Jim Kaye “The Big Tuna”, Last Show on WAQY Wacky 102 Springfield | August, 1981 (52:36) Scoped

Courtesy of Webmaster Steve West.

Here’s the only known recording of the final show, 7-12 Midnight, on the old CHR formatted “Wacky 102” WAQY Springfield Massachusetts. My good friend Jim Kaye was known as the “Big Tuna“, and says on this recording that he had been with the station for seven years, which would place him there back at a time when WAQY was automated Top 40, and most of the audience was listening to AM. But, at this point in time, while ratings were down, ‘The Whack’, as the slogan had morphed into, was still enjoying enormous popularity 12+

This was such a hugely popular station among high schoolers. It seemed everyone was listening. Maybe that was the trouble, everyone under the age of 18 WAS listening. But they don’t buy cars and big-ticket items. And adult at-work listeners didn’t care for 16 commercials an hour and hard rock. And so it was that my absolute favorite radio station in 1981, my junior year, dumped what was arguably the most popular format among people my age in favor of then-AOR (it wasn’t a complete loss… I was a big fan of all the Rock that the new Rock 102 would play so then THAT turned into my favorite station as I matured). I digress.

What you hear on this aircheck is night guy Jim Kaye doing his last show before the format change – at midnight. Tell me, just how many stations do you know of that allow the jock to do a ‘last show’? This one belongs in a museum… and to the best of my knowledge, I am the only one who had the foresight to pop a tape into my cheap recorder. To think, I never expected to keep it this long. In fact, the tape did self-destruct sometime in the last year, so this digital copy is all that’s left… and this, again, is apparently the ONLY copy of Tuna’s last show. Enjoy it!