Local music on WAKY and WKLO

[John Quincy]

We received this from former WAKY PD Johnny Randolph, who gave his permission to post. He was asked about airplay of local Louisville acts on WAKY:

The playing of songs by old Louisville groups is problematic and for me always has been. I came along at KLO and remember WAKY was all over songs by Louisville groups. I ended up M.D. at KLO and record shop wise never saw the sales results that WAKY was showing with the numbers.

Tim Tyler confided to me that WAKY did indeed hype the bulk of the local songs. Remember, he was a SAMBO partner who was the driving force behind the songs. Tim sponsored dances as well. I'm not trashing him but I have always questioned the validity of these songs and at WAKY was under pressure to give the local bands a chance. With the exception of the two Monarchs hits and Soul Inc. "I Belong To Nobody" I did very little to "carry the torch" after Tim left and boy did I piss bands off!

I don't know if you know this or not but when I was at 79 we had a jukebox program in which I hand picked the selections for about two dozen eateries/bars that had very active boxes. We also rotated 5 boxes around in different school lunch rooms (where the play was free). (There was no mention of WAKY where these boxes were).

The weekly meter readings from plays was invaluable. Coupled with the sales reports from a blue collar Shively record shop and an urban leaning Vine Records we had great input. At times I would test local songs and got very little response from the juke box players. Sure heard a lot from the groups' relatives on the request lines.

When I get accused of being a hard nose [when it comes to playing local acts] I guess the above proves it.

I was really struck by a comment Wayne Young told me just a few years ago. He was in the studio promoting some event. I hadn't seen him in decades and I remarked I was surprised he would even speak to me since I had always refused to play the majority of his records back then. He said, "No problem. You were just doing what you thought was best for WAKY". Class act!

[bruiser]

I've never heard The Rugbys legit top 30 national hit on WAKY. Maybe I've just missed it.

[ringo2]

"You,I" by the Rugbys did get the early play on WAKY, partially because their manager was a WAKY DJ, Montgomery Hogg I believe. He had contacts around a lot of the country so after the song reached #1 here, they hit the road hard and got the song up to 23 on Cash Box & a little lower on Billboard. The road was hard on the band and they couldn't keep the pace up, nor did they want. Their record promoter, Shelby Singleton got all the profits from the record so the guys pretty much quit caring.

[ringo2]

In 1972, I asked Johnny Randolph what it took to get airplay on WAKY. He replied, "get a national release". Right. 90% of the bands were signed to Triangle. Triangle would not support a national release because they didn't want to loose the steady income of the good groups they could book every weekend on a phone call or two.

On the jukebox issue, kids play the recognizable songs, not the ones they've never heard before.

WFPK is the only local station to give bands a fair shot. They give local and relatively unknown touring groups air time every day. If WAKY had just devoted one hour a week to something like a "Kentuckiana Showcase" with some local celebs, record store people doing a roundtable critique of the songs, a good song or two might have made it to the top and got some full-time airplay. The Oxfords, "Always Something There To Remind Me" and The Waters "Day In and Out" were good songs that we would have never heard had they been released in 1972 or later. Elysian Field's "24 Hours of Loneliness" was charting well on KLO until they fired Norman White. It immediately disappeared forever.

It's all politics.

[John Quincy]

We received this from Gary Major on December 13, 2012:

When I first came to Louisville and WKLO in the fall of '73, I knew of Johnny Randolph's reputation as someone who really knew the market. That came from record promotion people on a regional and national level. Within in a month of becoming a staff on air personality aka disc jockey, i was promoted to music director...the former music director had his list of stores he checked with, and i took that info as well as some street info into account. Johnny was spot on when it came to the "local groups" in this area...while they cranked out the records, there never was a sales follow thru that i could find...they may have sold product at their local gigs but the follow thru in the records stores was non-existent. I visited a lot of local stores in louisville as well as southern indiana and never let anyone know who i was...you could visually see that the largest stack of product usually meant it was a local product, you would see this at stores in the west end (urban leaning) the south end (blue collar Shively records) as well as stores in the different malls. The national product outlets like Kmart, and other retail discount department stores still sold singles but would not accept local product...Johnnny did what was best for WAKY and I tried to do at WKLO, reflect the local audience and its wants...WAKY a little bit more country, WKLO a bit more urban...Louisville WAS a great radio market, and Johnny had it spot on!

Gary Major
WKLO Music Director
WKLO Program Director
'73-'79 end of days

[Max]

Thanks Gary for sharing that. Johnny really had the pulse of radio in Kentuckiana back then! Immensely gifted in so many ways !

[1240WINN]

Some great insights from Johnny and Gary. I'm always interested in the behind the scenes stories about programming these two legendary stations.

[Max]

Just re-reading Johnny and Gary's posts made me really believe we had the best of the best at both stations. What a privilege to have grown up in Kentuckiana and at this time...no regrets whatsoever.