Another old aircheck of KAAY and Beaker Street has surfaced.
This new one comes from James England of Boulder, Colorado, who emailed us about a cassette tape he found. It was recorded in February 1974 off the KAAY skywave in eastern Kansas, with a steady signal. Beaker Street was airing a documentary on Bob Dylan with a KAAY ID in the middle. I wasn’t aware that Beaker Street aired any artist documentaries, but here is one! James provided this background on the aircheck:
“I started listening to Beaker Street around 1972, when I was living in Pratt, Kansas, attending Pratt Junior College. I stumbled on the AM signal on my '65 GTO car-radio, probably driving around after the local bar's midnight closing. Needless to say, there wasn't any comparable music programming in that part of the country then (sorry, KOMA), and I was hooked.
Apparently, I made the recording, probably in the early part of 1974, while living in Topeka. I have no memory of how (probably with a portable recorder's external mic right from a radio speaker) or why I recorded it, and don't remember even listening to it ever.
In cleaning out the garage I came upon a small stash of old cassettes; this one was labelled only "Bob Dylan" and I had assumed it was just a tape of one of his records. I had decided to throw it out, but figured I should at listen first to all the old tapes, and after purchasing a portable player (having long since retired the better-quality cassette deck), I fished it out of the trash and started it up. The first thing I heard, fortunately, was the KAAY/Beaker Street ID.”
I have edited a short segment of the aircheck with a bit of the documentary, and the KAAY Beaker Street ID.
BTW, the voice on the documentary is not a KAAY DJ. It was apparently a nationally syndicated show and the voice is that of Jim Bohannon aka “Jimbo”, who later went on to become a late night talkshow host on the Mutual Broadcasting System, replacing Larry King. I confirmed this is Jimbo’s voice with people who worked with him at Mutual.
Here at the Mighty 1090 Blog, we await still more discoveries of KAAY airchecks tucked away in more basements.
Greg Barman
https://archive.org/details/kaay-beaker-street-id-with-bit-of-dylan-documentary-1974
