Jay Johnson, WVON Chicago | 1972

Contributor Leo Knott sends in this studio quality ‘check of a great Chicago Soul station…

One of my favorite jocks of all-time. I don’t know all the stations he worked at but he did work the San Antonio market at one time. I heard Jay on Chicago’s WGRT (Later to be WJPC)… he was Orange Juice Jay in the morning. He was wooed away to WVON – the urban music giant at the time.

WVON had great personalities from Joe Cobb (the voice of Soul Train… at least at the beginning, Herb Kent “The Cool Gent”, Bill “Butterball” Crane, E. Rodney Jones, Cecil Hale, Richard Pegue, Pervis Spahn and others.

After WVON, he ventured to WTLC in Indianapolis to serve as PD and on air duties. He was Super Jay in his twilight at WVON and carried over into the Indianapolis market

WLS Chicago: Big 89 Rewind ‘08: 1-2PM Fred Winston

Hour two of the Fred Winston show is much like the first hour (12-1Pm) and features Catherine Johns with news, and by this time we’re all starting to get irritated with Les Grobstein’s sportscasts. What is it about this guy that grates on our nerves? There was a bit of negative reaction (based upon what we’ve read on the message boards) to Les’ sportscasts, which ran longer in many cases than the actual news itself.

Listen for the first appearance of Lyle Dean and a promo for “Choose your news” – a longtime feature of the old Fred Winston morning show back in the 70s and 80s.

WLS Chicago: Big 89 Rewind ‘08: 12 – 1PM – Fred Winston

And now, the real fun begins! Rewind, for the first 7 hours, was (IMHO), kinda boring unless you really loved hearing jocks just talk. Winston here is STILL funny, and able to quip a one-liner over a song intro just as good as the old days. And that voice is still as deep as ever, if not a bit gravely these days.

We still get hourly news, clips of the old WLS, and of course, steady reminders that this IS TODAY, Chicago’s Talk Station – 890 AM WLS!

John Records Landecker Returns to 89 WLS | March 13, 1986

“…Somebody thought it MIGHT be a good idea to present still another broadcast in the never-ending story of John Landecker and his job…”

Wow! Picking up right where he left off in 1981 is the one and only John Records Landecker, starting the show with the ‘family music hour’ – a fancy name for a bunch of Oldies (which WLS had begun to backslide into by this time). Sure, the Big 89 is still a rock station but there’s way more talk than music in this show. Landecker has a new feature just about mid-way through this aircheck – notes from the day’s WLS staff meeting, which, as JRL notes, was his first in almost 5 years. And his commentary from the staff meeting, wherin he comments on PD John Gerhon’s reminder of all air personalities’ FCC responsibilities as public trustees and the first line of public information… absolutely PRICELESS!

This is a long aircheck, it’s in AM Stereo, but the separation isn’t all that great – hi-fidelity nonetheless, and you’ll really love going back and reliving the end of the music era at WLS, that while sad, was still an exciting time in 1986, before the station sank down into oblivion within the next year.

Fred Winston 1st Day on AM 1000 WCFL Chicago | March 13, 1981

Going through the archives of donated materials, I seem to have forgotten about this one.

Who remembers this re-incarnation of WCFL as a contemporary music station? Apparently, according to WCFL Chicago Radio Timeline**(see note below), WCFL returned from MUZAK land, first as an All-News station in 1978-79, then flipped to an Adult Contemporary format in 1980. Who knew? Well, by 1981, then owner Mutual Broadcasting decided to add some popular personalities… Winston being one, Gary Gears another… and voila! WCFL was back, although quite a bit more subdued than the previous Top 40 years.

This is kinda funny, Winston is still a wisecracker, and someone calls in to say they are recording this for posterity, Winston fires back, ‘what, are you crazy? Trying to blackmail me or something hahaha‘

We’re lucky this survived all these years. Its from a time when WCFL tried a last ditch effort as a music station before going religious, then the huge days as WLUP-AM. Now, be forewarned. This took a lot of processing and sounds kinda wierd, since it was apparently an AM Stereo recording – from one of the early attempts at it like Khan, Hazeltine or something, and while there’s stereo separation in parts of this 30-plus minute aircheck, the receiver used in recording made it sound a bit grainy and there wasn’t much bass. That’s fixed here but it ain’t perfect so if it sounds funny, its not your computer! It would have helped if the person who originally digitized this had used a higher bit rate, but we can only use what’s available.

** The WCFL Chicago Timeline has apparently disappeared and in its place is we found a site with a trojan infection, which is why we removed the link to it. For your protection we strongly advise listeners to NOT search for any links to the WCFL Chicago Timeline.

Composite: 95 1/2 WMET Chicago | March 1977

Who knows what became of this 1970’s FM competitor in the Windy City? Certainly, there’s plenty of personality on 95.5 FM (including ol’ Captain Whammo aka Jim Channel), but the jingles in use are probably the worst ever heard in contemporary radio. I suppose that would be unique enough to keep an audience, but one would think that MET had enough personality playing the hits to give WLS a run for its money. Not being from Chicago, I know next to nothing about WMET other than it existed and that Captain Whammo went on to become a preacher with his own ministry sometime after his MET days.

Come to think of it, the jingles and top 40 approach seems similar to the John Long sound at X-Rock 80 down in Juarez, Mexico… minus the cutsey Mexican female voice

This composite runs approximately 46 minutes scoped. Its in mono, but pretty clean sounding considering it’s now 31 years old as of this writing. 31 years! wow, was high school that long ago?