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

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January 19, 2010

The station that hit the Louisville airwaves with a bang in 1958 left it with not even a whimper nearly 30 years later. Thanks to Gene Smith, you can hear what the final 15 minutes of WAKY sounded like here.

January 10, 2010

Nice to hear from the son of legendary WAKY DJ Jack Sanders -- James Dale Spence. Jr. -- who sent us scans of several photos from the family archives. Check out the new images on our Jack Sanders Page. 

December 19, 2009

Thanks to former WAKY GM George Francis for sending us the 1980 article WAKY: The Wild Kid Grows Up. Pics from the article have been posted on Photo Page 17.

November 23, 2009

Our appreciation to George Francis for sending us the new WAKY "Battle of the Stars" photo and to Bob Moody for writing the caption. Find it on Photo Page 15.

November 5, 2009

Thanks to Randy Davidson for the just-added Lee Gray aircheck from 1974.

October 19, 2009

We've replaced the October 14 WAKY-FM Johnny Randolph/Gary Burbank aircheck with a longer version. Get it here.

October 17, 2009

On October 14, former 79 WAKY personality Gary Burbank guested on Johnny Randolph's 103.5 WAKY show -- and a good time was had by all. Find the audio evidence here.

August 30, 2009

It was great to hear from Bob Newberry, WAKY's chief engineer 1979-81. Check out the great pics he sent us on Photo Page 16.

August 11, 2009

Check out Photo Page 19 for an update on the call letters that hung in WAKY's 4th Street showcase studio, courtesy Mark Strauss.

July 22, 2009

Thanks to Bobby Ellis for the 1984 photo of him with Gary Clark and Keith Landecker, which you can find on Photo Page 19.

July 3, 2009

Dave McCann worked at WAKY in 1979 (and later KJ100) but we didn't know what happened to him -- until now! Dave just discovered 79WAKY.com and checks in here.

April  26, 2009

Thanks to the man with probably the biggest record collection in Kentuckiana -- Leonard Yates -- for the pics of WAKY's 1967 "Louisville Scene" LP. Find it and other goodies on the Promotional Materials Page.

April 13, 2009

Get a whoppin' dose of your Duke of Louisville from the four new montages of WAKY-FM "Daily Baileys" here. Thanks to Les Cook for passing them on so all can enjoy the recent musings of Dr. William W. Bailey at their leisure.

March 8, 2009

Thanks for Rob Calhoun for sending us the October 1989 Heard-Leader column "Louisville Radio Station Was One Wacky Place To Work". Read it here.

February 15, 2009

A great big 790 kilocycle thank-you to Jim Brewer, who recently sent us an incredible unscoped WAKY aircheck he recorded on the afternoon of Sunday, October 13, 1974 while a freshman at the University of Louisville. While we had to scope down the music for online presentation, all the jock breaks, commercials and "station stuff" are left intact for your enjoyment in our just-posted airchecks of Chuck Jackson (our best yet) and Kris Kelley. 

January 25, 2009

A 1997 C-J "Business First" feature on former WAKY jock Coyote Calhoun has been added here. Thanks to Robin Oldham for sending it our way.

January 6, 2009

A better quality, more complete version of WAKY's Air Works TM Productions jingles (used during the Mike McVay era) is now available here.

December 28, 2008

We have new pics posted on Photo Pages 11, 12, 13 and 15 of Coyote Calhoun, Woody Stiles, Gary King and Lee Masters with lovely WAKY winners. Thanks to Mr. & Mrs. Les Cook for their help in getting these to us.

December 21, 2008

Courtesy WAKY-FM's Les Cook, we have two new 20+ minute "Daily Bailey" montages. Take a listen and be reminded why Bill Bailey was and is the "Duke of Louisville."

Old What's New Items

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 WCSC and WOKE, as well as pre-1990s Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky radio. 

Cool Links

WCSC, Charleston Tribute Site
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