Dude Martin on KLX

The Dude Martin band was pretty popular in Northern California and the North West. In various incarnations he recorded several records for RCA-Victor. His biography, The Dude martin Story is well worth reading, there is also a documentary film. As you may know, much rockabilly originated not in Nashville, but the Sacramento Valley and the San Joaquin Valley in California. Dude Martin first was on air at 910 KLX-AM in 1932 with his first band, The Nevada Nite Herders. Martin’s show was called the “Round-up.”

KLX-AM shared a frequency, staff and equipment with KZM-AM in the 1920s. KZM had come up as experimental station 6XAJ getting the calls in 1921. The Tribune Newspaper was deeply involved with the station and through inexplicabel logic, was convinved to get it's own license for the share-time by KLX founder Preston Decker Allen in 1922.

In 1928 Allen wanted to sell his license and rather than sell to the Tribune, he sold out to a lcal buisnessman Leon P. Tenney. Tenney moved the station to 1300 as a share time with KRE-AM then 1370. By 1930 Tenneywas bored and sold out to Julius Brunton who already owned KJBS-AM. That last transfer was not authorized by the FRC (this is pre-FCC) and bang the FRC deleted the license. The void of KZM is what allowed KLX to flourish.

So in 1932 when Dude martin does his first mic break on KLX they have the new frequency of 880 to themselves and are running at 1000 watts from the 20th story of the Tribune building. For the era, this was a big stick.

The Nevada Nightherders were Martin's highschool band. The Nightherder name went away as the shows popularity grew. The band ballooned to 10 members and the band was known as 'Dude Martin's Roundup Gang.' Around then they At this point they moved over to 1260 KYA-AM in San Francisco where they stayed for a decade. On KYA his sponsor was Gene Compton's Restaurant. By 1939 he changed the name again to the Wild West Show Revue Gang.

In 1949 Martin took at stabe at television and hosted The Dude Martin Show on KGO-TV. It was popular enough that he eventually moved to Los Angeles to host the Hoffman Hayride taking over for the erratic and possibly manic Spade Cooley on KTTV-TV in that much larger market. That show ran into the 1950s. He died in 1991.

KZM and KLX go seperate ways

Oakland is overshadowed by San Francisco's coloful radio history and so, Oakland is not remembered for it's radio heritage, but it like many towns, had its notable events. This is more of a parable. Two stations that began very equal and with two very different outcomes.

Preston Decker Allen became interested in radio in 1910, and began working nights as a Western Union telegraph operator while still in highschool. His interest led him to get one of the first amateur radio licenses, 6PF that same year. By 1911 the industrious young man was working for Marconi operating his high-powered trans-Pacific telegraph station at Kahuku, Hawaii. He did a tour of duty in WWI and returned to marconi afterwards in 1921.

But working for marconi wasn't going to be enough. He left Marconi after 2 more years and started a radio operator's training school called the Western Radio Institute. (NBC announcer Bill Andrews was one of Allen's first students) About mid-1921, an experimental radio station was started as a part of the school's operation. Allen built the transmitter from spare parts and a couple of discarded French tubes he had acquired while in Europe with the Navy, and it was on the air as 6XAJ. 6XAJ became KZM in September that same year.

News material to the radio staiton was provided by the local newspaper, the Tribune. Or it was until Allen himself mistakenly convinced publisher Joseph Knowland that the Tribune should apply for its own license. Tribune went on the air as KLX July 25, 1922, sharing the single broadcast frequency of 360 meters with all other area stations. such was the curse of 1922...

At this point KLX was kind of faking it. It was operated with the same staff and equipment as KZM. For all intents and purposes they are the same damn 5 watt station. In 1923 they went to 100 watts still sharing everything like brothers at the Oakland Hotel .

But in 1923, the Tribune's new office building was finished. KLX moved off of KZM's couch and got it's own 500-watt transmitter and studios. The station even got it's own frequency at 590. Dejected Allen sold the KZM license to Leon P. Tenney, a Hayward businessman. Tenney turned KZM into a sharingtime with KRE in Berkeley, first on 1300 (breifly on 1370 too)

In January of 1930, Tenney sold the station to Julius Brunton and Sons, operators of KJBS. But the FRC decided that the transfer of licese to Brunton was unauthorized. They killed the KZM license on June 23, 1931.

KLX asurvived unharmed for 30 years. In 1959 the Oakland Tribune sold KLX to the Crowell-Collier Publishing Company. This company operated KFWB, a successful rock'n'roll station in Los Angeles, and KLX became KEWB and eventually KNEW. http://www.knew910.com/

All stations on one frequency

This was a brief but painful stage in radio. At first, radio broadcasting stations operated with an experimental amateur license, and with call signs such as 6XAJ. They could operate over a wide range of frequencies. Then in 1918 almost all licenses were yanked as a part of WWII. That wasn't repealed until 1922. (more some other time on the ones that were not yanked)

In the middle of all this time period the (DOC) The Department of Commerce made some regulations that went into effect on December 1, 1921. It was one of the earliest broadcast rules. It required all non-government broadcasting stations to obtain a limited commercial license. These new licenses came with new three letter call signs. So 6XAJ became KZM.
This new license also required all stations to broadcast on the single authorized frequency of 833 kHz. Most government and weather broadcasts were allocated on 619 kHz. Now the immediate problem with this dumbass idea is that radio stations can't operate simultaneously on this channel without causing interference. Try to imagine radio as the newest hottest fad at the time. Over 100,000 radios had already been sold. And now, they barely worked because of all the damn crosss-talk. So the owners of the stations met and had to agreed on a time-share schedule. in San francisco the above mentioned KZM not only shared time with KLX but also their transmitter!

It got a little better in January of 1922. The Secretary of commerce sponsored the first National Radio Conference. It was decided that high- power stations (above 500 watts) were assigned to 750 kHz, and low-power stations (below 500 watts) remained on 833 kHz. Each station got exclusive use of the frequency for several hours each day. It was an improvement but the rudimentary radios of the time could babrely discren between the two frequencies. Despite this, about 1.5 million radios had been sold by the end of that year.
This cluttering was absolutely crippling in some cities. In Washington D.C. there were at least 11 stations sharing that frequency. This includes WQAW, WJH, WDW, WHAQ, WPM, WIL, WEAS, WIAY, WDM, and WMU. When the regulation was first issued in 1921, there were only 28 radio stations on the air. But in the year 1922 the DOC issued 480 more licenses! This was becoming a problem. By 1925 there were more than seven hundred stations and Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of the Department of Commerce, had to block the further issue of licences.

By 1924, the AM band stretched from 550kHz to 1500 Khz. Three levels of power, 5000, 500 and 100 watts were established. These became the designations of "clear", "regional" and "local". Finally, the Radio Act of 1927 enabled the government (thru the FRC) the power to regulate the technical side of stations. Thus we traded set of headaches was traded for another.
early FRC map: http://www.eliillinois.org/00001_00/main/map1932/map1932.jpg