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