T. Michael Jordan on KKDJ Los Angeles | May, 1973
“KKDJ… With over Eight-Thousand minutes of music a week”
Your humble webmaster has virtually no information on this station. That said, after listening and producing it for exhibit, KKDJ sounds like a complete rip-off of WWDJ Hackensack NJ. That, or it’s just a good guess.
You’ll hear a pretty unknown DJ, what sounds like ripped-off Johnny Mann Singers jingles, and the hits of the day. It’s still good listening. Hopefully, someone knows a lot more than I about this station and will post a comment or two.
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I discovered KKDJ 102.7 in September 1973 while on a trip to Ventura, CA. I was there for a week and just loved listening to this station. Why? Simple! I couldn’t believe my ears because I had been wondering what in the world happened to T. Michael Jordan and Jon Peters who had been on 1470 KNDE Sacramento Program Director Rick Carroll. All of which I soon found right there on KKDJ 102.7. I soon discovered that the station had Jay Stevens on air in the midday. I have hours and hours of this station on tape the only problem is that they are all on 8-tracks and I don’t have a player that works any more. Bummer cause I’ve also have KMET with Dr. Demento’s live show recorded on them too. And K100 and KRTH 101.1 and KOLA the POP sound too.
KKDJ was known as KRHM in it’s previous life (until 1971), playing MOR and standards. In 1976 the station became KIIS-FM, which it remains to this day. I too loved KKDJ as a teenager; it’s DJ lineup in 1974 included Charlie Tuna, Humble Harve, and Jay Stevens.
Don… nice to see you grace the airchexx pages! Thanks for the description of KKDJ.
Nice to hear myself on KKDJ. We all had a good time there. Just FYI, WWDJ (New Jersey) was owned by Pacific & Southern (also owners of KKDJ). They purchased WWDJ after KKDJ, and sent Rick Carroll to NJ for a couple of weeks to implement the format on WWDJ. So KKDJ was not a rip off of WWDJ. Though on a different level that’s like saying KHJ was a rip off of WRKO.
TMJ
Back in 1973 I was in L.A. answering the phones for the KLOS Community Switchboard…I was very interested in getting on the air as a rock jock– but didn’t really know how to get started..along comes this personal develpment program called EST…I enrolled in this weekend event and while there met T. Michael Jordan and Rick Carroll….T, if you’re reading this..thanks for selling me on the “sizzle” of radio…I ended up in the business for 12 years including a stint a KKRZ (Z-100) in Portland..I was only 23 when we partied at your condo in Hollywood..but I’ll never forget the great times up at KKDJ while you were on the air….here we are 30 years down the road….hope all is well with you my friend..take good care! Scott
Hey Scott. I’m living in Chicago now (past 5 years). If you ever come back to this page, drop me an email at tomntmj@earthlink.net
T
One thing I forgot to mention in my first post about KKDJ, the comment that the jingles (we only really used one), “sounded like a complet rip off of the Johnny Mann singers.” We cut them (it) at PAMS in Dallas, and remixed it (from an 8 track tape from PAMS) at the Buck Owens recording studios in Bakersfield. At the time one of the most sophisticated recording studios outside of Hollywood.
T
I listened to TMJ (T. Michael Jordan) on San Bernardino’s KMEN in 1967 - 1968 which I was in high school. A few years later in 1973 I found him on the dial at KKDJ while I was a college student in Northridge California. It was a real treat to come accross this clip.
I remember the KKDJ jingle! Shotgun jingles were always the best, that one wasn’t the best ever but it moved things nicely back into music. I don’t remember where I got the aircheck, but Humble Harv was the D.J. that day.
KKDJ came out in the early seventies with host Charlie Tuna. It was very popular when it changed its call letters over to KIIS FM and C.T. left the station. It was at that time when I stopped listening.
I’m a bit biased since I’ve known TMJ for many, many years, but as far as the comment about “a pretty unknown DJ,” I beg to differ. T. Michael Jordan, a veteran of the Southern California airwaves, was one of KKDJ’s best known jocks, doing the key 7 - midnight shift for many years with some very good ratings. Many of the jocks are still on the airwaves somewhere - Charlie Tuna is on KBIG-Los Angeles, Jay Stevens does voiceover work after retiring from weekends at KRTH (K-EARTH), Russ O’Hara on KDES-Palm Springs and http://www.morganoharalive.com, and Pat Evans is the imaging voice of Fox Sports Radio.
Great to have found this site!
By the way, Billy Pearl, also on the aircheck, went to KHJ (and was featured in a full-length article in the L.A. Times), then became a consultant with Tom Greenleigh before switching gears becoming an attorney. He was part of the “Dueling Bills” (with commentator Bill Press) on KABC radio.
Actually, KKDJ split the FM top-40 audience for much of its life with K-100 (KIQQ), which was Bill Drake’s attempt to redominate the market after leaving KHJ.
FM still hadn’t done much in the ratings yet in Los Angeles — five of the highest-powered signals in the market were still Beautiful Music — and K-100 took more listeners away from KKDJ than it did from the AMs.
The ratings actually went down after the call letter change to KIIS-FM (and daytime simulcast with recently acquired KIIS-AM 1150) and it wasn’t until the 1980s, when they changed to CHR after a disastrous couple of years as a disco music station, that they achieved market dominance.
That said, I loved the Rick Carroll years at KKDJ, and I’m still in touch with T. Michael Jordan, Billy Pearl, and Jay Stevens, all of whom are among the nicest people in the business.
It should also be pointed out that Rick went on to create the hugely successful “Rock of the 80s” format on KROQ.
Oh, and what’s with the KKDJ Fresno logo? The Los Angeles KKDJ was 102.7 …