Shortly after the death of B. Mitchel Reed, KLOS‘ Gail Murphy hosted a live tribute to the legendary deejay, featuring recorded interviews and a couple of very short samples of his earlier work. Apparently, there were not many original recordings of early Top 40 radio around back then. Imagine if Airchexx had been online in ’83! Perhaps, being that KLOS was an Album Rock station, they were reluctant to remind their audience of screaming Top 40 jocks.
This is mostly interviews. In fact, its kind of a dry presentation, but very informative. What about YOUR memories of BMR? Please post your recollections in the comment section at the bottom of this page!
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And what is the legacy of B. Mitchel Reed? He started his career by playing Jazz records before the first Top 40 stations came along. Rock and Roll had not yet really been born. Then Elvis happened. KFWB shook off the mantle of Big Band and Jazz music and flipped to “Color Radio”, the idea being that, if you have Color Television all shiny and new, then Color Radio would be the newest thing! (Unlike some descriptions heard elsewhere and not mentioned here, Color Radio had nothing whatsoever to do with Rock and Roll being thought of as ‘black’ music, in the very beginning). It was 1958. KFWB “Color Radio 98”, Rock and Roll and B. Mitchell Reed started at about the same time.
The credits, those people interviewed is pretty long, and rather than duplicate them, look under ‘tags’ below this post.
Steve, For some reason I am unable to listen to this tribute to BMR. By the way, his name is spelled Mitchel (only one l not two). Thanks for all the airchecks you have made available through the years. Tony
Tony, what browser are you using? I’d suggest using a different browser (Firefox, Chrome, Commodo Dragon, Safari all come to mind as good browsers, although FF has had some issues in the last couple of updates).
Steve, I was using Firefox, but I figured out the problem. Thanks.
B. Mitchel Reed – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
B. Mitchel Reed (June 10, 1926 — March 16, 1983) was a successful American disc Jockey on both Top 40 and album-oriented rock radio stations, working in …
Ironically, I just noticed in my post above I spelled my name Tomy instead of Tony.
A quite interesting tribute to BMR. Jane Fonda, when she was growing up, said BMR was her favorite DJ as well as thousands others. I wish we had more airchecks of his.
Tony
the BMR was a very important man
He was my very favorite at KMET and I still get nostalgic thinking about that time…1970, 71 or so. He was the best.
BMR briefly had a late night slot at KRLA-AM for awhile, playing underground type radio. I remember hearing Interstellar Overdrive on that show. Here are some of my favorite songs he used to play on KMET; cocaine blues, dave van ronk. christo redemptor; charlie musselwhite. 49 bye-byes; the frozen noses.