Hey, folks! We have a real gem from Russell Wells again! I'll let him explain:
"Hi, Bud--
I was going through a "traveling aircheck tape" from July 1977 ... apparently this guy took a long roadtrip from New Mexico to Memphis. That in itself wasn't important, BUT he tapped into the speaker line of his car radio, feeding into a cassette machine powered by an inverter (as I recall the story told me). With that setup, he airchecked a whole slew of stations along the way -- there are some good clips from Santa Fe, Amarillo, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and .... Little Rock.
Along with some brief clips of the original KLAZ (98.5) and KKYK (103.7), he captured a golden minute's worth of The Mighty 1090, with David B. Treadway at the mic.
The quality is beautiful -- in listening to the entire montage, it's VERY OBVIOUS when he started taping from KAAY; a glaring tribute to its engineering. I'll add here that there's a fantastic dialsweep of Memphis, and all the big players (WHBQ, WMPS and WDIA) also had great audio and all of them jumped out of the speaker larger than life ..... but to these ears, the KAAY sound had all of them beat.
Anyway, attached is that clip. Enjoy!!
Best, Russell
PS -- I was loving those Wayne Moss contributions. The jingle toward the end of the Moss '76 aircheck was a real gem."
(or download here)
And David Brian Treadway's response:
"Hey, Bud!
Couple o' points regarding that aircheck. I might have used my middle name for three days on the air. Sure enough, it got caught on tape! This experimentation was prompted by Kris Stevens at WLS in Chicago becoming Kris Erik Stevens, so I tried a similar move--but decided it was not for me.
It's good to hear that Russell liked the sound of the station, too. That would have been due to Dave Montgomery and Tom Rusk's meticulous installation of some SERIOUS audio equipment, followed by Jim Loupas's mystical fine-tuning of the Dorrough Discriminate Audio Processor (the "dap," as we called it) and finally that glorious, honking RCA transmitter. Yum! dbt"
I couldn't have said it better- YUM! This audio clip aired right after I graduated from high school...telling on myself, aren't I?
I'd said it before, and I'll say it again, I'd like to hear from Tom Rusk and Jim Loupas one day...I haven't been able to catch up with them, however....Thank you, Russell and David B.!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Wow! and thank you for all the nice comments, I appreciate it because I'm that guy who took the long roadtrip and airchecked the stations! I posted this radio travelog (including two other segments of the country) a few years ago on the ReelRadio.com site, which charges a small fee for access. I made the trip in a 1975 Chevy Vega with a Delco radio, and believe me the radio was the best feature of that doggone old car. As I drove thru Arkansas it was cool to hear KAAY's rich sound on groundwave, instead of the skywave reception I had been used to in the midwest. - Greg Barman
ReplyDeleteGreg, I found it! How short our memories are (well, MINE, any way! bs)...here's the link from A.J.'s blog:
ReplyDeletehttp://kaay1090.blogspot.com/2009/02/big-surprise-for-david-brian-treadway.html
Bud S.
Greg --
ReplyDeleteGlad you rose to take credit. I don't know how it landed into my hands, but it's good to know that I wasn't too far off the mark in the background info, re car radio.
HOW could I have missed A.J.'s post of this clip??!! Oh well, an encore performance never hurt anyone, right?
I'm inclined to agree that the Delco radios were the best thing about GM cars. And that you made a cross-country trip in a Vega, that in itself flirts with Ripley!! ;-) I mean, I've read tons of horror stories about the pancake aluminum engines in those heap Vegas.
--Russell