From new Contributor John Harrison, heres one that illustrates how Dan Ingram sounded just before going to New York City and WABC. A couple of points about this aircheck. First, note the length of these jingles. Most of them run almost one minute! Perhaps its because in 1961, while the music was important, it was secondary to the radio station identity within its community and the announcers were equally as important as part of that identity. Becoming a non-stop jukebox was quite a few years away.
WIL had something they called an on-demand reverb button. The idea was that when the announcer wanted to really emphasize something, he’d hit that button and roaring reverb, as if someone was shouting in a long tunnel, would be heard for the next word. Dan Ingram made good use of that button!
Listen to the Budweiser commercial! Talk about a wow moment. Oh, and WIL has a contest running where the winner can win TEN DOLLARS!
A note about sound quality. Overall, this is really good. I believe that this was a restored aircheck at some point because all the music was included in the master we obtained. The music was very high quality as opposed to the rest of the aircheck. Unfortunately, it had to be removed from this aircheck to comply with copyright law. We’ve talked about that on our Facebook page. Its a frustration for most, but one we cannot help.
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Funny – being born in 1963 and essentially listening to radio post -Boss, it is hard to imagine people liking radio like this. The station jingles/self promotion are so far above any other elements of the format! Not saying its bad or insulting anyone, but so vastly different than what came just a few years later. Wow!
Ingram’s voice sounds similar to that gut who did news a while back on SNL!
We’re the same age. I doubt whether I’d have enjoyed it were it not that I’ve been archiving this stuff for decades now. You have to consider where radio was in 1961. Overall still trying to find itself and bring in a decent audience after TV ripped it’s network programming away in the 50s. Agreed how the self promotions and grandiose jingles – gawdy by any standards, were over the top. But you know from listening. In only four short years, we had the ABC Sklar sound with it’s reverb and PAMS jingles, and Bill Drake came along and did his streamlined Top 40 format at KHJ and that was it! To think it has lasted this long with all the changes – top 40 radio that is – that’s pretty miraculous.