This blog, "mighty1090kaay.blogspot.com", came to birth four years ago today, on July 15, 2009. Many of the current readers do not know the history and evolution of the blog, so now is a good time to fill it all in!
Some History:
A.J. Lindsey ("Doc Holiday II") started his blog, "kaay1090.blogspot.com", in 2006. (You can still read his posts!) Doc presented the history of his station, posted photos and recordings that he owned and received from Pat Walsh (KAAY's famous General Manager), and encouraged others to contribute.
One of A.J.'s enthusiastic readers and contributors was Bud Stacy, from Mobile, Alabama. Bud listened to KAAY in the "glory days" and he shared Doc's desire to document what he remembered. Bud shipped a lot of audio files in Doc's direction, who saved them in Heaven-Only-Knows-how-many different accounts and servers and linked his blog to them. Sadly, A.J. passed away suddenly in May, 2009.
Bud couldn't rest, knowing the story was incomplete. He contacted me (I had posted a few comments on Doc's blog), and proposed that we contact other contributors to Doc's blog (Greg Barman, Ron Henselman, Jonnie King, Richard Robinson, Russell Wells, and others) about continuing the work. That We Did, commencing on this day in 2009. We scrambled to salvage all Doc's audio before it disappeared (just in time, too!), and we backed up all Doc's web pages. (Thankfully, Google Blogger is now an archive --- whatever is posted there stays forever!)
Our plan was to continue what Doc/A.J. started: document the history of the classic, Top-40-oriented, KAAY radio --- the jocks, the engineers, the listeners, the times. We posted articles that were informative, scholarly, and fun to read. We wanted a textual, visual, aural archive.
Bud contacted everybody he could find on the Internet, soliciting stories, photos, and recordings. Many, many KAAY people contributed, far too many to list here, but if you scan through the archives, you will see their names, all acknowledged for their contributions. Bud knocked himself out to do this right. He even made a field trip to Little Rock and visited the people and places of KAAY, all documented here on the blog.
An Update:
If you study the Blog Archive list in the right column of this page, you see a summary of the results: Roughly one article per day the first year-and-a-half, and about one article every other day for the next two years. Readership has grown to two hundred views per day, even on days when nothing new is posted. There is now a community of former KAAY employees who stay in touch. There is also a KAAY discussion/chat group (via Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/198469254312 ).
Several key people kept this blog going:
- Bud himself, the heart and soul of the endeavor.
- Jonnie King, the smooth-talking, classic-car-loving jock, who contributes great stories and maintains his own huge website, http://www.jonnieking.net
- Greg Barman, who has rescued, restored, and digitized many of the audio files on this blog as the tapes literally fell apart in his hands
- Richard Robinson, David B. Treadway, and Russell Wells, who supplied key contributions of scholarship, anecdotes, and audio. (Russell rescued and submitted the now-famous Pat Walsh tapes of KAAY from May 18, 1971.)
- Barry Mac, who rescued reels and reels of KAAY ads from the old transmitter building and incorporates them each and every week into his weekly webcast of Tin Can Alley. (Find it over there at the top of the right column!)
There are also many many other people who submitted great items at great times (thank you, Hollis Duncan, Dave Montgomery, Greg Fadick, Charlie King, Phil North, Wayne Moss, Fritze Prentice, Gary Pfeifer, and many others --- sorry if I've forgotten a name or two here!). Alas, we have lost some people too, most notably the blog's great friend, Jerry Sims.
A request:
As the blog starts its Fifth Year (amazing in itself for a volunteer effort!), there will be more articles, photos, and audio. But it is getting harder and harder to dig up the material.
To make things tougher, everyone here at the blog has a full-time job, and in Bud's case he now has two full-time jobs due to unplanned medical expenses. So, the posts are a bit less frequent than what they were a year ago. But we are still going and will keep going.
Here's what you can do to help:
- Contact us if you have any stories, memorabilia, and (especially) audio to share. Our intent is to archive for posterity the history of KAAY and have fun while doing it. Everyone can contribute! Email your materials to Bud and me at the addresses below.
- When you use materials from this blog --- photos, stories, audio --- please include a link back to us at www.mighty1090kaay.blogspot.com This helps new readers, who might have important archival material, to find us.
- Send Bud an email to thank him for his work!
So, Happy Birthday To Us!
Contact info: Bud Stacy staceys4@hotmail.com
Dave Schmidt schmidt1953@gmail.com
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