KAAY Articles From Arkansas Democrat Gazette, From Greg Barman

Thank you, dear readers and visitors, for being so diligent in finding and sending in pieces of KAAY history!  One such friend of the blog is Greg Barman (thank you, Greg!), who found three articles and sent them along for your enjoyment.  The first describes KAAY's last day as a Top 40 station.  Many of you have read David B. Treadway's and Barry McCorkindale's recollections of that day...if not, type in "last day" in the upper left hand corner search box and check 'em out.

Nonetheless, onward.  The second article deals with ten years after and the third article is five years after the second, describing more history of our beloved KAAY.  I'll post them in three parts.  They are in .jpg, so you can possibly download them, but Greg sent them to me in .pdf format, as well, so they can be readily expanded, read and printed.  If anyone wants copies, please e-mail me at my address below.

Here are Greg's comments:

"Here are few articles from the Little Rock Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Online service on the final day of the Mighty 1090, and some reminiscences of the station as the years went by.

The first article is from April 4, 1985 with coverage of KAAY’s final day of rock’n’roll the day before. Not that big of an article, really, for the end of such a huge institution! Perhaps the paper had more coverage prior to this day, but this was the only article I could find on the D-G online service. This happened before the two newspapers merged in 1991, and there is no indication whether it came from Democrat or the Gazette.

The second article is by the D-G’s Mike Tyler on April 21, 1995, about ten years after the day the music died. More than half the article is about Beaker Street.

Finally the third article is from May 26, 2000, and it’s a longer set of memories written by the D-G’s John Brummett. He writes about the Kay-Why generation and how “it was a great time to be alive with a transistor radio cupped in your hand against your ear.” Brummett concludes that radio in 2000 was holding up okay in the world of new media.

I wonder what the paper would say now. Maybe the Democrat-Gazette is overdue for another KAAY reminiscence, don’t ya think ?

Greg Barman
Denver CO"


Herewith, the 1985 article: