Desperately Seeking Sixties (Second Appeal)

Although this web site has a reputation for being about the sixties, there is no set cut off date on either end of the period covered. The most recently recorded item is a KNUZ oldies format recording from 1991. I also have a good amount of New Wave era material from around 1980.

Actually, the early 60's are woefully underrepresented here. I am asking for more materials from that period. Top 40 recordings are welcome, particularly if they are unscoped recordings not previously heard on the internet.

I also want to make a special appeal for adult format materials from the early and mid 60's. That would include such AM stations as KXYZ, KODA, KPRC, KTRH, and KTHT as well as all of the FM stations of that period.

—G.M.

Write to this web site

"It'll kill you. That's the way it works. It'll just kill you."

KXYZ-FM, Houston, 1969,"Brother John" Rydgren

This is a collection of PSA's aired by Love FM. That was the syndicated rock format offered by ABC Radio and hosted by "Brother John" Rydgren (1932-1988).

Brother John is the announcer on the "piggies" PSA. You also hear him do a tag line on other spots.

Love radio was the main programming on KXYZ-FM (later called KAUM) when they first switched to rock. Brother John tried to make their programming sound hip and cool while keeping it as far away from the drug scene as possible.

Wikipedia offers this background on the format:

In June 1968, 24 year old Allen Shaw was hired from WCFL radio in Chicago, by ABC Radio Stations President, Hal Neal, to program all 7 of the ABC Owned FM Radio Stations in a new album rock format. There was very little budget for ABC's FM stations at that time, so Shaw was told that the new rock format would have to be totally automated. Shaw designed the "LOVE" format, with John "Brother John" Rydgren as the only DJ on the air 24 hours a day. 25 hours of long-form tapes were recorded at WABC-FM for playback on the ABC FM stations.

Unfortunately, I didn't keep any of my ABC Love airchecks. I only have this collection of Public Service Announcements. They were originally included in a long tape recorded at 1.875 ips. Later the PSA's were culled out and re-recorded at 7.5 ips.

An ordained minister, Brother John also hosted Silhouette, a program on behalf of the American Lutheran Church. You hear him concluding one Silhouette broadcast at the beginning of the Ron Foster aircheck for August 4, 1968.

I don't normally list airchecks recorded in other markets. In this case, I make an exception. I want you to hear more of Rydgren than just my PSA collection. Here are some West Coast versions of Brother John.:

"Brother John" Rydgren on KABC-FM and KGO-FM.

My last material is below!

Please note that I said my LAST material, not my latest material!

Is this the beginning of the end

or the end of the beginning

for this radio site?

A local collector gave me most of this material five years ago. I have very few radio recordings left that I might put on line — recorded by me or by anyone else.

In fact, I have nothing left except my Apollo 11 material and airchecks of my own voice.

I am holding the moon landing material back indefinitely. That way I will still have something to trade if that is the only way to get something I want. I have given everything else away.

I must be sent new material for this site to grow.

Repeating myself: I have no more items to post unless someone sends them to me. Reel to reel tapes from the first half of the sixties get top priority. Adult format tapes get even higher priority.

KPRC, Houston, February 1, 1962, Tim & Bob

KPRC, Houston, January, 1971, Tim & Bob

The second item was sent recently by Jake Rees.

KENR, Houston, 1972, Scotty Morgan

KILT, Houston, 01 Michael
KILT, Houston, 02 Jay Rogers
KILT, Houston, 03 Bill Young & Todd Wallace
KILT, Houston, 04 Jay Rogers
KILT, Houston, 05 Barry Kaye
KILT, Houston, 06 Barry Kaye
KILT, Houston, 07 K.O. Bayley
KILT, Houston, 08 K.O. Bayley
KILT, Houston, 09 K.O. Bayley

Drunk on air????????

KQUE, Houston, September, 1976, Bob Jones, Take 1
KQUE, Houston, September, 1976, Bob Jones, Take 2
KQUE, Houston, September, 1976, Bob Jones, Take 3

Above are various recordings of a DJ who is alleged to have been drunk on the air.

I would not be posting this material if he were still alive. Bob Jones is one of several people I should have met in radio but never did. Not only were we in radio at the same time, but I have known his sister since high school.

I first heard about this material from the sister in January, 2003. After not seeing each other for several years we were having coffee. She mentioned that she had recently heard a morning drive shock jock play the "drunk DJ" recording over the air.

At that point, I didn't even think of myself as a collector of airchecks. My only involvement was that I had just started copying my own radio tapes to CD.

Later that year, I obtained some of that Bob Jones material from a local collector and another version of the recording from an out of state aircheck trader.

That, by the way, was the only time I ever exchanged recordings with a stranger. The trade was mainly to get my KXYZ recording from 1961 and my Weird Beard recording from 1965.

There was a part of my mind that didn't even want to get involved with the "drunk DJ" recordings, and I think I would have left it alone if I had not known the sister. That was enough to make me wonder what the material was like.

I had the sister listen to all of it. She expressed the opinion that Bob Jones was not drunk. She said that he had tended to have trouble speaking whenever he was really tired.

Also, at a point when he doesn't seem to know his microphone is open, you hear him state that he is sick. Obviously, he is struggling to get through a shift.

How this web site is changing

This radio section has grown to the point where it must be split into more than one page. The new pages are listed above.

No system of classification is perfect, and once you put a station into a category there can be some misleading implications. KILT won't be listed as an adult format, but it was not just for teenagers. It mainly aimed for ages 18-35.

On the other hand some teenagers listened to the KXYZ beautiful music format in the 60's. I was one of them.

Here is the question I use to separate the adult formats from the not so adult formats: "Is this a station which a young punk would put up with?"

In the 60's and 70's, a young punk would have listened to KILT and KLOL, but he would not have put up with KPRC, KODA, or KYND. I listened to all those stations, including the ones that a young punk would have laughed at. I was young but I was never a young punk. (I credit the Alex Bennett recordings for teaching me the usefulness of the phrase "young punk.")

There will also be overlapping categories. The Alex Bennett group is big enough to rate a separate section. Yet among his material you can find entire recordings which are the regular KILT music programming, not just the talk shows you expect. Also, you can sometimes hear other DJ's just before or just after a talk show.

You also find the opposite situation: The Beau Weaver talk show is buried among the KILT-KNUZ DJ battles. That is because I didn't want to break up my "Night in the Life of KILT" set. Later, I may decide to set up duplicate links in the news and public affairs section, but for now you just have to look for it among the main KILT collection..

There are also newscasts embedded within talk shows and music shows. I hope to eventually lift out all of the newscasts and list them separately on the news and public affairs page.

Some of the changes in this radio section will be gradual and over a period of weeks. Most of the real work has already been done, but when you make such a major change you set up the need for a number of other small changes. I will approach those changes gradually and favor slow decisions over bad ones.

You should continue to mark this page in your browser. The new radio pages are likely to go through additional reorganization and renaming, so always begin your visit with this page.

This home page is the first link listed. You can also return by clicking on the big flash text banner reading "Houston Radio History."

— The Kinks, "Around the Dial" (1981).
Written by Ray Davies.

Click here for the complete lyrics

Click here for a 2008 Ray Davies song

About Houston Radio History:

Except where other writers are quoted, all commentary on this page is by Grady McAllister.

The opinions of persons quoted or mentioned do not necessarily represent the views of this web site or its associates. Likewise, the appearance of a person's name or words does not constitute an endorsement of opinions expressed elsewhere on this site.

Some of the audio materials include opinions on political issues of their time. They are presented here solely for their historical interest and not as an endorsement of the views the recordings contain.

All material on this site is presented on an "as is" basis. It does not include any warranty as to its accuracy or availability or its suitability for any given purpose. Do not use this web site in making any decision for which incorrect data might lead to loss of life, personal injury, loss of property, financial loss, inconvenience, or emotional unpleasantness.

Houston Radio History is hosted as part of VASTHEAD.COM, a web site which has been on line since 1997. You can also access this page directly by going to

http://houstonradiohistory.com

Notes from the webmaster:

If you send an email and do not want to be quoted, please state so at the beginning of your message.

All writing, including my own, is subject to continual revision to better meet the current needs this site. In some cases, an incoming message may be rewritten slightly to improve clarity or to conform to generally accepted editing practice (for example, not beginning a sentence with a numeral).

Please write to me if you notice any typographical errors, bad links, skipping mp3 files, or any other problems in this page.

There is little point in writing to me seeking a specific aircheck. Nearly everything is already here.

I want to emphasize that this page is not a major aircheck warehouse. I am not a big collector, and I rarely seek material from other web sites. This page is mainly for things I recorded myself.

Beyond that, I am only looking for a few good airchecks from other people. I hope to find recordings relevant to Houston radio history, especially things that I wish I had recorded myself.— G.M.

This is my first aircheck recording, recorded on a machine of dubious quality. I leave it on the home page because I haven't figured out where else to put it. Recorded in a stop and go style, it has a little bit of everything. I expect to eventually turn it into a number of short recordings.

Of special interest are recordings from October, 1964, of the ill-fated Kodabird traffic helicopter. Operated by KODA-AM, October 12 recordings feature Ted Carr broadcasting from the helicopter. Carr jokes about flying. Followed by October 14 KXYZ coverage of the Kodabird crash and somber announcements on KODA.

The same recording includes local coverage of national and international news, including the 1964 presidential race, the departure of Khrushchev from the Kremlin, the death of Winston Churchill, and the arrest of presidential aid Walter Jenkins on "morals charges." Includes the very first KILT newscast of 1965.

The audio quality can only be described as "fair." I challenge computer geeks who are proficient in audio to take short segments of this material and send me an improved version.

Note: The "Fabulous Houston" jingle was first aired in the latter half of 1962. My copy was recorded in the spring of 1965 when I called the station and arranged for them to play that already outdated jingle over the air. (It became outdated when the Houston Colts became the Houston Astros in the fall of 1964.)

Desperately seeking Sixties

I am interested in obtaining other Houston radio material from the 60's, particularly KXYZ, KODA, KNUZ, KPRC, KTRH, KTHT (Demand Radio 79), KIKK, and KILT. If you have any Houston radio materials from the 60's, please send me an e-mail. I can arrange to copy your reel to reel or cassette tapes to CD or MP3 at no charge to you.

When we think of sixties radio, most people immediately think of the top 40 formats. Indeed, I am looking for more material from KILT and KNUZ, the stations which represented that format.

However, I am also looking for more recordings of the adult formats of that era, stations like KTHT (Demand Radio 79), KODA, KPRC, KTRH, and KXYZ.

I am asking you to think about about what old reel to reel tapes you may know about. Those materials may be gathering dust in someone's attic. They may be about to be thrown into the proverbial dustbin of history. That is what will happen to those tapes if someone dies and the person in charge of the estate fails to understand their historical interest.

Reel to reel tapes from the early sixties are especially welcome.

Please send me an e-mail if you have access to an aircheck collection in any radio format from the 60's.

Some random notes about this radio site

Please don't send me any highly scoped airchecks which don't really go anywhere of interest. There must be something besides a study of a DJ's voice quality. I don't want to hear any more recordings where every song is scoped and every newscast and commercial is chopped off in mid sentence.

Highly scoped tapes served their purpose in that they didn't waste the time of the program director when a DJ looked for a job. However, what we are looking for here is something which helps capture a zeitgeist, or spirit of the times. Hacked up recordings simply frustrate the listener.

Put me on a quiz show with Salty Old Radio Dogs (people who take old top 40 radio seriously), and I will be the first one voted off for being the weakest link.

I have had my relapses when I gave radio a Last Chance, such as the mid 90's when syndicated talk radio got so big.

And in the late 90's, I listened to the KBME oldies format when it took over the 790 AM frequency. But when KBME became "The Sports Animal" that pretty well wrapped up radio for me. I'm not a Young Cool Dude with an insatiable appetite for spectator sports.

And don't even get me started on what happened to KQUE, KNUZ, KLOL, and KRTS. . . (The latter was probably the last commercial classical station Houston will EVER have.) Can anybody detect a pattern in what happened to those rather unrelated formats?

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell
Burthen Ding-dong
Hark! now I hear them,--Ding-dong, bell.

— William Shakespeare
(The Tempest, 1.2.396), Ariel

Like radio, Shakespeare's character Ariel floats through the air. That is about all that this quote has to do with radio. However, these are my random notes, and I can include whatever I want.

But here is the key point: My original aircheck collection tends to have a lot of some types of material and not enough of others.

They emphasize talk radio at the expense of the music formats. Without consciously thinking it all through, I thought that similar music formats would always be available. That has not been the case.

(The music filling the Houston airwaves has gone through a sea change but not the kind that Shakespeare envisioned. It has been a change in the other direction.)

I made no systematic effort to document the various stations. I just tended to record what I was listening to at a given time.

Then, too, how much I recorded was limited by the cost of tape reels and the amount of space they consumed. By 1969, I had a six foot tall metal shelf filled with nothing but tapes. Later, when I was starving in radio myself, half of those reels were cannibalized for mailing my own air checks.

If I could jump into a time machine, I would go back and make more recordings of the major DJ's and key music formats. It would be great if I had taped more long "night in the life of" airchecks such as my KILT material for 1980.

As things stand, however, I have to work with what I actually did record and with what people send me.

Their emails fill in gaps in my own knowledge about stations and formats and people. They also bring back memories of my own — ones which I still carry that had faded from conscious thought.

Grady McAllister

Some notes about the photography on this site

There is a clear divide between the pictures I took before and after the beginning of the 80's.

Prior to 1980, the camera was a Kodak Instamatic 100 for which I had paid about $11. It had a fixed focus lens and only two exposure settings.

Surprisingly, in its April, 2008, issue, Shutterbug magazine listed the Instamatic 100 as one of the top 20 cameras of all time. I'm sure that is based on sales and product line extension, not on lens quality or mechanical precision.

I used my Instamatic to shoot 126 slide film. That was a square format that yielded images 26.5 X 26.5mm. That was a good size compared to the 110 "Instamatics" which appeared in the 70's.

From age 14, I always thought of myself as a serious photographer — somebody aiming for something artistic. I just didn't have much equipment or technical knowledge.

With all of my A-V money going toward audio, my photography had dwindled to almost nothing by the end of the 70's. I would leave the film in the camera for so long that that the resulting slides had a blue or magenta cast.

Then, a chance encounter revived my interest in photography. It happened in 1980 when I was doing some work for Houston Metro Traffic. One of the anchors was Lynn Hart, a newsman whom I had met previously at KENR, 1070.

Lynn was developing a photography business on the side and showed me his portfolio. I said to myself, "This is it. I going to get a real camera. I have put it off long enough."

For the next year, I immersed myself in photography. I shot hundreds of slides and and went through a few dozen photography books.

That decision to take up 35mm photography made it possible for me to create audiovisual training materials for Du Pont in 1980 and 1981. It was also a deciding factor when I was hired to manage audiovisual services at Texas Woman's University in the Texas Medical Center.

— G.M.

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May 8, 2008 7:15 AM .