From somewhere deep in the bowels of the airchexx archives (which consists of three crates with hundreds of loose cassettes) comes this excellent recording of one Joe Pinner with a DEEP announcer voice playing top 40 hits – if you can call this all standards presentation ‘top 40’. Perhaps it was, considering the time and place. This is the deep south back at a time most people would probably like to forget about, when segregation was alive and well. There’s even a commercial for an all-white dance! Fortunately, that is but only one instance, a quick :30 second commercial in this 30 minute Thanksgiving day broadcast which includes news, weather and those overly orchestrated jingles from the time period.
For you jingle freaks- From what company and package are the jingle sings in this aircheck? We’re guessing either CRC or Heller.
We can’t even find an old station logo. But for you wondering, yes this IS the former AM side to the current CHR 104.7 WNOK. Now you know its roots, this station has been top 40, like… forever.
Wow…from out of the blue, for sure! Was stationed at Fort Jackson at the time and working parttime for WNOK AM-FM-TV(WLTX TV NOW) while managing the WFJX the Armed Forces Radio station on the fort. Returned to WMBR TV (WJXT NOW) in Jacksonville, Fla and then joined WIS TV in Columbia, SC in 1963, semi-retired in 2000 but still put in a full day on Fridays doing weather and live shots. Full story, which I’m sticking to, is at //www.joepinner.com or from “staff” at WISTV.COM. Joy and agape’…Joe
Wow! Great aircheck. The quality is very good. I only vaguely remember those jingles because I was living in Va at the time.I don’t recall coming across those jingles when I worked at WNOK
Boy Webmaster!
That was truly unique and really old! I’m surprised the quality is so good and to have a comment from Joe Pinner to boot!
Those old commercials, tires, etc. That’s what DJ’s did though in the past was do their own commercials, right?
I recently came to Chas SC, so I “saw” some more “history of SC” with this.
Where in the world do you get all these???
I thought this was a great aircheck. The quality was really good for what- 50 yrs????
That’s pretty cool that Joe Pinner himself commented on it. Loved to hear the Pepsi Cola commercial. It made me want to hop on my bike, ride down to the Sinclair station and get a frozen cold Pepsi out of the Pop machine!
Love Joe’s voice too.
Thanks folks for the comments (especially from you, Joe). I was making a copy of WNOK’s jingle archive from the late 1960s to 1993 when I’ve stumbled upon this recording. I’ve first heard bits and pieces of this on-air one morning in 1996 when WNOK was celebrating their 50th Anniversary and Joe Pinner was a guest on their morning show, “The Morning Rush”. Since older recordings of Columbia radio are very hard to come by, I’ve made a dub of this as well (glad I did).
Robyn
ask mr. pinner does he still miss lynn, it was a long time ago.
Who is the Lynn mentioned. If it is me then it was a loing time ago.
No Lynn…not you this time. Lynn Nevius was a beautiful and very talented colleague of mine at WIS TV in the early 70’s who sadly took her life. It was such a tragedy for me and all who knew her and yes, I miss her and what she would have contributed to the true enjoyment of television! Lynn…miss you and “Bunny” too and will get in touch. Happy New 2013.
My father worked at WIS,how could I find archives on him?
Not only was an “all white” dance announced, in the news it was said that a “white pedestrian” was knocked down. This sounds SO wrong to my modern ears. I wonder if any white listeners at the time thought it wrong….
It should sound wrong to your ears. Note the date, 1959. One of the objectives of this museum is to provide an online history lesson, albeit one about the joys of radio, but a lesson in popular culture of the past. This was South Carolina at the end of the 1950s, where segregation was a way of life. As we all know, it would be a few more years and much social upheaval before that changed. This is living, breathing proof, just in case at some time in the future some nit wits decide to rewrite history, that Jim Crow laws were indeed alive and well, and African Americans were treated as sub-citizens as recently as 58 years ago. We teach, so that (we hope) it never happens again.
Yes, that was what I was thinking. The sheer mundanity of those words in an otherwise normal everyday radio show hits home just what it was really like. It’s easy for younger people to forget the normalcy of racism when we now live in a somewhat better, though very far from perfect, world.
Oh, and to answer that question, I recently talked with someone in his early 70s who told me that back in the 50s, few adults had any problem with segregation. It had been policy for so long after the end of slavery that few questioned it. The young people of the time did, but that whole issue of segregation didn’t gain traction until President Kennedy was slain – and then all sorts of things that were simmering quietly suddenly became giant issues. You can blame or credit President Johnson for that.
Re: Jingles–to MY “ear”–they sound like Heller–CRC was more “Big Band”-ish and these jingles don’t seem to have that arrangement–ad to be blunt–sound kind of “wimpy”..