*Featured Jocks
Don K. Reed and the Doo Wop Shop; 101.1 WCBS-FM New York | November 27, 1994
CBS-FM and that’s the sound of, yes, you know who. The Dells… Don K. Reed and the Doo Wop Shop is open for business one more time, just after Thanksgiving on New York’s Oldies Station. This is another in the series of Doo Wop Shop airchecks we received from Contributor Steven Green, who recorded these tapes while in New York. Thank you, Steven! It’s remarkable how laid-back Don K. Reed is. Records run out and for a second, you can hear that record scratch… talk about authentic! For those of you who love and cherish the Doo Wop groups of the early Rock & Roll 1950s, this show will appeal to you. For the sake of presentation, this aircheck is scoped down to 34:54, from two sides of a C-90 cassette. We have the master, unscoped copy in our archives just in c...
KRI loses its Z– The Chucker and Jack Elliot on KRIZ Phoenix | September, 1977
What are we supposed to do with your paycheck while you’re gone? – Give it away!! From deep in the archives of Contributor Daniel Coulombe comes this excellent quality recording of KRIZ in the Fall of 1977. This starts out with “Chucker” as the jock and a voice (we don’t know who) walks in and proceeds to announce that he (Zee) is going on vacation. Thus comes the contest, where in the world is Zee. Callers are instructed to call in and say “KRI plays the best music!” The legal I.D. is buried in a top of the hour Zee promotion. How they got away with this is anyone’s guess. This aircheck was taken from Tom Konard’s “Around The Dial” tape from September 1977. Konard’s company was called “The Aircheck Factory̶...
Jay Thomas, 98.7 WXLO New York | September, 1977
…I was hoping you might be able to get me in touch with John Gambling There are many things unique to this aircheck. First, this is from an early edition of Tom Konard’s Aircheck Factory tapes. This was from a monthly edition called “Around The Dial”. The “Aircheck Factory” was, likely, the first professional aircheck service. They received recordings primarily made by radio stations, for radio station program directors. At least, that was the intent. Many jocks and others in the business would subscribe as well as programmers just for the listening enjoyment, as a sales tool, or to use as examples of how a jock should sound in a particular format. We don’t have many of these here at Airchexx but this is an original tape in it’s original case...
Dan Taylor; Weekend Time Machine, 66 WNBC New York | September 12, 1987
Frank Davis sent us a lot of WNBC Time Machine recordings. Enough so that we might end up with the world’s largest collection of WNBC’s Weekend Time Machine! As a side note, a basic google search brings up dozens of links to places selling, of all things, “Time Machine” airchecks on CD, youtube re-mixes of our WNBC content and more. The web, being what it is, there’s nothing we can do here at airchecks, other than to say, our content is original recordings and we don’t charge you for it! By 1987, Oldies had become the biggest music format on WNBC. Contemporary music by this time was confined to The Imus in the Morning Program. Ray D’Ariano had midday Oldies, and Alan Colmes had a mostly talk and variety program every afternoon during 1987 and 1988...
Bud Ballou, WKBW 1520 Buffalo | 1967
Another Frank Davis presentation… Bud Ballou would become legendary in Boston, at 1510 WMEX, then Fairbanks Communication’s WVBF in suburban Framingham. But before his stint at 105.7, Ballou was heard all up and down the Eastern Seaboard on >WKBW AM 1520 Buffalo. KB itself is legendary, with a signal that blankets the eastern half of the United States and Canada, from the Maritimes to Florida, WKBW, and its present-day relative WWKB, on 1520, easily has the strongest signal on the AM dial. It was a station known for launching the careers of many artists just by virtue of their records being heard on KB. Ballou has always been… himself. He was one of those jocks who had his own way about him on the air. Like many jocks of that era, Ballou made a name for himself with hi...
Assorted WKNR Airchecks, 1964-1970 – Part 1
Kinda like a large, refrigerated taurine of tapioca… WKNR’s Bob Green, describing the chance of snow in the Detroit area weather forecast, one cold evening in 1968. Contributor Steven Green sent this to us from his collection in Texas, along with six others included on one CD. Highlights: Listen for commercials that you probably never figured you’d ever hear again, such as Manufacturers Bank, Libby’s Tomato Juice and Zestabs Vitamins. That last one, the female voice announcer says ‘the latest thing (that’s not good for you) is cyclamates”. Now, how ironic is it that some ingredient in vitamins is bad, but apparently, carcinogens like asbestos, cigarette smoke and auto emissions weren’t even on the public radar back in the 1960s. Such is the n...
Ron Stevens, 105.5 WQGN (Groton) New London | 1986
Here’s another from Contributor Paul DiMarco (Mr. 70s, as he’s known at his “Totally 70s Radio Network“). This is our very first entry from New London, CT. It was CHR in 1986 and remains a Top 40 giant in the Navy Submarine capital of Southern New England. In radio, Legal Identification is important, but these days it can be somewhat deceptive. Q105 says it’s from New London, but its proper city-of-license is Groton. This aircheck features Ron Stevens, who is a new entry into our “Featured Jocks” category. Ron joins literally hundreds of other radio people featured here on this website. The quality of this recording is very good, and this is something that Contributor Paul DiMarco prides himself in. This is very short, around 5 minutes, but I real...
Ken Gilbert, 102.9 WDRC-FM Hartford | June 17, 1989
Courtesy of Contributor “Mr. 70s“, Paul DiMarco, here’s a pristine quality recording of my friend Ken Gilbert on the old “Big-D 103” oldies station. The recording is so good, in fact, you’ll swear this is being broadcast live as you stream it! Hey Chris, I think there’s a price check at register two… Highlights of this aircheck include tons of phone call requests aired live, classic PAMS WDRC jingles, originally sung for the AM side 1360 WDRC, and a contest where the winner is invited to the “Oldies but Goodies” cruise on the Connecticut River. Listen for the contest tease and the winner’s phone call included in this aircheck. The commercials have been left intact for historical purposes. This aircheck was tightly scoped by ...
Gary Owens, 910 KEWB Oakland CA | July 7, 1959
The career of Gary Owens was so long, and filled with so much success that the written work about him fills volumes. Gary Owens is heard here at almost the start of his long broadcasting career, at 910 KEWB Oakland. We have very few airchecks from the 1950s at all, and earlier ones are hard to come by. Gary Owens died on February 12, 2015 after a long illness. You can read the article from Dateline Hollywood on his passing HERE. About this aircheck: This begins with at fairly long news segment. Perhaps the most unique thing about Top 40 stations at the beginning of the Top 40 era was the staccato pace of the entire format. Listen to the beep beep beep sounder before every headline. Was that really necessary? Apparently back then, it was. Then, listen to Gary Owens. What struck me as I prod...
Eric Cheney, 94.5 WZOU Boston | February, 1985
Eric Chaney WZOU Boston First posted several years ago and now restored, this very short clip of Eric Chaney on the old WZOU brought back lots of memories! This is a mid-Winter aircheck from the month of February. While its short, listen to the elements in this authentic, high energy CHR format! Courtesy of U.K. Contributor Neal Bowden This is “Boston Zoo”, 94.5 WZOU Boston and you’ll love the old Top Hour jingle with the live spoken ID – now THAT’s the way radio is supposed to sound! This moves along really fast, and perhaps that’s what’s good about these scoped gems… you get a feel for the station, then before you know it, it’s over. The curator lived within earshot of this great station and we sure miss it, and the CHR war that ran f...
Ron Brittain; Barney Pipp, WCFL Chicago | October, 1967
When Contributor Frank Davis wrote to say he was sending a box of original tapes, we really had no idea of the quality of the recordings. Most, says Davis, were taken right from the source reels, or recorded directly onto cassette. This was apparently the former. Starting off with a promo for the upcoming ‘New’ Dick Biondi ’68 show, here’s Ron Brittain and Barney Pipp – not together, but mixed inside this 30 minute partial scope of what sounds like a couple of different day recordings from the Fall of 1967. Listen to the assortment of jingles that WCFL was using in 1967! Some are instantly recognizable as classic PAMS cuts, others we’re not quite sure about. Heller, perhaps? As we’ve pointed out on numerous occasions on this website, the AM receive...
Tony Prince, 1520 (199 Meters) Radio Caroline North | March 1, 1966
Here is a slightly restored (to remove noise and enhance the fidelity) aircheck of Tony Prince, donated to us by Russ Horton. There is a huge connection here, in that, Tony Prince is still very active in radio and in 2018, launched a new internet radio station called “United DJs”, featuring many names from the Pirate radio era of the U.K. The roster of talent includes Mike Read, Emperor Rosko, David Hamilton, Dave Lee Travis and from Canada, Russ Horton! Attempting to tell the story of Radio Caroline is daunting, at best. The ship that actually carried the name Caroline was actually the MV Fredericia, that when purchased by Irish Broadcaster Ronan O’Rahilly was renamed the MV Caroline. It was known as “Caroline North” for much of the station’s early hist...
