[Just to keep the “Celebration Rock” blog alive, I’m adding at least one entry each month. For the whole story (God help you and bless you!), look back at the previous entries.]
In the first years of “Celebration Rock,” from its inception as “Showcase,” and until FM stereo rock sucked the life and ratings out of the once proud AM rockers, I was associated, in a peripheral but collegial way, with Richmond, Virginia’s WLEE “Good Guys.” When my radio program started on Sunday nights, the 1480 frequency was home to Richmond rock and roll. It was said that there were only two stations in Richmond that had massive ratings. WRVA had listeners over the age of 35, and WLEE had all the rest. I was connected with the Good Guys in these ways:
- Program Director Dick Reus provided personal encouragement and solid advice to this amateur with little background in rock and radio.
- Dick provided me with the latest records and added me to the mailing list of his “Reus Record Report,” a newsletter that others in the industry looked to for news of current hit activity and predictions of records about to make the charts.
- The “Good Guys” may have thought of me as a rather odd duck, a seminary student and then minister playing rock and roll on their Sunday night air, but they were always supportive, gracious, and welcoming.
- When my show first went on the air, WLEE had given up the rest of Sunday nights to “religious, public affairs” programming. After only a few months, I had been able to carry enough audience over from their rock format into mine that the station was able to sell the hours that followed my program. So, the weekend Good Guys intro’d my show, relaxed an hour, and came back until midnight with Top 40 hits and $-generating commercials. I assume that was a good thing. For me it meant having my hour in prime time radio, and no longer on the edge of the Sunday night public service ghetto time.
- And whether it was Randy Scott or Guy Spiller, or one of the other jocks who got stuck with Sunday night duty, we built good rapport and the audience rarely knew that I was actually on tape, my program run from another studio in a church basement miles away.
- The Good Guys made room for me in the production room on Saturdays so I could tape my shows with up-to-date (if not exactly state-of-the-art) equipment.
The reason I take this time to recognize the WLEE Good Guys from the 1968 – 1974 era is that many of those deejay alumni have re-connected in an on-line group. One-time WLEE jock Steve Hendrix invited me to be part of that group, and I have really enjoyed the camaraderie of old stories, truth, myth and legend, and the reminiscing over the “good old days” of rock radio. Whether the playlist was top 20 or top 40, the stations had personality and energy, and listener loyalty. The jocks were stars to their young listeners. Each jock had a unique style, and each station had a unique sound, even if its rivals were playing the same hits.
As I remember it, WLEE and its ilk had deejays working shifts that were only three or four hours long. Nine to noon. Noon to three. Three to seven. Maybe seven to midnight. Then overnight: a live deejay taking requests, working until dawn and the wake-up show or farm report(!). When they weren’t on the air, they’d be cutting commercials, setting up remotes at car dealers and furniture stores, or promoting dances and concerts. These guys (and they were guys back then) projected an UP sound, never cynical, never sarcastic (or at least rarely), and always keeping the audience entertained.
Nowadays, sad to say, most stations are robotic, computerized, impersonal conduit for music, owned by some out-of-town conglomerate, and both out of touch and out of reach. No longer an entertainment medium, radio has become little more than a desperate way to hold onto a bit of radio spectrum so no one else can get to it. Oh, I know the exceptions…there are some. But all that creativity that once filled (for better or worse, truth be told) a community’s allotted frequencies with individual station personalities is now directed at fewer monotonous voices that share two or three frequencies. A city’s Y-100 might be heard not only at 100 but at 98 and 102 as well. No use wasting resources.
The days of Cousin Brucie, Dick Biondi, and Shane Brother Shane are passed. But what a time we had. And I was glad to have heard it!
No, we won’t go back, of course. Times change and time changes. Still, we can remember.
Jeff Kellam
celebrationrock's Weblog 