Bob Jones, 580 KDAV Lubbock TX | July 15, 1976

Transistor Radio 1965 Bob Jones
This is the very radio I used…still have it…still works perfectly!! – Contributor Bob Jones

There’s a bit of interesting history behind this radio station. KDAV first went on the air at 580 kHz. An entry in Wikipedia for KDAV describes the early history of the station at 580 AM:

The original KDAV is reportedly the first radio station anywhere to program exclusively country music. Its primary founder and namesake, David Pinkston, better known on the air as Dave Stone has been inducted in the Country Music Disc Jockey Hall of Fame in Nashville and the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame in Carthage, Texas. When the station went on the air in 1953, KDAV call letters were on a 500-watt daytimer at 580 on the AM radio dial. It began at 66th and Quirt Avenue (today known as 6602 Martin Luther King). That station was founded by Elmore, Worley, and Pinkston. David Pinkston also founded KZIP in Amarillo, Texas (1310), KPEP in San Angelo, Texas (1420), and KPIK in Colorado Springs, Colorado (1580). All of the Texas stations used a common floor plan. The Amarillo building at 808 Charlotte was razed to make room for a highway, and the San Angelo building was vacated when 1420 returned its ticket to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, but the building still stands at 4300 North Chadbourne.

To listen to this aircheck, click the BIG BLUE BUTTON below.

 

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Contributor Bob Jones is the featured Jock heard on this recording. Jones worked for a station that was best known as the onetime radio home of Country singer and longtime overnight radio host Bill Mack. From its inception in 1953 through the 1960s and 1970s, KDAV was a Country station. You can get a feel for the flavor of this station as you listen. This aircheck also highlights the power of local radio and its role in serving its Community of License (COL). There is a weather situation going on and Bob Jones reads the bulletin about flooding and a tornado warning that is about to expire. KDAV had a good news department. The station aired complete local news reports along with ABC Network news. At the beginning of this aircheck, you hear the local horse race results… with multiple sponsors’ commercials inserted in the middle!


As to the audio quality, the original recording suffered from the source volume being too high. That resulted in some distortion. The distortion sounds worse at the beginning of this tape than the middle and end. Since the distortion was ‘baked’ into the recording, I couldn’t remove it without seriously compromising the overall sound quality. But, this is a recording from 1975 of an AM station, after all!

Today, KDAV is a Christian station located at 1590 kHz.