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This page last updated
Friday, July 03, 2009

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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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Get
Bill Bailey: A Louisville Legend and WAKY Remembered for just $20, postage paid --
you save $10!
Details here.
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."
December 20, 2008
Thanks to Ray Redman for the
1967 and 1969 airchecks of
Johnny Randolph (the
earliest JR WAKY airchecks we previously had were from
'69)..plus our very first aircheck of WAKY's
Jim Fletcher.
December 9, 2008
'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.
November 1, 2008
Tom Prestigiacomo did his second guest DJ shift on
WAKY-FM on August 27, and thanks to Les Cook, we have the
audio evidence.
October 22, 2008
Former WKLO DJ Joe London sat in with WAKY-FM's
Johnny Randolph on September 19th, and thanks to "big1080" we have
an audio recording of the event. Experience it
here. Also, our appreciation to
Joe London for sending us two new pictures of the 103-5 WAKY control
room, which may be viewed here.
October 11, 2008
A 1972 photo of Bill Bailey has been added
here. Thanks for Les Cook for forwarding
it our way.
September 18, 2008
Our appreciation to "radio79junkie" for the 1937
photo of the pre-WAKY 790 AM staff, which can be found
here.
September 9, 2008
In 1997 Gary Burbank spent an hour
chatting with a roomful of Ohio broadcasting students. Luckily for
us, the hour was recorded and is available
here. Whether you're a
fellow Gary Burbank fan or are just interested in pursuing a radio
career and would like an advice from a true pro, you should find it
an enjoyable listen. Thanks to former Gary Burbank producer Chad
Lambert for making it available.
September 6, 2008
From the Jerry Leitzell archives comes a montage
of three 1981 WAKY Scorelines. Anybody know who the unidentified
voices belong to? Hear it here.
Old What's New Items
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Check out our latest radio tribute Website,
LKYRadio.com!
LKYRadio.com salutes other
classic Louisville radio stations.
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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. |
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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. |
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WAKY-WKLO 2006
Reunion Review Page |
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Get "WAKY
Remembered" and "Bill Bailey: A Louisville Legend" for just $20,
postage paid! Details
here. |
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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
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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.) |
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About The Curator |
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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. |
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Cool Links |
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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 |


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