Here’s something interesting that came in on a tape labelled simply “DC Radio, ETC..” This is a very high quality recording of the old 1580 WPGC / 95.5 Simulcast from sometime in the mid-1960s. This is really too short to extract much out of. You won’t hear the jock name, but you will get a generous dose of old jingles and some vintage Washington-area commercials. Anyone remember Glen Echo Amusement Park? Also, this is so old that we hear a very short 10 second or so ad for Newport Menthol Cigarettes!
Perhaps someone can nail the exact date for us… at least the correct year, which we guess is 1964. Someone in our audience always knows. Listen. And discuss.
This must be 1963. Alice Wonder Land had the song “He’s Mine” out that year. It went to #62 on the charts. The jock says it was in their Top 40 for the first time.
Who is interjecting their comments all over this aircheck??
Harv Moore, August 1963. It must have been a tribute to him because the guy making the comments says that Harv has died.
Sorry, it’s Jerry G that he says has died.
That’s definitely Harv Moore on both the recording, AND doing the commentary! I knew Harv personally back in the day. Last I heard of him, he was in radio management and real estate in the Buffalo, NY area.
The confusion surrounding this tape is because it is an aircheck of an aircheck!
The original tape aired on 08/24/63, when a very young Harv Moore was filling in for the vacationing Dean Griffith, the Program Director and afternoon man who in November, 1964 would leave for the overnight shift at WMCA in NY.
Harv had only recently joined WPGC from a station in Frankfurt, Kentucky. Within three months when morning man, Jerry G left WPGC for KYW in Cleveland, Harv moved up to mornings from his evening till sunset shift. This occurred literally days before the tragic JFK assassination.
Flash forward 8 plus years to 12/31/71. From 1969 – 1971, WPGC aired the locally produced special, ‘The Rock & Roll Generation’ (a copy of ‘The History of Rock & Roll’). As part of the salute to 1963, Harv played his old aircheck from 08/24/63 while periodically commenting on what was being heard on the tape to 1971 listeners who otherwise must have thought they had been sucked in to a time warp of some sort!
The complete broadcast and detailed explanation of the above can be found here:
//www.amandfmmorningside.com/wpgc_aircheck_1963_08_24th_harv_moore.html