It features the bands of Les Brown, Glenn Miller, Woody Herman, Sammy Kaye, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Ray Anthony and Xavier Cugat. Everyone agreed that this guy could sell anybody anything. The feeling seemed to be we are not going to advertise on that station., Jim Ramsburg, an early WDGY jock, says we were given strict orders never to utter the phrase, Rock & Roll, because it was black slang for sex. It was baked in five pound slabs in a church basement and delivered just an hour before the deadline. As for our own radio stations, there were about nine to choose from the mighty WCCO (which had nothing remotely like rock n roll) and those listed below. This format gradually morphed into the sports talk format, and the calls were changed to KFAN in 1991. At first the prize was proposed at 63 cents per pound, but Station Manager Don French decided that a bigger incentive might be $6.30 per pound. I know nothing about Billy G! Will Jones reported in his column on March 12, 1964: Of all the new for-women-only features on KUXL, the station reports the ladies are most interested in a feature called The Unbelievable, Yet it Happened. Its about the supernatural. Here are some possibilities: Rock n rolls roots lie in pop, country, and most important, rhythm and blues. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!! The transmitter was destroyed by fire on February 23, 1933 and the station operated with WCCOs old transmitter. Johnny is on the rear of the bike. Kamman left for New York in 1950. KUXL hosted the Impressions at the Marigold Ballroom on January 22, 1967. Glover finally finally took two weeks vacation in New York City and never came back. [He became a freelance writer and contributing editor for Circus, a music magazine.]. Subject: Re: Guest Book for Scott Gary Burton. The caption to the photo below, from Minnesota Music magazine, 1980, reads. Feb 28, 2023. Rock continued to do well in Minneapolis in the eighties. Slogan. I found no other advertising in the Minneapolis papers, but the St. Paul papers are not online. To this day I am still impressed that a major country western and Grand Ole Opry star would drive all the way out to Anoka just to visit with someone who played country-western music for only 55 minutes a day. To celebrate its first anniversary, WDGY is happy to present this album of YESTERHITS FROM YESTERDAY. It includes a collection of twelve of the greatest hits from the last year. In 1949 the station moved its transmitter and studio to a new multi-tower array described as at 102nd and Bloomington Freeway/Lyndale Freeway/35W. Lord Jeffrey, (Jeff Diamond) came to work at KUXL in 1967, when he was about 15 years old. Steele (Steve Gibbons) Art Snow (The all night snowman) Scott Cannon, the Tall (Brother Bob) Robert Hall, Doug McKinnon, (Captain Billy in the morning) Michael J. Contributed by John Pratt 12-6-07. In 1950 it was 1.3 percent, and in 1960 it grew to 2.5 percent. In August 1957 the station claimed to be first with Twin Cities Housewives based on a telephone poll of 388 people. After the wayward flight to Illinois and a non-stop trek through Wisconsin, the transmitter arrived, tied to a U-Haul trailer pulled by a rental car. The slogan was 15 KSTPTHE MUSIC STATION., The Insider made note of the change to a rock format, playing a mix of current and older top 40. I purchased some of the WDGY airchecks from collector Arron Mintz in Maine. [2] 2 Baths. KANO was Disk Jockey Rod Persons first radio job in 1959. A few days later, WPBC-FM became WRAH and programmed an automated album oriented rock format. Yusef Mgeni, a radio-television program supervisor for U of M station KUOM and member of the Malcom X Pan Afrikan Institute, found the argument lacking, going so far as to accuse program director Mike Cunningham of having racist and oppressive views.. A fair portion of its signal pointed away from populated areas, making it audible only to its intended audience in South and West St. Paul. Some notes about this copy. Don was probably one of the first newscasters to experience terrorism while at KDWB, and shares this story with us. (Minneapolis Star, March 17, 1978). If you look carefully, you can see the old WDGY transmitter through the studio glass. The Insider reported that it was moving toward soft progressive in September 1971, when Dick Driscoll came back to the station after Dick had turned KQRS from classical to progressive. The turntables (pre-historic CD players) are out of the shot to his left side. and the slogan Beat of the Cities., Alan Freed at KMAPs booth at Riverfest, Harriet Island, 1988. Its president was Marvin Kosofsky, who said he was not going to change the jazz programming, which had been taken over by Art Hoehn and Paul Franklyn. And, as we all know, anything that is natures own is good for what ails you. One early promotion involved a sticker that said KDWB is Everywhere. $630 would be awarded to the person who placed the sticker in the most unusual place, which turned out to be on the St. Paul Cathedral dome! Like an acid-etching, the events of that day in early December 1969 are sharp as cut crystal. King was also coming to the same ballroom on September 12. In August 1962 the station was identifying itself as Time-Life Broadcasting Inc. At that time an ad appeared with the following text: What happened to wtcn 1280? Should you have any aircheck of Twin Cities radio stations, let me know and I may be able to include them at this site. The original WDGY DJs were Herb Oscar Anderson, Jack Thayer, Bill Bennett, Don Loughnane, Ralph Martin, and Len Bart. You can hear some of Herbs patter from September 7, 1956, on Tom Gavarass RadioTapes Web site: radiotapes.com/WDGY.html. WDGY (740 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Hudson, Wisconsin, and serving the Minneapolis-St. Paul radio market. According to PD Chuck Roberts, the new format is closer to AOR than Top 40 radio. A 15-year-old polio victim was smashed, face-first, into the pavement and sent home bleeding. Much of the following information about this ever-changing station comes from Jeff Lontos book Fiasco at 1280, The Rise and Hard Fall of a Twin Cities Radio Station, available through the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting. On February 26, 1964, Randall Hobart of the Star reported that Ed Skotch credited his women-oriented programming for a 480 percent increase in business since he took over the station. We Play The Hits! (Helicopters had to be replaced by limos when things got too dangerous.) Its Ipanema, not Impanema. We thought Formula 63 with the Colonel was really a good way to introduce our station. As a promotion, in November 1958 Jim Ramsburg cooked up the Radio Wonders basketball team. He didnt plan to start his new programming until he got a power increase from 500kw to 1,000kw. But late at night, if the conditions were right, Minnesotans could hear all kinds of music through the airwaves from all parts of the United States country blues from Arkansas, R&B from WLAC in Nashville, and maybe even some doo-wop from back East. As disasters go, this one wasnt even on the radar screen. From about 1955 to 1977, the station played popular music and was one of the most popular stations in the area, primarily competing for music listeners with KSTP 1500 and KDWB 630, though WCCO 830 was the major force of the day with a mixture of music, talk, and farm reports. The station was owned by the Peoples Broadcasting Company, founded by former WCCO announcer Bill Stewart and his wife Becky Ann. Jim went on to work for WDGY and KEEY. Jimmy Reed cues up a record in the control room at WDGY in 1969. And its guaranteed to relieve ennui! Around that time, a young Leigh Kamman and his friend Sev Widman hosted Studio Party Wham, named after a Jimmie Lunceford tune, showcasing big bands, small combos, and jazz. At least 48 times a day, if you happened to be tuning across the dial at that exact time all you could hear was the Colonel saying, You remember me? There is a promo of Jim Dandy announcing he was returning to WDGY (to fill the shift left by Rob Sherwood when he went to KDWB). Much later, in 1977, Kosofsky would transfer his shares to Miriam Warshaw. Preacher Paul was there three nights a week as a host, and on Saturday afternoons he broadcast from the place. She was awarded a free turkey along with the very important can of cranberry sauce. Midge was the luck caller who got to shoot the turkey. I do enjoy it! Black brought major R&B acts to the Labor Temple on 4th Street SE in Minneapolis. The shows were identified by the name of the DJs, which included Morris, Rodger Kent, Riley, Valentine, and Ingram. Al, by the way, happens to be a very knowledgeable fella, record wise. 1967 bumper sticker courtesy Curt Lundgren. SOLD JUN 13, 2022. The station finally landed at the great 1130 on March 24, 1941, when all of the local stations were repositioned. The license for that station expired in 1938, partly because mechanical television development was heavily discouraged by that point. From 1973 to 1976 it was strictly Country. These summaries focus on the 1950s through the 1970s, with an emphasis on trying to figure out which stations might have played rhythm & blues, rockabilly, or straight-on rock 'n' roll before WDGY, the first full-time rock 'n' roll station, hit the airwaves in February 1956. Click on Photo to go to a site with old bloomington antenna site and transmitter photos put together by Aaron White. This address doesnt exist as Highway 55 was expanded. After a brief shutdown in 1993 due to business failure and the sale of WRPX, the station picked up the vacated WMIN call sign, which had a long history in the market. Other Facebook stories of the strength of the transmission: In 1952 the station was sold to a group of four local businessmen, one of which was Clarence T. Hagman. Ten people were arrested, most for carrying firearms. The station even gave trading stamps three and a half million every week to listeners who called in at the right times. Rick B. Meanwhile the station was being sold, and they moved over to KQRS (which was then KEVE) to continue playing jazz after dark fell and KUXL was off the air. In early 1976, Fairchild Industries decided to put both stations on the market. Everyone made up and by 1972 (and probably before) the station had a Super Shooters basketball team. The Gavins sold their mimeographed service to one station per market and it was kind of a co-op into which we all poured our tips. Today, the station is KTLK, News/Talk 1130, and uses a transmitter site in Credit River Township. I took this from a flight I took in 1977. A media phenomenon, Coast to Coast AM deals with UFO's, strange occurrences, life after death, and other unexplained (and often inexplicable) phenomena. Bowman image sent to me by John Pratt, formerly of WDGY. MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA Format: T40. Now that TV had grabbed everyones attention, and radio was just background music, he wanted to reverse the process and create The Nations Most Attention-Programmed Station. The key was to provide entertainment, but not with comedy or drama, but with ideas and thoughts. We looked at each other for a long time. http://twincitiesradioairchecks.com/wdgy1130tapes.html. A unique look at sports. 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