New Contributor Dan Stolper sent in an original, perfect quality recording of a station that apparently has been gone from the Austin market for quite some time – we can find little information about it through any of our research tools. Perhaps one of our listeners can fill in the details of this former Top 40 station. 1490 AM today is apparently KLGO Christian radio.
Here’s Stolper, known on air as Danny Day in what sounds like a short composite of a couple of different airshifts. The quality is superb, complete with jingles and just the slightest hint of reverb.
Stolper writes:
Here is a 1977 aircheck from KNOW Radio, The Rock of Austin, which was the leading top 40 station in that market. I was a student at The University of Texas at Austin while working on-air as Danny Day.
When I was in Austin in 1990, KNOW was back on 1490 as an oldies station complete with 1960’s era jingles. I think it was the SMN oldies format.
KNOW was a Wendell Mayes radio station, and for several years, was one of the best medium market top forty stations anywhere. Some very well-known DJ’s passed through it from the late sixties through the eighties. One thing that set KNOW apart from many other top forty stations was its’ dedication to news. It had a top flight news department that won tons of awards and rivaled the departments of many of the Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio stations. I was fortunate to have spent two years working as the county courhouse reporter for Olen Murrell at KNOW. Thanks mucho for putting this aircheck on the site, and I’d love to hear some more from KNOW folks.
I lived in Austin in the late 60s and early 70s and remember KNOW at THE Top-40 station – not bad, but not anything as good as progressive FM rock radio!
I lived in Austin 1959-1963. Most guys my age, then 7 to 10 years old, wanted to grow up to be cowboys, firemen or a policeman, I wanted to be a DJ like the jocks I heard on the “Mighty 1490 KNOW!” It was THE station for the latest rock ‘n roll music survey hit sounds. KNOW brought me Chubby Checker, Martha and the Vandellas, Sam Cooke, the Crystals, Bobby Vinton and so many more! News was heard every hour from ABC and heavy local news reporting as well. To this very day I still remember “The black flag is flying.” It was a recorded intro to announce someone had been killed in an auto accident within the Austin city limits. KNOW was where I first heard Paul Harvey News. They were HOT in those days, 24 hours a day with only 1000 watts daytime and 250 watts at night.
In the very year Danny Day’s air check was recorded I was beginning my first job as a DJ on what used to be WEYE AM, Sanford NC. I worked in radio from 1977 to 1989. Then found a job that paid me something called money! 🙂 I miss KNOW. That station and the DJs influenced me with what I did. I miss radio as a career, too. It’s in my veins like a dormant disease. R I P, KNOW and to all of the 60s and 70s AM rockers that have evolved into a niche that keeps the transmitter on…and to all of those who have fallen into darkness. Those were the champions, my friend!
Listened to KNOW a lot when I was a student at UT in the early 70’s, and the experience encouraged me toward a career in radio which I had for about nine years in Tyler, Corpus Christi, Longview, and some other places. Mostly Tyler, though.
Thought all the jocks at KNOW were very good, ones that stood out were Jivin’ Jim Gossett, Gil “Boogaloo” Garcia, Jim Lang,
and of course, the Bill “Bullmoose” Moss,
who was on overnights a long time. Oh yeah, I liked Olive Talley on news. Anybody remember these people, and maybe know about their current whereabouts?? Please respond if you do. It was a great radio adventure in the day, and KNOW was one of the best.
I worked as the afternoon DJ on KNOW in the late 70s (1978 I believe). Had a great time there. Now in Charlotte as a safety manager for a plastics manufacturer. Miss the good old radio days.
Yes, I miss those days too, as a listener of the station ardently when a student at UT–played it all night, about every night.
I later applied for a job there in the news department, didn’t get it, but still managed to have a nine-year radio career mostly in middle-market Texas stations. Always regretted never working for the “Rock of Austin” though.
To comment on one post. The main oldies station in Austin in 1990 was 96.7 K-FOX.
I pulled the afternoon drive-time shift on KTAP (590 AM), the 500 watt daytime AM affiliate of KHFI, from 1969-71. We were KNOW’s competitor, doing “Adult” Top-40, with some albums thrown in the mix. That eventually evolved into the first version of K-98, Austin’s first progressive (aka, Underground) FM station — KHFI-FM, 9pm-6am. Had the distinction of being the first person in Austin to play — and maybe hear — “Whole Lotta Love”, Led Zeppelin, just before sign off one evening on KTAP. Bill Moss was a newsman there, along with Kirk Wilson, who now has an Austin ad agency. Great radio, great days — an Austin that’s gone forever.
Interesting that KTAP, a station I don’t remember much, although I do remember KHFI pretty well, had a newsman named Bill Moss. KNOW had an overnight DJ for years by the name of Bill “Bullmoose” Moss, otherwise known simply as “the Moose.” Could these two be the same person perhaps? Just wondering. I haven’t heard any news on the Moose in years, even though I’ve tried to get some info about him. I saw him at the station a couple times, but never really spoke to him.
So I’m working an afternoon drive time shift at KTAP when the request line rings, and a black guy asks me “How come y’all don’t play more James Brown?” Explained we had a current playlist and it didn’t have any James Brown on it, but I’d look through the oldies and see what I could find. Guy starts screaming’ “F**k you, you &@#$% mother****ing honky son of a *****!” and hangs up.
I’m still sitting there steaming about five minutes later, just started a record, when The Moose wanders into the control room from the newsroom downstairs and causally asks me how my shift’s going. “Man, one of your brothers just called me and gave me a hard time.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “So why DON’T y’all play more James Brown?”
That was Bill Moss, The Moose, and that was old-time radio hijinks.
He also told me about covering the Whitman shootings from the UT tower in ’67 as a TV cameraman. Said they were deputizing people on the spot and letting them haul high-powered weapons out of their vehicles and blaze away. So many bullets hit it that the entire top of the tower was hidden behind a haze of limestone dust.
So they are one and the same. Frankly, I never pictured “the Moose” as a newsman, although I know he did read some news on his overnight dj shows on KNOW. I never met the dude, although I did see him once at that station when I was there applying for a job. Went to work at a station in Tyler, as it turned out, instead.
Anyways, thanks for that info. Do you know anything about him and his current situation? A friend of mine and myself have been trying to find out about him for a long time. We always had fun listening to his late-night schtick on the radio, on the “rock of Austin.” Those were fun days, college days, you know.
Does anyone remember a KNOW d.j. named “Buzz” Long from about 1961 or 1962?
Yes! Buzz “A” Long, came from KEES Gladewater-Longview where he was working afternoons for the then “Top 40” “Wonderful KEES 1430”. Buzz worked with Big Tom Bigby who was the PD. Later, Wayne Moss of WABB and KAAY came in as the PD I got my start there doing weekends.
Wow. I remember KNOW from when I was a little kid. It was the only AM station I knew of that played rock and roll. It was where I first heard Bach-Turner Overdrive, then the Godz later on, with their tune “Gotta Keep a Runnin.’ ” That was in during the summer of 1978.
Good jocks, music I liked, and the news people were effective with their five minutes every hour. KNOW was a very good station in the Austin market. If I didn’t listen to them, I usually turned on KHFI on the FM. It was a lot of fun studying in my room with KNOW on the radio. They disappeared quite some time ago.
I lived in Austin just one one year, from ’76-’77 (I was in 4th grade)but I wore out hundreds of 9 volt batteries listening to KNOW as I fell asleep every night. Drove my Dad crazy ’cause I asked him to bring new batteries hope every single night. Great memories! By the way, I went into radio thanks to KNOW and have been in the business now for over 30 years.
Brings back good memories! Lived in Leander in the 70s.
Don’t forget about Lenny White, aka “Lenny Bruce”.