Wink Martindale, 98 KFWB Los Angeles | 1965

Wink Martindale and Elvis Presley

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  • Wink Martindale, 98 KFWB Los Angeles, 1965
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Description

Wink Martindale is a well-known personality, not only
in radio but as a TV game show host. In fact, Martindale has been part owner of a TV production company and he is also
an artist, with five songs that hit the Billboard Hot 100
chart, all in the 1950s.

His first love has always been radio. He broke into the business
in his hometown of Jackson, Tenessee at 17 years old at station
WPLI, moved on to WTJS and then WDXI before taking on the morning
show in Memphis at WHBQ, where he met and befriended Elvis Presley.
That was in 1954. Former WHBQ Program Director Jack Parnell once told me that his
friend Wink always said he had the most fun at WHBQ…
He later broke into TV there, at WHBQ-TV, hosting
his own dance show. Wink Martindale became the morning man at KHJ
Los Angeles in 1959, a full 6 years before Bill Drake and “Boss Radio” arrived,
and from there moved on to KRLA and finally KFWB in 1962.

Of course, Wink had great success in his career through the 1970s and 1980s
but this aircheck is from 1965.

Courtesy of Big Apple Airchecks, here’s Wink Martindale on the old “Color Radio”
98 KFWB, from 1965.