RADIO SEASONING HAS ITS BUMPS AND GRINDS
Over a course of four decades, have behind the mic at most of Texas' greatest radio stations in all of Texas'
biggest cities. To round things out, toss in a couple of the smallest broadcast outlets from tiny Texas' towns.
Elkin's Institute of Radio in Dallas released me into the world of radio in 1964. Elkin's make-believe radio
station was KEIR, which stood for Elkin's Institute of Radio. KASO AM was my very first time to be enrolled at a
real McCoy radio station behind a live mic and was truly a delight. Learned a whale of a lot about radio in a very short period.
KASO's coverage area is known as Shreveport-Minden, Louisiana. Minden was a straight shot due east
from my home town Dallas on I-20 a little over 200 miles away. KASO had two owners. BO COOK was General Manager and did the
morning show. COOK told me that he once was a deejay at WRR AM in Dallas.The other owner was DIGGER O'DELL. DIGGER was a very
short guy who was Chief Engineer. DIGGER came on like a philosopher of sorts.
KASO probably could've been a 24 hour operation, but COOK and O'DELL decided to sign-on at 7 am and sign-off
at 10 PM. KASO was a 1000 watt daytime operation. BO told me he would shell out $65 a week for me to become KASO's new
DJ. KASO had a nice studio with a new Collins board and three new turntables.
In the daylight hours, KASO had what was called a middle-of-the-road adult styled music format. Night-time
was the time to Rock On. One of my other duties was Music Director for the Rock 'n' Roll portion of KASO. During the week,
BO had me do two deejay shows every single day. Mid-days I spun the RAY C0NNIFF SINGERS. From 6-9 pm I twirled the ROLLING
STONES, 9-9:45 pm, tracked easy listening instrumental LPs. This gave me plenty time to rip the newscopy off the A-P wire
machine, put it together and then read it from 9:45 pm until sign-off at 10 pm. BILLY FULLER was a high school student
who did a two-hour deejay show called Teen Time which preceded my night-time Rock-n-roll revue show.
Really would like to hear from BILLY FULLER and find out what he's been up to these past 40
years. BILLY was only 16 and a teenager in high school who was a part-time DJ at KASO. Looked 16 myself, even though
I had just hit 21 in 1964. BILLY's two-hour deejay show led straight into 6 pm where I Rocked all of northeast Louisiana.
BILLY was very proud to be a KASO deejay. He bought some 4" stick-on letters at WEST-CLARK's hardware store.
FULLER slapped them in the middle of the rear window of his mom's 1960 Ford. JOHN WEST seemed to own every business in
Minden. There was even a WEST-CLARK Dodge dealership. Tried to bargain my 1963 Dodge Polara for a brand new 1965 model, but
had to rush back home to Dallas to get the best deal. When the new car bug bites, the only remedy is to purchase
a new set of wheels.
Zoomed to Dallas on a Friday night and roared back to Minden Saturday night in a brand new jet black
1965 Dodge Monaco sport coupe with all power, bucket seats and a console mounted shifter. This brand-new KASO deejay
was steppin' high, swingin' low. BILLY talked me into buying a set of KASO letter stickers just like his for my au courant l'auto.
Lived in a small three room furnished house in the gorgeous piney woods of northeast Louisiana for
the unheard fee of $65 a month, and that included all bills. Ate every kind of TV dinner on the grocer's frozen food shelves.
BILLY's
mom was a nurse at a dentist's office. Right then and there was where I lost one of my painful wisdom teeth.
KASO had no news department. We ripped-and-read the news from the Associated Press wire news machine
down the hall. At 9:45 PM, I had a fifteen minute newscast to prepare and read. This took us to the 10 PM sign-off time. We
mostly played 45 rpm records. The 45 rpm singles were only around 2 minutes long. These days, tunes can reach 5 or 6 minutes in duration.
When the Associated Press wire ink ribbon broke or ran out, we had to figure out how to change it between
records. That meant only about 60 seconds to run down the hall to the A-P wire machine and get back before the record ran
out. Absolutely no way to keep from getting ink all over your hands and anything else that you touched.
KASO had no production studio to tape commercials and no continuity writer to put them to words. In fact,
when I arrived on the scene, there was no cart machine in the building. All commercials were read live. About a month after
my arrival, BO bought a small record-playback cart machine for the control room. While I was on the air, the sales manager
got me to be his producer. This meant that he voiced his commercials on the floor mic in the live studio which was
to the left of the control room. I had to record his commercials on the audition channel of the console directly into the
control room cart machine. All this activity was going on while I was still trying to learn how to be a deejay on the program
channel.
BO assigned me the Joy Drive-in movie account to write the script, voice and produce its commercials
each week. That's how I learned to mix songs and audio by trial and error. Lots of error. BO told me to tape my commercials
after I signed-off the station at 10 PM. He said to be sure the transmitter filaments and voltage were both completely
turned off, so the audio wouldn't go out over KASO's airwaves.
Sundays, I did sign-on to noon. Taped and live religious programs were broadcast in 15 and 30 minute segments.
Three of the live broadcasts were same of the most comical things I ever witnessed grown-up adults do. A black gospel group
called the Minden Soul Stirrers had a 15 minute segment. These guys were the loudest screamers in the entire state of Louisiana.
They had one amplified guitar which out blasted anything CHUCK BERRY ever dreamed of. They were really good. Enjoyed them
very much. The term multi-tasking was invented by DJs in small market radio stations. We just never knew exactly what to call
it.
Another live Sunday morning act was a Pentecostal preacher who talked at the top of his voice for his
15 minutes of fame. His face lit up like RUDOLPH's shiny red nose. Next was a Church of Christ preacher who was very calm,
preached with a natural, but low-toned speaking voice. These two men of GOD had a family feud every Sunday
because the Pentecostal preacher always ran overtime into the Church of Christ guy's 15 minute spot of fame. This was much better
than watching TV.
There were 3 turntables in the control room. One t-t was used to play large electrical transcriptions (ETs)
which contained several produced public service announcements, such as the Army. These ETs were similiar in size to LPs,
but had public service announcements instead of regular tunes. Many of these psa's had their own jingles and were quite
entertaining. We placed 20 second psa cuts between live commercials that we read to break them up. A lot of the commercials
that I read on the air were straight from full page newspaper ads. This is a fantastic way for a radio greenhorn to learn
how to ad-lib. You may not think so at the time but will appreciate it on down the line.
Decided to move back home to Dallas and pursue radio closer to the home base. My parents drove down from Big
D on a Friday night to help me move.
BILL PIRTLE, who
owned KTER-1570 in Terrell, Texas, offered me the AM Drive deejay show for $60 a week. This was sign-on to 10 AM. Only about
20 hours a week behind the mic. KTER was a 250 watt daytime radio station about 25 miles east of Dallas. Kaufman county was
mostly flat cattle and farm land. KTER sent a strong signal which covered Dallas like a blanket. A few of us became seasoned
radio broadcasters the hard way, but we had a barrel full of fun while we did it. Nostalgia is fine for the soul and it is
rampant.
BOB POWLEDGE (Austin,
TX) rpowledge@austin.rr.com Subject: Early KABC San Antonio Question Jim-I recently came across your site at http://home.earthlink.net/~rosekkkj/jimroseremembers/id94.html and read with great interest some of the early history of KABC-AM San Antonio. Now I'm wondering if you or any of
your readers or contributors might be able to help me with a question regarding this station way back - during the 1930s....
My grandfather,
Kemp Cates, was an engineer for KABC San Antonio in 1938. This was the year my mother was born, and her birth certificate
lists the family address as being 811 E. Myrtle, in San Antonio. The family tradition holds that this address was the site
of the KABC transmission tower, and that the family lived at the site in either a trailer or temporary building at the time.
Here's where
my confusion comes in... not only is the site at 811 E Myrtle currently a vacant lot, but according to all the old maps I
can find of the city (like the Sanborn fire Maps), it has always been a vacant lot without any kind of structure. The site
is just northwest of the IH35 and 281 intersection, behind the now-defunct Peal Brewery.
Does anyone
know if KABC had its transmitter at this location in the 30s? If they did, what's the story? Thanks! Bob Powledge Austin,
TX
Boy, you hit me
with a biggie. Never dwelled in San Antonio until August 1968. That was when KBUC FM-AM lured me while the
World's Fair was in full swing in the City of Missions and Hemisfair Arena had just been built. Our column is far reaching,
due to email from as far away as Canada, California, New York and parts in between. If anyone can fill us in on that sixty-four
dollar question that BOB has put forth, all of us will be tingling with joy.
Wednesday, April
20th, I received this disturbing email from my KILT and most recently, KHJZ FM, buddy CHUCK TILLER.
CHUCK TILLER (Houston,
TX) chucktiller@yahoo.com I was admitted to the hospital, Sunday night with chest pains. Thought I had heart attack. I have 2 operations since
Sunday. Tiller
Let's pray for CHUCK's speedy
recovery from this malaise.
Jim Rose
Houston, Texas
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