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CKLW - The Big 8!

You’re listening to Jack Anthony on CKLW – Motor City Rock! One of the great all time Top of the hour announcements. Nothing fake about the voice of Bill Drake himself! Thanks again to contributor Paul Ford for this golden great!

Its the heyday of “The Big 8″ and the Drake format is alive and well in this 3 minute QuickCheck of CKLW. The Motor City is used as CKLW’s legal ID, and time/temperatures are given for both cities. This is ORIGINAL gold from RKO’s Canadian outlet – heard up and down the eastern seaboard. We don’t remember Darryl B., but he certainly fits in on this “Million Dollar” Weekend!

Thanks to contributor Paul Ford in Michigan.

The Big 8 - CKLW!

Contributor Paul Ford sent us something REALLY special, a TV spot for 101 WRIF. This goes back to 1985. Interestingly enough, WRIF is still using the SAME logo as of this writing!

From contributor Paul Ford, “Here is great aircheck from WDRQ 93.1 FM in Detroit… August 1977 with Jerry St James.” Truly representative of many one-man morning shows at the end of the 1970s, here’s one from the FM dial… which at the time was still having difficulty competing with AM radio. Detroit, however, was in a different position, where the dominant Top 40 station for much of the 70s was the Big 8 – CKLW, across the river in Windsor, Ontario.

DRQ is really trying to win, and it sounds great. Wish we had a recording of the rest of the broadcast day, which would truly give us a slice of what WDRQ 93 FM sounded like – but I’d bet you could get a feel for its sound by searching for Y-100 Miami on this site, since those two stations had a similar Top 40 sound.

As of this writing, WDRQ is called “93.1 Doug FM”, one of those ‘We Play Everything”-type stations, like “Jack-FM” was in New York.

WDRQ Detroit logo from about 1973

New contributor “Paul” checks in with a Detroit area station that’s been gone for 20 years. He writes:

(This) came from a long ago defunct radio station…. that was once in it’s heyday as a GREAT (FM) oldies station (WHNE) from 1973 – 1976 until it finally ended up as a has-been AM station until it’s demise around 1990.

Quality is good and of course, it’s a music station on AM… and we sure miss that!

Going way back to the Fall of 2002, this has been sitting in our archived collection waiting for a time when we had a tape player that would actually play it.

In what should have been part of our “Old Gold” series (this would be tape #8), this contains clips of Detroit area radio. It was tempting to edit this and post each aircheck separately, but given the way this tape was put together, it seemed like a better idea to simply present this as heard on the tape, Side 1.

Where did this come from? Some collector, no doubt put it all together, as the Old Gold tape series we’ve had online since our first year on the web. The whole collection came to us from an annonymous source (his choice). What you hear is stored on the cassette pictured above.

Included on this (not necessarilly in order):

WHFI “Honey” “Nostalgia 95″ (94.7) Birmingham, MI
CKLW Windsor, ONT
WNRS “FM Nine Four Country” Windsor, ONT
WXYZ Detroit
WDRQ Detroit
WPAG Detroit

The ink was barely dry on Telcom ’96 and the vast consolidation that unravelled radio was only just beginning. No sign of it in Detroit as 1997 kicked off, and Detroit’s newest dance station was RED HOT! From what was previously “Lite FM”, came this Rhythmic CHR station and one hell of a great jock called simply JOJO.

Listen to how JoJo works the phones, does contests and how TIGHT this station was! Who said radio was boring in the 90s?!!

We suspect that Steve Taylor and Gene Clark recorded this show right off the board… in fact, they say that they will record all their shows from now on right at the start of this superb recording. Interestingly enough, they say they will no longer say any words that offend the audience… hmmm, you mean there were shock jocks in 1968?

This is a very interesting aircheck for several reasons. First, it’s a broadcast quality aircheck of the morning show on WKNR (not too many of those around), and second, you get to hear about what’s going on in the world in ’68.

It may not sound like it going back in this wonderful submission, but 1968 was a VERY long time ago!

Not too many Keener airchecks floating around these days but here’s one in incredible audio fidelity! Right off the master reel is a composite of Steve Robbins, not heard anywhere else. Keener was Detroit’s ‘other’ Top 40 station, always in the shadow of CKLW across the river in Windsor Ontario, but WKNR had a very loyal following, especially in the mid-60s before CKLW literally ruled the airwaves of the Motor City!

This is so short but SO good! Seals & Crofts are in concert on May 28, The Beach Boys have a new album out, and Teddy Bear Richards counts down the bottom five songs on the CKLW all-time top 500!

Sure wish we had more of this aircheck, which comes to us via a cassette labelled simply “Tape G” out of an ‘annonymous’ collection (we know who it is, but he wants to be annonymous) donated in 2005.

Here’s another one we have to make an educated guess as to the year. This was the short-lived recreation of the Big 8 – on FM! Judging from my trip to Detroit in the early 90s, I remember this station and it really DID sound good.

One of the very few Oldies stations to effectively recreate the original sound of their AM (KFRC 99.7 TRIED, we’ll give them credit), CKLW brought just about everything back except all the old jocks. Imagine, trying to make new jocks sound like they did at 800 on the dial in 1974. Well, they did it here. Listen for CKLW 20/20 News – one can almost expect Byron McGregor to be anchor!

Here’s something that Matt at Big Apple Airchecks sent in. Apparently directly from Pat St. John himself, this is a ‘reconstructed’, mostly scoped aircheck of Pat’s last show on Keener 13 before he moved on to then AOR 95.5 WPLJ New York.

…”I am a radio star…”

If you listen to this closely, you’ll notice that Chuck McKay is returning to CKLW after some time at WLS Chicago (his words). But is this any way to return? He acts like he’s leaving again, and talks about being fired while on the air! This is the classic what not to do in a top 40 format… because the format is trashed 2 minutes into this show!

No jingles are heard on this recording, but that is about right, since the Drake days have been over at the Big 8 for some time now. McKay does some name dropping… Byron McGregor, etc… and thanks mom for convincing him to go back to CKLW.

“…Only a fool would work under these conditions”

Its a rainy, cold morning in the Motor City, and station management has left a memo to the morning guy … he can only use one phone line for his show because the phone company is concerned about too many listeners calling in. So what does he do? What any responsible air personality would do…

I’ve been corrected on the subject of this aircheck. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I incorrectly identified the morning jock as Dick Biondi. It was not. Thanks to Dale Patterson at Rock Radio Scrapbook for setting me straight. This is Mort Crowley, first aircheck of him for this website, so it’s really quite a catch!

This came to us on cassette from the ‘annonymous’ contributor (we know who he is but he made us promise to keep his name a secret). The audio quality is superb, considering the year of this broadcast!

Courtesy of Robyn Watts… Here’s an aircheck of a very YOUNG Art Vuolo (of Vuolo Video Airchecks) playing around on WOIA in Michigan. Included is, an unbelievable newscast delivered by John Landecker. The voice doesn’t even resemble “Records” Landecker… but, could it be this is one in the same person? Listen for yourself and see if this is the legendary WLS night jock or not!

It’s back to the Robyn Watts collection for this short but ultra-cool listen to Detroit’s WHYT. Back in the early 80s, this was one of Mike Josephs’ Hot Hits (TM) formatted Top 40 stations, but by this time the station is well beyond that.

This is the station which featured the likes of Lisa Lisa, J.J. Walkman, Captain Dave Fogel, Bo “The Jammer” Jackson and of course, Foxx & Drex, featured here.

From the Summer of 2002 comes this gem of an aircheck – A CKLW “Million Dollar Weekend”. As the restoral of the original site archives continues, I thought this to be a good time to bring back The Big 8 in all it’s glory, after a few site-surfers left comments saying they miss CKLW.

In the true spirit of radio-that-was, here’s your request!

Click HERE to Listen!

J. Michael Wilson – Don’t think I’ve ever heard him before, but this is an excellent quality representation of 1960′s WKNR. Main competition: Of course, RKO’s CKLW across the river. Many CK alumni passed throught these hallowed portals either on their way in or out of the Big 8. One guy who got noticed here: Pat St. John. Although he’s not featured on this aircheck (he’d get there in the early 70s), he did less than a year before heading to New York City and WPLJ.

The bass response on this aircheck is a bit high, turn down your speakers or prepare to get blasted across the room!

Click HERE to Listen!

CKLW may have been Canadian, but it was likely the most creative and best station in the RKO chain. It’s also likely that the period of 1970-1976 was probably the height of “The BIG 8″.

CKLW was a 50,000 watt music blowtorch covering most of Eastern North America… and it catered to interests in Detroit as well as to it’s own Canadian listeners. Today, however, this is known as “The Information Station” and primarilly serves the Canadian side of the boarder only. If only Canada’s CTRC knew the monster that was created way back when had the power to affect people thousands of miles away… well perhaps they did know. Either way, the CanCon rules enacted in the 70s may have helped Canadian artists, but it did spell doom for CKLW– as the audience shifted to other, U.S. stations within earshot right across the river.

Click HERE to Listen!