Oddball ID collection

Some people collect recordings of station identification. The reputable tophour.com is collecting them systematically for example. But you already know about them.

But I found on Youtube some dude in Honolulu making odd actionless station ID videos. He holds up a station logo (if anything) and appears to record the ID live in that moment. He's posted dozens. You can examine his unending quest here.

What it reminded me of was that stagnant cardshow WNEW-AM ad I posted a few weeks back. Anyway I found it a very entertaining bastardization of the service.

Tallest Towers

We've all seen lists of the tallest buildings in the world. But "building" is a limitation. We've built radio towers far taller than any building. I found a list on Wikipedia that was very complete. Their stories are fascinating, but the first two are amazing as they trades places twice for the rank of tallest. Click the Header for more towers.

Warsaw Radio Mast (2118 feet) The full name of the facility was Radiofoniczny Ośrodek Nadawczy w Konstantynowie. It was the world's tallest structure until its collapsed. It still remains the tallest land-based structure ever built. Approximately ten years after completion of the mast, inspections revealed structural damage caused by wind-induced oscillations. On August 8th 1991. The mast collapsed due to a human error while replacing guy wires. The contractor and worker involved most directly were actually sentenced to prison time over the catastrophe.

KVLY/KTHI TV Mast : (2063 feet) After the collapse, the KVLY-TV mast outside Fargo, ND regained the title as the world's tallest structure. The call letters of the television station for which it was built were originally KTHI, the "HI" referring to the height of the mast.

The picture to the right is the WSM tower. It's only 878 feet by comparison, but when it was built, it was the tallest tower in the world. The tower was erected in 1932 and is still in use today. More here.

WSM radio acquired licenses on FM and Television in the following years. In 1986 WSMV-TV put up a tower that was one of the world's tallest. At 1,369 feet it's 60% taller than their old AM stick.

About Jack

It's been a couple weeks since WCBS realized the error of its' ways and I've had the time to digest it a bit. I think I can do this now without rubbing in the salt.

Jack for all the bad press it has received, has persisted. And in radio, a universe of ill-fated rube goldberg, long-shots -lasting four whole books is success. Free FM didn't last 3 and that too had Hollanders fingers all over it.

So that in mind, I think it's important to remember one thing about Jack. Over the last year only two stations dropped Adult Hits. WCBS will be the first Jack-branded station in the US to give up the ship. Only two Adult Hits stations of any kind have dropped the format. On January 8th WTDA dropped Ted-FM for talk, then the WCBS change. To my way of thinking, the format is here to stay.

Off Shore Radio

I read this great post here on some UK sea-bound pirates. I started thinking about my own interest and the passing reference I've made and thought a summary of off shore broadcasting was in order. Legal maritime radio is one thing, but there are plenty of radio stations (mostly pirates) that broadcast from off shore. There is a very complete list here:
...And here are the mostly legal early highlights:
1898 East Goodwin Lightship First Marconi tests in the Thames estuary
1902 Nathan Stubblefield broadcasts from the ship the Hartholdi in the Potomac River in Washington, D.C.
1907-09 The Great White Fleet in an attempt to exert a wider international influence, broadcasts to passing ships and to land based communities from a umber of ships: The Alabama, the Connecticut, the Georgia, The Illinois, The Kansas and Kearsarge to name a few.
1919 President Woodrow Wilson makes an Independence Day broadcast on 2380 kHz for the coastal areas of the US from the USS George Washington. More here.
1924 USS Leviathan Broadcasting several concerts from the Atlantic as "WSN"

1933. A scientific vessle, theBathysphere, Callsign ZFB1 broadcast descriptions of underwater seascape to bermuda. It'd be a footnote except that it was carried by the NBC mediumwave network.

1942 A navy vessel the Kron Prinz, was outfitted in the Caribbean with a powerful radio transmitter. The original "Kron Prinz" was allocated the callsign DPZ during the spark wireless era. This is somonewhat incongrouous as there was also a Kron Prinz decommissioned in 1919 and sold for scrap to the Boston Metal Company, yet another record I found indicates the ship was sunk in WWI.

The Brothers Highton

This was all Pre-Marconi. In the mid 1940s when the Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway started buying up telegraph patents to exclude others from the market. The two brothers Edward and Henry Highton, were early experimenters, innovators and inventors in the field of telegraphy. they bought Henry's ‘gold-leaf’ telegraph. It had a unique gold-leaf filament as an indicator in an air-filled glass tube that was moved left and right by an electro-magnet, using a single wire. It was delicate but functional, and more important salable.

They also employed him to circumvent the patents they didnt' own, specificly those owned by Cooke & Wheatstone. But after those competing patents expired in 1851 Highton went off to found a competitor to the Electric company. that's why we have non-compete clauses today. Free to make his own projects as of 1852, Henry too k an interest in sending telegraph signals over bodies of water. They called it trans-aqueous communication. And more here.

Edward published a book 'The Electric Telegraph: Its History and Progress,' based on their initial research. It outlined their experiments and summarized their results. It’s out of print and you can’t even find it at auction really, but Google was kind enough to scan and post for the world to read for free here. This is totally diferent than the book of the same title written by George BartlettPrescott eight years later.

They began by sinking bare wires in canals. They were attempting to measure the loss of power durring immersion. They wanted to first find the mathmatical law that governed the loss of current when no insulation was used. Ultimately the proved that telegraph signals couldn't be sent any signifigant distance without insulation. It seems intuitive now, but at some point sombody has to theorize, test measure and prove these things. More here.

At the time there wire insulation was primitive and often failed. Most wire was used bare. So what begat the question was when the Brits tried to use bare wire in very wet places, say India. India is very wet. and is criss crossed by canals and wetlands. so any wires must cross numerous water-ways. Dr. W.B. O'Shaughnessy, performed some experiments using iron rods and in some cases no metallic conductors at all. He succeeded in passing some signals, but found the enormous power consumption to be cost prohibitive. The Society of Arts gave him a medal for this.

The brothers Highton decided there were 3 methods to trans-aqueous communication. The first uses copper plates heavy gauge wire and a heavy consumption of voltage. The second uses more sensitive instuments that can discern what little signal is not lost to the water. the third is perfectly insulated wire. By 1973 wire insulation was much improved and much cheaper. this new insulation was a solution of vegetable tar and lead oxide. Henry, not sore at all wrote a letter to the times endorsing the improvement.

Radio on the TV

Radio advertises on television and vice versa. TV seems to survive the exchange pretty well. but radio, lacking entirely in visuals fails to make the translation. Radio shows make very poor TV programs. Howard Sterns TV show is terrible, and Rush was so bad he got cancelled. Locally even my ads for WMMR are truly terrible. They look awkward and dated. Despite all the research availabel today, these peopel have no idea what thsi ad does to their image. I'm ghaving trouble deciding ifit's better or worse than this spot is for 1130 WNEW-AM from the 1980s.

In In 1992, WNEW-AM became WBBR-AM running the buisness news format under the Bloomberg brand as it still does today.

Front Page Top Fold!

I was given fifteen minutes with Greg Lysons of The Eastern Conference Champions. Despite my stream of free-thinking profantity he continued to entertain my questions well beyond that window making for a nice 1500 word feature. My saintly patient editor saw fit to cut only one sentence.. "Real sports fans are always ok with gambling; so long as you are betting on them to win."

See if you can guess where it was: Feature right here!

AIRCHECK WEEK: DICK BIONDI

Dick was another early rock n' roller. Dick Biondi began his broadcasting career at WCBA in Corning, NY. Biondi spent two fame-building years at WKBW in Buffalo before moving in 1960 to WLS-AM.

Three years later he left Chicago for Los Angeles on KRLA, then turning around for a syndicated gig on the Mutual broadcasting system which put him on 125 stations, probably reachign more peopel than even on the 50,000-watt WLS-AM. In the late 60s he returnd to Chicago on WCFL-AM. He did a little time in the south, but felt the pull of the deep dish pie. He went back to Chicago again in 1985 on WJMK then an oldies outlet. He was cut when they flipped to Jack about a year ago. In November of last year WZZN 94.7 scooped him up and he's still rocking oldies there.

Dick Biondi was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1998. If you look carefully, you can still find the novelty record he recorded in 1964 “On Top of a Pizza,” it sold over 11,000 copies.

AIRCHECK WEEK: Coyote McCloud

Coyote McCloud was a popular radio disc jockey in Nashville, TN. His big fame came on his overnight rock program in the 1970s at WMAK. For three decades he's been on air in Nashville. he was also on WYHY, WWKX, WZPC, WRQQ and others. This clip is from his time on WQXI. He had three very notable career peaks. He wrote the theme to Wendys' "where's the beef" commercials. Hwe also did the voice over for the first few years of CMT. He also was one of the subjects of a CBS 48 Hours documentary in 1992 about "shock radio". Of course, much of the content of that special isn't that shocking today.

Today with cohost Cathy Martindale he hosts a morning show, Coyote & Cathy In The Morning on 97.1 WRQQ until fall of 2006. Their non-compete clause has kept them off air in Nashville since then.  This aircheck is from WMAK way back in 1973

*Update: WFMU came through for all of us and posted an MP3 of the "Where's the Beef" theme by Mr. McCloud. More here.

AIRCHECK WEEK: Weird Beard

This Weird Beard was a hyperactive rock DJ on WAKY-AM, and WBBF in the mid-sixties. His real name was Burt Markert. He left WAKY for a PD gig in Rochester, and quit radio to become a cop in Louisville. He died in 1995 of MS complications.This Weird Beard may not be your Weird Beard. It turns out that there were many different Weird Beards. Burt Markert has no connection to Bill Vermillion another Rock DJ of the same era who was Weird Beard in Orlando on WLOF-AM. Nor any relation to Russ "Weird Beard" Knight on KBOX, WICC and KLIF Dallas in the 1960s and 1970s.  Also unrelated is Windy Craig "The Weird Beard" another mid 60s radio personality. His real name was Fred Winston he did time at WOLF and WLS-AM. That particular Weird Beard also set a a Ferris wheel riding record of 183 hours 2 minutes.  Jim Rose wrote an article about the Weird beard discontinuity phenomenon. You can read it here.

*Audio from http://www.79waky.com/airchecksweirdbeard.htm

102.3 WMFX, the Fox also has a Weird Bread on staff today. He's an ex-truck driver who has been spinning classic Rock at "The Fox" for the last decade. You see "Weird Beard" was a popular nickname for hippies that grew beards. In the shedding of the stiff clean-cut fifties look the beard had a renaissance which is being revisited by a new generation of clueless hipsters today.

AIRCHECK WEEK: Jim Randolph

"Big" Jim L. Randolph rose to fame in the 1950s and became an Los Angeles staple by the sixties. There are precious few airchecks of the man but they are worth finding.

He helped break the careers of R&B artists like Booker T & The MG, Larry Bright, and KoKo Taylor.He was the first African-American to attend the Oklahoma University School of Communications. He was a program director at KSAN in San Francisco, CA; and KLIF in Dallas, TX where he was also rated a Top 5 Lone star state DJ in October 1955. By 1969 he was booking talent for the Watts Summer festivals.

This clip is from KGFJ, in Los Angeles but he was also on WYNR, in Chicago, IL;  WERD in Atlanta others. More here. There was a "Big" Jim Randolph at KNOK in 1956, but I can't verify it's the same gentleman. An issue of Radio Daily-Television Daily lists him as replacing Dean McNeil in April of 1957, but gives the calls incorrectly as KNOX in  Dallas confusing the trail.

His obituary in Record World was brief and understated.

Jim Randolph, noted broadcasting executive, died Sunday, May 3, at his home in Los Angeles. Program Director of KGFJ (LA) and for the Tracey Broadcasting chain at the time of his death, Randolph had enjoyed success in several major markets as both air personality and executive. He achieved notable success in the Dallas, Fort Worth, Chicago and Los Angeles markets. A native of Oklahoma, "Big Jim" attended Morehouse College and the University of Oklahoma. Most recently he had guided KGFJ from "also-ran" to one of the four or five most important facilities in the Southern California market areas. Randolph is survived by his wife, Lillian, their six children, all of who reside in Los Angeles, and by his parents who live in Oklahoma City.

KGFJ was very progressive for it's day having an integrated staff. Their staff included other legends like Magnificent Montague, Johnny Magnus, Herman Griffith, Jim Wood, and Hunter Hancock. He died of a heart attack in 1970 at the age of 39.



 ***AUDIO EXPIRED***

*POST UPDATED 5/9/2020
*Anyone want to share a Jim Randolph aircheck?

AIRCHECK WEEK: The Black Pope

What is there to say about the Legendary Black pope. He was an obscure but amazing radioman, a DJ of indescribable temperament and ego. I first heard a clip of him on WPRB courtesy of Mr. Jon Solomon. But his audio originates on the infamous WFMU Radio Archival Oddities Vol. 2 CD.

Online references are many, but information is thin. He was a cult-ish popular DJ in Beaumont, TX and New Orleans, LA during the 1970s. I wish I knew more but truly his is a mystery. Moistworks name checked him (archived copy here).

Mo' Music, mo' reviews

Stranded in Stereo Issue 6 is up.

Three new record reviews, and more coming.

Panthers - The Trick

The Bad Plus - Prog

...and one from the SIS Blog

The Beast of Eden - End times

A Repreive!

Even though only this morning Sound Exchange was still claiming that the webcast royalty rates are "Etched In Stone." Mere hours later they've turned 180 degrees. They've now claimed infront of congress that they will not enforce the new royalty rates.

Wow.

Take a deep breath. New rates have not even begun to be drafted.

The stormclouds have gathered, will they shitstorm, or merely pass?

Porky Chedwick

Porky Chedwick, was a big Rock n' roll DJ in Pittsburgh, he called himself"The Daddio of the Raddio, " "The Platter Pushin' Papa, " "The Bosshoss," among other things. Chedwick did much of what Alan Freed got credit for. He was one of the earliest white DJs to play race records. (he called them dusty discs) Many credit Chedwick with being the father of "Oldies" radio....And he's got a schnoz like Jimmy Durante.

Porky Chedwick was born George Chedwick in 1918, 8th of ten children to a steel working father. Is there a more quinnesential Start for a pennsylvanian? the nickname "Porky" predates his radio tenure. He claims it was given to him by his own mother. Harsh woman if that be the case. More here.

He began his career at 860 WHOD-AM in Homestead (now WAMO-AM) in 1948. He started off doing play-by-play and eventually segued to music. His program became massively popular. Once in 1961 he did a broadcast from the Stanley Theater. An estimated 10,000 teens flooded the streets, and the police had to put an end to the broadcast so that traffic could move through Pittsburgh. He left WAMO for KQV in 1972, and passed through WNRZ and WWSW before ending up at WLSW in 2000.

By the early 1950s, R&B labels had herd of Porky. They didn't much care that he was white. They figured that Porky who was so good to their old R&B material might be interested in new releases. Porky went for it, but he stayed true to oldies and rock & Roll, and unlike Freed, never went the payola route. Forty years later he told the Tribune-Review "I wouldn’t even play Elvis Presley’s version of Hound Dog. I played Big Mama Thornton’s." He took a lot of heat in his day for corrupting white kids with naughty naughty black music.

Porky Chedwick has been recognized on the floor of the Senate for his pioneering contributions to radio and rock and roll (and countless times around Pittsburgh, including a day-long 50th anniversary oldies concert called "Porkstock." He is 88 years old today and still broadcasting, he has a program Sunday nights on 103.9 WLSW in Scottdale, Pennsylvania.

The Album Cover

It seems almost ridiculous now, but at one point all mass-produced music sold at retail had no cover art. they were sold much the way that white label test presses arrive at radio stations. Except instead of blank glossy white sleeves they sold in plain brown sleeves. Alex Steinweiss put an end to that. Seems like a no-brainer now. A book of his original album art here.

Some of the plain brown sleeves had simple logos on them but nothing like what we think of as "album art" today. More here.

In the year 1939, Alexander Steinweiss proposed to Columbia that maybe original artwork might spruce up those plain brown 78rpm sleeves. Before that an ornate font or logo was as edgy as the "art" got. The new look moved units. as soon as labels realized that album art can drive sales, all albums had art. People say today that labels are hard to adapt, but that's not true. If they can see the money, they move. More here. The first album featuring actual cover art was “Smash Song Hits by Rodgers and Hart” sold records. [Anyone have a scan?] That sealed the deal.

Eight years later Steinweiss invented the paperboard jacket that protected vinyl records from scratches and chips. it also made a more robust canvas for the artwork. The previous paper sleeves were too delicate. His innovation has been the industry standard for half a century. He often signed his work, something that rarely happens now. More on that here.

He was the art director for Columbia at the age of 23, that year, and continued to do album art until 1973 when he went into semi-retirement. but between 1939 and 1945, he designed all the covers for the label. Around 1950 he started doing art for Remington records, Decca, London and Everest.

The Annoying Music Show

This is a one of a kind music program brought to us by our good buddies at WBEZ and syndicated via NPR. More here.

They dont play novelty songs, dont play the meowing cats xmas album. It's not like Dr. Demento. It's all about the culturally banal music that surrounds us. Bad funeral soloists, dead serious but atrocious polka covers of 1980s new wave hits. It's music that commits cultural sacrilege against our forebearers.

The Annoying Music Show presents the most awful music ever recorded and is now heard on National Public Radio stations across the U.S. Its flagship station is Chicago Public Radio.
Host and producer Jim Nayder vows that no annoying music is tested on animals just on WBEZ listeners.

How annoying is it? I mean it's actually aired in a major metropolitain area on a big flagship public radio affiliate. Well they play Jerry Lewis on purpose and that's proof enough for me. the insidiously annoying program has persisted long enough to produce 4 CDs of pain-producing music. Click here if you dare.

SUNDAY EXTRA

FAKE STEVE JOBS

CALLS OUT THE BIZ

"The music companies are in a dying business, and they know it. Sure, they act all cool because they hang around with rock stars. But beneath all the glamour these guys are actually operating two very low-tech businesses. One is a form of loan-sharking: they put up money to make records, then force recording artists to pay the money back with exorbitant interest. The other business is distribution. They’ve got big warehouses and they control the shipment of little plastic boxes that happen to have music in them."

Oh damn. Infamatory, but largely accurate. With record sales in free fall, (down 15% in Q2 2007) The manuver by Universal to not renew their iTunes contract cannot be a true position. It's tactics. Legit digital download sales are up, sales of CDs are down... It's too late to back off now.

Insects Vs. Radio

It's not the kind of story you read very often. Locusts destroy crops, killer bees kill small children and annoying dogs, cockroaches crawl into peoples ears... they do not normally attack radio stations. In the end it was

Insects: 1, Radio: 0

A Swedish radio station in the town of Ystad, "Radio Active", was forced off the air by a plague of insects. The problem arose after thousands of freshly hatched insects caused Radio Active's broadcasting equipment to malfunction."

The staff of Radio Active was assaulted by a swarm of flies. Apparently a prior swarm had laid eggs inside a storage shed near the studio. Station Manager Andreas Narsell was brave enough to open the door to the shed to investigate and found the shed crammed full. The station had to remain off the air for three hours while new equipment was installed. http://www.radioactive.se/

"Thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of black flies came flying out. The whole thing felt like a Hitchcock film."

The Bettini Reproducer

I covered in great depth last year some of the major developments in popular turntable technology. In not-so-popular turntable tech arena there was a man named Gianni Bettini, a native Italian and renowned audiophile. More here. He made a number of high-end phonographs that are highly sought after today. He invented a playback device which improves the sound quality of recordings; The Micro-reproducer. There were many models and refinements but it all circulated around the isolation of the stylus, a multi legged unit he called a "spider." most of his inventions were marketed toward what would later be considered audiopiles. One of his later inventions was a Universal Speed indicator. A device that aided the fine adjustment of a phonography motor. More here.

In the 1890s He was a New York socialite, living in the swanky central park south neighborhood, what is now in the center of Midtown on the edge of the Theater district. It was there that he operated his New York phonograph laboratory. He made of extrordinary recordings of the Pope, mark Twan and President Benjamin Harrison. Bettini cylinders are among the rarest in existence. His catalog of opera recordings was 12 pages long, and the cylingers cost $6 when Edison cylinders cost under a dollar. He was selling to a specific clientele.

Before WWI he brought many of his rare recordings to Europe. During the war most of them were destroyed leading to their obscurity. He died in 1938 in San Remo, Italy.

Group Harmony Review

New York City was an early adopter of Rhytm & Blues music for radio, Dr. Jive, Alan Freed, Jocko Henderson, Hal Jackson all took to the air in that city. WMCA played black R&B artists alongside rock n' roll in the mid fiftes, and WFUV debuted The Time Capsule Show in 1963. (TCS itself being popular enough to be syndicated on WRTI via tape.

TCS came to and end in 1977, becoming the Group Harmony Review was already established, and survives today. I cant emphasize that point enough, since they out live all others...

Group Harmony Review has now been running for 40 years on WFUV. That makes it the longest running rhythm and blues radio show in America. Dan Romanello began hosting the programin 1983 continuing the tradition as it's firsts hosts Joe Marchesani and Tom Luciani intended. He gives the background on the artists he plays featuring popular singles and obscure cuts side by side. Miss a week? Listen to past shows in The WFUV Archives.

Thurl Ravenscroft

I was browsing the perpetually entertaining WFMU Beware of the Blog. And read a spectacular post aboutThurl Ravenscroft, the famous bass singer. He was the voice of Tony the Tiger and sang the Xmas tune "You're a mean one Mr. Grinch." He had a notable singing career, and has a nice long entry at imdb. As I always do, I begin to thing... I bet he started in radio.

Thurl's career began on radio in the mid-1930s. He was in artschool and starting to get some die work in theatre, and doing vocals. Then he scored a regular gig as Grandpa Hortle on The Goose Creek Parson, radio show. [I cant find anything about this show.. anyone?] CBS Radio network picked up the show for syndication and carrie dit three nights a week. The show lasted a few more years, but thurl had already bolted. He left to sing at The Kraft Music Hall backing up Bing Crosby, as part of the Paul Taylor Choristers. Download here at Wilderworld Blog.

It there that Thurl first met Spike Jones then just a wacky member of the NBC Studio Orchestra. Spike would later collaborate with Thurl and later tapped him to perform on a now cultish Halloween themed horror/comedy LP called Spike Jones in Stereo. (A.K.A. Spooktacular in Screaming Sound.) More here.

Later in his career he cut colo albums, and eventually scored hsi most famous roles as the lead vocal on the Dr. Suess Xmas cartoon in 1966 his esteemed perennial gig as Tony the Tiger. NPR did a great biography show of him afterwards. You can hear it here . Everyone starts in radio.

Totally off topic

There's been much in the way of news lately vyying for my attention, but instead I've been grabbed by a late night DJ on KKDA-AM in Dallas.

DivShare File - KKDA-AM.wav
or here
http://www.supload.com/sound_confirm.php?get=722399222.wav
or here:
http://www.zshare.net/audio/2543726e8905fc/


Damn that man sounds like Wolfman Jack.
Who the hell is that?