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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July 11, 2008

Didn't make the July 4th WAKY-FM Free Picnic? See some of what you missed here. Thanks to Dude Walker and Mike Summers for the great pics.

July 8, 2008

Info on 1981 WAKY newsman Jerry Leitzell has been added to the DJs Page.

We've placed many of our WAKY Videos on YouTube and have adjusted the links accordingly.

July 6, 2008

So how's WAKY-FM sounding these days? Download a scoped version of 103-5 WAKY's Eddie Lee's midday show on July 4, 2008 here. Included in the aircheck are reports from WAKY's 50th Anniversary Free Picnic at Churchill Downs during the broadcast. (Thanks to "radio79junkie" for the original unscoped recording.)

June 29, 2008

Three additional Bob Jannsen airchecks have been added, all from 1970. You'll hear bits from WAKY's Classic Rock, Dance Marathon and Super Giant Aquarian Weekends -- plus promos for a "mystery DJ" (Bill Bailey) coming to WAKY. You can also download a full June 16, 1969 Bob Watson newscast. Thanks again to Chris Turner, who found all these recent additions in a Jeffersonville yard sale and mailed them on to us.

June 26, 2008

Two more right-off-the-board overnight airchecks of Bob Jannsen from June 1969 are now online, courtesy Chris Turner.

June 25, 2008

Thanks to Chris Turner for our first-ever WAKY aircheck of Farrell Smith. Hear how middays sounded on WAKY in March of '67 here. Then, check out overnights from June 1, 1969 with our very first Bob Jannsen 'check. (Both are right-off-the-board quality.)

June 24, 2008

Bob Jannsen (real name: Bob Boling) was a WAKY part-time jock in 1969 and 1970. In 2008 Chris Turner purchased a bunch of Mr. Boling's tapes at a Jeffersonville yard sale and sent them to us for sharing via 79WAKY.com. The first is a newly found WAKY jingle package from the early 60s produced by a Dallas company called "Formatic." We never knew WAKY used these jingles, but we do now -- and we like them a LOT. (They swing, baby!) Find them here.

June 14, 2008

Thanks to 1979-1982 WAKY Account Executive Max Green for sending us the new pictures you can find near the bottom of Photo Page 17.

May 26, 2008

Your humble Webmaster had the pleasure of jocking a couple of hours on E-town's WAKY-FM on May 23. We've preserved this monumental broadcast achievement here.

On May 13 Johnny Randolph spent some quality time on 103.5 WAKY with longtime Louisville musician Paul Penny. Thanks to Mike Griffin for "rolling tape" so you can enjoy the aircheck here.

May 22, 2008

More stuff has been added to the Good Times page.

May 21, 2008

In late 1980 WAKY published a direct-mail tabloid called "Good Times". Thanks to then current General Manager George Francis for sending us a copy. We've begun typing and scanning selected articles and posting them here.

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.)

Old What's New Items

Check out our latest 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