This is from a tape donated to us by Tom Konard’s “Aircheck Factory“. Undoubtably, Tom used only the original master recording for his aircheck service.
The Details:
This recording opens with a weather report… where it’s 17 degrees in St. Louis! It’s the tail end of KXOK news with Frank Linn. Get it? Frank-linn? Ok. Maybe it wasn’t.
After the Top Hour ID, it’s back to KXOK music with Jack Elliot. Once again, this had to be telescoped to comply with copyright law. We do apologize for that, but everything else including commercial breaks and every word spoken in this recording made from 5:00 to 6:00 PM is there.
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The jock here has a reverb-on-demand button so he can emphasize certain words or phrases. Modern listeners would probably consider this annoying but it was a gimmick in the radio stations’ toolbox. Another thing KXOK has… another gimmick… Tookie, the KXOK weather bird live from the Radio Park Weather Tower. Seems as if every hit music station in the early 60s had some sort of gimmick to keep listeners guessing.
We noticed that many of the hits played in this, like Paul Anka’s “Story of my Love” really didn’t have much lasting power. Perhaps they would have, if not eclipsed by so many of the major artists later in the decade. This aircheck just reeks of 1950s, and most of the jingles, both of the radio station and most of the commercial products still have a big band sound or lots of keyboard stuff reminiscent of the 1950s era.
This is a very unique aircheck, in that the era this was recorded from, was in between what Top 40 radio started out as, and the two different major styles that became mainstream later on. Those being the Drake “Boss Radio” sound, used almost exclusively in the RKO General chain of stations, and the ABC chain of stations with their reverb and more personality approaches such as WABC, WLS, et al.
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…a remarkably good quality air check from 1961….very clear and clean considering how old it is. Yes…a tad ‘corny’ however, radio was going from traditional middle of the road “announcer” styles to “disk jockey’ personas. At the time, all of the little ‘gimmicks’ were considered groundbreaking into radio personality world. The $1.00 prize was worth about 8.50 in today’s dollars…..and you could buy all kinds of things for 8.50 equivalence back in the day. remember….most candy bars were a nickel , cokes were a dime…burgers were well under 50 cents……45’s cost about 49 cents…albums 1.50 …….so winning the News Flash $1.00 was a decent prize.