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My turn on remembering rock on FM in the early 70's. "BBM-FM" was really a blend of some of the "top 40" that WLS & WCFL were playing and album rock. It was Bob Sirott's first radio gig, as he started as a weekend jock "Robert R Bradley" and all of a sudden took over morning drive, replacing Bud Kelly, and went to Bob Sirott on the air. Steve King was afternoon drive on there. I still chuckle when I remember the Rolling Stones song "Bitch" coming out in April 1971 and how Steve King used to always make it a point to say the name of the song, usually stretching it out, every time he played it. (Remember - it was 1971 and that was unheard of!)
WGLD, 102.7 FM, indeed went from oldies, including the great night-time jock "the Boss Hoss, Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrother Ross!!" into a loose album rock format, including the then revolutionary "Fem Forum with Morgan Moore" middays.
Sometime during 1972, a foreign language and brokered station, WXRT, started playing underground and progressive rock after midnight, and kept expanding the amount of time they did so. Bob Shulman had an awful voice and delivery but knew his music.
Going back to the original post on this thread - we also had "Spoke", an underground music show which aired at night on 94.7 WLS-FM, and was the first station to truly air "underground" and album rock music in Chicago. The amazing part is that WLS-FM had a split format for months, with local legend Art Hellyer playing elevator music from something like 7 AM to 5 PM (replaying his bits for the day during the afternoon) and then changing over to hard and underground rock for the night and overnight. Two totally different formats on the same station, but that didn't stop Hellyer from an occasional derogatory comment about the "stuff we play here at night".
The station then changed to WDAI and had Stan Dale hosting talk in the mornings, and music the rest of the day. They even had Jim Kerr hosting mornings from Chicago for a while. WDAI also brought us Bob Brown, the guy who really did say "and here's Jethro Tull with HIS latest....." one morning while doing a song intro. (For those non-rockers, Jethro Tull is the name of a rock GROUP, as every listener knew.) Later WDAI went disco, and in 1977, along came WLUP.
Which brings us back to today. WLUP had tons of music to play back then, yet now they boast about their heritage. Yet, the last time they did their "everything from A to Z", it took all of about 5 days. And so it goes...........
WGLD, 102.7 FM, indeed went from oldies, including the great night-time jock "the Boss Hoss, Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrother Ross!!" into a loose album rock format, including the then revolutionary "Fem Forum with Morgan Moore" middays.
Sometime during 1972, a foreign language and brokered station, WXRT, started playing underground and progressive rock after midnight, and kept expanding the amount of time they did so. Bob Shulman had an awful voice and delivery but knew his music.
Going back to the original post on this thread - we also had "Spoke", an underground music show which aired at night on 94.7 WLS-FM, and was the first station to truly air "underground" and album rock music in Chicago. The amazing part is that WLS-FM had a split format for months, with local legend Art Hellyer playing elevator music from something like 7 AM to 5 PM (replaying his bits for the day during the afternoon) and then changing over to hard and underground rock for the night and overnight. Two totally different formats on the same station, but that didn't stop Hellyer from an occasional derogatory comment about the "stuff we play here at night".
The station then changed to WDAI and had Stan Dale hosting talk in the mornings, and music the rest of the day. They even had Jim Kerr hosting mornings from Chicago for a while. WDAI also brought us Bob Brown, the guy who really did say "and here's Jethro Tull with HIS latest....." one morning while doing a song intro. (For those non-rockers, Jethro Tull is the name of a rock GROUP, as every listener knew.) Later WDAI went disco, and in 1977, along came WLUP.
Which brings us back to today. WLUP had tons of music to play back then, yet now they boast about their heritage. Yet, the last time they did their "everything from A to Z", it took all of about 5 days. And so it goes...........
1. After a basicly jazz format, WSDM called itself, "Jazzed Up Rock".
2. After the Progressive Rock Format, WGLD became W-Gold, with former WLS jock, the late Art Roberts, the PD. The air staff included Ray Smithers, Greg Brown, Morgan Moore with the infamous Femme Forum, Art himself, Brother Ross Brooks, a myraid of Normin in the Mornings, and Pat Cassidy doing news. :-*
2. After the Progressive Rock Format, WGLD became W-Gold, with former WLS jock, the late Art Roberts, the PD. The air staff included Ray Smithers, Greg Brown, Morgan Moore with the infamous Femme Forum, Art himself, Brother Ross Brooks, a myraid of Normin in the Mornings, and Pat Cassidy doing news. :-*
dhrmabum said:1. After a basicly jazz format, WSDM called itself, "Jazzed Up Rock".
2. After the Progressive Rock Format, WGLD became W-Gold, with former WLS jock, the late Art Roberts, the PD. The air staff included Ray Smithers, Greg Brown, Morgan Moore with the infamous Femme Forum, Art himself, Brother Ross Brooks, a myraid of Normin in the Mornings, and Pat Cassidy doing news. :-*
Ed Shane, now a Texas-based radio programming consultant, programmed WGLD's oldies format - and also did either a fulltime or weekend air shift.
D
dgregg
Guest
I was in high school in the early '70s and liked WBBM-FM's format, which I called the 'COCA' format -- for all practical purposes, they generally played a Current (top 40) hit, then an Oldie, then a Current hit, then an Album cut. They also played local artists -- Styx got a lot of airplay in about '72 and '73 before they went national. 'BBM-FM (as it was called on-air) also played Bonnie Koloc, John Prine, Steve Goodman, and other locals. (I still have several reel-to-reel airchecks of 'BBM-FM in those days -- I liked the format and the DJs so much that I recorded hours and hours of it to take with me when I went away to college at Bradley University in Peoria, but I don't know if the tapes are still playable.)
Their air staff in those days was Bob Sirott in AM drive, Tony Phillips (Program Director) 10am-noon, Jim Cloney noon-4pm, Steve King 4-8 pm, and I don't remember who was on after that. Sirott moved to WLS (10pm-2am) in '73 (I have an aircheck on reel of his final hour on BBM-FM, as well as his last show on WLS). He started at WLS at the same time as Yvonne Daniels, who took the 2-6 am shift, moving from WSDM's all-jazz, all-female-airstaff format (97.9 -- the call letters stood for "Smack Dab in the Middle" of the dial). A few months after Sirott and Daniels started, Sirott moved to PM drive on WLS and Steve King jumped from BBM-FM to fill Sirott's late night shift.
I remember WGLD, after its oldies incarnation, became what I would call 'hard-core' underground; meanwhile, around '69 or '70, WLS-FM also ran a syndicated progressive-rock show hosted by a guy named "Brother John" after 7 pm, and was either soft rock or simulcast WLS-AM during the day.
In the early '70s, WXRT ran progressive rock from midnight to 5 am, then moved the start time back to 10 pm, then back to 7 pm, then started it at 3 pm, before finally going 24 hours. The rest of 'XRT's broadcast day was foreign-language programming.
Someone in an earlier post mentioned Ray Smithers; after WGLD, he went on to become Program Director of WEXI, a 3kw station on 92.7 out of Arlington Heights. I remember listening to that a lot -- it was the first pure top 40 station I'd heard on FM. WEXI was totally automated, with Ray Smithers intro-ing or outro-ing each song played. He later went on to be PD of 50-kw WYEN (106.7) out of Des Plaines, also mentioned in an earlier post, which had an all-request soft-rock format. Last I heard, he was in Florida someplace.
Their air staff in those days was Bob Sirott in AM drive, Tony Phillips (Program Director) 10am-noon, Jim Cloney noon-4pm, Steve King 4-8 pm, and I don't remember who was on after that. Sirott moved to WLS (10pm-2am) in '73 (I have an aircheck on reel of his final hour on BBM-FM, as well as his last show on WLS). He started at WLS at the same time as Yvonne Daniels, who took the 2-6 am shift, moving from WSDM's all-jazz, all-female-airstaff format (97.9 -- the call letters stood for "Smack Dab in the Middle" of the dial). A few months after Sirott and Daniels started, Sirott moved to PM drive on WLS and Steve King jumped from BBM-FM to fill Sirott's late night shift.
I remember WGLD, after its oldies incarnation, became what I would call 'hard-core' underground; meanwhile, around '69 or '70, WLS-FM also ran a syndicated progressive-rock show hosted by a guy named "Brother John" after 7 pm, and was either soft rock or simulcast WLS-AM during the day.
In the early '70s, WXRT ran progressive rock from midnight to 5 am, then moved the start time back to 10 pm, then back to 7 pm, then started it at 3 pm, before finally going 24 hours. The rest of 'XRT's broadcast day was foreign-language programming.
Someone in an earlier post mentioned Ray Smithers; after WGLD, he went on to become Program Director of WEXI, a 3kw station on 92.7 out of Arlington Heights. I remember listening to that a lot -- it was the first pure top 40 station I'd heard on FM. WEXI was totally automated, with Ray Smithers intro-ing or outro-ing each song played. He later went on to be PD of 50-kw WYEN (106.7) out of Des Plaines, also mentioned in an earlier post, which had an all-request soft-rock format. Last I heard, he was in Florida someplace.
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