Dr. Bob Show, WAWA-FM Milwaukee | 1966
June 16, 2009 
11 Comments
This goes way back to 1966. It’s a rare FM show, rare because there were very few FM stations that programmed popular music independently of a co-owned AM. Here, Dr. Bob mentions that some of the day’s programming is on FM only.
This show is what would probably be classified today as Urban CHR… but in 1966 there was no such format, so we’ll just say it’s a mainly R&B oriented Top 40. A purely Rhythm and Blues station surely would never have played The Beatles!
Courtesy of James Edwards
Podcast: Embed
Its “dr. Bop” Not “Dr. Bob” of 1590, WaWa!
This clip is from the newly purchased WMKE-FM station studio in a partitioned carpet store at 5609 W, North Avenue in Milwaukee. This station was sold to Suburbanaire (WAWA) for $75,000, and the seller couldn’t wait to get the cash! He was drowning in a sea of debt at the time. Low and behold if he would have hung on a few years longer, WMKE would have been worth easily 20 times more than the selling price. The station transmitted with a Standard Electronics 5 kW transmitter to a 6 bay antenna mounted on a 125 foot self-supporting tower constructed through the roof of the carpet store. I was one of the people who removed the tower in 1968 and the roof had to be re-done where the tower poked through. The station got out pretty well since the carpet store was located on a very high elevation point in Milwaukee. The echo in the aircheck is natural do to the high ceiling with concrete walls and no padding or acoustical tile. Console was an Altec-Lansing and microphone was an EV 636.
The Echo in the background is not room reverb but sound coming out of speakers
in the background that was the custom
used at the time wmke did a lot of live
programming before it was sold to wawa by Richard V steffen owner of wmke.
I worked at the AM on Bluemound Road and frequently on North Avenue and there and it was actual room echo. Speakers were muted during voice transmission or acoustical feedback would have occurred. Steffan ran almost all taped programming from Ampex 350 machines with little announcing prior to the sale and the room had terrible acoustics. After the sale in October, 1966, Saints & Sinners ran a gospel show on FM along with much AM simulcast during the days, and initially Dr. Bop live in the evenings at North Avenue followed by Jockey Jack.
I love it. My brother and I made cassette
recording of his show.They all got destroyed by fire.
Thank you so much for the aircheck. I have Dr Bop’s intro but never this. This is history!
Yeah this is whats up.. I remember all of this and Jerry, Hub, and Harvey is y i’m a dj today. I was kicking it with u in the clubs in Atlanta back in 1997 when I move down there!!!
Who knows the name of the artist and song that Dr. Bop used at the end of his broadcast? The lyrics were something like this…so long, bye bye, so glad we met so sad to say goodbye, now we’re friends and i know we’ll meet again.
that was Dr Bop himself!!!
I grew up as a youngster growing up 20th & Vliet St.-listened to WAWA-Dr. Bop, OC White, Jim Frazier (what’s all I can remember) so does anyone remember the names of the DJs between the years 1970-1980s?
I borrowed Dr. Bop’s line: “I should have been triplets; it’s unfair for one man to be so good looking.” LOL!!!