I was too young for the Golden Age of radio drama (although
I’ve heard plenty of great Old Time Radio as an adult), but I was right on time
for the Golden Age of Top 40 radio. I don’t know exactly when FM radio became
popular, mostly in the late Sixties and early Seventies, I think, but in the
late Fifties and early Sixties, we were all about AM radio, baby. That was the
only band on our car radios and the little transistor radios we carried around
in our hip pockets. The sound quality may not have been great, but we listened
to them all the time anyway.
My favorite station was KXOL, 1360 on your radio dial in Fort Worth. There were two popular Top 40 stations in Fort Worth, the other one being KFJZ, 1270 AM. You had your KXOL guys, and you had your KFJZ guys. I was a KXOL guy, through and through. There was also a Top 40 station in Dallas, KLIF, but to be honest, I didn’t know anybody who listened to it. Maybe their signal didn’t get over into our part of the country very well.
KXOL had some history to it. George Carlin and Jack Burns worked there as DJs. Bob Schieffer was part of the news department. A couple of national number one hit songs, “Hey Baby” by Bruce Channel and “Hey, Paula” by Paul & Paula, were recorded at a nearby sound studio and had their debuts on KXOL. Paul & Paul were actually named Ray Hildebrand and Jill Jackson and became Christian music artists later on. I saw them perform live at the church I attended, and I’m pretty sure they still sang “Hey, Paula”.
I didn’t always get to listen to what I wanted, though. My dad was a TV repairman, and sometimes I’d go with him when he made his service calls. He listened to a country music station, KBOX (I don’t recall the frequency), and of course the announcers pronounced it just as you’d expect, kaybox, except when doing official station IDs. I didn’t really mind, though. I’ve always been able to listen to just about any kind of music.
During the summers, I spent a lot of time at my aunt’s house in Blanket, Texas, and while I was there I listened to KBWD out of Brownwood. It still exists, but it’s a country station now instead of Top 40 like it was in those days. I remember sitting on the porch of her house with a transistor playing “Light My Fire” or “If You’re Going to San Francisco” while I was reading paperbacks or going through my aunt’s old copies of THE SATURDAY EVENING POST and reading all the fiction.
Another summer, I pretty much lived at my sister’s house, and that was the year I started listening to “Music ‘Til Dawn”, the all-night Easy Listening/Adult Contemporary program I did a blog post about several years ago. Like I said, I enjoyed many different kinds of music and loved what I heard on that program on KRLD out of Dallas.
One thing I liked to do during that era was to turn down the sound late at night, press the radio to my ear, and slowly go through the dial, trying to see how many stations I could hear, and from how far away. When I caught the signal skip just right at night, I was able to hear St. Louis and Chicago pretty regularly, and of course XERF came blasting in from across the border in Mexico. It was all English-language programming, mostly religious, but it didn’t have to abide by FCC regulations.
Along about the same time, I became a fan of WFAA, a Dallas station that was Adult Contemporary during the day and talk radio at night. It was a sister station of WBAP, a country station in Fort Worth, and they had an odd frequency-sharing arrangement. Part of the day, WFAA was at 570 and WBAP was at 820. Then, after a certain number of hours, they would switch frequencies. I never knew why they did this. I’m sure there was some sort of business or regulatory reason. But it made keeping up with them a little difficult. Eventually, WFAA settled into the 570 frequency, and WBAP took over the 820 frequency permanently, where it still is, I believe. WFAA radio is long gone. But I was a regular listener, especially during college, when I seldom missed the late night talk show hosted by Ed Busch.
Radio lost a lot of its charm once I got older and the FM band dominated the industry, although I was a fan of KOAI (“the Oasis”), a smooth jazz station that was in Dallas for a while. And when our daughters were young and I was driving them to school and various activities during the Nineties, I listened to a lot of Top 40 again, only it was their Top 40, not mine. I liked quite a few of the songs, though. These days, we have satellite radio in the car, and I listen to smooth jazz, New Age, classic rock, metal, whatever I’m in the mood for at the moment. Music doesn’t play nearly as big a part in my life as it once did, but still, when the right song comes on the radio, I turn it up. And now and then . . . if I’m by myself . . . and if I hear the opening chords of Three Dog Night’s “Joy to the World” . . . yeah, that’s me bellowing out “Jeremiah was a bullfrog!” at the top of his lungs like an idiot. A happy idiot.
My favorite station was KXOL, 1360 on your radio dial in Fort Worth. There were two popular Top 40 stations in Fort Worth, the other one being KFJZ, 1270 AM. You had your KXOL guys, and you had your KFJZ guys. I was a KXOL guy, through and through. There was also a Top 40 station in Dallas, KLIF, but to be honest, I didn’t know anybody who listened to it. Maybe their signal didn’t get over into our part of the country very well.
KXOL had some history to it. George Carlin and Jack Burns worked there as DJs. Bob Schieffer was part of the news department. A couple of national number one hit songs, “Hey Baby” by Bruce Channel and “Hey, Paula” by Paul & Paula, were recorded at a nearby sound studio and had their debuts on KXOL. Paul & Paul were actually named Ray Hildebrand and Jill Jackson and became Christian music artists later on. I saw them perform live at the church I attended, and I’m pretty sure they still sang “Hey, Paula”.
I didn’t always get to listen to what I wanted, though. My dad was a TV repairman, and sometimes I’d go with him when he made his service calls. He listened to a country music station, KBOX (I don’t recall the frequency), and of course the announcers pronounced it just as you’d expect, kaybox, except when doing official station IDs. I didn’t really mind, though. I’ve always been able to listen to just about any kind of music.
During the summers, I spent a lot of time at my aunt’s house in Blanket, Texas, and while I was there I listened to KBWD out of Brownwood. It still exists, but it’s a country station now instead of Top 40 like it was in those days. I remember sitting on the porch of her house with a transistor playing “Light My Fire” or “If You’re Going to San Francisco” while I was reading paperbacks or going through my aunt’s old copies of THE SATURDAY EVENING POST and reading all the fiction.
Another summer, I pretty much lived at my sister’s house, and that was the year I started listening to “Music ‘Til Dawn”, the all-night Easy Listening/Adult Contemporary program I did a blog post about several years ago. Like I said, I enjoyed many different kinds of music and loved what I heard on that program on KRLD out of Dallas.
One thing I liked to do during that era was to turn down the sound late at night, press the radio to my ear, and slowly go through the dial, trying to see how many stations I could hear, and from how far away. When I caught the signal skip just right at night, I was able to hear St. Louis and Chicago pretty regularly, and of course XERF came blasting in from across the border in Mexico. It was all English-language programming, mostly religious, but it didn’t have to abide by FCC regulations.
Along about the same time, I became a fan of WFAA, a Dallas station that was Adult Contemporary during the day and talk radio at night. It was a sister station of WBAP, a country station in Fort Worth, and they had an odd frequency-sharing arrangement. Part of the day, WFAA was at 570 and WBAP was at 820. Then, after a certain number of hours, they would switch frequencies. I never knew why they did this. I’m sure there was some sort of business or regulatory reason. But it made keeping up with them a little difficult. Eventually, WFAA settled into the 570 frequency, and WBAP took over the 820 frequency permanently, where it still is, I believe. WFAA radio is long gone. But I was a regular listener, especially during college, when I seldom missed the late night talk show hosted by Ed Busch.
Radio lost a lot of its charm once I got older and the FM band dominated the industry, although I was a fan of KOAI (“the Oasis”), a smooth jazz station that was in Dallas for a while. And when our daughters were young and I was driving them to school and various activities during the Nineties, I listened to a lot of Top 40 again, only it was their Top 40, not mine. I liked quite a few of the songs, though. These days, we have satellite radio in the car, and I listen to smooth jazz, New Age, classic rock, metal, whatever I’m in the mood for at the moment. Music doesn’t play nearly as big a part in my life as it once did, but still, when the right song comes on the radio, I turn it up. And now and then . . . if I’m by myself . . . and if I hear the opening chords of Three Dog Night’s “Joy to the World” . . . yeah, that’s me bellowing out “Jeremiah was a bullfrog!” at the top of his lungs like an idiot. A happy idiot.
