The WLS Big 89 Montage – 1960-1979

As December 2015 drew to a close, ideas were flying around as to what ‘new’ programming I could come up with for my own internet radio show. The first, most logical choice, was a take on the memory of what WLS Chicago did every year after they played the Number One song of whatever particular year they were doing their Big 89 Countdown. The WLS Music Montage (it never really had a name) played immediately before Midnight of the new year. It was always timed out perfectly, so that Auld Lang Syne would air after the montage was over. And each year, WLS production would add a new assortment of song clips (I believe they were each Number One songs) for the current year.

So, I amused myself and listened to the original montage in its final version for 1988, and decided I wanted to do SOMETHING for HitOldies. Unfortunately, I already had my New Year’s Eve show done and it was too late to do it for New Year’s Eve 2015. But the idea stuck. I began work on the WLS Big 89 Countdown, choosing the year 1979 from the WLS Year End chart for that year. Why 1979? Partly arbitrarily, and partly because 1979 was the first year that I became very serious about my music. After all, your webmaster was all of 17 years old!

The countdown was completed in time for airplay the week of January 25, 2016. But it needed something. That something turned out to be an all-new Montage of the Music and Jingles that WLS played between the years 1960 and 1979.

This is NOT in any way a re-mix of the original montage. It is a brand new production, done by yours truly, just for the occasion. Can you tell how much I miss radio? Seventeen-plus minutes of musical heaven, an assortment of hundreds of splices, some parts of which make their own sentences, others are mixed just for effect. I’m not a creative genious, simply a guy who loves radio and the music of the Top 40 era.

Please listen, and enjoy!

Steve West
Owner
Airchexx.com