Jackson Armstrong, 1020 KTNQ Los Angeles | December, 1978

1020 AM Los Angeles Dave Sebastian The Real Don Steele Charlie Tuna Jackson Armstrong M.G. Kelly KFVD KPOP KTNQ KGBS

Big Apple Airchecks Matt Seinberg CraigJack Armstrong is on top of his game in this, a 2004 donation to our site by Matt Seinberg at BigAppleAirchecks.com. Right off the bat, the gorilla is right there with Jack and the fun starts from the first song!

Armstrong is doing the morning show this particular day. Too bad he wasn’t around 10 years earlier in Southern California, he’d have been great on KHJ! I’m always struck by how fast Armstrong talked and still got his point across. It helps that Ten-Q had a great thing going. But these were the waning days of AM Top 40 and KTNQ’s days were numbered from the start as the audience slowly but surely moved to FM. But boy does this sound GOOD!

Re-mastered for better audio!


9 Comments

  1. Tony

    “LA’s only rocker”, proclaims Armstrong.

    And spotlighting Barry Manilow? LOL

    Tony

  2. Bryan

    Remember Tony this was Top 40 before all of the formats that sliced the everything into even smaller formats designations.

    • Tony

      Yep, I know Bryan. I worked in Top 40 in that era.

      All I was stating was Barry Manilow was never a rocker. Pop ballads yep. Rock no.

      It seems a bit strange to promote a station as “LA’s only rocker” while promoting Barry Manilow, an anti-rocker, so heavily.

      In addition, the slogan was untrue. LA had many rock stations then — KLOS, KMET to name a couple.

      KTNQ was a top-40 station, not a rocker.

      Tony

  3. calradiopd

    Tony’s right. By 1978, “rocker” meant a station like KMET.

    This is a Saturday. Armstrong’s weekday shift was afternoon drive. He replaced The Real Don Steele in September of ’78.

  4. Robert

    I remember the old station on 1020 before KGBS. it was KPOP in 1959 and top 40 up against KFWB. KPOP was essentially a daytimer but licensed as “limited time” meaning it could operate at night if KDKA Pittsburgh was off the air. since KDKA went off Sunday nights 12-5 for maintenance, KPOP would come on 9 pm-2am Sunday night Pacific time with regular format.

  5. Duncan Dewar

    Any WBZ air checks 70’s Dave Maynard, Larry Justice, Bruce Bradley, Larry Glick (overnight talk)????????

    • I have searched high and low with no luck, although I recently exchanged a few facebook messages with Larry Justice who says he has a few airchecks from the old days. Perhaps he’ll be willing to part with a couple.

  6. Gary Kerns

    This ‘cjeck was made just as I was rediscovering country. The song I liked best (though they were all scoped) was Grand Funk’s “Some Kind of Wonderful” at 10:35, and it was four years old at the time. At 11:50, they mentioned double albums, which I’d forgotten about. I also got a kick when at 10:51, the Gorilla advised Christmas shoppers to take along a ton of money. At reelradio.com, I heard a Jackson Armstrong aircheck from March 1973, the beginning days of 13Q in Pittsburgh. he sounds a lot more restrained here. All told, a good aircheck. Sadly, Jack died in 2008, the result of a fall. He was 62 or 63 (born in 1945). His real name was John Larsh. There’s tons of stuff about him on the web.

  7. ejcrummey

    How bout some Duncan Dewar??????

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