Composite: Dana Lauren, Brian Kelly & Dan Taylor on 1050 WHN New York | Sometime 1983
Here’s a look at early-80s WHN… there’s not much life left in the biggest and most memorable Country station New York ever had at this point, but it sounds SO good! The music is scoped, the jocks some of the most talented, and the audio quality of this aircheck pristine.
No, this isn’t Top 40, but it’s an important high-quality aircheck for many reasons - one of which is that this is one of the very last music stations on AM in this market, and also because this is one of only two stations in modern history that played Country music in New York. There hasn’t been one since the demise of WYNY (97.1/103.5/107.1), which itself, became home to many of the former WHN jocks.
Give this one a listen, then please remember to post your comments below.
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All the classic WHN airchecks I have came directly from former PD Ed Salamon. I have converted them all from cassette to digital audio. Ed has sent me over 4 dozen tapes in the past year, and I still have a lot of work ahead of me to convert them all.
Although I’m not really a fan of country music, I can appreciate this aircheck because I did listen to WHN from time to time and I do remember the jocks especially Brian Kelly and Dan Taylor.
I first heard Brian Kelly on WCBS FM back in the ’70s after they became an oldies station. He is a good jock.
Dan Taylor is a guy I have listened to for years. He sounds good here but my favorite memory of Dan is when he did the Time Machine on the former WNBC.
It was a sad day when WHN became WFAN in 1987. Dan Taylor was the last jock on the station.
Do you have any airchecks of Lee Arnold on 1050 WHN? He made his name there as well as on 1560 WQEW years later. I miss hearing him. He knew how to talk to people and not at them.
Thanks for this aircheck. Always glad to listen to classic New York radio.
First, this aircheck is actually from the summer of 1981, per the songs and news reports. And within a year, Dana Lauren would be on the other side of the country, at soft AC KMGG (Magic 106) Los Angeles.
Please post AM stereo airchecks of WHN.
WHN has always been a favorite of mine. Please keep the Classic WHN airchecks coming! I wish I had your 4 dozen tapes. Thanks for the memories!
man, im so glad i finally found somewhere to talk about whn.i dont know where to start, but here goes. ive lived in west virginia all my life, but i lived for trips to nyc so i could listen to hn.bobby wayne, who was at hn in the late 70s, was from farmington, wv, about 8 miles north of where i live. i called him when he was at whli, and he seemed very glad to hear from a fellow marion countian, which is where farmington is. i understand he died around 1993. the last time i was in ny, july6, 1982, to be exact, i’ll bet i listened to whn 93% of my waking hours. i became a baseball fan because of hn, as they started doing mets games in 83. when the mets won the 86 series, i was just about over the moon with joy. when whn quit playing country, it was almost like losing a family member. well, im gonna go now, and in conclusion, happy holidays “y’all”.
kernsie again. i was in nyc for the 4th of july in 1980. my dad and i were on our way to new england. hn played tired of toein the line by rocky burnette several times. i couldn’t get over it. what was the world coming to–plj playing the beverly hillbillies theme–or perhaps coal miners daughter? later on i read that whn wasn’t so much a country station as it was a station that played country music. also when i was there in 82(my last trek to gotham, as i mentioned earlier], i took a liking to a song called “love’s found you and me” by ed bruce. this was one of those “customized” songs in that it used the call letters of the station playing it. the normal version started out “just as sure as there’s gold in california”, but whn’s was “just as sure as there’s country whn”. well,sir, when i heard that, i do believe a chill ran down my spine. i wish i’d airchecked whn the 3 times i was in nyc that i listened to them, namely 1979, 80, and 82. i tried, with some small success, to get hn down here, but it was notoriously directional. one could receive it going through new england, as i was getting it in maine. also, i got it in scranton, pa, which, incidentally, is lee arnold’s hometown. well i’m gonna go now, and, again, thanx a million for somewhere for me to extol whn; it’ll live 4ever in my heart. whn ROCKED!
hi again from the guy who loved whn, more, i reckon, than life itself. at youtube.com, type in del curtis, who was none other than del demontreux. he hosted a show on wstv(now wtov) in steubenville, ohio, called “teen time”. i felt it incumbent upon me to mention this. teen time ran during the late 60s. well, i’ll jaw at ya later.
happy 2008, y’all. hank williams jr. had a song called dixie on my mind. one time in the summer of ‘81, he was a guest dj on hn. well, when they played it, hank jr. got threats of either grievous bodily harm or death, or maybe even both. as i understand it hn never played that song again.
me again. this is somewhat off the subject, but if someone had said 15 years ago that wcbs and wins would someday be sister stations(they have been since about 1998), somebody would probably have tried to have them committed.
hi youse guys. i immensely enjoyed the above aircheck. i know the date it was made. scores for that day’s yanks and mets games were given. i went to baseball-reference.com and saw that it was august 12, 1981. that was at least part of the date, as i don’t know but that the check was made on more than one day.
when the yanks were on mgm, they won the ‘58 world series and the’60 american league pennant, losing to the pirates on bill mazeroski’s 9th inning solo homer. also as wmgm, they were the brooklyn dodgers’ flagship, winning several nl pennants, including the ‘55 ws over none other than the yankees. i must admit my loyalties have shifted to the yankees. i call joe torre’s sister (she lives in brooklyn in the family home) every year, telling her to pass along happy birthday wishes to joe. two years i reached her answering machine, so for all i know, joe’s heard my voice.he’ll be the dodgers manager starting this year. whn also did new york giants’ football, ny knicks, and ny rangers’ hocky in the ’40s and ’50s. they also carried the knicks during their ‘73 nba championship season, and did the mets in ‘73, when they lost to oakland 4 games to 3 in the world series. i understand 1050 is now wepn, an all sports station. ironically, they were wfan’s first frequency. sorry if this last posting was too long, but i had many things i wanted to point out. well ya’ll come back, hear?
me again. my last posting was redundant(sorry about that). whn had 2 previous stints as the mets’ flagship, namely 64-66 and 72-74.
the old southerner posts again. there’s a format called classic country, and i was thinking it’d be wonderful if whn could come back as classic country, though i don’t know what frequency they’d use. also i don’t know that they could even call themselves whn, as i’m not sure new stations can use 3-letter calls.wwhn, perhaps?
i may have to amend one of my earlier postings. i think wnbc, not whn, carried the’73 knicks.
guess who? whn was the yankees’ flagship from 1967-70, and as wmgm their flagship from 1958-60.
i think whn’s best days were when they were in manhattan. they moved to queens aroun d mid 1986.
bobby wayne’s real name was robert wayne satterfield. he was on, among other stations, wcbs-fm, wsai(cincinnati), and whar(clarksburg, wv).
tunnelmouth from the south(or is it of the south) again. anyhoo, i saw (on the internet i believe it was) that in the late 70s, that whenever one got into a cab in nyc, that the cabbie had whn on the radio.
So glad to find a site with so many WHN fans. Does anyone remember a song that Jesse used to play in the mid-70’s called “Brooklyn” about a little girl caught in a custody battle? (Very country)I have been searching for this song for 30 year! Thx - Linda
Linda, I believe the song to which you refer was by Cody Jameson, who, incidentally, was from NYC. It spent 7 weeks on the country charts, peaking at 64, and reached 74 on the pop charts.
A couple ohter things. First off, the ‘Welcome back Kotter’ theme spent 2 weeks on the country charts in ‘76, peaking at 93. I’m sure it got quite a bit of play at WHN, as it was set in Brooklyn. Also ‘Splish Splash’ by Bobby Darin hit no. 14 for 3 weeks in’58. He was born
Walden Robert Cassotto on 5-14-36 in the Bronx. The chart positions of the preceding 3 songs can be found in Joel Whitburn’s Top Country Singles; the book is updated every few years.
I wonder whether any nyc-based celebrities ever listened to whn. I think it would’ve been so cool if Al Pacino, for instance, did. One night, when i called up there on the request line, the dj told me that all of the newscasters listened to whn.
On my last sojourn to NY, we were driving thru North Bergen, New Jersey, and I saw a billboard saying “Thank you, New Jersey”. It was a WHN billboard, and it had a radio dial(slide rule type) with the pointer between 1000 and 1100. Also WHN was at 400 Park Avenue and WINS at 90 Park Avenue, so WHN was just up the street and just up the dial from WINS.
I miss WHN and all the old DJs.Lee Arnold was the most knowledgable about country music, Glad he’s in the Country Music DJ Hall of Fame! Just read Stan Martin passed away 5 yrs ago. Met many at the WHN picnic. Went on that trip to Nashville in 1973, that WHN sponsored. The late Jack Spector accompanied us. Dan Taylor sounds soooo good. I have us on a cassettte I taped when I won a contest! I listen to classic country on the internet, but it’s not the same without commercials, traffic and weather! I loved listening to this!!! Think I’ll head to Palisades Park..Oh , that’s gone too!!
Yee-haw!!! Heard a WHN aircheck from ‘77 that included Bobby Wayne. When he called himself the West Virginia wiz, a chill ran down my spine. I’ll be going to a family reunion 3 weeks from today; there’ll be family members from West Virginia, and a couple or three other states. Rosemary, I was sorry to learn of Stan Martin’s death. Seems I talked to him on the phone in ‘82 or ‘83.