRKO in Boston and KILT in Houston.

Last I heard he had a recording studio in Houston.

Can Someone Help with a date for Frank Woods

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Broadway Drive-In and more great commercials on KA...":

Well, A.J., you never know what you'll find sometimes...I just happened to pick up the log sheets I had when I was a kid and was looking them over and just happened to turn over a sheet- on the back, I had several scribbled references, one was, "Frank Woods, KAAY, Little Rock, AR 72203" and another was, "Lord Have Mercy On My Soul, Black Oak Arkansas", and "Beaker Street. P.O. Box 1971, Little Rock, AR". I did a search on Frank Woods and found one reference to him reading COMEX News here on the blog...what was the time frame when he was there, please? Thanks! Bud, Mobile, AL

KAAY Rob Robbins Early Clip

Here is a very early KAAY clip of Rob Robbins a/k/a Tom Campbell one of the original jocks that signed on KAAY. Notice lots of requests. From 8-11 PM it was heavy request time. Notice the phone number starting with a prefix name "Franklin". Also notice that Tom and a produced promo use K "double A" Y. This indicates a very early date in the history of KAAY. The jingle package heard on this clip was only used for a short period of time.

Here is the clip:

LINK

Beaker Street ......

Thanks to Bud Stacy for this link to an article on Beaker Street:

LINK

Greatest Aircheck Ever Revised

Thanks to Ron for continuing to improve "The Greatest Aircheck Ever".

If you saved the first one posted here you might want to change to this one:

LINK
Ron identifies the date as Sunday evening, September 2, 1962 which I believe to be completely accurate. I now think that the voice on the two recorded production elements is Dub Murry a/k/a the first Doc Holiday. I would sure like to here from some of the guys who were there to help identify/verify the voices. Based on the time of day of the recording, I would assume the voice reading the names is Tom Campbell, aka the first Rob Robbins.


Here is Ron's comments on the revision:

Hello A.J.,

My friend Andy Nemec, KB9ALN, informed me there was a heterodyne in my KTHS recording. It is around 5000 Hz. That is the frequency at which my ears ring, so I couldn't hear it. He removed the tone with a notch filter. I am sending the modified file to you. I decided to see if I could hear the tone by using the graphic equalizer in Cool Edit Pro. When I increase the 5 KHz range up to 18 decibels, I hear it plenty loud. Nobody, including my wife Linda, told me the tone was there when I asked them to listen to the file. I wonder if her hearing loss is greater than I previously thought. Let me know what you think about the tone being removed on the attached file. I think it is an improvement.

Sincerely,

Ron

Comment

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Read Ron's Comment added to Post Below":

RON ALL THE WAY!!!! GREATEST RADIO PERSONA W/O BEING A PRO

DA GYPSY

Message to : Jim Hankins, Wayne Moss, Tom Bigby, or Jack Grady

Take a listen to this clip:

CLIP

Please help me identify the voices on this clip.

Email me at ajlinds@yahoo.com

Thanks so much.

A.J.

Comment

Hello, A.J.!

Read yesterday's posting on the KAAY "blog". Very interesting, and
brought back some memories.

Ron Henselman, W9FT, is an old friend of about 32 years. One of the
first hams I became close with, and we still keep in touch. We share
the love of AM radio in its heyday, ham radio, BCB DX, and record
collecting.

I started DXing BCB back around 1963. KAAY was one of my faves; the
sound of that booming echo in the night made the hair on my arms
stand up. I still have my QSL card; it was one of my first. We may
never have that sound again.

I tuned in so many hundreds of stations I can hardly remember details.
I managed to hear about 42 states and a bunch of provinces, and some
south-of-the-border stations in the first couple of years. I remember
hearing Radio Costa Rica on 625 KHz during a WTMJ (620 KHz, Milwaukee)
power reduction one night. One thrill was getting a QSL letter from the
CE of a tiny station, WHOT 1330, in Youngstown, OH, in response to a DX
report. I heard them when they were doing a XMTR check one morning and
power had been reduced to a few watts. On occasion I hear WJJL 1440 in
Niagara Falls (daytime power 500 watts) at night, when they lower their
power to about 15 watts. I sent two reception letters to them and even
spoke to the DJ and the CE, and they never sent a QSL. Now they stream,
so the chances for a QSL are nil.

The "warm glow" of my old Hammarlund HQ-105 at night back in the mid-60s
was a sensation I'll probably never have again, but it stays with me.
Drove my parents nuts, sitting up half the night listening to static and
lightning crashes. ;-)

In my senior year of HS (1967) I built an FM BCB transmitter from Radio-
TV Experimenter magazine and souped it up a bit. ;-) I had an RG-8 fed
stick on my roof so I had a range of half mile. I taped my shows, and
out on the street my friends couldn't figure out how they were hearing
me.

What a treasure radio used to be. The serials of the early '50s that I
remember as a kid; the screaming disk jockeys of the 60s. Thank goodness
for guys like Dick Biondi, who does his show on 94.7 FM evenings from 7
to 11 (they just changed the call-sign back to WLS so they could use the
old 1960s vintage PAMS jingles again!) He keeps radio alive like no one
else can. A living legend and a good friend. He's 76 now and I hope he
lives forever.

Have a great 2009!

Mike Wolstein WB9QHL
Park Ridge (Chicago) IL

KTHS KAAY Jerry Sims

A.J.,

First of all, congratulations on the big day on the blog! I appreciate your efforts every day, and I know that kind of encouragement helps keep you going.

I had experience with KTHS Radio back when I was about 15 or 16 years old. I wrote briefly on this about a year ago, but I thought I might fill in some blanks about it since there is some interest in pre-KAAY -KTHS.

I had a real desire to be on the radio at a very young age. I did not have any contacts in the business to even talk to about my plans. There was a radio announcer in our church (Park Hill Baptist-North Little Rock) that my Dad knew. I was aware of him only because of hearing that great voice doing narration of programs at church. He was Earl Davis on KTHS. My Dad introduced me and I immediately began to throw questions at him about radio, which prompted an invitation to visit the station, which I did a a regular basis. He had a program (I believe it was 10:30pm to Midnight) called "Razorback Round-Up".

I was amazed at the coverage that his program had. Callers from all over the mid-west, usually. He even had a fan club! He was "Pappy Davis" on his program. He did his show from a booth just off the control room (later the KAAY News room). He had his own engineer (Eddie Graham, at least part of the time), that played records and commercials for him. There was just a light over his mic that let him know when his mic was open.

Other than his country music program, they did a "good music" format they called Sonorama. They even had a newsman that prepared a fifteen minute 10 pm News for them. There was a window in the control room that gave you a view of the KTHV 11 television studio downstairs. I later was the "KTHV Weather Man" in that same studio, but the biggest kick came as I watched the radio operation then, and certainly later as Sonny Martin on KAAY. TV was fun.....Radio was exciting!

I wondered as a teenager then, how could a radio station in Little Rock be popular across a good portion of the country, when people in Little Rock did not know they existed. Well, it did exist in some more "adult" minds.

There were several of my friends, that I later worked with at KTHV, who had worked for KTHS before their television days. Among those were George Moore and Bob Hicks.

Great air-check on the Baby Elephant Walk/phone book trick. I remember we were at KXLR and were looking at trying to be competitive with the Sleeping Giant that was waking up. Later we both ended up there with them. My (our) lucky day!

Jerry Sims...aka Sonny Martin
....................................................................................
Thanks for the great memories Jerry. I remember Earl "Pappy" Davis. I never worked with him but he must have hung around the KTHV studios and The Blue Goose. He was full and overflowing with fun. Just a great guy to be around. It was also great to be in the same building with KTHV and not actually be connected ownership wise. We were always asking some of their talent to do voice work. When we started Ear On Arkansas, we needed lots of extra voices. Gary Robertson was the son of B.G. Robertson the manager of KTHV. We discovered Gary could

sustain a great British accent. As the British invasion took place we put Gary on the air doing his British stick.
I cannot remember his air name...help me out here.

KTHS To KAAY

Yesterday, A HOLIDAY, this blog scored one of the highest number of hits ever. Thanks again Ron for the "Greatest Aircheck Ever" (scroll down and see the post and listen to the aircheck). Normally, weekends and holidays are very slow, but Ron's teaser campaign helped bet great hits. I was also astounded with the KTHS listener. Since this is a KAAY blog we tend to forget there was a small contengent of KTHS listeners who must have been upset at the change. KTHS was a CBS radio affiliate with block programing. Tommy Trent did a country show. The only programing that made the change to KAAY was Marvin Vines and his farm reports at 5:30 AM and at noon. I have written several times about Marvin Vines. Just do a search in the upper left box and search this blog.

KTHS to KAAY Comment

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Here IT is .....The Greatest Aircheck of All TIme":

Great catch of radio history, Ron! Would we all be so fortunate. But, then again, if we were, we wouldn't have this much-anticipated teaser! Thank you so much, Ron, for sharing this with us! And here's hoping we can find more KAAY recordings for 2009! Bud, Mobile, AL

I Was There

Len Carl has left a new comment on your post "Here IT is .....The Greatest Aircheck of All TIme":

Many fond memories. Thanks for sharing this. It was a great day and I was there.

Len Carl
.............................................................................
Thanks Len, can you identify the voices on the "greatest aircheck of all time"?

KTHS Remembered

Amazing Grace has left a new comment on your post "Here IT is .....The Greatest Aircheck of All TIme":

I always wondered what happened to my favorite radio station, KTHS. I listened from 1951 to 1954 to the late night jazz program hosted by Jonny Holliday. I went on a trip to Canada in August-September of 1954 and when I returned home, the program and station no longer existed. I've often wondered what happened to Jonny. He and his program are the reason for my lifelong love of jazz from the age of 14. Thanks for clearing up a mystery.

Read Ron's Comment added to Post Below

Here IT is .....The Greatest Aircheck of All TIme

I can't seem to get any of the blogspot mp3 players to work this morning, so I am just giving you the link which should play on everyone's computer. You can and should save this aircheck.

Why is this the greatest? I have always looked for this. Even KAAY apparently did not save any of the Labor Day Weekend change from KTHS to KAAY. I have written about this several times on this blog. This was the most unique call letter and format change I have ever heard. Playing Baby Elephant Walk over and over was not so unique. Lots of stations played a record over and over. Reading the Little Rock phone book was. As the clip starts you hear some of the phone book reading. All of the air people, took turns at 24 hour shifts over the weekend. This clip is very early in the weekend. I know this because of the produced "YAAK" bit. YAAK is, of course, KAAY backward. After about the first day, KAAY was introduced with production elements.

As you can hear this was recorded off the skywave which really gives authenticity to the recording. What are the odds of someone recording this? What are the odds of getting a recording so early in the change.

Several years ago, I tried to get George J. Jennings who was news director on the original staff to recreate the event but he never did.

I can not thank Ron Henselman W9FT Melrose Park, IL for this recording. It was on reel to reel and the tape oxide was deteriating. He worked hours on restoring this great aircheck.

Please leave comments to thank him for all his work and his willingness to share this with everyone.

Here it is:
LINK

...............................................................................
Here are some comments regarding the recording from Ron:

Hello A.J.,

I had just turned fifteen eight weeks before I made the recording. You heard the whole event, so maybe your description of the transition is more accurate than what I remember. I think I made the recording seven hours before the official change of call letters. It was around 10:00 or 11:00 at night when I made that recording. I'm pretty sure I listened on the hour to verify they were still using KTHS as the call letters. This was a big deal if one was a radio DX'er. They announced "Tune in at 6:00 AM tomorrow morning for a big surprise. If you can't hear the mighty ten ninety during daylight hours, then tune in tomorrow night to hear the surprise." I listened to the station until about 1:00 AM, but then I had to go to bed. I couldn't hear anything the next morning, so I had to wait until close to sundown. They were already doing regular programming as KAAY when I was able to receive the station via skywave the next evening. I liked top forty music at that time, so my ear was glued to the radio for most of that evening. The tape I used was recycled. It was labeled, "Paul Grove Sunway Vitamins Show 1955 WCKY." I recorded over the existing material. Tape was too expensive for a kid to buy, so I was very lucky when Gary Wegners's father Wally gave us a bunch of used tape he found. Acetate tape was probably all that was available when that tape was manufactured. Some of the tape my sister bought in 1959 was made from different material, and it survived much better.

Sincerely,

Ron Henselman