WAKY's McLendon-Era Airchecks

[John Quincy]

I hope each one who reads this message downloads the recently-added airchecks donated by Tom Perryman. These are among the best WAKY airchecks the site has received. In these right-off-the-board recordings from 1960 and 1961, you can hear how WAKY sounded in the McLendon era...plus the early days of LIN Broadcasting in 1963.

There are 1960s airchecks of both Tom as a newsman and as a jock, plus airchecks of DJs Jack Grady (' 61) George Williams ('63). (You'll also hear DJ Art Keller in the coverage of Richard Nixon's visit to Louisville in 1960.) Some of the airchecks have all of the commercials in them.

By 1963 WAKY had cart machines (you can hear the "thunk" as spots were started in the 1963 aircheck) but before that almost everything was played off one of four turntables in the studio: jingles, spots, IDs, everything. Can you imagine doing a show that way today?

And...check out the writing in the newscasts that Tom Perry and Mike McCormick did. They took boring, run-of-the-mill happenings and made them truly dramatic. (That was the McLendon way.)

The WAKY of the early 70s was "my" WAKY...but these recent donations from the early 60s are fascinating. I called Tom to thank him personally and he says he thinks he **might** have more early 60s WAKY material -- including some airchecks of Jack Sanders.

Tom explained why as a newsman he did some weekend and fill-in DJ shifts. He said it was extra money. For instance, he got paid $35 extra (real money in 1960) to do the 6a-noon shift on Sunday mornings, which consisted of running religious shows till 10 and then DJ-ing for two hours.

[Travis]

The WAKY of the early '70s was "MY" WAKY as well, but I've often thought how great it would have been to be a jock at WAKY during the 1960s. I still feel at times that I was born too late when I hear those wonderful old recordings (cart machine 'clunks' and all).

I'm still hoping to hear Jack Sanders. Much has been said about the man as a jock, and his in-house antics, and it's just absolutely uncanny that of all the recordings that have surfaced, thus far, there are still no recordings of a typical Jumpin' Jack Sanders.

Finally. Being a "Disc-Jockey" in those days actually meant what the title implied. When you consider that the tunes in those days had an average playing time of just plus or minus 2 minutes and that the jock probably spent 25%, or more, of that playing time preparing the other turntables for jingles, spots, IDs, the next song, etc. That man had to be constantly moving.

How easy it was when I would do a show, and heeding the call of nature, would just slap in a cart containing Lynard Skynard's 9-minute long 'Freebird' and go off down the hall to take care of business.

What on earth did the jocks back in the early '60s do when nature called?

I guess after a big night at the local Gold Star Chili, there was a lot of dead air on the show the next day. ;D

To the radio disc-jockeys of the early '60s... SALUTE!!

[Travis]

Just finished listening to all of Tom Perry's airchecks as well as his coverage of Nixon's visit in 1960. The sound quality is absolutely incredible and I resorted to listening with headphones for an even better close-up of what was going on in the background.

Considering that these recordings were made off-the-board (no audio processing) I was amazed at how consistent the levels were. It seems to me that in those days the broadcasters paid far more attention to the VU meters than they do today. You can hear Tom back the music down slightly as he speaks over it and then pot it right back up again. To me, that was the proper way to do it and it prevented distortion on the mic.

Even during the early '70s I saw jocks just talk over the intros/extros without so much as backing the music down a bit. The music could be hitting "0" dB and the jock would be +3 or pegged to be heard above it. Of course, the station audio processor would level it all out, but it was so improper and I could tell a difference even when listening at home.

Listening with headphones I could hear the pops & scratches on the jingles and other recordings that were actually playing from disks. Some of them were very badly scratched, but didn't skip. Turntable tonearms weighed much more in those days and that probably helped. Many of the jingles were from Pams Series 14 (which can be heard on the jingles page of this site) and the mic had a really good sound as well.

By the way. When you listen to the jingles on this site you are hearing them somewhat out of context. It's only when you hear them in actual shows, such as Tom Perry's airchecks, can you really appreciate just how good, even magical, they really are.

While I can appreciate hearing Tom Perry's airchecks as off-the-board recordings I would love to hear how they actually sounded on the air. Still. I'm glad to be able to hear these excellent recordings from WAKY's past and it's fortunate that Tom Perry recorded and preserved them so well over all these years.

Just maybe, Jumpin' Jack Sanders will be heard on this site soon.

[bruiser]

In the late fifties and early sixties, Marty Robbins rescued a lot of jocks when "El Paso" became a major hit.

[Travis]

Could it have been Marty Robbins' 'A White Sport Coat (and a pink carnation)' that did that? Come to think of it, I've always been aware of 'El Paso' but had never heard 'A White Sport Coat' until I heard WHAS's Joe Donovan playing it. I was feeling a bit homesick back in '92 and successfully picked up Donovan's show on WHAS at around 2 AM right here in Venice, Florida. The song is quite catchy and was stuck in my head the rest of the week.

[John Quincy]

I think Bruiser mentioned "El Paso" because of it was longer than 4 minutes (a rarity back then) which gave the jocks time for a potty break. (In other words, it was the "Hey Jude" or "American Pie" of its day.)

Of course, back in those days you could smoke in the control room so it's not like today where the on-air smokers in my cluster have to go outside to puff. With live-assist automation segueing the songs and spots for you, they can smoke two or three before they have to come back in.

[Mike Griffin]

John,

The old airchecks are the best, no doubt about it. These new airchecks, the ones from Tom 'Bob' Watson, fantastic. I put the early Weird Beard air checks in this category too. There was a life and natural quality that is missing from later stuff.

Mike

[Travis]

Wow. Smoking in the control room. I can remember watching Doc clean the tar & nicotine from the heads of the cart machines on Sunday mornings. At that time WAKY had 5 Criterion brand cart machines in the control room and a Spotmaster which was dedicated to running the 7-second delay cartridge for the Mason Dixon Line and other phone-in talk shows to follow.

Many of the photos on this site show all 5 of the Criterions and even the Spotmaster, which sat on top of the Code-A-Phone (the answering machine for the WAKY request line) which sat on top of the #5 Criterion cart machine. Check the photos of Jason O'Brien for a really good look at the layout.

On Sunday mornings, between 3:30 & 10 AM, the main control room would be off the air because WAKY's public affairs programming ran from the main production room in the back. This allowed Doc to perform maintenance in the control room without bugging a jock. He could open the console, remove the turntable platters, clean & demagnetize cart machine heads, whatever.

There was one cart machine that got cleaned & demagnetized much earlier than the rest. It was a Spotmaster located in a small utility room just behind the back wall of WAKY's control room. The machine was dedicated for playing the WAKY extro jingle which was the one with the bell at the end (W-A-K-Y DING!!).

The room could only be accessed through the WAKY newsroom offices and since the newsroom was not in use, Doc would just service the Spotmaster as part of his newsroom maintenance duties. However, this required alerting the jock because the extro jingle was used quite heavily at that time. In fact, it's probably the most heard jingle on all of the airchecks from the late '60s and early '70s.

The back wall of the control room, which bordered the utility room, was not really a wall at all. It was actually patch cord racks and panels. From inside the utility room you could actually see and hear everything that was going on in the control room. The room was actually an access for servicing these racks from the rear.

When Doc was ready to service the Spotmaster containing the WAKY extro jingles he would just yell at the jock through the paneled wall. This not only let the jock know that the Spotmaster was about to be out of service, but to pot it down as well. On Saturday nights, one of three weekend jocks were likely to be on. Mike Griffin, Jim Miller or Steven Lee Cook.

Well. It was bound to happen. One Saturday night Doc yelled through the paneled wall at Steve Cook to pot down the Spotmaster. For some reason, Steve failed to do it and when Doc stuck the head demagnetizer to the head and squeezed the trigger...

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPP!!! (I really can't describe the sound, but it was awful)

The audio processing knocked the song way down to allow for the much louder flux from the head demagnetizer, so that was all that was heard. I'm not sure, but I believe Doc heard the sound coming from the on-air monitor and released the trigger sooner than he would have normally done. It probably would have sounded much worse, but WAKY was so compressed that the sound did not really jump out at you in terms of loudness; it was just there. I still don't know why Steve failed to pot it down to this day.

Ah, but those were the days when LIVE radio was at its best. ;D

[John Quincy]

I believe the Spotmaster machine in the closet later was the home of the world famous WAKY shout (which plays when 79WAKY.com loads), which must have took the place of the chime jingle around '71 or '72.

On one of the WHAS broadcasts, Johnny Randolph mentions that a bunch of people at the station got together in a studio and made that shout. JR was joking. It came from PAMS (would love to find the original master tape!) but I'm guessing WAKY souped it up by running it through production room processing to give it even more compression. I've never heard another shout from PAMS with that much extra processing.

Speaking of Spotmaster cart machines, besides having those dopey levers, with every one I worked with the cue tone would leak out to the audio track and you'd hear a little squeak or beep when the cart cued up. (I always tried to pot carts down after they played anyway.)

[Mike Griffin]

JQ has it right, the cart machine in the back did graduate to hold the famous WAKY shout. There was also an old Ampex 350 in that back room. It was activated by the mic key for air-checking.

You had to cut through the newsroom to get to the closet. I think there was a small office for the News Director that you also had to cut through.

I am unaware of the delay machine that Travis mentioned working correctly during my time at the Big 79. Well, maybe a few times. The engineers would reload the delay cassette and it might work a time or two, but then was bad again. Mason would usually not even try to use it. He seemed to always get away with it. The first time I did the talk show with out the delay (actually it was the first time I did the talk show, the first time I had ever done any talk show), a guy called in and said, very clearly and very loudly, "you mad mother-f--ker." Somewhere in a box I have the aircheck of it. Pretty funny really. I cherish that moment.

[Travis]

When the public affairs programming was running from the main production room, and Doc was out at the transmitter site, I would play DJ in the control room. Since the control room was off the air I had to listen to the wall monitor and the headphones in PGM mode.

The WAKY SHOUT may have been on the dedicated Spotmaster at one time or another, but on those Sunday mornings when I was playing in the control room (in 1972) the jingle with the bell was definitely in that machine.

I can also recall seeing the cart which contained the WAKY SHOUT. The label was typed as follows:

W A K Y SHOUT SHOUT SHOUT

For some reason, the word "shout" had been typed 3 times across the label. It was if someone wanted to make the cart more easily recognizable. I can see that label in my mind, but I'm not sure if there were spaces between the letters in WAKY and there may have been exclamation marks after each shout.

Anyway. That's how I remember it. But it does make sense that either one could have been fired from a dedicated machine since both were heavily used.

As for an Ampex 350 being in that same closet... I don't remember that at all. The jocks generally airchecked themselves on the Ampex 350 which was mounted on the back wall of the control room next to the newsroom window.

Still. That particular Ampex was used to play recorded newscasts at night, so there must have been another way of airchecking since some of those pre-recorded newscasts are actually on some of Weird's airchecks. Weird couldn't have done both on the same Ampex.

Anyway. My memory has been a great aid in writing these posts, but I really have no way of telling just how accurate it is. I'm more inclined to believe someone like Mike Griffin because he was an actual jock at WAKY. You could say Mike knew the "software" because he was a jock, talk-show host and production director. He also knew the "hardware" because he was an engineer.

'nuff said. (insert WAKY SHOUT here)