Houston Retro Radio
A Message from Captain JackKILT DJ Captain Jack appears on my "Night in the Life of KILT" recordings in the column to the left. Below is a message from Captain Jack and the responses his message generated. Received April 30, 2009 Dear Grady McAllister, I noticed on your Houston radio web site the following comment….
FYI….I air checked my show EVERY NIGHT, not for posterity, but to listen and critique when I’d get off the air…then, plan a better show the next night. I hope it sounded like I was having fun….’cause I did, every night. You’re kind to include me as part of your web site and Houston radio history. ‘Captain Jack’ Rick
Candea, Response to the above messageOn May 1, 2009. Robert B. McEntire wrote:
Robert B. McEntire was one of the main newscasters at KILT from 1967 until late 2008. On May 1, 2009, Bill Young wrote:
I also received messages from former listeners... On May 11,2009, Greg Todd wrote:
On May 16, 2009, Cher Ferretti Poff wrote:
On May 18, 2009, Cher Ferretti Poff wrote:
Note: Cher's Cook Off photo is below. Your can click on it for a larger, higher quality version. |
Below: Shot near the Flagship Hotel, the young woman was on spring break in 1981.
Technical note: I shot this using a standard 50 lens. I mention this because many digital SLR users would never think of using anything but a zoom.
When I bought my first 35mm SLR in 1980, it was a Sears camera made by Ricoh, and it came with a fast normal lens, not a zoom. I used it for most of the Galveston seawall photos on the Radio Home Page. The normal lens is good for emphasizing a main subject while throwing a background out of focus.
I kept the background out of focus by using a low F-stop number. In the background are the rocks and surf below the Galveston seawall.
his is one of the songs that revived my interest in current music in the early 80's. I'm sure this band never appeared on any best-dressed lists, but there is no song quite like this one.
By the way, the black and white footage at the beginning depicts Johnnie Ray, a singer young women idolized in the early 50's.
I have only just now broken down the lyrics and figured out all the things mentioned in the song. Before now, all I knew was that the song was about Eileen and her dress, and that the song was very, very Irish
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Summer turns you upside downTo help get us into an '80's mode of mind, below are videos of three my favorite songs by The Cars, all of them shot live in Houston. I was a little slow in getting used to The Cars. My first Cars album was Heartbeat City in 1984, their last commercially successful LP. That was the year I started to catch up on music after neglecting it for several years. And it happened to be a very good year for pop music. Long time rock critic Robert Christgau wrote of of Heartbeat City:
The two main band members were about my own age, but The Cars seemed to be aiming mainly at teenagers. I had first seen a Cars record while I was still at KIOX in Bay City in the late 70's. I had thought, "What a clever name. All teenagers think about cars." By 1984 the band had matured enough for me to take them seriously. "Magic" from Heartbeat City is one of those songs I never get tired of. It's a car driving song if there ever was one. It is not about any particular subject. It alludes to everything that is exciting: The midnight hour, the summertime, summer magic, merry-go-rounds, and much more that is not specifically mentioned. For someone my age, to combine the words "summer" and "magic" so prominently can even suggest an old fashioned movie with Hayley Mills.The whirling techno sound at the beginning of the song -- barely audible on the video -- is the same sound a flying saucer makes whenever it hovers over your roof and takes you aboard for a ride. Likewise, "Magic" whisks you away into an alternative universe where anything good can happen. "Magic" plays on, and you emerge as the magician who drives and finally arrives at Heartbeat City. What took you so long? Grady McAllister July 12, 2009 |
And now you find yourself in '82,
The disco hotspots hold no charm for you,
You can't concern yourself with bigger things,
You catch the pearl and ride the dragon's wings
— Asia, Heat of the Moment (1982)
Above: Galveston in 1980. The Last Days of Disco had begun.
Above: A huge KLOL banner high above Galveston's East Beach, 1983. Click for the complete picture. Photo by Grady McAllister.
Oiler Mania in 1980
Cher Ferretti Poff shot the photo below at the height of the 1980 Oiler Mania. It shows an Oilers rally at the Astrodome. Cher photographed numerous public events involving Houston radio air personalities. She sent her photo from Lakeland, Florida.
I never recorded a ball game myself, but a legend in my family is that my father once made a wire recording of a Rose Bowl in which a player ran the wrong way. That wire recording apparently slipped through the cracks long ago. Maybe somebody can advise me exactly which game that would have been.
However, please don't send me a ball game recording unless it is a an original recording of a game which has spawned gigantic legends. I have never personally been a heavy follower of the sports scene, and I don't want it to be a major focus for this site.
Nonetheless, in the year 1980 you had to be living in the proverbial cave not to be swept up in Oiler Mania. It was everywhere you went.
The Houston Oilers fight song was so
catchy, I caught Rush Limbaugh playing it over a decade later.
Below: The Galveston seawall, a summer Sunday at dawn in 1982.
Mainly '80's
DANCING WITH MYSELF: Below is Galveston's Hut Club at Stewart Beach in1982.
"For all the dreams and schemes, Click here for the complete lyrics This page includes radio recordings from New Years Eve, 1979, to the early 90's. Winds of Change in the '80'sOn June 24, 2009, Bill Young wrote:
Ad for Scorpions concert, 1985 I set up this Mainly '80's page so I could put more emphasis on that exciting decade. In the mid 80's, I was entering into a Second Youth after pretending to be a middle aged adult for several years. For one thing, I was paying more attention to current music and was surprised to find it as good as the music of 60's and 70's. I found The Scorpions worthy of special attention, and I have several albums by that German band. Let's all thank Bill Young for sharing this material. Personally, I can still remember other Bill Young music promotions from an earlier period. I am thinking of some ads which I did not record and which are probably lost to history that are nonetheless part of the mental soundtrack for the days of my youth. As for my personal aircheck collection, the only Bill Young concert ads I know about are the ones for Jimi Hendrix and for the Fever Tree. Both are on the KILT Ron Foster aircheck for August 4, 1968. Bear in mind that those commercials were cut almost two decades before that Scorpions ad. As Bill pointed out in an email, his full blown production style was not yet developed at that time. There may be other concert ads buried among my airchecks which I have not yet noticed. One thing I hope to do eventually is to go through all of my long recordings and cull out all the ads (especially local ads) and newscasts. They would be listed separately from the long items from which they are are cut. It's hard to find the time for all that. If you know how to edit mp3 audio and would like to contribute to this site, feel free to edit out some short items and send them to me. If you have worked with mp3 at all, you'll find it easy to learn to edit on a computer. It is definitely easier than using a razor blade to attack a 10.5 inch tape reel on an Ampex as big and as old as the proverbial dinosaur. The program I recommend is called Audio mp3 Editor. I have downloaded trials of other programs, but I found them all comparatively cumbersome Since, 2004, I have used Audio mp3 Editor to record and edit hundreds of hours of material, mainly educational cassettes going as far back as the 70's. Now I have my entire audio library on a single hard drive, and I keep a back up in my car. Grady McAllister Revised November 21, 2009 KAUM drives us to the edge of the 80's: "Let's Go!"KAUM,
Houston, KAUM,
Houston, KAUM,
Houston, KAUM,
Houston, It's 1980 straight ahead. Taped during the last hours of 1979, Rick Lambert counts down that year's hits and rings in the new decade. Although recorded mostly on the 70's side of midnight, we group these New Years Eve recordings with the 80's. Over the years, KAUM underwent periods when its format changes seemed more uncertain and more frequent than its rivals. The Wikipedia article on KLOL describes the two distinctive periods when that station battled KAUM (later KSRR) for album rock supremacy. The two stations also competed with the KILT-FM rock format before that station "permanently" switched to country. KAUM had evolved out of the old KXYZ-FM. That station switched from beautiful music to album rock in 1969. Local programming eventually replaced the syndicated ABC Love format and the new call letters emerged. As this broadcast indicates, the KAUM format had changed drastically by the end of the 70's. These recordings show it between its original album rock format and its role as 97 Rock (KSSR) in the 80's. It would be safe to say that KAUM was an album rock station during most of the time it used those call letters. However, these recordings capture KAUM at a way station between two album rock periods, and here we find it fighting it out in the top 40 arena. The inclusion of disco music is a dead giveaway that this is no album rock format. It sounds more like the KILT-AM of the early 80's than like the FM rock KILT of the same period. You might want to compare this KAUM material to the KILT Captain Jack airchecks further down this page. I personally recorded that collection about three months into the new decade. For more about the early album rock days of KXYZ-FM and KAUM, go to the Album Rock page. — Grady McAllister. M.S. Remarks revised May 21, 2009. These airchecks came on line December 15, 2007. Recorded on Philips audio cassettes. Roger Reini sent this material from Michigan. According to XM Radio, here is what happened to Rick Lambert at KAUM:
And so it goes . . . My Accidental Archive: A Night in the Life of KILTKILT, Houston, March 25, 1980 A
Night in the Life of KILT-1, A
Night in the Life of KILT-2, A
Night in the Life of KILT-3, A
Night in the Life of KILT-4, A
Night in the Life of KILT-5, The first two KILT segments on this page feature DJ Captain Jack, and the last three are the Beau Weaver Talk Program. This is over 4 and a half hours altogether. This was originally one long continuous recording on a 10.5 inch reel of .5 mil tape. Like most of my airchecks, I made the recording at 3.75 inches per second. These airchecks show a legendary top 40 station in its twilight phase. By 1980, the days for AM top 40 in Houston were numbered. For KILT, the McLendon era glory days of the 1950's and 1960's were long gone. KILT-AM was losing ground to FM and was clearly in a state of decline. The KILT call letters would survive the new decade, but not as a top 40 contender. Nonetheless, the KILT of 1980 still held a loyal following. Many people had grown up listening to KILT, and it seemed to satisfy a more mature audience than an FM top 40 monolith like KRBE. Also, their strong signal kept KILT popular with people in outlying areas. Personally, I spent much of the late 70's in Bay City, 80 miles southwest of Houston. FM reception there was so poor than many people didn't even bother with it in their cars. For me, KILT was the radio voice from home. I was back in Houston at the time of this recording. Going over the material, it almost sounds like The Captain knew someone was recording the night for posterity. Notice the "gospel" sing-a-long (in which "AM" replaces "Amen"), the references to KILT's wide listening area, and songs that rhapsodize about radio. By the way, the Beau Weaver incursion into talk radio held the same slot, 10:00 PM to 1:00 AM, which Alex Bennett had filled thirteen years earlier. This recording was preserved by sheer chance. It was made long after I had lost interest in making new air checks to keep. As it happened, my last reel to reel machine was stolen in a burglary. I had no way to record over this tape, so I kept it. When I heard it again after 23 years, it had acquired new value. Although the date of these recordings was not cataloged, I determined it by researching the presidential primary story mentioned on the newscast. The recording begins on March 25 and ends shortly after midnight, March 26. Beau Weaver's Notes on Facebook KNUZ as an oldies stationKNUZ,
Houston, In addition to Bob Edwards, you can hear Richard Dobbyn toward the end of his radio news career. KULF at the end of 1981KULF, Houston, December, 29. 1981, Beau Weaver His KILT talk show is history, but 1981 finds Beau Weaver running the midday show at KULF. Roger Reini sent this material from Michigan. |
