Tommy Riggs has been mentioned from time to time on this blog and A. J.'s old blog; Charlie Okle shares a humerous story with us (how many of US have done this, huh?):
"Here's a Tommy story from the old KAAY days...
After Tom started working at KAAY, I would drive up to Little Rock from Pine Bluff and visit fairly often as we were best of friends. One afternoon in downtown Little Rock, we were browsing around in the old Woolworth Store at 4th and Main. We spotted a display of the new Wham-O "Super Balls". Having seen them advertised on TV, we each bought one. As we went to the sidewalk out front Tom unwrapped his and gave it a mighty slam against the concrete. This was a very busy intersection and the ball bounced very high out over traffic. When it came down and bounced off a car driving by, all hell broke loose. Here was his ball being batted around by passing autos. Tom shouted "My God", and we stood there dumbstruck for a minute, then beat a hasty retreat down the sidewalk hoping no one had noticed where it had come from!!! -Charlie."
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
"Where Are They Now"...Again....
Man, what a pleasure, listening to those voices on the Timeless Tracks! Always the questions surface...this time, it's about Jim and Jerry Pitcock! Does anyone know where they are nowadays, how to contact them and what they're doing? We sure would like their input to the blog!
How about Charlie King? I think Jerry Sims mentioned that he may still be around.
The more we look around, the more folks we find who are still with us! Still looking for stories, anecdotes, pictures and what-have-you to help fill the historical holes in KAAY's lineage!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
How about Charlie King? I think Jerry Sims mentioned that he may still be around.
The more we look around, the more folks we find who are still with us! Still looking for stories, anecdotes, pictures and what-have-you to help fill the historical holes in KAAY's lineage!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Comments Re: Mary Donald
So Delores Handy, who is about to be inducted in the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame is the "Mary Donald" of KAAY fame. Her bio says she was the first black anchor person in Arkansas television also, but it does not say anything about her KAAY history. She probably was the first black on-air personality at KAAY also. Let us hear more about this person and her KAAY connection.
Jim Clark
Rogers, AR
(and)
I remember working with Mary Donald very well, for quite awhile she did newscasts on my show at night.
Mary truly cracked me up one night when she reported an earthquake that hit China or somewhere. She stated something like "...the earthquake registered 6.5 on the RICHARD Scale."
I was on the floor ! I explained to Mary that it was the "RICHTER" Scale NOT the Richard Scale.
I used to tease her before she went on sometimes by saying: "Coming up in just a few minutes, Mary Donald, wearing her newest Orthopedic Sweat Sox, with the latest news."
Mary was a sweetie and was well aware of my research, show prep, and, constant striving for "doing things the right way the first time, so you don't have to do them a second time." I was, and still am, a stickler for perfection, as most who know me well will attest to.
So, one time when she was in the Control Room and heard me compliment someone about something they did, Mary said: "You got a compliment from Jonnie King ?! Boy, you better not forget that ! He doesn't cut anybody any slack !"
Mary was a really nice girl, but I know that at first working with me she was sometimes intimidated. She hadn't been in the business all that long at the time, and she was a little leary of making the wrong moves or saying the wrong thing in her newscast when I was on the other side of the glass.
However, after awhile she warmed up, and knew I "was on her side" and wanted her to do well, and became a good friend.
I missed her when I switched from 8-11pm to Mid-Days.
Jonnie King
Jim Clark
Rogers, AR
(and)
I remember working with Mary Donald very well, for quite awhile she did newscasts on my show at night.
Mary truly cracked me up one night when she reported an earthquake that hit China or somewhere. She stated something like "...the earthquake registered 6.5 on the RICHARD Scale."
I was on the floor ! I explained to Mary that it was the "RICHTER" Scale NOT the Richard Scale.
I used to tease her before she went on sometimes by saying: "Coming up in just a few minutes, Mary Donald, wearing her newest Orthopedic Sweat Sox, with the latest news."
Mary was a sweetie and was well aware of my research, show prep, and, constant striving for "doing things the right way the first time, so you don't have to do them a second time." I was, and still am, a stickler for perfection, as most who know me well will attest to.
So, one time when she was in the Control Room and heard me compliment someone about something they did, Mary said: "You got a compliment from Jonnie King ?! Boy, you better not forget that ! He doesn't cut anybody any slack !"
Mary was a really nice girl, but I know that at first working with me she was sometimes intimidated. She hadn't been in the business all that long at the time, and she was a little leary of making the wrong moves or saying the wrong thing in her newscast when I was on the other side of the glass.
However, after awhile she warmed up, and knew I "was on her side" and wanted her to do well, and became a good friend.
I missed her when I switched from 8-11pm to Mid-Days.
Jonnie King
Monday, October 19, 2009
Jerry Sims, The Beach Boys and KAAY
The Beach Boys were in town on Oct. 1st here in Little Rock to perform with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra. Yeah, really. I was out of town or I would have been there. Here is my KAAY related story:
Whenever a big name group or performer came to town, back in the day, promoters would attempt to tie in KAAY in some way, to get our endorsement and extra exposure. (Free Advertising). The Beach Boys were coming to Little Rock and they wanted our involvement. They wanted one of the D.J.'s to be there and introduce the show. I was asked, and willing. The week of the show, sometime about 1964, arrived and we were required to announce on air, that the show had been postponed. Brian Wilson, (the creative genius of the Boys) was "ill". If you have followed the history of the Beach Boys you will know that this happened quite often. So, the show was to be re-scheduled to a later date. Ticket holders could get a refund or hold them for the re-scheduled show.
The show was re-scheduled before too long. The Boys came out with their pink and white stripe shirts, and did their usual show. About half way through the night Mike Love told the audience that Brian Wilson was ill, and they had to bring a fill-in for him. He introduced the replacement as an "Arkansas Boy". Yep.... he was Glen Campbell. He wanted to feature him on a solo. I do not remember why, but I can remember the song he sang. Roy Orbison's "Crying".
In Branson, Missouri on business about two years ago, I had an opportunity to see Glen performing with Andy Williams. Glenn had his daughter with him, and I got an opportunity to talk with her. I told her the story and asked her if she thought Glen would be impressed that I remembered the song. She said that we would ask him after the show.. I was not able to speak with him though, because of a power failure that knocked out power to the adjacent restaurant where Glenn and Andy were to go after the show.
Our "Arkansas Boy" can still sing and play that guitar. Andy, at about 102 pounds, still has that voice too, although it was a little weak from a cold that night. Because of the voice weakness, they were unable to do "MacArthur Park" together. A big disappointment for me. I might consider a drive back to the beautiful Missouri Ozarks just to hear that one.
Jerry Sims......who was "you know who" back when Glen, Brian, and I were just kids.
Whenever a big name group or performer came to town, back in the day, promoters would attempt to tie in KAAY in some way, to get our endorsement and extra exposure. (Free Advertising). The Beach Boys were coming to Little Rock and they wanted our involvement. They wanted one of the D.J.'s to be there and introduce the show. I was asked, and willing. The week of the show, sometime about 1964, arrived and we were required to announce on air, that the show had been postponed. Brian Wilson, (the creative genius of the Boys) was "ill". If you have followed the history of the Beach Boys you will know that this happened quite often. So, the show was to be re-scheduled to a later date. Ticket holders could get a refund or hold them for the re-scheduled show.
The show was re-scheduled before too long. The Boys came out with their pink and white stripe shirts, and did their usual show. About half way through the night Mike Love told the audience that Brian Wilson was ill, and they had to bring a fill-in for him. He introduced the replacement as an "Arkansas Boy". Yep.... he was Glen Campbell. He wanted to feature him on a solo. I do not remember why, but I can remember the song he sang. Roy Orbison's "Crying".
In Branson, Missouri on business about two years ago, I had an opportunity to see Glen performing with Andy Williams. Glenn had his daughter with him, and I got an opportunity to talk with her. I told her the story and asked her if she thought Glen would be impressed that I remembered the song. She said that we would ask him after the show.. I was not able to speak with him though, because of a power failure that knocked out power to the adjacent restaurant where Glenn and Andy were to go after the show.
Our "Arkansas Boy" can still sing and play that guitar. Andy, at about 102 pounds, still has that voice too, although it was a little weak from a cold that night. Because of the voice weakness, they were unable to do "MacArthur Park" together. A big disappointment for me. I might consider a drive back to the beautiful Missouri Ozarks just to hear that one.
Jerry Sims......who was "you know who" back when Glen, Brian, and I were just kids.
David B. Treadway, Re: Mary Donald And Jack Lee
Delores Handy left her "Mary Donald" persona behind many years ago and apparently never looked back. She was at KABC, Los Angeles, by 1973 (if fading memory serves), did some fill-in anchor work at CNN and is currently an award-winning correspondent for WBUR in Boston, an NPR affiliate. I am certain that I have left out many stops along her way, for her stack of credentials must be five feet thick by now.
I remember her as being unflappable on the air. Phil North and I certainly tried to crack her up, but it was for nought. When the mic was on, she was All Business. After that, she loved to laugh--and the sound of it was musical to me. I had a crush on her as big as Dallas!
I remember two Jack Lees, the first of whom would have been there prior to 1971. He was Gary Souheaver (pronounced "SAI-ver") from El Dorado AR. That's all I know, except that I heard his family had some financial interest in stations in south Arkansas.
Mike McKinney (also from El Dorado; go figure) was Jack Lee from circa 1976 until he left the business for a lucrative career as an investment advisor. He was also the go-to guy for one of the Little Rock TV stations whenever they needed a complex issue explained in language that mortals could understand. It would not surprise me in the least if he retired rich.
I did not know Gary Souheaver, but I'll bet he was as competent and talented as Delores and Mike. You did NOT get a position in the KAAY news department unless you were the best available.
David B. Treadway
Doc Holiday VI (or was it VII?)
I remember her as being unflappable on the air. Phil North and I certainly tried to crack her up, but it was for nought. When the mic was on, she was All Business. After that, she loved to laugh--and the sound of it was musical to me. I had a crush on her as big as Dallas!
I remember two Jack Lees, the first of whom would have been there prior to 1971. He was Gary Souheaver (pronounced "SAI-ver") from El Dorado AR. That's all I know, except that I heard his family had some financial interest in stations in south Arkansas.
Mike McKinney (also from El Dorado; go figure) was Jack Lee from circa 1976 until he left the business for a lucrative career as an investment advisor. He was also the go-to guy for one of the Little Rock TV stations whenever they needed a complex issue explained in language that mortals could understand. It would not surprise me in the least if he retired rich.
I did not know Gary Souheaver, but I'll bet he was as competent and talented as Delores and Mike. You did NOT get a position in the KAAY news department unless you were the best available.
David B. Treadway
Doc Holiday VI (or was it VII?)
Jonny King's Console Comments
I remember that console very well...even though it's been 37 years since I've seen it !
I always loved watching REAL needles move back-and-forth,rather than digital-electronic scans.
And, yes, Woody had been the Air Force. In fact, one time around 1970 I think, he hired a guy from the close-by Air Base in Jacksonville to be a week-ender.
Sad to say the guy wasn't very good, and I'm being kind here, and only lasted a weekend or two.
He brought in his "Confusius Says" joke book and would read the one-liners out of it verbatim...not very funny.
I felt sorry for him, but it was another case of the "Gee, I'd Like To Be On The Radio !" Syndrome, and just didn't work out.
JK
I always loved watching REAL needles move back-and-forth,rather than digital-electronic scans.
And, yes, Woody had been the Air Force. In fact, one time around 1970 I think, he hired a guy from the close-by Air Base in Jacksonville to be a week-ender.
Sad to say the guy wasn't very good, and I'm being kind here, and only lasted a weekend or two.
He brought in his "Confusius Says" joke book and would read the one-liners out of it verbatim...not very funny.
I felt sorry for him, but it was another case of the "Gee, I'd Like To Be On The Radio !" Syndrome, and just didn't work out.
JK
Sunday, October 18, 2009
The Blue Goose on Timeless Tracks
With all the recent comments regarding the "elegantly appointed Blue Goose Restaurant", here's an audio clip for your listening pleasure: It's taken from the 40th KAAY anniversary broadcast of the Timeless Tracks radio show. You will hear the origin of the Elegantly Appointed Blue Goose as well as the time listeners across the country were asked to mail napkins to the restaurant (due to a shortage ?!). There are also some stories related to the Emperor Holiday's Commandoes basketball team....
(Click here to download clip.)
---Dave S.
(Click here to download clip.)
---Dave S.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Comment To "Fun With Electricity!"
Hi Bud--
Jonnie's post about Tom Rusk and Barry Wood reminded me of a Barry Wood 'factoid'. I worked with Woody in Pine Bluff after his KAAY days, just before he left PB to start KLAZ. He had great pipes and was one of the most quick-minded on-air guys I ever worked with. But, before he became Michael J. McCormick at KAAY, Woody was in the U.S. Air Force and worked in a missile silo.
Jim
Jonnie's post about Tom Rusk and Barry Wood reminded me of a Barry Wood 'factoid'. I worked with Woody in Pine Bluff after his KAAY days, just before he left PB to start KLAZ. He had great pipes and was one of the most quick-minded on-air guys I ever worked with. But, before he became Michael J. McCormick at KAAY, Woody was in the U.S. Air Force and worked in a missile silo.
Jim
Dave M. Checks In With Goodies!
Since Jonnie brought it up, the pictured console is the one that he mentioned. Jonnie sent many midwest young’uns into dreamland using that microphone and console and his silky smooth delivery!
/D/
/D/
More "Where Are They Now"?
I still scour the 'net in a never-ending quest for more material for the blog...I also listen to the audio we're archiving and a new question comes up occasionally...like, "what about the news people?" Two, in fact, come to mind: Mary Donald and Jack Lee. We've mentioned the incomparable George J. Jennings, but I was wondering about these folks, as well.
Anybody?
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Anybody?
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Cruisin'....
"Cruuuuuuu-isin'...cruisin' in my automobile...." (Jefferson Starship)
Yep, today is Friday...and that means CRUISIN'! This was the exact dash in my ol' '66 Dodge Coronet 440 and that AM radio was tuned to- you guessed it- 1090, KAAY!
I'd mentioned somewhere before that I'd outfitted the car with a four-section, extra-long telescoping antenna and an in-line bullet amplifier that would work on AM and FM. Sure made the difference in pulling in signals, too.
Most of the time, I was working the night shift after high school, so I'd pull the car up to the shop, have it idling, the doors open and the radio blaring...I'd punch out at 11PM (unless I had to work overtime), run to the car and spin out of the parking lot. I'd have to be back at work the next morning at 7AM, so I'd take a small detour (approximately double the normal drive- what the heck, premium gas was only 33 cents at the time!) and listen the whole way. If I had to double over for the next shift when the next guy failed to show, I'd have the car pulled up, anyway, and have that radio going, regardless!
During the summer, I worked day shift, so I'd make sure that I'd be near a radio about dusk. Later, after I'd graduated, I worked a year before going to college and, after entering college, I'd work from 7am to 3:30pm, run to classes at 4pm- or clinical rotations at whatever hospital I was to work at- I was a Paramedic- and, as soon as I got free from my class or rotation shift, I'd turn that radio on and cruuuuuuise....
Even when I had to drive to the scene or the station, I had that radio going, whether it was a fire or a wreck...hey, at 3am in the morning, I had to wake up somehow!
I had some good times in that car and listening to KAAY....and I feel fortunate and blessed to be rubbing elbows with and sharing the stories of my heroes from KAAY via this blog.
Happy Friday, all!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
More Goose Stories, From Jerry Sims/Sonny Martin
Another KAAY/ Goose memory:
After the religion block (6:30 to 8:00 pm), the D.J.'s on the 8 pm to Midnight, and the Midnight to 5 am shifts were required to do their own news cast. Preparing the news report required a trip next door to our News Room (booth) to rip A.P. wire copy. Also we made hourly trips to the KTHV Newsroom, downstairs, to get weather copy since we did not have a weather teletype. It was convenient to leave the control room door open after hours, since there was not a lot of traffic in the halls. All of that to set up another Blue Goose story.
I knew something was not right when I came in early on Saturday morning to do a 7am to Noon shift. The control room door was not only shut, it was locked. The D.J., who will remain nameless, had locked himself in, and finally peeked out the door after I knocked several times. "Quick, look over to the Goose....is there a guy in the lot?" (From the control room door, you could look down on 7th Street and across to the Goose parking lot). "No....just lots of the usual...beer bottles and trash." He pulled me in and closed the door.
Someone had called him very early in the night and told him that he "knew what he had been doing with his wife", and he was in the Goose lot with his rifle ready to "blow his *%# off", when he came out the door. So all night he had been locked in the control room, with no fresh news or weather, and doing what was, most likely, not his best show. I suppose he was thinking too, that a high powered rifle in the Goose lot would not have looked all that out of place.
Thinking back on doing your own news report, I immediately think of my favorite news opening. We were required to hit the news cart at 6 seconds before the hour. The audio was a beep, every second.....Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.....then Tom Perryman, like the voice of God, saying "K A A Y Communications Exchange..... K-ComEx News!!" Wow, it was not fair for me, or any of us, to have to follow that voice. I have said it before. We had great jingles....great promotion...great coverage...but that voice WAS KAAY. Thanks Tom!
Another Goose memory......Their dumpster was parked very near the sidewalk on 7th Street, with a pay phone close by. We got the number of the phone, and would place calls when we saw someone about to walk by. Usually, they could not resist answering. Watching from across the street we would, in our best radio voice, whisper....."The money is in the dumpster." The questions then was, "To Dumpster Dive, or not to Dumpster Dive". This was also a favorite trick later when I worked for KTHV. By then, I had grown up, and was beyond such tricks. (I only watched when they had a victim in suit and tie walking by).
Jerry Sims...aka Sonny Martin KAAY...seems like yesterday, ago
After the religion block (6:30 to 8:00 pm), the D.J.'s on the 8 pm to Midnight, and the Midnight to 5 am shifts were required to do their own news cast. Preparing the news report required a trip next door to our News Room (booth) to rip A.P. wire copy. Also we made hourly trips to the KTHV Newsroom, downstairs, to get weather copy since we did not have a weather teletype. It was convenient to leave the control room door open after hours, since there was not a lot of traffic in the halls. All of that to set up another Blue Goose story.
I knew something was not right when I came in early on Saturday morning to do a 7am to Noon shift. The control room door was not only shut, it was locked. The D.J., who will remain nameless, had locked himself in, and finally peeked out the door after I knocked several times. "Quick, look over to the Goose....is there a guy in the lot?" (From the control room door, you could look down on 7th Street and across to the Goose parking lot). "No....just lots of the usual...beer bottles and trash." He pulled me in and closed the door.
Someone had called him very early in the night and told him that he "knew what he had been doing with his wife", and he was in the Goose lot with his rifle ready to "blow his *%# off", when he came out the door. So all night he had been locked in the control room, with no fresh news or weather, and doing what was, most likely, not his best show. I suppose he was thinking too, that a high powered rifle in the Goose lot would not have looked all that out of place.
Thinking back on doing your own news report, I immediately think of my favorite news opening. We were required to hit the news cart at 6 seconds before the hour. The audio was a beep, every second.....Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.....then Tom Perryman, like the voice of God, saying "K A A Y Communications Exchange..... K-ComEx News!!" Wow, it was not fair for me, or any of us, to have to follow that voice. I have said it before. We had great jingles....great promotion...great coverage...but that voice WAS KAAY. Thanks Tom!
Another Goose memory......Their dumpster was parked very near the sidewalk on 7th Street, with a pay phone close by. We got the number of the phone, and would place calls when we saw someone about to walk by. Usually, they could not resist answering. Watching from across the street we would, in our best radio voice, whisper....."The money is in the dumpster." The questions then was, "To Dumpster Dive, or not to Dumpster Dive". This was also a favorite trick later when I worked for KTHV. By then, I had grown up, and was beyond such tricks. (I only watched when they had a victim in suit and tie walking by).
Jerry Sims...aka Sonny Martin KAAY...seems like yesterday, ago
Comment To "Greg Fadick And FM"
"It was Great Stuff! Sure Change my way of thinking about Radio and the direction I wanted to go! If the Walls could talk inside the Studio...My,my,my...:-)
Jeff Rains..."Woody, you had to be the most Creative Boss I had and Dale...thank you for making the Call to get me on the Blood Shift!
Oooooh those where the Days...Radio at it's Best!
JaBeaux on myspace
KAFM and KVNF
Electric Rooster Entertainment
P.O.Box 4325
Grand Junction, Colorado 81502"
Hey, "JaBeaux", come visit any time! And PLEASE share some of those stories you tease us with...the statute of limitations has expired, as far as we're concerned!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Jeff Rains..."Woody, you had to be the most Creative Boss I had and Dale...thank you for making the Call to get me on the Blood Shift!
Oooooh those where the Days...Radio at it's Best!
JaBeaux on myspace
KAFM and KVNF
Electric Rooster Entertainment
P.O.Box 4325
Grand Junction, Colorado 81502"
Hey, "JaBeaux", come visit any time! And PLEASE share some of those stories you tease us with...the statute of limitations has expired, as far as we're concerned!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Jerry Sims & Jim Clark On The Blue Goose
I told you I check the blog often. I even read my own post today. I guess the "executives" that we terrified got back at me. Maybe that is the reason they were "executives" and I was on the skateboard. And yes, I usually use spell check. And....the Goose had a phone?
Jerry...oops
(and)
I was one of the parents who took my two kids down to the studio to trade in their skateboard for the albums. By the way, it was Jan and Dean, I believe. I think, maybe, it was none other than Jerry Sims (a/k/a Sonny Martin) who was the DJ to whom we surrendered the dangerous instruments of accidents. My daughter, who was about 6 or 7 at the time, had broken her arm on one skating down a hill in the Levy area of North Little Rock where we lived. So I made her and her brother, 1 1/2 years older. surrender their skateboards. We went down to KAAY in the evening, had to ring a bell or something like that, to get in and turned the nefarious things in to a young man who looked very similar to the Jerry Sims photo on the blog recently. My son and daughter are now 53 and 52 years old, so we are really dealing with ancient history now, but I remember it well, and it is still one of my positive remembrances of KAAY.
I also remember the Blue Goose. It was actually a drive-in that also had seats inside, and as Jerry noted was a beer joint. I ate a lot of hamburgers out of there. If I had known what Jerry noted with the "furry animals" I might not have liked it so much. I hope everyone will keep on posting these memories, because they bring back a lot of my own.
Jim Clark
Rogers, AR
Jerry...oops
(and)
I was one of the parents who took my two kids down to the studio to trade in their skateboard for the albums. By the way, it was Jan and Dean, I believe. I think, maybe, it was none other than Jerry Sims (a/k/a Sonny Martin) who was the DJ to whom we surrendered the dangerous instruments of accidents. My daughter, who was about 6 or 7 at the time, had broken her arm on one skating down a hill in the Levy area of North Little Rock where we lived. So I made her and her brother, 1 1/2 years older. surrender their skateboards. We went down to KAAY in the evening, had to ring a bell or something like that, to get in and turned the nefarious things in to a young man who looked very similar to the Jerry Sims photo on the blog recently. My son and daughter are now 53 and 52 years old, so we are really dealing with ancient history now, but I remember it well, and it is still one of my positive remembrances of KAAY.
I also remember the Blue Goose. It was actually a drive-in that also had seats inside, and as Jerry noted was a beer joint. I ate a lot of hamburgers out of there. If I had known what Jerry noted with the "furry animals" I might not have liked it so much. I hope everyone will keep on posting these memories, because they bring back a lot of my own.
Jim Clark
Rogers, AR
Thursday, October 15, 2009
FUN WITH ELECTRICITY !
If Dave Montgomery views this Post in the next few days, maybe he can expand on this story:
This took place in maybe 1969 or 1970. I wasn't in the building when it happened, but heard about it that afternoon when I came in to my office.
There had been some work in the Main Control Room, rewiring, putting in new pots or something. Whatever the case, Tom Rusk (who was a great guy, and had a sweet little wife, whose name I think was Mary) had done the wiring, or, at least some of it. The work that was being done was on the Console.
WELL, as luck would have it, something didn't get "grounded" correctly. Barry Wood (Mike McCormick) was on the air doing afternoon drive (Barry also had an engineer's license as I recall). Barry sat down at the Console and proceeded to grab both handles on the ends of the Console, was immediately zapped with a Trillion Volts of Electricity, got knocked out of the chair on his rump, and was lucky to be among the living !
Poor Tom was in the proverbial "doghouse" for awhile, but was young and had just not insulated/grounded a connection, wire, or cord somewhere...from what I could gather.
And "Woody" (as we called Barry), had another close call as my friend Dave Treadway told me. This was many years later and Barry had a brain aneurism and lived to tell about it.
ATTENTION: DAVE M. Do you remember the incident I just described ? And, did my memory serve me well on some of the details ? Lemme know, Amigo.
PS: I'll be announcing the Official Launching of my Personal WebSite soon. Maybe by next week. It's a look at my career through the years, with pix, airchecks, memorabilia, etc., involved. It'll be a work-in-progress, but I hope you enjoy it.
As always: stay safe & well,
Jonnie King
This took place in maybe 1969 or 1970. I wasn't in the building when it happened, but heard about it that afternoon when I came in to my office.
There had been some work in the Main Control Room, rewiring, putting in new pots or something. Whatever the case, Tom Rusk (who was a great guy, and had a sweet little wife, whose name I think was Mary) had done the wiring, or, at least some of it. The work that was being done was on the Console.
WELL, as luck would have it, something didn't get "grounded" correctly. Barry Wood (Mike McCormick) was on the air doing afternoon drive (Barry also had an engineer's license as I recall). Barry sat down at the Console and proceeded to grab both handles on the ends of the Console, was immediately zapped with a Trillion Volts of Electricity, got knocked out of the chair on his rump, and was lucky to be among the living !
Poor Tom was in the proverbial "doghouse" for awhile, but was young and had just not insulated/grounded a connection, wire, or cord somewhere...from what I could gather.
And "Woody" (as we called Barry), had another close call as my friend Dave Treadway told me. This was many years later and Barry had a brain aneurism and lived to tell about it.
ATTENTION: DAVE M. Do you remember the incident I just described ? And, did my memory serve me well on some of the details ? Lemme know, Amigo.
PS: I'll be announcing the Official Launching of my Personal WebSite soon. Maybe by next week. It's a look at my career through the years, with pix, airchecks, memorabilia, etc., involved. It'll be a work-in-progress, but I hope you enjoy it.
As always: stay safe & well,
Jonnie King
Home brew again
In a previous post, More Home Brew: The Knight Kit, Ron Henselmen described his adventures with his friend Gary Wegner at kit building and amateur broadcasting. Here's a follow-up to Ron's story:
PART II: Bud and Ron digress:
Bud:
Cool story! I also played with Part 15 transmitters, but they were transistorized and, much later in life. I used to DX pirates, so I got a bunch of tapes from them. I have a Ramsey FM-10 that I used at Hamfests as a display (us Hams can use them for other things than broadcasting!), but I put some of the funnier pirates on, just for shock value. Yes, I i.d.'ed as a Part 15 broadcaster, following the FCC guidelines, but STILL got a Ham or two wanting to file on me!
Later, a pirate sent me a Ramsey AM-10 (?), modified with plug-in capacitors to quickly change operating ranges. I've never tried it, never hooked it up.
Ron:
I have a Ramsey FM 100, and I built an amp with a low pass filter for it. I never designed a VHF RF amp using an RF power transistor before, so it was a good learning experience for me. That was in 2000. I ran the FM-100 without the amp as an automated oldies station using WaveStation software, but the novelty wore off quickly.
There weren't many pirate stations when I was an active DX'er, so the only thing I ever heard was a pirate on 101.5 MHz. That was about twenty years ago. There aren't any local stations occupying that frequency, so I use it to check VHF propagation. That is also the frequency I used for the Ramsey transmitter.
I never bothered to read the part 15 rules until I bought that transmitter. It never dawned on me that the rules between the FM and AM broadcast bands might be different. I thought one could use 100 milliwatts with a 60 inch antenna on FM too. My fun came to a close when I saw people getting busted for running things which were only slightly questionable; I didn't want to lose my commercial license or my amateur license.
It will be fifty years in December or January since I built my first transmitter from just parts. I built it into a cigar box, and I used the 90 volt battery out of a tube type AM portable radio to supply the voltage for the tubes. Gary Wegner reminded me about how I got into trouble in seventh grade for bringing it to school. I left my transistor radio turned on, but the transmitter was turned off with a toggle switch. A classmate decided to be cute and flip the transmitter power switch on during the middle of class. The transmitter was setup to transmit tone modulated Morse code, so the tone blared out of the transistor radio while my teacher was talking. She was not impressed, but I didn't get into any major trouble. Later, I made the unit into a voice transmitter. I hated Morse code at the time.
Sometimes we were asked to bring portable radios to school, so the whole class could listen to some history making event. Everybody else in the class would have their radios tuned to the Chicago NBC station, and we would have ours tuned to the Milwaukee NBC station. We would play dumb when the teacher asked us why there was a delay in the audio between our radios and the rest of the radios in the classroom. The attached photo will show what I looked like about the time of the multiple radio incidents:
Dave mentioned seeing catalogs that his father received from Allied Radio. Their main store was on Western Avenue in Chicago. I loved going there; it was a sad day when most of the company was purchased by Radio Shack. They had what they called a dock sale shortly before closing down the store. I went there along with Gary Wegner. We bought speakers, turntables and headphones. I finally had money to buy things because I saved most of what I earned in Vietnam....
Have you ever heard some ridiculous claims from pirate broadcasters or illegal CB'ers as to how much power they are running? Some of them can't do the basic math to figure out their electrical circuits can't handle the amount of current required for their claims. 240 volts X 100 amps = 24000 watts total available to the typical older home with 100 amp service. I have a fifty amp 240 volt electric range outlet just to run my VHF amplifier. I never argue when I hear those claims; I just chuckle.
Thanks, Ron and Bud, for the memories!
---Dave S.
PART II: Bud and Ron digress:
Bud:
Cool story! I also played with Part 15 transmitters, but they were transistorized and, much later in life. I used to DX pirates, so I got a bunch of tapes from them. I have a Ramsey FM-10 that I used at Hamfests as a display (us Hams can use them for other things than broadcasting!), but I put some of the funnier pirates on, just for shock value. Yes, I i.d.'ed as a Part 15 broadcaster, following the FCC guidelines, but STILL got a Ham or two wanting to file on me!
Later, a pirate sent me a Ramsey AM-10 (?), modified with plug-in capacitors to quickly change operating ranges. I've never tried it, never hooked it up.
Ron:
I have a Ramsey FM 100, and I built an amp with a low pass filter for it. I never designed a VHF RF amp using an RF power transistor before, so it was a good learning experience for me. That was in 2000. I ran the FM-100 without the amp as an automated oldies station using WaveStation software, but the novelty wore off quickly.
There weren't many pirate stations when I was an active DX'er, so the only thing I ever heard was a pirate on 101.5 MHz. That was about twenty years ago. There aren't any local stations occupying that frequency, so I use it to check VHF propagation. That is also the frequency I used for the Ramsey transmitter.
I never bothered to read the part 15 rules until I bought that transmitter. It never dawned on me that the rules between the FM and AM broadcast bands might be different. I thought one could use 100 milliwatts with a 60 inch antenna on FM too. My fun came to a close when I saw people getting busted for running things which were only slightly questionable; I didn't want to lose my commercial license or my amateur license.
It will be fifty years in December or January since I built my first transmitter from just parts. I built it into a cigar box, and I used the 90 volt battery out of a tube type AM portable radio to supply the voltage for the tubes. Gary Wegner reminded me about how I got into trouble in seventh grade for bringing it to school. I left my transistor radio turned on, but the transmitter was turned off with a toggle switch. A classmate decided to be cute and flip the transmitter power switch on during the middle of class. The transmitter was setup to transmit tone modulated Morse code, so the tone blared out of the transistor radio while my teacher was talking. She was not impressed, but I didn't get into any major trouble. Later, I made the unit into a voice transmitter. I hated Morse code at the time.
Sometimes we were asked to bring portable radios to school, so the whole class could listen to some history making event. Everybody else in the class would have their radios tuned to the Chicago NBC station, and we would have ours tuned to the Milwaukee NBC station. We would play dumb when the teacher asked us why there was a delay in the audio between our radios and the rest of the radios in the classroom. The attached photo will show what I looked like about the time of the multiple radio incidents:
Dave mentioned seeing catalogs that his father received from Allied Radio. Their main store was on Western Avenue in Chicago. I loved going there; it was a sad day when most of the company was purchased by Radio Shack. They had what they called a dock sale shortly before closing down the store. I went there along with Gary Wegner. We bought speakers, turntables and headphones. I finally had money to buy things because I saved most of what I earned in Vietnam....
Thanks, Ron and Bud, for the memories!
---Dave S.
Car Radios As Audio Tools
I'd inquired to Dave M. about when he mentioned using car radios, why so? And his reply below:
"Back in the day, you either had a car radio or you didn’t. About the only option you had with a car radio was to have a rear seat speaker with a front-to-back fader. Car radios were made by Philco (if you owned a Ford) or by DELCO (if you owned a Chevy). Purely subjective listening tests taught us a couple of things about these two radio brands. The DELCO’s were the best at picking up stations at a distance but the Philco’s had the best sound.
So using all the subjective talent we could muster, we would “tweak” the audio of KAAY using a Philco car radio as the listening post. We knew that if it sounded good on a Philco car radio, it HAD to sound good on just about everything else!
But if you wanted to listen to a radio station on the dark side of Mars, get a DELCO.
We had a lot of little audio tools and tricks we used to tweak the audio. Our goal was to be the best sounding 50kW station on the dial, including all those “big city” stations. Wayne Moss (Wayne Moss) had an exceptionally good ear and audio intuition, and he was constantly asking for a little more of this, a little less of that, etc., and we were glad to oblige. Some days, we would make a little audio tweak, and then run out to the car radio to see how it sounded. We didn’t use the studio monitors because we wanted to see how things sounded to Mr. Average Joe Public.
Wayne would be a most excellent resource to coax into contributing to the blog – his tenure spanned both the early days of KAAY as well as into the 70’s and he knew most of the people mentioned on the blog to date.
/DM/"
And I sure would like to hear from Wayne Moss...on ANY subject! Thank you, Dave!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
"Back in the day, you either had a car radio or you didn’t. About the only option you had with a car radio was to have a rear seat speaker with a front-to-back fader. Car radios were made by Philco (if you owned a Ford) or by DELCO (if you owned a Chevy). Purely subjective listening tests taught us a couple of things about these two radio brands. The DELCO’s were the best at picking up stations at a distance but the Philco’s had the best sound.
So using all the subjective talent we could muster, we would “tweak” the audio of KAAY using a Philco car radio as the listening post. We knew that if it sounded good on a Philco car radio, it HAD to sound good on just about everything else!
But if you wanted to listen to a radio station on the dark side of Mars, get a DELCO.
We had a lot of little audio tools and tricks we used to tweak the audio. Our goal was to be the best sounding 50kW station on the dial, including all those “big city” stations. Wayne Moss (Wayne Moss) had an exceptionally good ear and audio intuition, and he was constantly asking for a little more of this, a little less of that, etc., and we were glad to oblige. Some days, we would make a little audio tweak, and then run out to the car radio to see how it sounded. We didn’t use the studio monitors because we wanted to see how things sounded to Mr. Average Joe Public.
Wayne would be a most excellent resource to coax into contributing to the blog – his tenure spanned both the early days of KAAY as well as into the 70’s and he knew most of the people mentioned on the blog to date.
/DM/"
And I sure would like to hear from Wayne Moss...on ANY subject! Thank you, Dave!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
"Hot Seat"
Wowza, Dave M. checks in with a good State Fair story...good timing, since many Fairs are visiting towns near us at this time of year- thanks, Dave!
"Hi Bud,
I wanted to tell you about another State Fair promotion we did in the late ‘70’s. It was called SHOCK THE JOCK. It’s absolutely hilarious, and if anyone tried this today, the lawyers would be lined up three deep and four across at the front door. But we did it and it was a HOOT!
Here’s the setup- - State Fair comes along once a year. In the late ‘70’s we had a tent on the midway, and we parked the Funmobile next to it, and broadcast from there every night, 8-11pm as the lead-in to Beaker Street. Big promotion. Lots of people.
I think it was Dave Hamilton that brought the idea to me. He wanted me to build a “Shock the Jock” machine that would be used at remote broadcasts and especially the State Fair. He explained his idea in some detail - We talked it over and came up with a concept that was eventually built and then used on the State Fair midway. Here’s how it worked.
Picture this. There were two chairs, placed about 6-8 feet apart and facing each other, and a small control box on a pedestal between them. The “control box had three large light bulbs on top, one RED, and the other two green. One of the green light bulbs had a random flasher module in it so that it would flash on and off at a rate of about 1-2 times a second. The box also had a small control panel with a couple of switches on it that made a very loud CLICK sound when they were moved – creating an “audible” signal that something was happening. The DJ controlling the box could switch from a “steady green” to a flashing green, or a steady red by simply flipping some switches.
The two chairs were rigged with auto ignition coils on the underside, which were connected to small electrodes the chair seats, and also back to the “control” box. The chairs were “hot” and sparks would jump the gaps – there was no way you could sit idly by - it was jump up in the air “hot”. We quickly found out we had to screw the chairs to the floor to keep them from being knocked over when people would “fly” out of them.
The DJ would ask for volunteers from the audience to come up and sit in the chairs, facing each other. Each volunteer was given a small hand-held pushbutton switch and told – “Watch for the RED light to come on. If you press your button first, after the RED light comes on, you’ll shock the other guy in his pants. But if you press your button too soon, you’ll shock yourself in the pants!”
There were a couple of “fake outs” built into the control box. One was – when the RED light came on (controlled by the DJ) there was also a very loud buzzer in the box. So you had the effect of psyching out your opponent, watching for the RED light to come on, and being the first one to press your button to burn the pants off the other guy. BUT – the buzzer also had a “fake” switch that would just make the BUZZ sound but NOT the RED light!
There was also the continuously flashing GREEN light. The contestants knew that the moment the GREEN light went OFF, and the RED light came ON, it was time to press the button.
So you get the picture? In each chair you have a couple of “bullet proof” State Fair partiers who think they can beat the Jock to the switch. The DJ is in full control of the lights and buttons that enable the two contestants to either shock themselves or the other poor doofus. I have to tell you, we never laughed so hard for so long at the knuckleheads that WANTED to sit in those chairs!
Like they say on Mythbusters – “Don’t try this at home. We’re whatcha call experts.”
Heh, /DM/"
(I wonder how those fared when wearing dungarees with copper rivits? bs)
(A "P.S." from Dave:) "The State Fair is fertile ground for “midway heroes”, what with beer being served, and plenty of knuckleheads out to impress their dates….We clearly took advantage of this – Sometimes we would have a guy and his date zapping each other. Funny?! I can’t even begin to describe the delight a young damsel takes in giving her date the hot seat. And the tent crowds cheered ‘em on!
/DM/"
Yessir, times never change...they get ten feet tall and bullet-proof when they get a few in 'em, don't they? I wonder how many relationships broke up because of this- and other similar things? HAH!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
"Hi Bud,
I wanted to tell you about another State Fair promotion we did in the late ‘70’s. It was called SHOCK THE JOCK. It’s absolutely hilarious, and if anyone tried this today, the lawyers would be lined up three deep and four across at the front door. But we did it and it was a HOOT!
Here’s the setup- - State Fair comes along once a year. In the late ‘70’s we had a tent on the midway, and we parked the Funmobile next to it, and broadcast from there every night, 8-11pm as the lead-in to Beaker Street. Big promotion. Lots of people.
I think it was Dave Hamilton that brought the idea to me. He wanted me to build a “Shock the Jock” machine that would be used at remote broadcasts and especially the State Fair. He explained his idea in some detail - We talked it over and came up with a concept that was eventually built and then used on the State Fair midway. Here’s how it worked.
Picture this. There were two chairs, placed about 6-8 feet apart and facing each other, and a small control box on a pedestal between them. The “control box had three large light bulbs on top, one RED, and the other two green. One of the green light bulbs had a random flasher module in it so that it would flash on and off at a rate of about 1-2 times a second. The box also had a small control panel with a couple of switches on it that made a very loud CLICK sound when they were moved – creating an “audible” signal that something was happening. The DJ controlling the box could switch from a “steady green” to a flashing green, or a steady red by simply flipping some switches.
The two chairs were rigged with auto ignition coils on the underside, which were connected to small electrodes the chair seats, and also back to the “control” box. The chairs were “hot” and sparks would jump the gaps – there was no way you could sit idly by - it was jump up in the air “hot”. We quickly found out we had to screw the chairs to the floor to keep them from being knocked over when people would “fly” out of them.
The DJ would ask for volunteers from the audience to come up and sit in the chairs, facing each other. Each volunteer was given a small hand-held pushbutton switch and told – “Watch for the RED light to come on. If you press your button first, after the RED light comes on, you’ll shock the other guy in his pants. But if you press your button too soon, you’ll shock yourself in the pants!”
There were a couple of “fake outs” built into the control box. One was – when the RED light came on (controlled by the DJ) there was also a very loud buzzer in the box. So you had the effect of psyching out your opponent, watching for the RED light to come on, and being the first one to press your button to burn the pants off the other guy. BUT – the buzzer also had a “fake” switch that would just make the BUZZ sound but NOT the RED light!
There was also the continuously flashing GREEN light. The contestants knew that the moment the GREEN light went OFF, and the RED light came ON, it was time to press the button.
So you get the picture? In each chair you have a couple of “bullet proof” State Fair partiers who think they can beat the Jock to the switch. The DJ is in full control of the lights and buttons that enable the two contestants to either shock themselves or the other poor doofus. I have to tell you, we never laughed so hard for so long at the knuckleheads that WANTED to sit in those chairs!
Like they say on Mythbusters – “Don’t try this at home. We’re whatcha call experts.”
Heh, /DM/"
(I wonder how those fared when wearing dungarees with copper rivits? bs)
(A "P.S." from Dave:) "The State Fair is fertile ground for “midway heroes”, what with beer being served, and plenty of knuckleheads out to impress their dates….We clearly took advantage of this – Sometimes we would have a guy and his date zapping each other. Funny?! I can’t even begin to describe the delight a young damsel takes in giving her date the hot seat. And the tent crowds cheered ‘em on!
/DM/"
Yessir, times never change...they get ten feet tall and bullet-proof when they get a few in 'em, don't they? I wonder how many relationships broke up because of this- and other similar things? HAH!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Of Skateboards and The Blue Goose Restaurant....
Jerry Sims and I had a conversation awhile back and he promised a couple of "insider" stories that are hilarious...and we enter the "theater of the mind" as we read them below:
"Early Skateboards were very crude. Many had metal skates attached to a very rigid board. Very few had polyurethane (or whatever) wheels that allowed the ride to be fairly smooth. Because of these problems, there were lots of kids being thrown to the street. Lots of broken arms, etc. Parents hated them.
Being the days of all the Surfing songs, there was a group who put out an album called "Sidewalk Surfing". Being "The Mighty 1090", and able to break records over a large part of the country, they were willing to give us a huge stack of albums to give away. Knowing parents wanted to get the little rascals off the boards, we offered an album to anyone who would trade in their Skateboard to us. Kids hated it, Moms loved it. We got lots of them everyday. We, in fact, ended up with a room full of them. Not wanting them to go to waste, several of us would pick out one with smooth wheels to do some mean "hall surfing", up and down what used to be, rather quiet halls. This was in the earliest days of KAAY when we were upstairs, over KTHV Channel 11, the CBS Television station in Little Rock. We shared the upstairs with the television executives and their accounting and traffic departments. The TV folks never did like us very much. Imagine a couple of D.J.'s racing down the hall, usually me (Sonny Martin) against Buddy Carr (Richard Wiethan) only to scare mild mannered TV accountants on their way to the ladies room. Or maybe even George J. Jennings coming out of the news booth. He was a great newsman, but not much of a Skateboarder, as I recall.
You have to be old to remember, but TV stations were not on 24 hours a day. There would usually be a late movie after the 10 pm News, that would be over at about midnight. They would then sign off, lock the doors, and go home. We were on 24 hours a day, and highly against the wishes of our land lord, on occasions would allow "fans" inside to join the party. Hey, if they had traveled across several states to visit what they thought was "Party Central", the least we could do was unlock the door for a brief visit. Sometimes they might stray downstairs into the TV area. A definate No-No.
The reason we were in the building in the first place, if you have not figured it out yet, was because KTHS (which became KAAY) was there. When Arkansas Broadcasting Company sold their radio station, call letters were changed to KAAY, and they moved in. TV folks, most likely, regretted this on about day two. We later moved to the new building (a former Doctor's office) on 7th Street, adjacent to the State Capitol Building. Ironically, I ended up spending most of my broadcasting career back at the Channel 11 building. Being Weather Boy, News Reporter, Account Executive, and other things. Even in the same office that I had once used as Music Director at KAAY.
Also while thinking of people who thought Little Rock was the "Rockingest" possible place on earth: I knew of some who even planned their vacation around a Little Rock visit. They always wanted to visit the station, and see the "Blue Goose". Howard Watson (Ken Knight) deserves most of the praise for the promotion of the Goose. He started referring to it as "the elegantly appointed Blue Goose", and several of us took up the cause. It was described as Little Rock's most elegant and special restaurant. It, in fact, was a local beer joint. We used to watch furry animals scurry about the trash bins over there. I remember one time a man decided to drink as much as possible before killing himself in his car there. You might find a disc jockey, or a TV news anchor there, but not exactly a proud stop on the Arkansas Tourism map. Anyway, visitors to KAAY would have second thoughts about a meal there when they got their first look. It was usually a shock for them too, to see one little old me, upstairs in a dark building, attempting to lead a multi-state party, in the middle of the night, when they expected maybe, "a cast of thousands" (OK, two or three anyway). I believe still, it was magic. KAAY. I was just a small part of it.
Jerry Sims....aka Sonny Martin...a while back."
Jerry, I DO remember the TV stations signing off, with the National Anthem, followed by a test pattern. (I believe Jonnie King has such a test pattern on his site, along with pictures of old TV shows.) Sure brings back memories. Now, you'd be hard-pressed to hear the National Anthem anywhere outside a ball game or find anyone who actually knows what a test pattern is....
I also remember a recording of a radio show where A. J. Lindsey, Sonny Martin III, Pat Walsh and a couple others were discussing the Blue Goose Restaurant. They made mention that the deejays, while describing the fine dining, would have a soundtrack going in the background, complete with tinkling glasses, silverware scraping on plates and what-have-you. So many people fell for it, that they called the place for reservations...the fellow answering the phone replied, "You want WHAT???"
Thank you, Jerry! What great stories! Please keep 'em coming!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
"Early Skateboards were very crude. Many had metal skates attached to a very rigid board. Very few had polyurethane (or whatever) wheels that allowed the ride to be fairly smooth. Because of these problems, there were lots of kids being thrown to the street. Lots of broken arms, etc. Parents hated them.
Being the days of all the Surfing songs, there was a group who put out an album called "Sidewalk Surfing". Being "The Mighty 1090", and able to break records over a large part of the country, they were willing to give us a huge stack of albums to give away. Knowing parents wanted to get the little rascals off the boards, we offered an album to anyone who would trade in their Skateboard to us. Kids hated it, Moms loved it. We got lots of them everyday. We, in fact, ended up with a room full of them. Not wanting them to go to waste, several of us would pick out one with smooth wheels to do some mean "hall surfing", up and down what used to be, rather quiet halls. This was in the earliest days of KAAY when we were upstairs, over KTHV Channel 11, the CBS Television station in Little Rock. We shared the upstairs with the television executives and their accounting and traffic departments. The TV folks never did like us very much. Imagine a couple of D.J.'s racing down the hall, usually me (Sonny Martin) against Buddy Carr (Richard Wiethan) only to scare mild mannered TV accountants on their way to the ladies room. Or maybe even George J. Jennings coming out of the news booth. He was a great newsman, but not much of a Skateboarder, as I recall.
You have to be old to remember, but TV stations were not on 24 hours a day. There would usually be a late movie after the 10 pm News, that would be over at about midnight. They would then sign off, lock the doors, and go home. We were on 24 hours a day, and highly against the wishes of our land lord, on occasions would allow "fans" inside to join the party. Hey, if they had traveled across several states to visit what they thought was "Party Central", the least we could do was unlock the door for a brief visit. Sometimes they might stray downstairs into the TV area. A definate No-No.
The reason we were in the building in the first place, if you have not figured it out yet, was because KTHS (which became KAAY) was there. When Arkansas Broadcasting Company sold their radio station, call letters were changed to KAAY, and they moved in. TV folks, most likely, regretted this on about day two. We later moved to the new building (a former Doctor's office) on 7th Street, adjacent to the State Capitol Building. Ironically, I ended up spending most of my broadcasting career back at the Channel 11 building. Being Weather Boy, News Reporter, Account Executive, and other things. Even in the same office that I had once used as Music Director at KAAY.
Also while thinking of people who thought Little Rock was the "Rockingest" possible place on earth: I knew of some who even planned their vacation around a Little Rock visit. They always wanted to visit the station, and see the "Blue Goose". Howard Watson (Ken Knight) deserves most of the praise for the promotion of the Goose. He started referring to it as "the elegantly appointed Blue Goose", and several of us took up the cause. It was described as Little Rock's most elegant and special restaurant. It, in fact, was a local beer joint. We used to watch furry animals scurry about the trash bins over there. I remember one time a man decided to drink as much as possible before killing himself in his car there. You might find a disc jockey, or a TV news anchor there, but not exactly a proud stop on the Arkansas Tourism map. Anyway, visitors to KAAY would have second thoughts about a meal there when they got their first look. It was usually a shock for them too, to see one little old me, upstairs in a dark building, attempting to lead a multi-state party, in the middle of the night, when they expected maybe, "a cast of thousands" (OK, two or three anyway). I believe still, it was magic. KAAY. I was just a small part of it.
Jerry Sims....aka Sonny Martin...a while back."
Jerry, I DO remember the TV stations signing off, with the National Anthem, followed by a test pattern. (I believe Jonnie King has such a test pattern on his site, along with pictures of old TV shows.) Sure brings back memories. Now, you'd be hard-pressed to hear the National Anthem anywhere outside a ball game or find anyone who actually knows what a test pattern is....
I also remember a recording of a radio show where A. J. Lindsey, Sonny Martin III, Pat Walsh and a couple others were discussing the Blue Goose Restaurant. They made mention that the deejays, while describing the fine dining, would have a soundtrack going in the background, complete with tinkling glasses, silverware scraping on plates and what-have-you. So many people fell for it, that they called the place for reservations...the fellow answering the phone replied, "You want WHAT???"
Thank you, Jerry! What great stories! Please keep 'em coming!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
How Many Nights...
...did we sit up, listening to wonderful programming, with nothing but the dial light of the radio on? So many stations "up and down the dial"...but, to lots of us, there were few like KAAY. Some of the greatest hits came from this station, some of the most fun deejays, lots of good memories. And how many times did your Momma holler down the hall or up the stairs, "You'd better NOT be listening to that radio! You've got school tomorrow!" (I wonder how many times she & dad may have secretly listened to something when they were growing up?)
Something about the night...and crazy, wild music that emanated from the radio from that program called Beaker Street. Many of us had never heard anything like it, especially the spooky background behind that deejay! Then there was Beaker Theater...and I listened with my head underneath the covers, but with my forehead at the edge of the bed, touching the table so I could hear the radio at it's lowest volume. I was scared, but at the same time, fascinated! What times, growing up!
When I was a teenager and driving, I tried to make my trips longer at night, especially when I got off from work at 11PM, so I could listen longer. Living on a farm, I had to draw the line somewhere, since 5AM came early and attending school, participating in sports and working took a lot of energy and time. Listening to the radio, and KAAY in particular, was my release. But on summer nights when I was out of school, I would cruise....
Later in life, a local radio station hereabouts started playing old radio shows on Saturday or Sunday afternoons. They dropped it, another tried it. Still fun, but nothing like Beaker Theater. I'd give almost anything to relive those young days. Just these little snippets we're enjoying here are simply gold. Thank you to all who contribute here...every aircheck, every story is a little ray of sunshine in our lives!
Radio has been a large part of many of our lives...mine, especially. I wish I knew where that old green Zenith tube table radio was...its long gone now. I obtained the one above when my wife's grandmother passed away and added it to my collection. However, it is from approximately an era when KAAY was still "large" in the Top 40 market.
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
A Don Payne Recollection!
Boy, I'll tell you what...those KAAY folks were a great bunch! The more I rub elbows with them, the more I find that they were a cut above the rest, as far as innovation and being fun-loving! Don Payne regales once again:
"Howdy Bud!
I worked for KAAY/ KEZQ and later KLPQ in the Cottondale Lane building for about 3 years in the late 70s. Bob Nelson and Stewart McRae and I have stayed in touch off and on thru the years; Bob just yesterday emailed me the link to this site. Incidentally C. David Hamilton (the KAAY Program Director who took over after Dick Downs) ended up being my Regional VP here at Radio One. We had a nice time talking about the KY days. Oh, and not directly to do with KY but remember the Program Director for Ron Curtis’ KLAZ and KALO-AM, Barry Mayo? Well, he’s the President of Radio One right now! He’s one heck of a great guy; every time he comes to town we have some good conversations about Little Rock radio. Never burn a bridge, right? Who would know almost 40 years later we’d be working together.
KAAY was only my second job in radio and I was only about 19 or 20 years old. I had worked right across the river at gospel 1050 KSOH for about a year. My friends and I had ham radio licenses and we would drive out to Wrightsville to see Stewart in the middle of the night and stare at that huge transmitter. We got to be friends. The transmitter was in a very remote location, and we would bring Stewart cokes and donuts and snacks. Stewart ended up hiring me to do weekends to give him a few days off. By then all operations were in the new studios on Cottondale Lane. Saturday was my big night and there was only about 2 hours of Beaker on Sunday before we went into block programming loading reels of tape and babysitting it all night as I recall. At that age, and after growing up listening to the guys on that station….I was so damn nervous every time I opened the mic that you could hear it in my voice. I’ll be glad to put more memories like this on the site.
Part of my job was to keep that automation system across the hall (It had a nickname “Clark” named after the Superman Clark Kent) loaded with reels of music and it was sometimes a pain in the ass. It took the better part of Bob Nelson’s life 24/7 to listen to it constantly and keep it running. I later went on to do afternoon drive at that station, which changed from beautiful music to AOR. You would not believe how the front desk phone rang for a solid week after that format change! Doctors and Dentist offices opened up Monday morning with Zeppelin blaring thru the hallways! What memories. Later, I’ll tell you about the time the KY Fun Mobile caught on fire and burned along side a major freeway.
(Once), I locked myself out on the roof during Beaker Street. (Never mind what I was doing up there, but it went on a lot back in those days)
I put on a nice 7 minute song and headed up the ladder. The wind blew the hatch shut and there I was. Luckily another staff member just happened to be in the neighborhood and heard the station go silent. After about 10 minutes of dead air, I must imagine his surprise as he came pulling in the driveway seeing me standing there out on the roof, stoned. The fact that nobody ever said anything or I never got in trouble for that is a major miracle. Ha. -Don"
Uh, oh, I'm glad the statute of limitations has run out...now we can hear about the Fun Mobile and other things! Thank you, Don, we'll be sitting on the edge of our seats for more!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
"Howdy Bud!
I worked for KAAY/ KEZQ and later KLPQ in the Cottondale Lane building for about 3 years in the late 70s. Bob Nelson and Stewart McRae and I have stayed in touch off and on thru the years; Bob just yesterday emailed me the link to this site. Incidentally C. David Hamilton (the KAAY Program Director who took over after Dick Downs) ended up being my Regional VP here at Radio One. We had a nice time talking about the KY days. Oh, and not directly to do with KY but remember the Program Director for Ron Curtis’ KLAZ and KALO-AM, Barry Mayo? Well, he’s the President of Radio One right now! He’s one heck of a great guy; every time he comes to town we have some good conversations about Little Rock radio. Never burn a bridge, right? Who would know almost 40 years later we’d be working together.
KAAY was only my second job in radio and I was only about 19 or 20 years old. I had worked right across the river at gospel 1050 KSOH for about a year. My friends and I had ham radio licenses and we would drive out to Wrightsville to see Stewart in the middle of the night and stare at that huge transmitter. We got to be friends. The transmitter was in a very remote location, and we would bring Stewart cokes and donuts and snacks. Stewart ended up hiring me to do weekends to give him a few days off. By then all operations were in the new studios on Cottondale Lane. Saturday was my big night and there was only about 2 hours of Beaker on Sunday before we went into block programming loading reels of tape and babysitting it all night as I recall. At that age, and after growing up listening to the guys on that station….I was so damn nervous every time I opened the mic that you could hear it in my voice. I’ll be glad to put more memories like this on the site.
Part of my job was to keep that automation system across the hall (It had a nickname “Clark” named after the Superman Clark Kent) loaded with reels of music and it was sometimes a pain in the ass. It took the better part of Bob Nelson’s life 24/7 to listen to it constantly and keep it running. I later went on to do afternoon drive at that station, which changed from beautiful music to AOR. You would not believe how the front desk phone rang for a solid week after that format change! Doctors and Dentist offices opened up Monday morning with Zeppelin blaring thru the hallways! What memories. Later, I’ll tell you about the time the KY Fun Mobile caught on fire and burned along side a major freeway.
(Once), I locked myself out on the roof during Beaker Street. (Never mind what I was doing up there, but it went on a lot back in those days)
I put on a nice 7 minute song and headed up the ladder. The wind blew the hatch shut and there I was. Luckily another staff member just happened to be in the neighborhood and heard the station go silent. After about 10 minutes of dead air, I must imagine his surprise as he came pulling in the driveway seeing me standing there out on the roof, stoned. The fact that nobody ever said anything or I never got in trouble for that is a major miracle. Ha. -Don"
Uh, oh, I'm glad the statute of limitations has run out...now we can hear about the Fun Mobile and other things! Thank you, Don, we'll be sitting on the edge of our seats for more!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Calling In On Radio Promotions
Remember these? I collect old things, like some folks do...mine are communications-related. I have one from about the 1940's as well that I may post later....regardless, how many of us have tried to wear out one of these phones trying to call a radio station to win something? There was no such thing as a redial button- we'd just "dial 'em again!"...and keep on dialing until we were the caller who got in, or heard over the air that someone else won the prize.
My kids never saw one of these until I brought one out of storage. For many years, I had one held back and it still worked on the modern lines, even though it was a pulse-dial phone and the lines were utilizing Touch Tone. The reason being, if/when the power went out during a storm or a hurricane, cordless phones do not work! Nowadays, there's redial, caller I.D., multiple (three-way) call, call forward, etc., etc., etc. And cell phones, cordless phones, camera phones, yadda ya....
The worst thing we had with these phones were a party line...big deal, unless someone was "on" when you wanted to call the radio station to try to win that goodie!
By the way, the big white overlay was for those of us who misplaced our glasses on top of our heads....!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Jerry Sims' KAAY Poster!
Jerry recently found a few of these and sent in a copy for the blog. He mentioned that, "Ironically, this 'Beat Texas A & M' poster will have special meaning again this year when the Razorbacks play the Aggies in the new Texas stadium." Arkansas beat Texas A & M 47-19 this year, but I hope this doesn't dishearten our KAAY fans in Texas! (BTW, this poster is over 40 years old!!!)
Jerry also told me, "Pat Walsh, KAAY Manager, would have these printed each week during the season, and you would see them in windows of homes and businesses all over Central Arkansas. We would usually hand them out (and stack up traffic) in front of the station in drive times all week."
"Particularly when I worked the night shift, I would be getting calls from all over the place thinking Little Rock, AR must be 'party central'. Funny, but it was just a young, local kid, all alone upstairs over a dark TV station (that had already signed off and gone home), having the time of his life, with a huge audience, that were apparently making lots of memories, too."
Jerry, thanks so much for sharing this with us!
We are always looking for memorabelia, audio and what-have-you to share here on the blog. What YOU get out of it is what YOU put into it, so if you have something, please share! Please don't think your contribution doesn't count, because it DOES! One little memory could trigger a flood of memories for someone else, and we're all made richer for it!
Again, thanks to Jerry Sims for sharing this poster!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Don Payne Checks In!
"Hey it's Don Payne here!
It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure I did the last one. I would have taped it on the big old Revox airchecker but God knows where that tape is. I've moved thru Memphis, St. Louis, Lafayette, Indiana (Purdue Engineering) then Indy, Cincinnati as Director of Engineering for CBS, then back to Indy, as of today, 10/13/09 I'm CE of a 5 station cluster, 3 FM's 1 Directional AM, and a TV. 53 years old and having a good time here in spite of the challenges of the economy. I know where some of the other folks are, and will post later.
Thanks to Bob Nelson for sending me the link to the site. dpayne@radio-one.com"
Cool! Don, please regale us with more stories and spread the word...we're having a blast here on the blog!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure I did the last one. I would have taped it on the big old Revox airchecker but God knows where that tape is. I've moved thru Memphis, St. Louis, Lafayette, Indiana (Purdue Engineering) then Indy, Cincinnati as Director of Engineering for CBS, then back to Indy, as of today, 10/13/09 I'm CE of a 5 station cluster, 3 FM's 1 Directional AM, and a TV. 53 years old and having a good time here in spite of the challenges of the economy. I know where some of the other folks are, and will post later.
Thanks to Bob Nelson for sending me the link to the site. dpayne@radio-one.com"
Cool! Don, please regale us with more stories and spread the word...we're having a blast here on the blog!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Monday, October 12, 2009
Anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis
Much has been said about the Cuban Missile Crisis here and on A. J.'s blog, and how KAAY broadcast, re: the situation. This was one time that we were a breath away from annihilation. I believe President Kennedy and Khrushchev used good restraint in knowing NOT to "push the button"...unlike some of our leaders today, who have no sense and thrive on power and ego. As King Crimson said in "Epitaph": "...man's fate is in the hands of fools..."
Needless to say, I was a few days shy of four years old when all this happened and have no recollection of it; however, I enjoy history, and this phase of ours makes me shiver....
There are many, many references to this event. I personally do not like Wikipedia, because I was told by someone opposite of my party affiliation that almost anybody can register and give their version of history. Therefore, I refuse to use that source any more, after having seen some "sensitive" information being changed as many as three times in one month. Hence, the sources I commit here. If anyone has any other interesting references in this historical anniversary week, please feel free to leave them in comments.
How about the timeline:
http://www.hpol.org/jfk/cuban/
Some Navy FAQs:
http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq90-1.htm
The National Security Archive photograph site:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/photos.htm
And A. J.'s posts re: the events:
http://kaay1090.blogspot.com/search?q=Cuban+missile+crisis
Remember...and celebrate life! I believe there should be deterrant enough to avoid catastrophe...and not to trust too much....
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Needless to say, I was a few days shy of four years old when all this happened and have no recollection of it; however, I enjoy history, and this phase of ours makes me shiver....
There are many, many references to this event. I personally do not like Wikipedia, because I was told by someone opposite of my party affiliation that almost anybody can register and give their version of history. Therefore, I refuse to use that source any more, after having seen some "sensitive" information being changed as many as three times in one month. Hence, the sources I commit here. If anyone has any other interesting references in this historical anniversary week, please feel free to leave them in comments.
How about the timeline:
http://www.hpol.org/jfk/cuban/
Some Navy FAQs:
http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq90-1.htm
The National Security Archive photograph site:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/photos.htm
And A. J.'s posts re: the events:
http://kaay1090.blogspot.com/search?q=Cuban+missile+crisis
Remember...and celebrate life! I believe there should be deterrant enough to avoid catastrophe...and not to trust too much....
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Another Mini-Broadcaster Checks In!
Mike Wolstein said...
In re my old buddy Ron Henselman's great story about the Knight Kit Broadcaster:
I did the same exact thing, in 1968, when I was 19; but on FM! During my high school days, when I was 15, I built that same little blue "Knight Broadcaster". I tried a long wire but still got only 100 to 150 feet of range.
In 1968 I found a schematic for a tube-type FM transmitter in Radio-TV Experimenter magazine (I loved White's Radio Log!). I built it, and the fidelity was amazing! So much better than AM. It had a pretty good range, maybe 100 yds., but that wasn't quite good enough for this seasoned pro broadcaster. ;-). I connected the output, via RG-8, to my CB antenna on the roof of our building. I found that a CB antenna is great for FM! I had no idea how far my signal was going, so I made a 2-hour reel-to-reel tape of myself doing a radio show, complete with "commercials", rock and roll (lots of Fab Four!)and some locally-oriented announcements. Very professional! I took my little GE transistor radio and went walking around the neighborhood.
I finally started getting noisy about 1/4 mile away. I saw some friends of mine sitting on a porch and gave them a show. They were totally blown away. They couldn't figure out how I was doing that; they didn't know about tape. I did a daily show after school for a little while, but not many of the kids were paying attention. That ended my radio broadcast career.
73 Mike (Chicago area)
In re my old buddy Ron Henselman's great story about the Knight Kit Broadcaster:
I did the same exact thing, in 1968, when I was 19; but on FM! During my high school days, when I was 15, I built that same little blue "Knight Broadcaster". I tried a long wire but still got only 100 to 150 feet of range.
In 1968 I found a schematic for a tube-type FM transmitter in Radio-TV Experimenter magazine (I loved White's Radio Log!). I built it, and the fidelity was amazing! So much better than AM. It had a pretty good range, maybe 100 yds., but that wasn't quite good enough for this seasoned pro broadcaster. ;-). I connected the output, via RG-8, to my CB antenna on the roof of our building. I found that a CB antenna is great for FM! I had no idea how far my signal was going, so I made a 2-hour reel-to-reel tape of myself doing a radio show, complete with "commercials", rock and roll (lots of Fab Four!)and some locally-oriented announcements. Very professional! I took my little GE transistor radio and went walking around the neighborhood.
I finally started getting noisy about 1/4 mile away. I saw some friends of mine sitting on a porch and gave them a show. They were totally blown away. They couldn't figure out how I was doing that; they didn't know about tape. I did a daily show after school for a little while, but not many of the kids were paying attention. That ended my radio broadcast career.
73 Mike (Chicago area)
Bob Nelson, Re: Other KAAY Personnel
Bob Nelson again checks in various personnel he was affiliated with at KAAY, along with a few comments about the station:
"...(about KAAY)...factoring in its smallish market size and location in a flyover state, it was arguably among the most influential stations for that period.
Just from my era (a short span from 1976-1978), I count these others, all of whom are still in the industry or an allied field:
-Reid Reker - Became GM of CBS/Chicago and later CBS/Dallas
-Don Payne - CE of Radio One properties in Indy
-Carl Hamilton - Just retired as market manager for Radio One/Houston
-Mark Zintel (Larsen) - Retired from WFLA/Tampa, a bigtime talk operation
-Steve Gunn - Did afternoons at WGCI/Chicago and was at ABC at last check
-Stuart McRae - Also at ABC (Citadel) at last check
-Linda Page - Assignment editor for Fox TV-13/Memphis
-Gary Heathcott - Runs an advertising agency in Little Rock
-Tom Rusk - Became a station owner, later a multi-station engineer in Arkansas
-Joe Coeburn - Did mornings at WBBM-FM for years as Joe Bohannon
-Mark Winston - I ran into him back in 1993 at a Wichita station I was doing software work for, he's now a voiceover talent
...and that's just a few off the top of my head.
Of course I have to also include Lou Holtz,later coach of Notre Dame and now an ESPN analyst. Although he didn't work at KAAY, we carried the Razorbacks during the magical period when he led that program to prominence. Hey...that's gotta count for something, eh? :-)
Again...thanks to John Schaab for getting me hooked up with Lee Roy and for getting me turned on to the ``Mighty 1090 KAAY'' blog! Feel free, Dave, to share any of this on that site."
("Lee Roy" being Dave M., of course...bs)
Any of these fine folks are WELCOME to visit and drop us some comments! Thank you again, Bob and Dave!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
"...(about KAAY)...factoring in its smallish market size and location in a flyover state, it was arguably among the most influential stations for that period.
Just from my era (a short span from 1976-1978), I count these others, all of whom are still in the industry or an allied field:
-Reid Reker - Became GM of CBS/Chicago and later CBS/Dallas
-Don Payne - CE of Radio One properties in Indy
-Carl Hamilton - Just retired as market manager for Radio One/Houston
-Mark Zintel (Larsen) - Retired from WFLA/Tampa, a bigtime talk operation
-Steve Gunn - Did afternoons at WGCI/Chicago and was at ABC at last check
-Stuart McRae - Also at ABC (Citadel) at last check
-Linda Page - Assignment editor for Fox TV-13/Memphis
-Gary Heathcott - Runs an advertising agency in Little Rock
-Tom Rusk - Became a station owner, later a multi-station engineer in Arkansas
-Joe Coeburn - Did mornings at WBBM-FM for years as Joe Bohannon
-Mark Winston - I ran into him back in 1993 at a Wichita station I was doing software work for, he's now a voiceover talent
...and that's just a few off the top of my head.
Of course I have to also include Lou Holtz,later coach of Notre Dame and now an ESPN analyst. Although he didn't work at KAAY, we carried the Razorbacks during the magical period when he led that program to prominence. Hey...that's gotta count for something, eh? :-)
Again...thanks to John Schaab for getting me hooked up with Lee Roy and for getting me turned on to the ``Mighty 1090 KAAY'' blog! Feel free, Dave, to share any of this on that site."
("Lee Roy" being Dave M., of course...bs)
Any of these fine folks are WELCOME to visit and drop us some comments! Thank you again, Bob and Dave!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Bob Nelson Checks In!
Hey, folks, Dave M. assists once again in helping fill in more KAAY history! His friend, Bob Nelson, Operations Director from 1976 to 1978, fills us in:
"As much as I enjoy broadcast history, until today I wasn't even aware of``The Mighty 1090 KAAY'' blog site. It's a great resource and I appreciate the time and effort put into keeping the memories alive.
As for me, my stint at KAAY/KEZQ was all-too-brief, stretching from winter 1976 to late summer 1978. In that short span of time, I worked with an outstanding collection of people. I subsequently worked in larger markets than Little Rock (Nashville, Pittsburgh and Dallas) but I always look back to my days in Little Rock as the most fun I've ever had in any job.
I was really just on the periphery of the great people that worked there. My job was running the automated Bonneville beautiful music companion,KEZQ. My actual title was Operations Director but it amounted to little more than keeping the Schafer-903 programmed. But the part I enjoyed the most was doing weekends and fill-in over on KAAY. It was a blast giving the phone number for the hit lines, complete with area code (501) 661-1212. It never got old picking up the phone and getting a request from places like Des Moines, New Orleans, Duluth and Bismarck.
For a while I did middays on the AM and had the pleasure of working with Farm Service Director Marvin Vines, a true gentleman.
As for Dave Montgomery, I have this one story to share which reveals the true measure of the man. One weekend, I was driving back to Little Rock after visiting friends from college up in Nashville. My little red Mercury Capri had close to 200,000 miles on it when the engine finally blew out in the little town of Widener, AR on the far side of Forest City. This happened around 1:00 early on a Sunday morning and I was scheduled to do live assist on KEZQ for morning drive. Dave was doing the regular weekly maintenance for KAAY at the studio. I called the hotline and told him of my dilemma. Without a complaint, he hopped in the station jeep and drove the 200+ mile round trip to get me back what seemed like the middle of nowhere back to Little Rock.
There are other anecdotes I can share about Dave (and other KY-ers) but that act of generosity is among the more memorable. -- Bob Nelson"
Bob we certainly hope you'll check in often...we'll be looking forward to many more stories and anecdotes...and, thanks to Dave M. for bringing Bob on board. Kudos, gentlemen!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
"As much as I enjoy broadcast history, until today I wasn't even aware of``The Mighty 1090 KAAY'' blog site. It's a great resource and I appreciate the time and effort put into keeping the memories alive.
As for me, my stint at KAAY/KEZQ was all-too-brief, stretching from winter 1976 to late summer 1978. In that short span of time, I worked with an outstanding collection of people. I subsequently worked in larger markets than Little Rock (Nashville, Pittsburgh and Dallas) but I always look back to my days in Little Rock as the most fun I've ever had in any job.
I was really just on the periphery of the great people that worked there. My job was running the automated Bonneville beautiful music companion,KEZQ. My actual title was Operations Director but it amounted to little more than keeping the Schafer-903 programmed. But the part I enjoyed the most was doing weekends and fill-in over on KAAY. It was a blast giving the phone number for the hit lines, complete with area code (501) 661-1212. It never got old picking up the phone and getting a request from places like Des Moines, New Orleans, Duluth and Bismarck.
For a while I did middays on the AM and had the pleasure of working with Farm Service Director Marvin Vines, a true gentleman.
As for Dave Montgomery, I have this one story to share which reveals the true measure of the man. One weekend, I was driving back to Little Rock after visiting friends from college up in Nashville. My little red Mercury Capri had close to 200,000 miles on it when the engine finally blew out in the little town of Widener, AR on the far side of Forest City. This happened around 1:00 early on a Sunday morning and I was scheduled to do live assist on KEZQ for morning drive. Dave was doing the regular weekly maintenance for KAAY at the studio. I called the hotline and told him of my dilemma. Without a complaint, he hopped in the station jeep and drove the 200+ mile round trip to get me back what seemed like the middle of nowhere back to Little Rock.
There are other anecdotes I can share about Dave (and other KY-ers) but that act of generosity is among the more memorable. -- Bob Nelson"
Bob we certainly hope you'll check in often...we'll be looking forward to many more stories and anecdotes...and, thanks to Dave M. for bringing Bob on board. Kudos, gentlemen!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Want To Modulate A Flame?
Here’s an old article about different ways to modulate a flame to produce audio:
http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/PopularElectronics/May1968/Flame_Amplification.htm
Dave M.
(Dave, do you know any jocks who were also pyromaniacs? bs)
http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/PopularElectronics/May1968/Flame_Amplification.htm
Dave M.
(Dave, do you know any jocks who were also pyromaniacs? bs)
Sunday, October 11, 2009
More Home-Brew: The Knight Kit
PART I: Ron and Gary at work in Chicagoland, 1958:
Ron Henselman:
How many of our readers ever wanted to be a deejay or operate his or her own transmitter to play music? One of those readers was me, and another was my friend Gary Wegner.
We were both AM and TV DX’ers, but we were just kids twelve years of age. We were inspired by stations which played rock and roll. Our first inspiration was KOMA in Oklahoma City. A.J. mentioned it was one of his inspirations too.
Then one day it happened: we found an ad for something called a Knight Kit Broadcaster. The technical name for it in those days was a phono-oscillator. Gary and I nagged his father to drive us to Allied Radio in Chicago. Allied was the company which produced Knight Kits. One weekend we finally managed to visit the wonderful store which had the product of our dreams. Gary bought the kit, and we returned to his house and stashed it there. It was a kit, and we were kids. So who was going to build it for us?
It is really strange how we both developed head colds the next morning, and we were both too sick to attend school. I reasoned with my mother, “Doesn’t it seem logical I can’t give Gary my cold because he already has one?” This made sense to my mother, so she let me visit Gary during the afternoon. Mom failed to notice I was armed with Dad’s soldering iron, a roll of solder, needle nose pliers, and a pair of diagonal cutters.
When I arrived at Gary’s house, we quickly went to his basement and unpacked the kit. The instruction manual was full of pictorial diagrams, and it was written in simple language. We took turns installing the tube sockets, resistors and capacitors. We only had one resistor left to install on a terminal strip. Resistors had all sorts of pretty colors on them, but it was tough to distinguish one from another. As I installed the last resistor, I heard a cracking noise. Oh no! I ruined the resistor, and it wasn’t even my kit. There went any hopes of getting on the air that day or did it? I sneaked home, and I found one in my father’s resistor stock which was kept in a cigar box. The resistor had the same colors, so I reasoned it would work. We installed it, and the kit was finished.
Do we dare plug it into the wall? After all, we were just kids. We plugged it in anyway, but who had the guts to turn the power switch. Gary did it, and the vacuum tubes lit up. Hooray! We did it, but did it really work?
We were working next to one of those large old console tube radios which had a wooden housing and a giant speaker. We chose 1090 kilocycles because we had recently learned KTHS couldn’t be heard during daylight hours. We set the radio dial to 1090 and plugged a crystal microphone into the jack on the kit. As I used a small screwdriver to tune the little variable capacitor on the kit, we suddenly heard a burst of loud feedback. It scared the hell out of me, so I threw the screwdriver into the air. Surely I must be getting electrocuted. When we figured out it was only feedback, we calmed down; then we centered the transmitting frequency to what we thought was 1090 kilocycles. What do we do next?
Of course we thought we were deejays, so we announced and played our favorite top forty records. We had an astounding revelation: kids don’t sound like professional radio announcers no mater how much they practice. We had our fun, so the two horribly ill children decided to quit for the day. Mom! I need more Kleenex.
The next weekend we decided to check the range of the transmitter. We used my small portable tube radio to check the range. What a disappointment! We couldn’t even be heard in the yard next door. I was secretly hoping the three neighbor girls would be part of our audience. There had to be a way to increase our transmitting range.
There was a little sticker included with the kit which stated, “Complies with part 15 FCC rules and regulations.” The instruction book mentioned we could not use an antenna longer than sixty inches in length including the lead-in wire, or we would be in violation of the FCC rules. Who was the FCC? Most twelve year old kids didn’t have a clue.
I had the idea of disconnecting the twin-lead antenna wire from Gary’s TV and connecting one of the wires to the terminal on the little transmitter. We suddenly had a signal which could be heard for blocks. When were the cops going to break down the door and arrest us? Would our parents share the same cell with us? Would we have to pay Elvis money because we played his record over and over again?
The novelty of our little transmitter wore off quickly, and we sort of lost interest or did we? There might be more to my story. My discovery of the KTHS transition to KAAY rekindled those interests. My next dream was to build a transmitter which was so large one would have to climb inside of it to tune it up.
After reading the KAAY blog, I have a good feeling when I realize many of our readers successfully followed their dreams.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Some References:
Ron Henselman:
How many of our readers ever wanted to be a deejay or operate his or her own transmitter to play music? One of those readers was me, and another was my friend Gary Wegner.
We were both AM and TV DX’ers, but we were just kids twelve years of age. We were inspired by stations which played rock and roll. Our first inspiration was KOMA in Oklahoma City. A.J. mentioned it was one of his inspirations too.
Then one day it happened: we found an ad for something called a Knight Kit Broadcaster. The technical name for it in those days was a phono-oscillator. Gary and I nagged his father to drive us to Allied Radio in Chicago. Allied was the company which produced Knight Kits. One weekend we finally managed to visit the wonderful store which had the product of our dreams. Gary bought the kit, and we returned to his house and stashed it there. It was a kit, and we were kids. So who was going to build it for us?
It is really strange how we both developed head colds the next morning, and we were both too sick to attend school. I reasoned with my mother, “Doesn’t it seem logical I can’t give Gary my cold because he already has one?” This made sense to my mother, so she let me visit Gary during the afternoon. Mom failed to notice I was armed with Dad’s soldering iron, a roll of solder, needle nose pliers, and a pair of diagonal cutters.
Do we dare plug it into the wall? After all, we were just kids. We plugged it in anyway, but who had the guts to turn the power switch. Gary did it, and the vacuum tubes lit up. Hooray! We did it, but did it really work?
We were working next to one of those large old console tube radios which had a wooden housing and a giant speaker. We chose 1090 kilocycles because we had recently learned KTHS couldn’t be heard during daylight hours. We set the radio dial to 1090 and plugged a crystal microphone into the jack on the kit. As I used a small screwdriver to tune the little variable capacitor on the kit, we suddenly heard a burst of loud feedback. It scared the hell out of me, so I threw the screwdriver into the air. Surely I must be getting electrocuted. When we figured out it was only feedback, we calmed down; then we centered the transmitting frequency to what we thought was 1090 kilocycles. What do we do next?
Of course we thought we were deejays, so we announced and played our favorite top forty records. We had an astounding revelation: kids don’t sound like professional radio announcers no mater how much they practice. We had our fun, so the two horribly ill children decided to quit for the day. Mom! I need more Kleenex.
The next weekend we decided to check the range of the transmitter. We used my small portable tube radio to check the range. What a disappointment! We couldn’t even be heard in the yard next door. I was secretly hoping the three neighbor girls would be part of our audience. There had to be a way to increase our transmitting range.
There was a little sticker included with the kit which stated, “Complies with part 15 FCC rules and regulations.” The instruction book mentioned we could not use an antenna longer than sixty inches in length including the lead-in wire, or we would be in violation of the FCC rules. Who was the FCC? Most twelve year old kids didn’t have a clue.
I had the idea of disconnecting the twin-lead antenna wire from Gary’s TV and connecting one of the wires to the terminal on the little transmitter. We suddenly had a signal which could be heard for blocks. When were the cops going to break down the door and arrest us? Would our parents share the same cell with us? Would we have to pay Elvis money because we played his record over and over again?
The novelty of our little transmitter wore off quickly, and we sort of lost interest or did we? There might be more to my story. My discovery of the KTHS transition to KAAY rekindled those interests. My next dream was to build a transmitter which was so large one would have to climb inside of it to tune it up.
After reading the KAAY blog, I have a good feeling when I realize many of our readers successfully followed their dreams.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Some References:
- Knight Kit tribute page: http://www.knightkit.com/
- PDF copy of Knight Kit assembly manual: http://www.we0h.us/Amateur_Radio_stuff/Knight/Wireless-Broadcaster/Knight_Kit_Radio_BC___Amp.pdf
- Popular Electronics 1959 article on the Knight Kit: http://www.smecc.org/knight_kit_home_broadcasters_-_allied_electronics.htm
Friday, October 9, 2009
Remember "Audio By Fire"?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lr8tVC-Qx0
Here’s a link to a guy who makes music from the plasma of a Tesla coil. Very similar to what we were doing - - - except we were using induced RF to create the plasma arc. You can hear that when it’s optimized, it’s quite audible.
/DM/
Here’s a link to a guy who makes music from the plasma of a Tesla coil. Very similar to what we were doing - - - except we were using induced RF to create the plasma arc. You can hear that when it’s optimized, it’s quite audible.
/DM/
Critical Directional Antenna Patterns: Dave M. Replies To Bob Nelson
From the very early days, all AM transmitters over a certain power were required to have an on-duty engineer. The 50kW transmitters were the top o' the technical heap, and therefore had to have an on-site First Class Radiotelephone licensed engineer on duty whenever they were in normal operation.
The duty engineer was required to make readings at least once per hour. That explains why, for example, Beaker Street originated from the transmitter rather than from downtown - Dale Seidenschwarz (aka Clyde
Clifford) had a "first phone" and he served double duty - as the overnight transmitter engineer - and as the host of Beaker Street. The subsequent Beaker Street announcers also had to have a First Class Radiotelephone license until the rules were relaxed allowing a Third Class license to be a "meter reader" by remote control. By that time, Beaker Street had been retired, and all operations were out of the Cottondale Lane studios.
An engineer on site could read the meters, make a reasoned determination whether things were running within the norm, and continue operations or pull the plug. If you remember, at night time, you had to make three separate antenna base current readings and log them, as well as the other readings - Plate Current, Plate voltage, and transmitter output current. The KAAY power divider and antenna phasors were very robust and stable, and I don't ever remember a shutdown due to a breakdown of one of these elements.
KAAY had a full time staff of First Class Radiotelephone engineers on duty when I started in the late '60's. The deejays worked from downtown studios, from West 7th street and later from the Cottondale Lane studios. All the while there was someone at the transmitter site reading meters, making the directional/non directional switches, and generally tending to the place. Felix kept them busy.
Roughly in the mid 70's (not exactly sure of the date ???) there was a relaxation of the rules allowing 50kW directionals to be remote controlled. A major task was to convert the transmitter to remote control. The RCA-BTA50F transmitter was originally designed to be operated strictly in "local" or manual mode, so all the remote control interface had to be custom designed and installed. Felix and Tom Rusk (and others) worked many long hours on this project, and "mission accomplished".
There was a transition period as I recall, between on site control and remote control of the transmitter. The last couple of KAAY transmitter engineers were verging on retirement, and Felix kept them around to watch things after the remote control was made operational. Dual transmitter logs were kept (1 at the studio and 1 at the transmitter) and were compared with each other. The downtown people had to be trained how to make the antenna change and keep the down-time to a minimum (and on-time) without burning up the antenna relays.
Eventually, the last of the KAAY engineers retired, and the transmitter was then run on full remote control from downtown.
Do you remember the plate voltage and current readings? Or the antenna base current? I seem to remember the RCA ran about 10,700 VDC @ about 5.7A. Calculated out this would be about 61kW+ "input power".
Here's another trivia bit - We ran two separate transmission lines from the transmitter building to the center doghouse, where the power divider and phasor units were located. One transmission line was used daytime, and the other was used nighttime.
There was an RF contactor (relay) at each end of the transmission line that "switched" the transmitter between the tuning units. There was an additional contactor at the antenna tuning unit for the East and West tower, used to detune the towers in the daytime, and connect them to their transmission lines during nighttime operation. There were a lot of moving parts, and almost anything could go wrong. But it seldom did.
It was a well known problem that if you switched transmission lines while the transmitter was "hot" you could burn the relay contacts, and cause VSWR to "spike" and take the transmitter truly and solidly off the air instead of remaining in "hot standby". So Felix developed a procedure to keep this from happening.
At antenna change (happened twice a day) you would:
1) Kill the plate HV (transmitter off)
2) Press the CHANGE button.
CAUTION - DO NOT PRESS THIS BUTTON IF THE TRANSMITTER IS STILL ON!!!
3) Apply the plate HV (transmitter back on)
If you were fast enough, you could do the whole thing by counting "ONE-MISSISSIPPI" and be back on the air on less than 2 seconds.
But if you EVER switched "hot", or too fast, you ran the risk of having the transmitter shut down and then you had to explain yourself first to the Program Director (why the &#%*@&# were you off the air???) and then explain again to Felix (son, I thought you knew better than that...).
Heh.
Fixing the contactor could only be done with the transmitter off the air. The main contactor was on top of the P.A. cabinet and you had to use a ladder to get to it.
KAAY's pattern protects WBAL Baltimore and vice-versa. The major northeast null is oriented toward B'more and if you look at a map, you can see it clearly. In broader terms, we also protected the 1090 XEPRS out of San Diego, but that was much farther away to the southwest and not generally an interference problem.
The duty engineer was required to make readings at least once per hour. That explains why, for example, Beaker Street originated from the transmitter rather than from downtown - Dale Seidenschwarz (aka Clyde
Clifford) had a "first phone" and he served double duty - as the overnight transmitter engineer - and as the host of Beaker Street. The subsequent Beaker Street announcers also had to have a First Class Radiotelephone license until the rules were relaxed allowing a Third Class license to be a "meter reader" by remote control. By that time, Beaker Street had been retired, and all operations were out of the Cottondale Lane studios.
An engineer on site could read the meters, make a reasoned determination whether things were running within the norm, and continue operations or pull the plug. If you remember, at night time, you had to make three separate antenna base current readings and log them, as well as the other readings - Plate Current, Plate voltage, and transmitter output current. The KAAY power divider and antenna phasors were very robust and stable, and I don't ever remember a shutdown due to a breakdown of one of these elements.
KAAY had a full time staff of First Class Radiotelephone engineers on duty when I started in the late '60's. The deejays worked from downtown studios, from West 7th street and later from the Cottondale Lane studios. All the while there was someone at the transmitter site reading meters, making the directional/non directional switches, and generally tending to the place. Felix kept them busy.
Roughly in the mid 70's (not exactly sure of the date ???) there was a relaxation of the rules allowing 50kW directionals to be remote controlled. A major task was to convert the transmitter to remote control. The RCA-BTA50F transmitter was originally designed to be operated strictly in "local" or manual mode, so all the remote control interface had to be custom designed and installed. Felix and Tom Rusk (and others) worked many long hours on this project, and "mission accomplished".
There was a transition period as I recall, between on site control and remote control of the transmitter. The last couple of KAAY transmitter engineers were verging on retirement, and Felix kept them around to watch things after the remote control was made operational. Dual transmitter logs were kept (1 at the studio and 1 at the transmitter) and were compared with each other. The downtown people had to be trained how to make the antenna change and keep the down-time to a minimum (and on-time) without burning up the antenna relays.
Eventually, the last of the KAAY engineers retired, and the transmitter was then run on full remote control from downtown.
Do you remember the plate voltage and current readings? Or the antenna base current? I seem to remember the RCA ran about 10,700 VDC @ about 5.7A. Calculated out this would be about 61kW+ "input power".
Here's another trivia bit - We ran two separate transmission lines from the transmitter building to the center doghouse, where the power divider and phasor units were located. One transmission line was used daytime, and the other was used nighttime.
There was an RF contactor (relay) at each end of the transmission line that "switched" the transmitter between the tuning units. There was an additional contactor at the antenna tuning unit for the East and West tower, used to detune the towers in the daytime, and connect them to their transmission lines during nighttime operation. There were a lot of moving parts, and almost anything could go wrong. But it seldom did.
It was a well known problem that if you switched transmission lines while the transmitter was "hot" you could burn the relay contacts, and cause VSWR to "spike" and take the transmitter truly and solidly off the air instead of remaining in "hot standby". So Felix developed a procedure to keep this from happening.
At antenna change (happened twice a day) you would:
1) Kill the plate HV (transmitter off)
2) Press the CHANGE button.
CAUTION - DO NOT PRESS THIS BUTTON IF THE TRANSMITTER IS STILL ON!!!
3) Apply the plate HV (transmitter back on)
If you were fast enough, you could do the whole thing by counting "ONE-MISSISSIPPI" and be back on the air on less than 2 seconds.
But if you EVER switched "hot", or too fast, you ran the risk of having the transmitter shut down and then you had to explain yourself first to the Program Director (why the &#%*@&# were you off the air???) and then explain again to Felix (son, I thought you knew better than that...).
Heh.
Fixing the contactor could only be done with the transmitter off the air. The main contactor was on top of the P.A. cabinet and you had to use a ladder to get to it.
KAAY's pattern protects WBAL Baltimore and vice-versa. The major northeast null is oriented toward B'more and if you look at a map, you can see it clearly. In broader terms, we also protected the 1090 XEPRS out of San Diego, but that was much farther away to the southwest and not generally an interference problem.
A Question From Bob Nelson...
Bob Nelson said...
Dave --
A quick question from Bob Nelson (we worked at KAAY/KEZQ in the mid-70's).
What criteria existed back in that era for certain directionals to have first ticket operators on duty at the transmitter? As I recall, during non-DA operation, we could remotely control and take readings for the transmitter.
When the night pattern kicked in, all of that happened at Wrightsville.
Even later, toward the end of my time there in 1978, both day and night were allowed to be done from Cottondale. Was that a waiver granted to KAAY and other stations or did the FCC relax the regulations at that time?
Dave --
A quick question from Bob Nelson (we worked at KAAY/KEZQ in the mid-70's).
What criteria existed back in that era for certain directionals to have first ticket operators on duty at the transmitter? As I recall, during non-DA operation, we could remotely control and take readings for the transmitter.
When the night pattern kicked in, all of that happened at Wrightsville.
Even later, toward the end of my time there in 1978, both day and night were allowed to be done from Cottondale. Was that a waiver granted to KAAY and other stations or did the FCC relax the regulations at that time?
"Audio From Fire!", From Dave M.!
Here’s a short story about a trick Felix showed me. When we were installing the new ground system, we were working right at the base of the towers, which were VERY HOT with RF. The two end towers, even de-tuned for daytime operation still had significant induced RF since they were only about 500ft away from the 50kW center tower! So the towers were a potential lethal shock hazard even though they were not being directly driven by the transmitter.
To “safety” the tower, there was a buried copper cable, about size “000” that had a crook in the end – we would take the crook end and hang it off the bottom of the tower to insure it was properly grounded and then safe to work around. (It messed up the daytime pattern when we did this, since the tower would no longer be properly detuned, but that’s another story).
On more than one hot summer afternoon, a typical summer thunderstorm would build in the distance and begin rumbling in. We wanted to work as long as we could, but we also wanted to be away from the towers when the lightning began to fly around. We didn’t keep a portable radio with us, but we did want to hear the weather forecast. Well, the weather forecast was always right after the news at the top of the hour, so we would watch the clock to know when the next weather forecast would be on the air.
At the right moment, Felix would un-ground the tower and hold the crook of the grounding cable close enough to the tower base to draw a small arc. The flame of the arc was modulated RF, and we could plainly “hear” the weather forecast in the flame of the ARC!!! Audio from fire!
We would then decide if lightning danger was approaching and how much longer to stay out working before the storm arrived.
Best, /DM/
To “safety” the tower, there was a buried copper cable, about size “000” that had a crook in the end – we would take the crook end and hang it off the bottom of the tower to insure it was properly grounded and then safe to work around. (It messed up the daytime pattern when we did this, since the tower would no longer be properly detuned, but that’s another story).
On more than one hot summer afternoon, a typical summer thunderstorm would build in the distance and begin rumbling in. We wanted to work as long as we could, but we also wanted to be away from the towers when the lightning began to fly around. We didn’t keep a portable radio with us, but we did want to hear the weather forecast. Well, the weather forecast was always right after the news at the top of the hour, so we would watch the clock to know when the next weather forecast would be on the air.
At the right moment, Felix would un-ground the tower and hold the crook of the grounding cable close enough to the tower base to draw a small arc. The flame of the arc was modulated RF, and we could plainly “hear” the weather forecast in the flame of the ARC!!! Audio from fire!
We would then decide if lightning danger was approaching and how much longer to stay out working before the storm arrived.
Best, /DM/
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
More on Tommy Riggs from Charles Okle
Charles Okle has been in contact with us and has some info and photos of Tommy Riggs/Rock Robbins:
There are also nice Tommy Riggs tribute pages at http://www.johnredam.com/tommyriggs.html and at http://www.steveriggs.com/Dad/. (The latter has lots of audio clips that are worth a listen.)
Thanks Charles!
Here is some more "Tommy" info that I posted years ago: http://www.geocities.com/charliebegood97/2index
Yahoo is getting ready to take down the Geocities domain about Oct. 26th, so you need to check it out and copy anything you want before then. Look for more than one page I put on there, I think. I'll be back in touch. Take care. -Charlie.
Thanks Charles!
The Lost Souls, Moses Melody Shop, Tommy Riggs & KAAY
While searching the web for more goodies, I came upon this survey, attached in a website:
A couple of the members of the Lost Souls band visited KAAY when Tommy Riggs was on shift; in their writing of KAAY and Tommy Riggs' promotion of their music, Moses Melody Shop was mentioned...and, to my knowledge, I haven't heard of this store until now. Tommy's promotion of their song, "Lost Love" got them plenty of sales! Anyone got any information on Moses Melody Shop? Here's the text:
"Little Rock was home to one of the biggest rock stations in the country, KAAY 1090 AM, “The Friendly Giant” at 50,000 watts of power. The range of the station reached the entire Midwest. Tommy Riggs, a legendary local rock and soul performer, also had a career as a DJ on KAAY known as Rock Robbins. Griggs and Petray decided to knock on the station door to meet Riggs, who they’d seen perform at the Cimarron Inn and heard on the radio. Riggs let the boys in and played “Lost Love.” It soon reached #1 on his call-in request show. They sold the record at the hippest place in Little Rock, Moses Melody Shop, a music store on Main Street. The record sold very well and they restocked with several 50-count boxes."
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Ron H. Comments On Jerry Sims' Fair Story
"Great story!
I went to see a promotion for a mobile home park. They had a girl in a bikini encased in a rectangular object made out of blocks of ice. One could speak with her via a CB walkie talkie. This was around 1964. While the other guys were drooling over her beauty, I kept trying to figure out how she could go to the bathroom. There didn't appear to be any type of toilet facilities. She was lying on her back, and there was a breathing vent through ice blocks. I'm guessing the inner blocks were probably clear plastic instead of ice. Jerry's post stirred my memory on this stunt. I won't be able to sleep tonight because I'm going to wonder about the bathroom thing again. It was two o'clock in the morning when I was there, so they didn't remove her for the night.
I don't remember any of the major Chicago stations doing anything like Jerry described. If anybody remembers anything else like this, please post it. Visibility is more important than most of us are aware.
Dick Biondi, who was from WLS, flew over the local shopping center and dropped many ping-pong balls from a helicopter. The balls had numbers printed on them, and one was supposed to visit each store to see if the balls he or she collected were a winner for that store. This was visibility, but the whole stunt was over too quickly. The group of ball collectors consisted mostly of kids, so it would seem the stores gained very few new customers. WLS was the only winner from this stunt. Dick Biondi and I both remember it, but most of my friends who attended have long forgotten about it.
KAAY always had something exciting going on for the general public. I was always envious because I lived too far from Little Rock to ever participate in any of the promotions. I was only able to hear the nighttime deejays, so I was only able to hear Jerry once. I really felt shortchanged.
Ron Henselman"
Ron, I agree...I'd always wanted to take a vacation right around Christmastime and go up to work with the folks on the Toys for Tots program. Never took off, though, didn't have the cash to do it, for one thing, and my work ethic kept me at the job, up to the minute we took off for the holiday.
Needless to say (and I may have mentioned this before), KAAY was so strong in the evening, that the signal started coming through thirty minutes before sunset. I never heard the daytime jocks, either, so it's a real treat to hear the airchecks we have today!
Thanks, Ron!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
I went to see a promotion for a mobile home park. They had a girl in a bikini encased in a rectangular object made out of blocks of ice. One could speak with her via a CB walkie talkie. This was around 1964. While the other guys were drooling over her beauty, I kept trying to figure out how she could go to the bathroom. There didn't appear to be any type of toilet facilities. She was lying on her back, and there was a breathing vent through ice blocks. I'm guessing the inner blocks were probably clear plastic instead of ice. Jerry's post stirred my memory on this stunt. I won't be able to sleep tonight because I'm going to wonder about the bathroom thing again. It was two o'clock in the morning when I was there, so they didn't remove her for the night.
I don't remember any of the major Chicago stations doing anything like Jerry described. If anybody remembers anything else like this, please post it. Visibility is more important than most of us are aware.
Dick Biondi, who was from WLS, flew over the local shopping center and dropped many ping-pong balls from a helicopter. The balls had numbers printed on them, and one was supposed to visit each store to see if the balls he or she collected were a winner for that store. This was visibility, but the whole stunt was over too quickly. The group of ball collectors consisted mostly of kids, so it would seem the stores gained very few new customers. WLS was the only winner from this stunt. Dick Biondi and I both remember it, but most of my friends who attended have long forgotten about it.
KAAY always had something exciting going on for the general public. I was always envious because I lived too far from Little Rock to ever participate in any of the promotions. I was only able to hear the nighttime deejays, so I was only able to hear Jerry once. I really felt shortchanged.
Ron Henselman"
Ron, I agree...I'd always wanted to take a vacation right around Christmastime and go up to work with the folks on the Toys for Tots program. Never took off, though, didn't have the cash to do it, for one thing, and my work ethic kept me at the job, up to the minute we took off for the holiday.
Needless to say (and I may have mentioned this before), KAAY was so strong in the evening, that the signal started coming through thirty minutes before sunset. I never heard the daytime jocks, either, so it's a real treat to hear the airchecks we have today!
Thanks, Ron!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Monday, October 5, 2009
Interesting Blog Linking to Mighty1090KAAY!
I found this blog while trying to describe the old transmitter site to a friend, who is actually in Little Rock, AR, but had never been there before:
http://tvdxseark.blogspot.com/2009/09/almighty-1090-circa-2009.html
Nice pictures....BTW, I thanked them for linking to us and invited 'em over!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
http://tvdxseark.blogspot.com/2009/09/almighty-1090-circa-2009.html
Nice pictures....BTW, I thanked them for linking to us and invited 'em over!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Jerry Sims, a.k.a. Sonny Martin At The 1963 Arkansas Fair!
(Click on the above for a bigger picture of a handsome young man! bs)
The appearance was a big hit and lots of fun. As always, we had our set of unforeseen problems. Hurriedly put together as it was, we did not have a sail. Some local ladies sewed together enough sheets to make a sail, and we painted the big KAAY on it. The sail helped cause our biggest problem. Ya see, the boat had to be built up on a wooden frame. I had a ladder to climb up into it in the rear. Then when the north wind came, the sail caught it enough to nearly blow boat and skinny D.J. into an anxious crowd. Engineers quickly came out to cut holes in the sail. I later took down the sail when the wind blew so hard that the whole frame lifted in the rear. The whole promotion was a great success, so much so, that the Fair said "Never again". We kept the entire entrance stacked up. I had a rope/basket contraption rigged up to allow people to send me up "stuff". I had stuffed animals all lined up along the edge, and so much food that I had a hidden garbage bag for it.
I never thought about being unsafe, even after the fair had closed for the night. For those familiar with the fair location on Roosevelt Road, you would guess... that I would not want to spend even daylight hours there today.
One of the attractions that year was Sonny James, who had a decent career with "Young Love" and others. I got word that he listened to us and wanted to visit me. He wouldn't fit in the "Teddy Bear Sling", but did come by and sent up autographed pictures, etc. Come to think of it, Sonny Martin may have been a bigger hit than Sonny James on that trip.
Because of the major entrance clog, the fair officials moved us next year to a "Fall Out Shelter" between the Hall of Industry and Barton Coliseum. The late Tommy Riggs (Rock Robbins) got that call. No one but us ever knew if he was in there for sure. There were no windows. His bath did not look like Soji Tabuchi's either. He had a camper toilet with plastic bags. I will not repeat his comments to me over that one. Fall Out Shelters, it seemed, were very tight. Kept nuclear stuff out....odors in.
Speaking of toilet facilities: My sailboat had a portable toilet, about 5 feet high, with enough chemicals to last for the week. Because it was so tall, the only place to put it was right under the entrance to the boat. Sitting on this monster, my head had to stick out the top of the boat. Midway fans would see me waving to them, and have no idea what the bottom half of my body was up to.
None of us got extra pay, or even thought about asking for it, for such adventures. It was just a very exciting part of our job. We all considered ourselves very lucky to have been part of this great radio station adventure.
Jerry Sims.....aka Sonny Martin....1962-1967
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Where Are They Now: Sonny Martin III, By David B. Treadway
"Hello, Youngster!" (That's a little inside joke between David B. and I! bs)
"I have been in touch with Matt D. White, who was the last Sonny Martin at KAAY from about 1968-77 (dates very approximate, memory completely fuzzed). I know that he has viewed the KAAY Blog and he's promised to contribute when he has time. Perhaps he will see this and get on the stick, hee!
Sonny (as I have always known and referred to him) is now seriously involved with the Pot O' Gold Restaurant at Lindsey's Rainbow Resort in Heber Springs AR. In his abundant spare time, he drives to Searcy every weekday and does 6:00 AM til Noon on KWCK, 99.9 FM under the air name of (wait for it!) Sonny Martin. How he finds the time for all of this in one day is beyond me, but he can still be heard on the air and online at http://www.kwck999.com/.
I remember him best from the morning show with the late George J. Jennings at KAAY. Their Razorback/Longhorn feuds were legendary. Whenever things got slow, George would dis the Hogs and hold forth about how EVERYTHING was better in Texas. The phones would light up like a Christmas tree!
Once in the summer of 1971, Sonny made the mistake of leaving his hairbrush in the KAAY Funmobile. I was out on a remote and looking for a little something extra to give away, so I forged his initials on the back of the brush with a magic marker and offered it to the next listener who showed up. Two girls immediately began pounding on the door and you'd have thought I'd just given them fifty bucks! I had to explain to the next dozen visitors that it had gone quickly.
Years later, the Funmobile was parked in a huge field some miles south of Little Rock for a big music festival headlined by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. We were all doing our shows live from the event that day and it was well after dark when Sonny showed up demanding my belt and KAAY buckle. Yes, he had been there all day. A fan had admired Sonny's buckle, so naturally he had given it to her--belt and all. He was due onstage in introduce the Dirt Band in a couple of minutes and his jeans were in danger of going south. Reluctantly, I gave him my belt and, of course, never saw it again! But that's how we did it Back In The Day: everything for the station, all glory to the call letters.
As with everyone else at KAAY during my times there, Sonny was a true pro and a pleasure to work with. I hope he lives to be a thousand."
Thank you, David! I'd e-mailed Matt but have yet to hear from him; we all know how busy life can be!. We all hope he'll check in here and give us a few lines about his history with KAAY!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
"I have been in touch with Matt D. White, who was the last Sonny Martin at KAAY from about 1968-77 (dates very approximate, memory completely fuzzed). I know that he has viewed the KAAY Blog and he's promised to contribute when he has time. Perhaps he will see this and get on the stick, hee!
Sonny (as I have always known and referred to him) is now seriously involved with the Pot O' Gold Restaurant at Lindsey's Rainbow Resort in Heber Springs AR. In his abundant spare time, he drives to Searcy every weekday and does 6:00 AM til Noon on KWCK, 99.9 FM under the air name of (wait for it!) Sonny Martin. How he finds the time for all of this in one day is beyond me, but he can still be heard on the air and online at http://www.kwck999.com/.
I remember him best from the morning show with the late George J. Jennings at KAAY. Their Razorback/Longhorn feuds were legendary. Whenever things got slow, George would dis the Hogs and hold forth about how EVERYTHING was better in Texas. The phones would light up like a Christmas tree!
Once in the summer of 1971, Sonny made the mistake of leaving his hairbrush in the KAAY Funmobile. I was out on a remote and looking for a little something extra to give away, so I forged his initials on the back of the brush with a magic marker and offered it to the next listener who showed up. Two girls immediately began pounding on the door and you'd have thought I'd just given them fifty bucks! I had to explain to the next dozen visitors that it had gone quickly.
Years later, the Funmobile was parked in a huge field some miles south of Little Rock for a big music festival headlined by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. We were all doing our shows live from the event that day and it was well after dark when Sonny showed up demanding my belt and KAAY buckle. Yes, he had been there all day. A fan had admired Sonny's buckle, so naturally he had given it to her--belt and all. He was due onstage in introduce the Dirt Band in a couple of minutes and his jeans were in danger of going south. Reluctantly, I gave him my belt and, of course, never saw it again! But that's how we did it Back In The Day: everything for the station, all glory to the call letters.
As with everyone else at KAAY during my times there, Sonny was a true pro and a pleasure to work with. I hope he lives to be a thousand."
Thank you, David! I'd e-mailed Matt but have yet to hear from him; we all know how busy life can be!. We all hope he'll check in here and give us a few lines about his history with KAAY!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Dave M. Checks In On Tom Roberts
"Hi Bud,
“Tom Roberts” is Tom Rusk. I believe he still lives in the Little Rock area, is chief engineer for several stations in the area, and I believe he is an owner or part owner of one of the stations in the market.
Tom and I worked as engineers primarily; Tom spent a lot of time at the transmitter, while I spent a lot of time at the studio. Tom did Beaker fill-in as I remember, and did a stint as “da host”.
Regards,
/DM/"
“Tom Roberts” is Tom Rusk. I believe he still lives in the Little Rock area, is chief engineer for several stations in the area, and I believe he is an owner or part owner of one of the stations in the market.
Tom and I worked as engineers primarily; Tom spent a lot of time at the transmitter, while I spent a lot of time at the studio. Tom did Beaker fill-in as I remember, and did a stint as “da host”.
Regards,
/DM/"
Friday, October 2, 2009
Tom Roberts, Don Payne and Beaker Street
Tom Roberts did a stint at the Beaker Street helm, during/about 1974...does anyone know where he might be these days?
Don Payne was said to have "done" the last Beaker Street...does anyone have any airchecks of him or know where he is? I know a lot of folks were called back for the "last day" as a Top 40 station and Clyde Clifford did the last hour of the last day, but a couple of sources mention Don Payne after Stuart McRae...???
Bud S. (a Beaker freak) (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Don Payne was said to have "done" the last Beaker Street...does anyone have any airchecks of him or know where he is? I know a lot of folks were called back for the "last day" as a Top 40 station and Clyde Clifford did the last hour of the last day, but a couple of sources mention Don Payne after Stuart McRae...???
Bud S. (a Beaker freak) (staceys4@hotmail.com)
#1 Songs For This Date In....
...the years 1962 through 1985:
1985 Money for Nothing- Dire Straits
1984 Let's Go Crazy- Prince & the Revolution
1983 Total Eclipse of the Heart- Bonnie Tyler
1982 Jack and Diane- John Cougar
1981 Endless Love- Diana Ross & Lionel Richie
1980 Another One Bites the Dust- Queen
THE 1970s
1979 Sad Eyes- Robert John
1978 Kiss You All Over- Exile
1977 Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band- Meco
1976 Play That Funky Music- Wild Cherry
1975 Fame- David Bowie
1974 I Honestly Love You- Olivia Newton-John
1973 Half-Breed- Cher
1972 Baby Don't Get Hooked on Me- Mac Davis
1971 Maggie May/ Reason to Believe- Rod Stewart
1970 Ain't No Mountain High Enough- Diana Ross
THE 1960s
1969 Sugar, Sugar- The Archies
1968 Hey Jude- The Beatles
1967 The Letter- The Box Tops
1966 Cherish- The Association
1965 Hang On Sloopy- The McCoys
1964 Oh, Pretty Woman- Roy Orbison
1963 Blue Velvet- Bobby Vinton
1962 Sherry- The Four Seasons
http://www.joshhosler.biz/NumberOneInHistory/10/1002.htm
Just thought this was fun, to reminisce...boy, how music has changed!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
1985 Money for Nothing- Dire Straits
1984 Let's Go Crazy- Prince & the Revolution
1983 Total Eclipse of the Heart- Bonnie Tyler
1982 Jack and Diane- John Cougar
1981 Endless Love- Diana Ross & Lionel Richie
1980 Another One Bites the Dust- Queen
THE 1970s
1979 Sad Eyes- Robert John
1978 Kiss You All Over- Exile
1977 Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band- Meco
1976 Play That Funky Music- Wild Cherry
1975 Fame- David Bowie
1974 I Honestly Love You- Olivia Newton-John
1973 Half-Breed- Cher
1972 Baby Don't Get Hooked on Me- Mac Davis
1971 Maggie May/ Reason to Believe- Rod Stewart
1970 Ain't No Mountain High Enough- Diana Ross
THE 1960s
1969 Sugar, Sugar- The Archies
1968 Hey Jude- The Beatles
1967 The Letter- The Box Tops
1966 Cherish- The Association
1965 Hang On Sloopy- The McCoys
1964 Oh, Pretty Woman- Roy Orbison
1963 Blue Velvet- Bobby Vinton
1962 Sherry- The Four Seasons
http://www.joshhosler.biz/NumberOneInHistory/10/1002.htm
Just thought this was fun, to reminisce...boy, how music has changed!
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
Beaker Street Led The Way?
On A.J.'s blog, there may have been a post or two from WindsofChange's website...here's one that basically gives Beaker Street the credit for starting "underground radio":
http://windsofchangekc.com/
"...patterned after radio shows like Beaker Street with Clyde Clifford. That program, which aired on 50,000 watt clear channel station KAAY 1090 AM out of Little Rock Arkansas from 1966 through 1972, is considered by many to be the first "Underground" radio program. Although it aired on an AM station, it greatly influenced the "Free Form" and "Progressive" radio formats of the years that followed."
Many people WERE influenced by Beaker Street and it's still very popular. Whether it was your cup o' tea or not, it was an interesting, eclectic show. Many still listen today, via it's latest incarnation on the 'Web.
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
http://windsofchangekc.com/
"...patterned after radio shows like Beaker Street with Clyde Clifford. That program, which aired on 50,000 watt clear channel station KAAY 1090 AM out of Little Rock Arkansas from 1966 through 1972, is considered by many to be the first "Underground" radio program. Although it aired on an AM station, it greatly influenced the "Free Form" and "Progressive" radio formats of the years that followed."
Many people WERE influenced by Beaker Street and it's still very popular. Whether it was your cup o' tea or not, it was an interesting, eclectic show. Many still listen today, via it's latest incarnation on the 'Web.
Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)
More Home-Brew Radio!
Dave M. beat me to the punch! I was going to forward this from an e-mail he sent me yesterday and he put it as a comment to the "Home-Brew Radio" post...wonderful memories...way to go, Dave!
"Here's a Knight Kit AM broadcast band transmitter I built!
http://www.knightkit.com/
/DM/"
"Here's a Knight Kit AM broadcast band transmitter I built!
http://www.knightkit.com/
/DM/"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)