Sie Holliday: a groundbreaking voice at KRLA

Sie Holliday

One of KRLA's most adventurous forays into programming was the hiring of Shirley (Sie) Holliday in 1962. Women were not featured as on-air personalities during the 1950s and 1960s, especially in larger radio markets. Holliday was a happy exception, becoming one of the first female deejays in the Los Angeles area.

Born Shirley Schneider in Giddings, Texas in 1930, Holliday was already using her unusual nickname during her college years, where her interests included speech, debate, and radio. Her years at the University of Texas also included activities in drama, the University's Texas School of the Air, and Radio House, a production entity for on-air and local entertainment. She became a staff announcer on local Austin television by 1951, a time when women, if on television at all, were relegated to homemaking shows and similar niche programming.

Holliday's first west coast professional gig was at the San Diego area's one-thousand watt radio station KDEO 910 AM, which had jumped on the top-forty bandwagon as early as 1959. Several KRLA alumni were part of the station's line-up, including Perry Allen, Sam Riddle, and Mel Hall. One or more of her compatriots probably introduced her to KRLA management, where she was hired in May 1962. Holliday's home-town newspaper the Austin American Statesman highlighted her success that month.

It was a tempestuous time to join KRLA, enmeshed as it was in its licensing issues. The local Pasadena press regularly updated its readers on the station's travails. Holliday's unusual but mesmerizing voice, shorn of its Texas twang, was a noticeable highlight on the airwaves, where she had her own show in a variety of time slots. She also acted as traffic director for KRLA alongside fellow deejay Bill Keffury, managing advertising and promotional spots for the station, recording voice-overs where needed, and substituting for absent air talent.

John Gilliland's "Pop Chronicles" provided another voice opportunity for Holliday in 1967. A fellow Texan, Gilliland had worked at KRLA as a newscaster but was inspired by the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival to produce a multi-chapter on-air history of pop music from the 1950s onward. Holliday was one of the show's narrators along with Thom Beck, Lew Irwin, Len Chandler (lending his songwriting skills), and Harry Shearer.

In 1974 the Cal State Fullerton newspaper the Daily Titan interviewed Holliday at some length, which you can read here. She admitted that forging a radio career as a woman wasn't particularly easy, but (said Holliday) "I have never had a problem with the 'public acceptance.' And I was a staff announcer on television long before there were women staff announcers."

Holliday left KRLA in 1976 and returned to Texas to care for her aging mother in 1978, but she remained active in real estate and dabbled in local theatrics. Holliday died in 2006. An obituary details her many accomplishments.