KRLA Beat: L.A.'s first rock-and-roll newspaper

This pastiche of airchecks from several different sources follows KRLA's line-up in late 1961. Bob Eubanks was a young deejay hired from KACY in Oxnard, California to fill the midnight to 6am shift, where he began to develop his warm, upbeat on-air delivery.

You'll hear show intros and outros for morning man Wink Martindale from 6am to 9am; Roy Elwell from 9am to 12 noon; Dick Moreland (another hire from KACY) from 12 noon to 3pm; afternoon drive personality Jimmy O'Neill from 3pm to 6pm, Sam Riddle from 6pm to 9pm, and Frosty Harris from 9pm till midnight.

This month also brough Wink Martindale's farewell from KRLA when he accepted a promotional position at Dot Records. Buried in Martindale's emotional farewell is a subtle reference to unspecified rumors about the station. KRLA had recently been accused of rigging on-air contests and falsifying its station logs, which would eventually result in the FCC pulling KRLA's license in 1963. If you're an amateur radio enthusiast you'll catch a bit of morse code toward the end of the Martindale farewell -- that would have resulted in another kind of license trouble at the time.

You'll also hear a snippet of Bob Eubanks in his new morning drive slot, replacing Martindale, and an excerpt of one of Los Angeles' few women deejays, Sie Holiday, giving the time check into Roy Elwell's 9am show.

Casey Kasem had been at KRLA just five months when this aircheck was made, having made his way from San Francisco's KEWB. Kasem's approach to announcing was less frenetic than his on-air colleagues. He offered biographical information about each artist played during his early afternoon show and used teaser questions to keep his audience hooked from commercial to commercial. At this point he had not yet added in his countdown of top ten records, a feature that he would debut on KRLA a short time later.

In this segment Karen Tommassio calls in to play "Record Roulette" (with only six dollars in the jackpot). The news is read by Cecil Tuck, later publisher of the KRLA Beat, Sie Holiday handles the timecheck into Kasem's second hour, and a variety of advertisements are offered for your pleasure, among them the newest sensation in beer cans, the "lift tab cans" from Falstaff.

Dave Hull is nice and loose in this aircheck, which dovetails nicely with the beginnings of the KRLA Beat. The newspaper was just three months into it's official newsprint edition. Several of the Beatles interview segments played by Dave on this show come from his recent trip to the Bahamas, which he reported in a recent Beat article.

Dave and KRLA Beat editor Derek Taylor had flown down to meet the Beatles on the set of their new movie, which would evenautally be titled "Help!". Dave interviewed the Beatles extensively and played bits and pieces of their taped interchange on his show.

Paul's comment "Not nice, Dave" was actually in response to Dave's admission that he'd revealed the Beatles' parents' home addresses on his radio show...not nice at all. And George's comment ("I think I enjoyed the scene in the bathroom") referred to the filming of "A Hard Day's Night" the previous year. Dave used it to segue into a soap commercial!

Bob Hudson, another hire from KEWB, started with KRLA in March 1963. His on-air persona evolved over the years from the egoism of "Beautiful Bob" to full-fledged royalty in the form of Emperor Hudson, whose show was punctuated by promotional spots such as the one that begins this aircheck (sharp-eared KRLA fans will recognize the voices of fellow deejays Casey Kasem and Dave Hull, as well a newsman Richard Beebe).

Hudson's approach was popular with morning listenership but he was clearly not always in touch with music trends of the era, evidenced by his disdain for Barry McGuire's then red-hot hit record "Eve of Destruction". Compare this approach with the KRLA Beat, which at that time couldn't give enough newsprint to McGuire, his lyrics, and his musical philosophy. This short clip ends with an improvised recipe for salad, inspired by an advertisement for Wesson Oil.

If it hadn't been for the Beatles, KRLA might not have made it through 1964. Their licensing troubles still loomed large. While their right to broadcast wasn't terminated as the FCC had threatened, the station was operating on an interim license and was managed by a non-profit organization until the FCC could determine what course to pursue.

Meanwhile the FCC was accepting applications from entities wishing to replace L.A.'s number one Beatles station -- the station, no less, whose deejay Bob Eubanks had mortgaged his home to pay the Beatles' way to the Hollywood Bowl.

Don Page, who wrote about the radio industry for the Los Angeles Times, was barely able to contain his glee over KRLA's imminent demise. "Despite the bleatings of the Beatles and their adoring teen-age public" he crowed, "the purveyors of rock 'n' roll radio are diminishing." Soon only KFWB would be left, "a convalescence home for elderly teen-agers, or a museum of noise."

In this midst of this impending catastrophe Casey Kasem reigned cooly supreme. The only heat in this show was tempered by Coppertone sunscreen. A hunger for deliverance from the FCC jaws of doom was assuaged by Jack-in-the-Box onion rings. There were only 35 days left till the Beatles came to the Hollywood Bowl. Focus on this indelible goal. All else is commentary.

The mention of the Beatles concert date allows us to calculate this selection's air date as July 19, 1964. Enjoy!

In early 1963 Ted Quillin came to KRLA via KFWB to fill in the 9am to noon slot. With teenagers in school during that time listenership tended toward a more adult audience. Quillin's "Coffee Break" club, with rewards for cardholding listeners, its supermarket report, and its demographically mature advertisements were geared toward the grown-ups at home. The playlist too was more bluesy than teen-beat.

In this excellent-quality aircheck, fellow deejay Bob Hudson guests on a Mark C. Bloome spot. You'll also hear a promo for ex-WLS Chicago deejay Dick Biondi, the so-called "Wild Eyetralian". Apparently attempting to placate the FCC with its devotion to community service, Quillin's show offers a plethora of public service announcements, and Jere Laird, one of KRLA's newsmen, pops up periodically to keep the listening audience informed about late-breaking stories.

This short snippet focuses on KRLA news reporters Cecil Tuck and Jim Steck. For an AM top-forty format KRLA emphasized its news department strongly, employing a multi-reporter staff and scheduling news reports on the hour and half hour through most of the 1960s. Here Jim Steck reports on the crisis in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, allowing us to date this excerpt to September 1965.

In 1964 KRLA won two prestigious Golden Mike awards for best radio documentary and a special Golden Mike created to honor the station's historical series on the American revolution. In 1966 KRLA news director Lew Irwin won two more Golden Mikes for KRLA documentaries on drugs and "suggestive lyrics of today's music". In June 1968 Irwin, along with newsmen Richard Beebe, John Gilliland, Thom Beck, and folk singer Len Chandler created The Credibility Gap, a satirical show that followed the news and offered up to 15 minutes of political commentary. Nothing else like it existed on AM airwaves at the time.

It's hard to pinpoint when Dave Hull was at the top of his game. His popularity at the station certainly spanned the two years since the Beatles had been chart-toppers and successfully transitioned into KRLA's all-request format -- guess whose songs were requested the most?

KRLA also sports its new jingle package which had been revamped in late 1965. The melody was based on the little-known single "That's Where It's At" by The T-Bones, whose bigger hit was "No Matter What Shape".

In this excerpt you'll hear bits and pieces of the station's all-request playlist, which generally followed top forty chart listings in major trade publications like Billboard and Cash Box. A complete newscast is a special treat, as is a tongue-in-cheek Valhalla Thunderbolt Gasoline ad with the fictitious "Remington Noble" extolling its superior propellants.

This aircheck is elsewhere dated as June 18, 1966, but two of the news stories (the first photographs from the Lunar Orbiter and a car crash involving football players Roman Gabriel and Marlin McKeever) suggest that a more accurate date would be August 19, 1966. The promo about "nine days to get your Beatle tickets" for the August 28 show at Dodger Stadium was a bit of a giveaway as well.

As Eddie Payne, the deejay more widely known as Jimmy Rabbitt began his on-air career in Tyler, Texas in the fall of 1961. His career expanded with the British Invasion and he landed a lucrative position in Dallas at KLIF-AM.

By 1970 Jimmy Rabbitt was working the 9 pm to 12am shift at KRLA, relying on standard hits of the day as well as album tracks from rock classics such as the Beatles, Badfinger, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Thunderclap Newman, Jimi Hendrix, and Simon & Garfunkel. Advertisers had drifted into attempts at counterculture references (the Datsun commercial is a prime example) but most spots are as banal as they were in the early sixties.

Of particular interest to Credibility Gap fans, this night's broadcast provides a six-minute bit by the pared-down satirical group (Harry Shearer, Richard Beebe, David L. Lander and Michael McKean) who, in the guise of the Three Stooges, invade Richard Nixon's oval office and almost start World War Three. The entire news program was nearly twelve minutes long. You can catch the Credibility Gap starting at the 13:30 mark in this 36-minute-long aircheck.

Broadcast on Saturday night February 27, 1970, this aircheck also reveals that KRLA had gone back to its original jingle from the early 1960s, a rather incongruous reminder of the past.

A nice KRLA trumpet ID and a promo for "Hudson's Commandos" opens this short excerpt from Casey Kasem's afternoon show. The air date for this show isn't exact, but Casey's mention of Dick Clark's latest "Caravan of Stars" is a bit of a help.

The June 13, 1964 issue Billboard Magazine listed the same lineup for this traveling show mentioned by Casey, among them headliner Fabian plus Mike Clifford, Terry Stafford, and a Los Angeles based singer called Round Robin. The show was set to debut later that month on June 26, so this narrows down the time frame of this aircheck.

One of the Beatles' compatriots, Billy J. Kramer, was enjoying a number one hit in Los Angeles, though mainstream music was still a part of the pop landscape on KRLA. Case in point: Dean Martin's hitbound "Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime" and the Ray Charles Singers' "Love Me With All Your Heart" were also part of Casey's playlist.

As a teaser, Casey refers to two singers with five years of hits who still made time for college, one as an industrial design major, the other a medical student. They were Jan & Dean, in case you were wondering.

KRLA launched its final Valentine Art Festival this month in an effort to connect with its more creative listeners. Winners of the contest would be highlighted in the KRLA Beat the following month.

Bob Dayton, one of KRLA's weekend and fill-in deejays, hosts this show on Sunday afternoon, January 21, 1968. Upcoming events, as Dayton notes, were Blair High School's Battle of the Bands and a concert by the Bee Gees (who had not yet gone disco) at the Anaheim Convention Center. Dayton thoughtfully gave his listenership the Bee Gees' incoming flight number in case someone wanted to meet them at the airport that afternoon.

This aircheck includes a nice advertisement for Wallach's Music City, then one of the biggest independently owned record stores in the Los Angeles area. Their flagship store was at Sunset and Vine but there were regional shops around Southern California. In this spot owner Clyde Wallach suggests that "there’s nothing better than listening to good stereo music on these long winter nights” and introduces a record trade-in policy for records you don't listen to anymore: one dollar per record. Wallach's didn't sell used records but it was a clever way to get young folks into the store and boost customer traffic.

In 1967, when Johnny Hayes called KRLA "L.A.'s king-sized vibrator", it didn't mean what you think it means. Airwaves, people, airwaves. The air date for this excerpt is Friday April 14, 1967.

This 31-minute aircheck includes a full five-minute newscast by KRLA Beat publisher Cecil Tuck. A wearer of many hats, he was still a newsman at heart and served as an on-air announcer when needed. Jim Steck provides the sports news. These were the days when a top-forty radio station could still suport a full investigative team.

Check out the advertisement for Radio Free Oz about 17 minutes into this aircheck. This show was hosted by a foursome of comics and political commentators known as the Firesign Theatre. They were shortly to perform their first live stage appearance at UCLA's Experimental Arts Festival but had just signed on with KRLA to broadcast from The Magic Mushroom club on Ventura Blvd. in the San Fernando Valley. "Easy radio for troubled times" indeed!

And for KRLA Beat fans, catch the ad for the Beat at about 22 minutes in. The cover issue for this week highlighted Bobby Jameson, a local songwriter whom the Beat tried valiantly to promote, with little success.

"Music and cash time" transformed into celebrity call-in-time on New Year's Eve, Friday evening December 31, 1965. Dick Biondi fields phone calls from Gene Pitney, Bobby Rydell, Chubby Checker, Dion, Pat Boone, Casey Kasem, Tony Bennett, Neil Sedaka, and promises phone messages later that evening from Dave Clark and the Beatles in London.

News announcer John Land is on hand to advise on the falling temperatures and crowds gathering in Pasadena for the Rose Parade the next morning and the Rose Bowl football game later that day. KRLA's studio was located just south of Colorado Blvd. on Oak Knoll Ave., so they were close to all the excitement.

Call-ins would also include KRLA deejays, who were probably grateful that they weren't saddled with an on-the-air shift that night. Casey Kasem couldn't quite remember the name of Herman's Hermits new hit but he did recall that it was written by "two very talented local boys, Phil Sloan and Steve Barri". The former was P.F Sloan, who had also written "Eve of Destruction". The song, by the way, was "She's A Must To Avoid", another in a string of hits for Peter Noone and his compatriots.

Like a bookend to Dick Biondi's show the previous night, this aircheck features Dave Hull as he works his regular afternoon shift on Saturday January 1, 1966, playing the hits of 1965.

I count at least six mentions of the UCLA football team's unexpected triumph over heavily-favored University of Michigan. Both teams played the Rose Bowl in Pasadena that day and the game ended just before Dave's last hour on the air. It was the UCLA team's first-ever Bowl win.

Charlie O'Donnell, one of KRLA's regular deejays, reads an advertisement for the KRLA Beat's January 8th issue, with five full pages of Rolling Stones coverage. But get your subscription request postmarked by midnight -- only three dollars per year. What a bargain!

A brief clip of the news ends this selection. Dave's shift ended at 6:00om. Next up (not too hung over from his New Year's Eve festivities, one hopes) was Dick Biondi.