Welcome to 79WAKY.com...a tribute to Louisville, Kentucky's WAKY radio!
"Great site for former WAKY people, WAKY lovers, Top 40 Radio lovers, Great Radio lovers, etc."
- George Francis, former WAKY General Manager

Search this site powered by FreeFind

May 5, 2008

From the 79WAKY.com Instant Gratification Department: We've added an embedded Media Player from Yahoo to most of our pages with audio (like Airchecks, Jingles and Audio Interviews) so you can listen to WAKY golden goodies without having to download them first. Look for the little arrows next to the audio links. (Just ignore the "Buy" button on the player; all of our online audio remains free.)

March 23, 2008

Several WAKY text-based Top 10 lists from the 1970s have been copied from the 79WAKY.com Message Board to their own page. Our thanks to Max Highbaugh for transcribing the original image-based surveys.

February 17, 2008

We've added the December 14, 2007 Cincinnati Post article about Gary Burbank's WLW retirement here, plus the December 18, 2007 Cincinnati Enquirer Burbank retirement article here.

February 10, 2008

A great big Super 79 salute to John Frank, who has transcribed all of the image-based versions of the 1960s WAKY music surveys on this site to text. Not only does it let vision-impaired visitors enjoy the surveys using screen reading software, but everyone should be able to browse through the '60s surveys a lot quicker. We've saved them all in a single PDF file here. It's interesting to see all of the songs that made WAKY's Top 10 that today's oldies stations ignore.

December 27, 2007

Remember the "WAKY Radio Loves You" song from 1978? Download it here. A big thank you to Jon Wolfert at JAM Creative Productions for making it available.

December 9, 2007

Thanks to David Cox for his memories of an early '60s visit to the WAKY studios and his meeting with the legendary Jumpin' Jack Sanders. Read it here.

December 6, 2007

'Tis the season to be WAKY! Get in the festive mood by downloading and listening to Dude Walker's and Weird Beard's late '60s Christmas shows here.

October 28, 2007

Another 790 WAKY vet guest jocks on WAKY-FM. Grab a scoped version of Chuck Jackson's two-hour October 11, 2007 appearance on the new WAKY here. Again, we thank Mike Griffin for his original recording expertise.  

October 8, 2007

Nearly 30 years later, Tom Prestigiacomo was back on WAKY -- WAKY-FM that is.
Download a scoped version of Tom's two-hour guest DJ spot on 103.5 WAKY on July 21, 2007 here. (Our appreciation to Mike Griffin for the original aircheck.)

October 2, 2007

Want to get a good taste of what the new WAKY sounds like? Check out the just-added scoped version of the first two hours of Johnny Randolph's July 23rd show. Find it at the bottom of this page. (Thanks to Mike Griffin for making the original recording.)

September 24, 2007

Read the September 22, 2007 Roger Moon Times-Mail feature article "WAKY: the soundtrack for many lives" here.

September 11, 2007

Thanks to Leonard Yates for the 1988 Courier-Journal Magazine piece on former WAKY DJ Gary Burbank (who will be retiring from his daily WLW radio show at the end of this year).

September 2, 2007

Check out the great collection of WAKY photos Robin Ballard sent us from 1966 and 1967.  We were so impressed we used it to try out a fancy-shmancy Flash-based image viewing applet.

August 19, 2007

On August 15, John Quincy visited the Elizabethtown, Kentucky studios of 103-5 WAKY and was given the opportunity to be an authentic WAKY DJ for two hours. See photos and download a scoped aircheck of his on-air appearance here.

August 10, 2007

A couple of more pictures from the "Gary Burbank Day" proclamation last month have been posted at the bottom of this page, as well as a WLW aircheck of the award presentation. Mucho gracias to WRKA's Gary Clark for passing it along.

August 6, 2007

Thanks to Robin Oldham and "Joe Mama" for sending us more WAKY Surveys (ranging from 1966 to 1976) and for the scan of the 1975 WAKY "Name It and Claim It" winner's postcard that now resides on our Promotional Materials Page.

Old What's New Items

Check out our newest radio tribute Website, LKYRadio.com!
LKYRadio.com salutes other classic Louisville radio stations.

What About WKLO? If you're a fan of Louisville's other great Top 40 station of the '60s and '70s, check out 1080WKLO.com. Thanks to all the former WAKY and WKLO employees and fans who have made the WAKY and WKLO Tribute Sites possible by sending airchecks, photos and promotional items. If you have any WAKY or WKLO material you'd like to make available to these projects, please contact us.
	79WAKY.com welcomes the WAKY call letters back to the Derby City! On May 11, 2007, WASE-FM in Elizabethtown changed their calls to WAKY, while maintaining their popular oldies format. Now much of the Louisville market can enjoy the music and jingles that made WAKY famous on the all new 103.5 WAKY.
WAKY-WKLO 2006 Reunion Review Page
Get "WAKY Remembered" and "Bill Bailey: A Louisville Legend" for just $30, postage paid! Details here.

Why 79WAKY.com?

For over 20 years, WAKY (790 AM) in Louisville, Kentucky was one of the most influential and highly-respected secondary market Top 40 stations in America.

In the summer of 1970 while visiting Louisville for a week, I discovered WAKY. I had never heard radio like WAKY before. The station boasted strong and entertaining personalities like Bill Bailey, Dude Walker, Gary Burbank, Weird Beard and Mason Lee Dixon. The music presentation was upbeat and fun. WAKY was big time radio.

I was so impressed with WAKY that when I returned home to Lexington, Kentucky (90 miles from Louisville) I started paying more attention to the local radio stations while continuing to listen to WAKY every chance I could get. Because of the spark WAKY ignited in me, I pursued a career in on-air radio which continues today at WTMA in Charleston, South Carolina.

In 2003, with the assistance of legendary WAKY Program Director Johnny Randolph, I produced a one-hour audio tribute to WAKY. WAKY Remembered became one of the more popular streaming presentations on ReelRadio.com. CD copies were made for many WAKY fans and alumni. Due to all of the positive feedback, in late 2004 I decided to put together a sequel. Interviews were recorded with many former WAKY DJs and Newsmen. In the process of talking to these "Louisville Legends" the question kept coming up: "Why hasn't anybody put together a WAKY tribute Website?"

Because WAKY was such an influence to me not only as teenager but as a broadcaster -- and because nobody else had done one -- I put the sequel on hold and launched this WAKY tribute site in January of 2005.

79WAKY.com features downloadable WAKY jingles and airchecks, photos and music surveys, information about the WAKY on-air personalities, and memories from other WAKY fans.

We cover the entire history of WAKY here: from its launch as a Top 40 station in 1958 -- to its Adult Contemporary days in the late '70s and early '80s -- to its final rock-based format (Oldies) between 1982 and the station's switch to automated Beautiful Music in 1986.

If you have any WAKY memories (pictures, tapes, promotional material, etc.) you wish to share with our site's visitors please drop me a line. A great big thank-you to all former WAKY personnel and fans who've contributed thus far!

-- John Quincy, Charleston, South Carolina

Remembering An Exceptional WAKY Engineer

I finished listening to the Bill Hennes WKLO interview. Very good; it was interesting hearing different perspectives. WAKY did have a higher component of country music, usually dayparted. At nights the urban component was probably pretty close between the two stations.

Mike Rivers was a tremendous production guy who turned out some great stuff, promos and commercials; a great voice too. I didn't know Mike, but he was a master.

WKLO's multi-track production studio is something WAKY didn't match until '73, '74 or so (I don't recall exactly). It happened when we got a new chief engineer, John Timm. John did a lot for WAKY: upgrading the production studio; introducing digital timers tied to an element starting; upgrading the cart machines to three stacks with secondary tones to sequence the commercials; and taking us away from playing 45s on the air to all cart. He also upgraded the old Gates large-platter turntables in the production room to electronically controlled turntables. After the turntable upgrade WAKY would also, very occasionally, speed up a song. An example is Maxine Nightingale's "Right Back Where I Started From." John Timm's actions may have followed from a decision by management to upgrade but I remember John as the driving force and I suspect he sold them on the idea.

A lot has been said about Johnny Randolph tweaking WAKY's 'sound' and that is certainly true. John Timm came and installed equipment that gave Randolph even more handles to tweak on. WAKY had some engineers along the way who were good technically, but John was an innovator and moved the station along in ways that made an important difference on the air. John Timm was important to WAKY and I know that Bruce Clark and Pete Boyce were important to WKLO. - Mike Griffin, former WAKY Production Director

(Note: John Timm exited WAKY in the late '70s. He passed away in 1997.)

About The Curator

Even though he was born 15 years earlier, Lexington, Kentucky native John Quincy [Real name: Ted Tatman] didn't really discover Top 40 radio until he smuggled in a transistor radio to a church camp outside of Louisville in the summer of 1970. After a few hours of listening to the legendary WAKY in his dorm room, he caught the radio fever. Upon his return to Lexington and a visit to local stations to find out how radio stations really performed that on-air magic, he was hooked.

Shortly thereafter a high school teacher told him about a Junior Achievement program being sponsored by WVLK-AM. Every Wednesday night WVLK would turn over a half hour of their programming to high school kids who would sell, operate, and program it. Quincy made sure he was one of the ones chosen to be one of the teen DJs.

Between his junior and senior year of high school, Quincy scored a summer job working seven days a week at WBGR AM & FM in Paris, Kentucky. Most of the time was spent running the board for Cincinnati Reds baseball games, but for part of each shift he got to play DJ. While it was country music (which was especially bad in the early '70s), it was radio. From that point, Quincy never looked back.

There were stints at other Lexington area radio stations (WEKY, WAXU, WCBR, WKDJ, and WBLG) before Quincy got the call in 1979 to escape Lexington's mostly awful winters and work in sunny Savannah, Georgia (WKBX and WZAT). Then in 1981, Quincy moved up the coast to Charleston, South Carolina to take on PM drive duties at rock station WSSX. Later Charleston gigs included AC WXTC (where he spent nearly 10 years as PD), All 70s WJUK, Country WBUB, Oldies WXLY, News-Talk WTMA, Country WNKT and AC WSUY. Subscribers to Tom Konard's Aircheck Factory service might remember Quincy as one of the narrators of "Around The Dial" and various profiles.

Today Quincy is the assistant program director, technical director, morning show producer and imaging guy at News-Talker WTMA in Charleston. Along with his radio work, he does regular mobile DJ gigs plus creates and maintains Web sites including tribute sites to Charleston radio stations WTMA and WOKE, as well as pre-1990s Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky radio. 

Cool Links

WKLO, Louisville Tribute Site
LKYRadio.com (Louisville and Lexington Radio Tribute Site)
WTMA, Charleston Tribute Site
WQAM, Miami Tribute Site
Max Highbaugh's 14WIEL Online