Here’s a look at early-80s WHN… there’s not much life left in the biggest and most memorable Country station New York ever had at this point, but it sounds SO good! The music is scoped, the jocks some of the most talented, and the audio quality of this aircheck pristine.
No, this isn’t Top 40, but it’s an important high-quality aircheck for many reasons – one of which is that this is one of the very last music stations on AM in this market, and also because this is one of only two stations in modern history that played Country music in New York. There hasn’t been one since the demise of WYNY (97.1/103.5/107.1), which itself, became home to many of the former WHN jocks.
Give this one a listen, then please remember to post your comments below.
All the classic WHN airchecks I have came directly from former PD Ed Salamon. I have converted them all from cassette to digital audio. Ed has sent me over 4 dozen tapes in the past year, and I still have a lot of work ahead of me to convert them all.
Although I’m not really a fan of country music, I can appreciate this aircheck because I did listen to WHN from time to time and I do remember the jocks especially Brian Kelly and Dan Taylor.
I first heard Brian Kelly on WCBS FM back in the ’70s after they became an oldies station. He is a good jock.
Dan Taylor is a guy I have listened to for years. He sounds good here but my favorite memory of Dan is when he did the Time Machine on the former WNBC.
It was a sad day when WHN became WFAN in 1987. Dan Taylor was the last jock on the station.
Do you have any airchecks of Lee Arnold on 1050 WHN? He made his name there as well as on 1560 WQEW years later. I miss hearing him. He knew how to talk to people and not at them.
Thanks for this aircheck. Always glad to listen to classic New York radio.
Can you tell me anything about Lee Arnold? He hosted dog shows on the Animal Planet cable network some years back. I used to call him when he was at WHN. If he’s still living, I’d guess he’s somewhere around 85.
First, this aircheck is actually from the summer of 1981, per the songs and news reports. And within a year, Dana Lauren would be on the other side of the country, at soft AC KMGG (Magic 106) Los Angeles.
Please post AM stereo airchecks of WHN.
WHN has always been a favorite of mine. Please keep the Classic WHN airchecks coming! I wish I had your 4 dozen tapes. Thanks for the memories!
man, im so glad i finally found somewhere to talk about whn.i dont know where to start, but here goes. ive lived in west virginia all my life, but i lived for trips to nyc so i could listen to hn.bobby wayne, who was at hn in the late 70s, was from farmington, wv, about 8 miles north of where i live. i called him when he was at whli, and he seemed very glad to hear from a fellow marion countian, which is where farmington is. i understand he died around 1993. the last time i was in ny, july6, 1982, to be exact, i’ll bet i listened to whn 93% of my waking hours. i became a baseball fan because of hn, as they started doing mets games in 83. when the mets won the 86 series, i was just about over the moon with joy. when whn quit playing country, it was almost like losing a family member. well, im gonna go now, and in conclusion, happy holidays “y’all”.
kernsie again. i was in nyc for the 4th of july in 1980. my dad and i were on our way to new england. hn played tired of toein the line by rocky burnette several times. i couldn’t get over it. what was the world coming to–plj playing the beverly hillbillies theme–or perhaps coal miners daughter? later on i read that whn wasn’t so much a country station as it was a station that played country music. also when i was there in 82(my last trek to gotham, as i mentioned earlier], i took a liking to a song called “love’s found you and me” by ed bruce. this was one of those “customized” songs in that it used the call letters of the station playing it. the normal version started out “just as sure as there’s gold in california”, but whn’s was “just as sure as there’s country whn”. well,sir, when i heard that, i do believe a chill ran down my spine. i wish i’d airchecked whn the 3 times i was in nyc that i listened to them, namely 1979, 80, and 82. i tried, with some small success, to get hn down here, but it was notoriously directional. one could receive it going through new england, as i was getting it in maine. also, i got it in scranton, pa, which, incidentally, is lee arnold’s hometown. well i’m gonna go now, and, again, thanx a million for somewhere for me to extol whn; it’ll live 4ever in my heart. whn ROCKED!
hi again from the guy who loved whn, more, i reckon, than life itself. at youtube.com, type in del curtis, who was none other than del demontreux. he hosted a show on wstv(now wtov) in steubenville, ohio, called “teen time”. i felt it incumbent upon me to mention this. teen time ran during the late 60s. well, i’ll jaw at ya later.
happy 2008, y’all. hank williams jr. had a song called dixie on my mind. one time in the summer of ’81, he was a guest dj on hn. well, when they played it, hank jr. got threats of either grievous bodily harm or death, or maybe even both. as i understand it hn never played that song again.
me again. this is somewhat off the subject, but if someone had said 15 years ago that wcbs and wins would someday be sister stations(they have been since about 1998), somebody would probably have tried to have them committed.
hi youse guys. i immensely enjoyed the above aircheck. i know the date it was made. scores for that day’s yanks and mets games were given. i went to baseball-reference.com and saw that it was august 12, 1981. that was at least part of the date, as i don’t know but that the check was made on more than one day.
when the yanks were on mgm, they won the ’58 world series and the’60 american league pennant, losing to the pirates on bill mazeroski’s 9th inning solo homer. also as wmgm, they were the brooklyn dodgers’ flagship, winning several nl pennants, including the ’55 ws over none other than the yankees. i must admit my loyalties have shifted to the yankees. i call joe torre’s sister (she lives in brooklyn in the family home) every year, telling her to pass along happy birthday wishes to joe. two years i reached her answering machine, so for all i know, joe’s heard my voice.he’ll be the dodgers manager starting this year. whn also did new york giants’ football, ny knicks, and ny rangers’ hocky in the ’40s and ’50s. they also carried the knicks during their ’73 nba championship season, and did the mets in ’73, when they lost to oakland 4 games to 3 in the world series. i understand 1050 is now wepn, an all sports station. ironically, they were wfan’s first frequency. sorry if this last posting was too long, but i had many things i wanted to point out. well ya’ll come back, hear?
me again. my last posting was redundant(sorry about that). whn had 2 previous stints as the mets’ flagship, namely 64-66 and 72-74.
the old southerner posts again. there’s a format called classic country, and i was thinking it’d be wonderful if whn could come back as classic country, though i don’t know what frequency they’d use. also i don’t know that they could even call themselves whn, as i’m not sure new stations can use 3-letter calls.wwhn, perhaps?
i may have to amend one of my earlier postings. i think wnbc, not whn, carried the’73 knicks.
guess who? whn was the yankees’ flagship from 1967-70, and as wmgm their flagship from 1958-60.
i think whn’s best days were when they were in manhattan. they moved to queens aroun d mid 1986.
bobby wayne’s real name was robert wayne satterfield. he was on, among other stations, wcbs-fm, wsai(cincinnati), and whar(clarksburg, wv).
tunnelmouth from the south(or is it of the south) again. anyhoo, i saw (on the internet i believe it was) that in the late 70s, that whenever one got into a cab in nyc, that the cabbie had whn on the radio.
So glad to find a site with so many WHN fans. Does anyone remember a song that Jesse used to play in the mid-70’s called “Brooklyn” about a little girl caught in a custody battle? (Very country)I have been searching for this song for 30 year! Thx – Linda
Linda, I believe the song to which you refer was by Cody Jameson, who, incidentally, was from NYC. It spent 7 weeks on the country charts, peaking at 64, and reached 74 on the pop charts.
A couple ohter things. First off, the ‘Welcome back Kotter’ theme spent 2 weeks on the country charts in ’76, peaking at 93. I’m sure it got quite a bit of play at WHN, as it was set in Brooklyn. Also ‘Splish Splash’ by Bobby Darin hit no. 14 for 3 weeks in’58. He was born
Walden Robert Cassotto on 5-14-36 in the Bronx. The chart positions of the preceding 3 songs can be found in Joel Whitburn’s Top Country Singles; the book is updated every few years.
I wonder whether any nyc-based celebrities ever listened to whn. I think it would’ve been so cool if Al Pacino, for instance, did. One night, when i called up there on the request line, the dj told me that all of the newscasters listened to whn.
On my last sojourn to NY, we were driving thru North Bergen, New Jersey, and I saw a billboard saying “Thank you, New Jersey”. It was a WHN billboard, and it had a radio dial(slide rule type) with the pointer between 1000 and 1100. Also WHN was at 400 Park Avenue and WINS at 90 Park Avenue, so WHN was just up the street and just up the dial from WINS.
I miss WHN and all the old DJs.Lee Arnold was the most knowledgable about country music, Glad he’s in the Country Music DJ Hall of Fame! Just read Stan Martin passed away 5 yrs ago. Met many at the WHN picnic. Went on that trip to Nashville in 1973, that WHN sponsored. The late Jack Spector accompanied us. Dan Taylor sounds soooo good. I have us on a cassettte I taped when I won a contest! I listen to classic country on the internet, but it’s not the same without commercials, traffic and weather! I loved listening to this!!! Think I’ll head to Palisades Park..Oh , that’s gone too!!
Yee-haw!!! Heard a WHN aircheck from ’77 that included Bobby Wayne. When he called himself the West Virginia wiz, a chill ran down my spine. I’ll be going to a family reunion 3 weeks from today; there’ll be family members from West Virginia, and a couple or three other states. Rosemary, I was sorry to learn of Stan Martin’s death. Seems I talked to him on the phone in ’82 or ’83.
I’m listening to tapes I recorded when my husband worked nights. Dan Taylor was my company. Moe Bandy’s Americana was a song suited for the U.S.A. today. Wherever you are Dan Taylor get this song back on the air.
Sorry I haven’t posted for quite some time. Can you begin to imagine how great WHN would have been had they been non-directional? A disc jockey friend of mine said they had to protect KYW(1060), hence the directional signal.
Gary…what do you mean by “the directional signal?” Sounds like a radio term… LOL
Do you remember WYNY (the new country)
Rosemary, directional signal means that the signal goes better in one direction than another. I believe WHN had to protect CHUM in Toronto, as they’re 1050 also. Moreover I believe they had to protect KYW in Philadelphia, which is 1060. I’m telling this a best I can, but I believe other stations may take precedence; some FCC regulation, but I don’t really know specifics. When I was taking a trip through the northeast in 1980, I got WHN in, of all places, Boston. It came in as clearly as if I was picking it up in Brooklyn. I never listened to WYNY, but I do know it was NYC’s country station for a few years after WHN became WFAN. Also, there was a country station in Queens called WKHK. It competed with WHN for a spell, but never did very well. WYNY is now WQHT, and they play rhythmic contemporary. One other thing, and beg pardon if I’m being too wordy, but WKTU has an HD channel on which one can listen to country music. You need a special receiver, but country is still to be heard on radio in New York. I have to say my favorite music as of now is pop oldies, followed by rap metal, such as Limp Bizkit. Some taste in music, huh?
You would NOT believe what I just discovered. In one of my postings some months back, I said how great it would be if WHN could come back as a classic country station. Well, it’s not WHN, but, go to wabccountry.com, and you can get your fix of classic country. I discoverd this by a quite pleasant accident. (Isn’t “pleasant accident” a contradiction in terms?).
“Does anyone remember a song that Jesse used to play in the mid-70’s called “Brooklyn” about a little girl caught in a custody battle”
That was Brooklyn by Cody Jameson on Atco. It was promoted as a pop, not a Country release. But you WHN listeners know that we didn’t care much about industry politics. If listeners like Linda considered it “Very country”, that was good enough for us.
Ed Salamon
WHN Program Director 1975-1981
Sorry for not having posted anything for the longest time. I just got to doing other things, and time REALLY slipped away.NYC has a country station on WLTW, but it’s in HD-2 format. It’s on 106.7-2. Incidentally, WKHK, which, as i mentioned before, briefly competed with WHN, was at 106.7. Also, if anybody has any WHN memories to share, my e-mail is kernsie23@yahoo.com. I’d love to hear from you.
A minute after I finished my last posting, I went to radioinfo.com and saw that an AM station in Canada is playing country. The article started with the question ‘Why not New York?’ I read that WLTW has transmission problems sometimes, but you can get country music at worcountry.com. It’s known as “The Elephant”.
I just got off wikipedia, and I read that WHN was considered the most listened to country station in history. I’ve said before and will likely say again, I felt privileged to have listened to WHN (albeit intermittently) from 79-87.
i remember hearing dan saying ”this will be the last time you will ever hear 1050 WHN” back in 1987..micky
I remember so many of those classic songs. You can’t find anybody doing a format like this anymore. The only other station like it which i thought was just a great was WIXL in Newton NJ back in the late 70’S and early 80’S. It never got into the NY market because it was at 103.7 and WYNY was at 103.5
I realize I’ve not posted anything in over a year and a half; guess there wasn’t all that much to talk about. One more thing about the song “Brooklyn”: Actress Gloria Loring recorded it under the name of Cody Jameson.
Does anyone remember a song they played in 1981 purposely recorded for the station called, “Horray for Those WHN DJ.s” The singer sang about WHN’s big success in NYC by delivering Country Music and they mentioned Dan Taylor, Lee Arnold, Del Demontreau, and Jesse. If anyone had it can you post it for us. Thank you
You might be able to find it at bigappleairchecks.com. WKHK, which briefly competed for country listeners with WHN, had their version of the song. Also, WHN, as did several other stations, have their own version of Tommy Overstreet’s “Fadin’ in, Fadin’ Out”, in which instead of saying “listenin’ to my favorite country show”, he sang “listening to WHN”. At least one other song that mentioned the WHN calls was “Love’s Found you and Me” by Ed Bruce. In the commercial version, he sings “Just as sure as there’s gold in California”, but in the WHN version, he sings “Just as sure as there’s country WHN”. Several other stations followed suit on this song as well. Hope I was able to help, and sorry if I was too wordy, but I wanted to point out those other two things.