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This has been sitting around the Airchexx studio since 2004… a composite that’s had an 8 year wait to hit the Airchexx Archives!

This kicks off with Jim Conley filling in for Dave Sebastian who is out sick on this particular day. Conley begins at 12 Noon and this scope spans the entire 3 hour show. Jackson Armstrong and the Gorilla pick up at 3pm with the wildest, zany and positively MAD presentation heard anywhere! Armstrong is certainly at his BEST on this day, with the exception of ONE break where he misses the post! Talk about rare!

Technically, I doctored this up a little bit, but overall it was in very good condition. The only complaint is, BOY those jocks were quick on the mic button! This was obviously recorded on a skimmer tape deck wired in-line to the studio board, to record when the mic was turned on and to shut off when the mic was turned off. These two guys were so quick on the mic button that it’s nearly impossible to get the tape slowing and speeding up at the point where they hit the mic button out of this recording. Lord knows I tried! But I think you’ll enjoy this slice of Ten-Q, for a time, the BEST Top 40 station in Los Angeles!

Courtesy of our good site friend Matt over at Big Apple Airchecks!

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Continuing our series on KTNQ given to us way back in 2004, Here’s yet another great clip of the late Jackson Armstrong… still in his prime with the Gorilla and a stack of Rock & Roll records (well, probably were carts) on a station that simply COOKED!

Compare this with KHJ recordings of the same time period and you can see why KHJ fell off the map. While 93 KHJ was turning into a less talk more music outlet, Ten-Q let the jocks be themselves, and the evidence is clear.

Charlie Tuna does the imaging voice on this one, Jack Armstrong is himself, and the music is pure Top 40 magic!

Courtesy of BigAppleAirchecks.com!

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Jack Armstrong is on top of his game in this, a 2004 donation to our site by Matt Seinberg at BigAppleAirchecks.com. Right off the bat, the gorilla is right there with Jack and the fun starts from the first song!

Armstrong is doing the morning show this particular day. Too bad he wasn’t around 10 years earlier in Southern California, he’d have been great on KHJ! I’m always struck by how fast Armstrong talked and still got his point across. It helps that Ten-Q had a great thing going. But these were the waning days of AM Top 40 and KTNQ’s days were numbered from the start as the audience slowly but surely moved to FM. But boy does this sound GOOD!

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Jackson Armstrong seems to be one of airchexx.com’s favorites – his name shows up in our search page almost as frequently as Dan Ingram – and little wonder why! One of the fastest talkers ever, Armstrong has a long history of gracing radio stations with his mouth, one of them being WMEX Boston.

Here’s a young Jackson Armstrong with vocal cords engaged – certainly revving up WMEX – which at this time was in hot pursuit of WRKO. This aircheck literally rolls along at light speed! Listen how Armstrong plays the Rolling Stones jingle, then never misses a beat in ‘fixing’ it. You’ll also hear those custom PAMS jingle cuts exclusively for WMEX. The “Good Guys” were definitely cookin’ in Boston in ’68!

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Courtesy of longtime Contributor Joe Tymecki.

Posted elsewhere as part of a long KFRC composite, here’s the late Jack Armstrong with all the energy a jock could muster back at at time in KFRC’s history when they were on top of their game as the Bay Area’s leading CHR station. It was said that FM radio still hadn’t penetrated the San Francisco market even in the early 80s because of the topographical features of mountains surrounded by water and the city’s high rise buildings, which created for horrible multipath conditions in many parts of San Francisco. But that was 1983, and FM receiver manufacturers hadn’t quite figured out how to null out reflected signals and all that. So, KFRC remained with it’s Top 40 format, had added AM Stereo (for those who were lucky enough to have one of those receivers), and had a mere 5kw signal that covered an area usually covered by a 50kw blowtorch because of both it’s low dial position and the unusually good AM propagation characteristics of a transmitter surrounded by water.

Now add in some of the best personalities available in radio at the time and you have the AMAZIN’ AM that was 610 KFRC! This station cooks, in every respect. It SOUNDS like an FM CHR in another market! Everything about KFRC in 1983 made the station sound larger than life. A part of San Francisco’s daily life. And perhaps that’s what was lost three years later when the station finally gave up, despite still having clear signal advantages over any FM competitor.

Add this to your favorites, as Jackson Armstrong airchecks are in great demand. This one’s a gem, with plenty of one liners and Armstrong wit to go…

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Heres’s a very young Jackson Armstrong (with a slightly higher pitched voice) on WFUN, one of the early AM Top 40 stations in Miami. This has all the elements that many personality oriented stations had, reverb, PAMS jingles, and a lot of jock patter. Certainly not the streamlined Drake approach, more like a WABC approach, circa 1964.

It’s only slightly over 3 minutes in length but you can certainly get a feel for what things sounded like in the tumultuous year of 1968.

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This is the first time Your Leeeeeeeeder has been caught using his real name (at least here at Airchexx), but that’s how it was back in ’65 at Big WAYS in Charlotte. Larsh is holding down the overnight and there’s been bad weather… as the headlines of the lead story in his FULL newscast, which starts off this recording attest. Yep, this overnight show has the jock pulling news duties, jock duties… doing everything, and he pulls it off flawlessly.

Listen to the incredible amount of what programmers today would call clutter in the format. Sound effects between each news story, echo and reverb used to excess in promo and announcements… but, gosh, didn’t it sound fun?

Yes, this is unmistakably THE one in the same late Jackson Armstrong whom we loved so much at KB in Buffalo and elsewhere, and now you’ve heard another place that got to be graced by his personality.

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From deep in the Airchexx vault comes this rare recording of Your Leeeeeader, Jackson Armstrong in a typical lightning fast performance on WKYC. The source tape is a little muddy and this was obviously recorded slightly outside of the local signal contour since some fading is heard, but otherwise this is a decent sounding recording that will harken you back to the good ole days of AM radio, PAMS jingles and jocks who had fan clubs!

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You know you’re a monster talent when creative folks come out of the woodwork from seemingly everywhere to pay tribute. In so many ways, Jack Armstrong, whose real name is John Larsh, was one of the pioneering voices in the history of Top 40 radio. In a career that spanned over 50 years on air at dozens of stations, many of them legendary, Armstrong paved the way for other fast talking on air lunatics (we say that in a complimentary way) to captivate massive audiences on both coasts, and the hinterlands in between. From legendary status at WKBW Buffalo, to KFI in Los Angeles and KKHR Los Angeles to morning drive at an Oldies station back home in North Carolina concurrent with a voicetracked appearance on the short lived KB Klassic format at WWKB Buffalo, Armstrong set the standard for quick witted one liners. Fact is, Armstrong graced so many stations from Boston’s WMEX to little stations in the midwest among his large market appearances, it could almost be argued that he worked at more stations in more markets than Joey Reynolds – a jock who once quipped “I’ve worked at so many radio stations they call me the Voice of America”.

This tribute, by our friendliest and certainly most generous contributor, Matt Seinberg over at Big Apple Airchecks, is one of the best, most insightful and respectful I’ve heard anywhere. It deserves airplay, and since no radio stations seem to have any interest, we proudly present this tribute to one of the truely great radio legends, Jack Armstrong!

Don’t be ashamed to shed a tear – this one’s that good.

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While we don’t usually stray into the foray of Satellite Radio, this time it seems appropriate, as we’ve received, courtesy of J. R. Russ, a studio quality recording of this four hour tribute to the late Jack Armstrong.

XM Radio’s 60s channel, “60s on 6″ regularly does radio station re-creations, usually hosted by Terry “Motormouth” Young. This time, instead of a re-creation, Terry hosts a night of restored airchecks of Armstrong. Part one as heard here, features a young Jack Armstrong using his real name, John Larsh on North Carolina’s powerhouse 61 WAYS Charlotte. Vintage stuff from over 40 years ago… classic commercials included.

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