“All Night Radio” is a song by our friend Tim Krekel. He writes/sings about listening to the radio in his room late at night when he was a kid.
I heard this song on my ipod today and I got to thinking about how much I have enjoyed listening to the radio over the years. I’ve enjoyed radio for many reasons.
My favorite AM radio station of all time was WLS 890 Chicago. When I was teenager, I caught the last years of this station being known as “The Rock of Chicago”. They played great rock and roll music and I heard some tunes on that station that I never heard on our local Louisville, Ky stations. One song I so remember was a tune called “What About Me” by a group called Moving Pictures. I never once heard that on Louisville radio.
Each night at 10 PM Eastern Time you could hear the Top Nine at Nine.
There were great personalities on WLS. Les Grobstein did Sports. DJs were Chuck Britton…I think he is the voice following the “WLS!” jingle on the clock radio you hear on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
My favorites were Uncle Larry Lujack and Little Tommy Edwards in the mornings. You got to remember this was, as Krekel’s song suggests, all night radio at its finest. The sun had to be way down before you could think about picking WLS up….then it would fade away about the time the sun would slice the Eastern horizon in the morning. Lujack and Edwards did a funny segment every morning called “Animal Stories”. Nothing was sacred as they would talk about animals of all kinds and in all circumstances. I could not explain the “Animal Stories News-team Anchormen” to you in seven weeks. You can “Youtube” it. My dear wife, Carrie, will tell you it will make you laugh or it won’t. She has yet to laugh about it.
One last WLS note. I remember lying in my bed at night as a kid with a transistor radio with a raised antennae in one hand and a single white ear piece plugged into the radio as I was listening to Barry Manilow sing “I Write the Songs” which was, ironically, written by a guy named Bruce Johnston.
Other AM radio highlights:
Listening to WAKY 790 out of Louisville on the bus when I was a kid in elementary school. I wrote on an earlier post that it was on that bus, listening to that radio station, when I heard a sound that would change my life. It was the guitar riff in the song “I Can Help” by Billy Swann. As I reported earlier, over thirty years later I would find myself in a recording studio playing songs I had written with the same guy…Tim Krekel…that played guitar with Billy Swan.
WAKY had its share of great DJs. Bill Bailey the Duke of Louisville. Bob Moody. Gary Burbank. Lee Masters. Johnny Randolph. And Coyote Calhoun.
Great story: I was doing an editorial piece for WHAS TV-11 in Louisville in 1989. A polite young lady was giving me a tour of the facility, which also housed WHAS radio and WAMZ radio which was and I suppose still is big time Country Music radio station. We met Coyote Calhoun, now the afternoon drive guy and program director of mega-Country station, in the hallway. Coyote had his cowboy boots on and had just gotten back from a big Country Music Award Show where he had been honored for his work.
When the young lady introduced me to Coyote I said the first thing that came to mind: “Yeah, I know you. I used to listen to you on WAKY when I was a kid.”
Coyote was a bit put off. He kind of pursed his lips and turned his head. The next thing you know I am being whisked away by my guide to another side of the building.
I don’t care that Coyote played country music. Good for him. Just don’t make me listen to his show.
Other radio highlights:
Rob Ray in Middle School bringing in a transistor and an ear-piece to listen to the Cincinnati Reds opening day on WLW. Rob could get away with that. I would have gotten caught. At least he passed me a few notes updating me on the score and if someone hit one out. Thank you, Marty.
WWL 870 out of New Orleans. This was a truck driver’s paradise of a radio station in the 1970s. “The Road Gang” is what they called the broadcast team. We’d listen to it as we were traveling South to visit relatives. They gave weather and interstate reports all over the country. I remember they’d have comedy on there too. There was one skit called “Dammit Ray and the Talking Outhouse”. I hope one day I can find it again.
Today my favorite radio station is an FM station. 96.3 WJAA in Seymour is awesome. Robert Becker owns and runs the place and he’s like Frank Sinatra doing it his way. Plays what he wants…says what he wants. Tom Petty couldn’t have said it better. I know who he was singing about.
I will not leave out 650 WSM the Home of the Grand Ole Opry.
“This portion of the Grand Ole Opry sponsored by Cracker Barrel.”
Now that is speaking the rights.
Danny Johnson