AM Radio in the '60's...what we would have missed

[Scastles]

Not all of us on this forum were fortunate enough to hear the breakthrough of rock radio in the '60's. I've always felt it was one thing to see the Beatles on Sullivan, but if AM Top 40 radio hadn't been around to reinforce that one night on TV in '64, would the outcome have been the same?
I also would like to know what station was the one to tune to? What jock might have been the one you listened to for the hits? The one that spoke to you. Everyone knew of Wolfman but there were so many others. I idolized a lesser known jock on WLS/Chicago, Gary Gears. He worked the overnight shift, and he played all the tunes I wanted to hear. He had the delivery and voice I would later emulate on the radio.
But in the end, before the constraints of todays radio, and the demise of rock radio as most know it, what station, what personality was the one?
And what would have happened to all of those Brit rock invaders if the radio hadn't been around?

[cjj]

Wow, hard to remember that far back. There were a lot of stations to listen to as a kid in the '60's in Southern California, the only one that comes to mind is "The Real Don Steele" on KHJ.

[jps]

WIXY 1260. The DJ I remember is Larry Morrow, although I know there were others I listened to, also.

[teb]

We listened to WLS and every night at 10:00 they would play the top three most requested songs. If there was something new out, it usually made it to the list or the batch of songs played on either side of the top three. We had those first-generation small transistor radios - the first thing I ever owned that used a 9-volt battery. If the weather was decent, we would go out in the back yard for better reception and standard procedure was to hold the radio up against your ear and crank up the volume (Me? Tinnitus? Never....but why are those crickets always following me around?) Curiously, I can still remember the smell of the plastic used in those early radios. Maybe it was the shell or maybe the circuit boards, but they had a distinctive plastic smell. Later, I got a Zenith "Circle of Sound" table-top radio. It had a 6" speaker, pointed straight up, with a plastic cone suspended above it to spread the sound all around the room. It was actually a really good sounding radio for that time and meant that we didn't have to go out in the yard.

I remember Dick Bionde and later Larry Lujack and little Tommy (of Animal Stories fame) but they're the only names I can still remember from LS. The whole experience was positively stone-aged by today's standards, but watching rock and roll grow up during a period when communication was much less sophisticated was incredibly exciting.

[kiramdear]

Big Daddy Tom Donahue was my man. KYA 1260, San Francisco

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KYA_(AM)

[jimk]

I listened to a local station KGAL 1580-AM, in Lebanon, OR and the DJ I remember had the goofy on air moniker of Charlie Chun, the Irish Chinaman. For a little station in a one-horse town like that one, KGAL was pretty hip for a while.
JimK

[FretlessOnly]

I may have just caught the tail end of the AM thang, as I was born in '63. We had 68 WRKO in Boston that played AM hits; now it's the hotbed of conservative talk radio. No further comment there, other than I don't listen to it. But it does carry Red Sox games on certain days, so I do tune it in on occasion.

My Mother used to listen to WJIB; things like "What are you doing for the rest of your life" played on the pan flute. The jazz joke there is "What are you doing with the breast of my wife," but I digress. I will say that my Mother's favorite song in about '78-'79 was "Margaritaville" and she had no idea that it was all about a drunk who stepped on a pop-tart. How I used that against her when I came home drunk at 16.

About '71, the FM thing really took over in Boston, and AM became the voice of, well, stuff I didn't want to listen to. But every now and again, when doing my job in western MA backin the late 90s, I'd be driving back to the Boston area and listening to old Bob Seger hits on AM radio (because that's all you'd get out there) and feeling very nostalgic for 1975-76.

[cjj]

Pop-Tart? Kids...

[rictified]

I may have just caught the tail end of the AM thang, as I was born in '63. We had 68 WRKO in Boston that played AM hits;

I grew up close to Worcester and have an LP called: 68/WRKO, Now Radio In Boston, 30 Now Goldens. (songs two years old or less sometimes back then were considered oldies) It's got some great stuff on it too. Little Girl, Syndicate of Sound, Laugh Laugh, Beau brummels. I Fought the Law, Bobby Fuller Four, No Good to Cry, The Wildweeds. Mr Dielingly sad, The Critters, Leader of the Pack, The Shangri-las, Lies, The Knickerbockers, all sorts of great tunes.
Anyway, I listened to WORC 1310 Worcester, MA It was a regional station but was a great one, Love Me Do was on the charts a year before The Beatles broke early in 1964, one of the DJ's had traveled to England to check out the Liverpool music scene and brought The Beatles back with him. I don't remember it unfortunately as I didn't really get into radio until The Beatles did break. But the second they broke I had my ear glued to it constantly. First was my father's tube AC-DC Motorola. I then also got a 6 transistor radio. I was a budding radio collector (still am, but have bloomed) so I took an old tube radio out of it's case and hooked up a 12" console TV speaker to it and used to lie behind the TV with my head in the back of the speaker part so I could hear the bass better. I guess I was a born bass player. I remember listening to the top 30 every Saturday hearing The Beatles, The Searchers, The Rolling Stones, Swinging Blue Jeans, The Animals, I could go on and on. I listened to the station until the burgeoning FM undergound scene started in Boston with WBCN during the late 60's. I still listened to AM radio sometimes however and still listen to it for oldies stations. There's a great independant oldies station in ware, MA called WARE on 1250, it has a very large play list.

[kenposurf]

KRLA/KFWB in LA
The Real Don Steele
Dave Hull
Dick Biondi
Jimmy O-Niel
Roger Christian

[shamustwin]

KRLA/KFWB/KHJ in L.A.
The above mentioned as well as Casey Kasem and Bob Eubanks.