WERE 1300 is now WJMO (another of David's first gigs as I recall). WJMO 1490 is now WERE. The way we WERE...
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AM Frequency of the week: 1300
- Thread starter cyberdad
- Start date
WJMO 1490 was my very first gig. When the AM moved studios and transmitter closer to the Black community, the orphaned FM, WCUY, remained at the location that I could get to on my bicycle. Fortunately, that was just when the FCC required a minimum schedule and 7-day-a-week operation for FMs so they had lots of hours to cover and I got some of them. Previously, they had run from 4 PM to 10 PM daily, Monday to Saturday. I got to do Sundays, 7 AM to 11 PM non-stop; that meant lots of White Castle coffee and fifteen cent hamburgers kept warm on top of the transmitter! For a 14-year-old it was a major thrill.
Mason City, IA:
All KGLO, all the time
Central KS:
Daytime-No identifiable local signals. KAKC/Tulsa and KBRL/McCook, NE are the closest to me on this frequency, yet have not received them.
Nighttime-Mostly mush. Have yet to hear anything notable.
All KGLO, all the time
Central KS:
Daytime-No identifiable local signals. KAKC/Tulsa and KBRL/McCook, NE are the closest to me on this frequency, yet have not received them.
Nighttime-Mostly mush. Have yet to hear anything notable.
I thought WJMO had always been in that grassy field by Case Western. At least that's where I thought it was in my two weeks with my family in Cleveland at the Cleveland Clinic. WABQ 1540 was over on the other side of the Clinic, I could see it, but never got that far West. 1490 and 1540 were the strongest AM signals where we stayed. Topped the Liquid Crystal signal meter on the Grundig S-350 with the RF gain turned all the way down.
WSRS, named for the owner, Sam R. Segue, was at Cedar and Lee in Cleveland Heights on the second floor of a car dealership back in the era when dealers did not have huge suburban lots with hundreds of vehicles.
The ground system for WSRS was a counterpoise system on the second floor roof, and the FM was on a 4-element pylon on the top of the tower.
The second floor was shared with the Sun-Press, one of those weekly ad-supported journals best used for paper training a dog. They populated the halls with a never-ending series of salespersons, all men and all in cheap Robert Hall suits, carrying an endless supply of smelly cigarettes... lots of smoke and stains on the walls and door handles.
Occasionally, our owner, Richard Eaton, would visit. He was by that time confined to a wheel chair and was carried up the stairs to the second floor by four staff members. The AM station air-staff used to have a pool each time, placing money on which numbered step the carriers would trip and drop Eaton to his demise. Nobody won, of course, and Eaton went on to lose a TV license and several radio licenses (WOOK and WFAB) due to illegal or prohibited practices like using Bible verses for an illicit numbers game or double billing coo-op advertisers for fun and profit.
I learned so many things that should not be done at a radio station that I was well prepared a few years later to own my own ones. Just don't do anything that Eaton did and you will win, I thought.
There are many more stories... and that is why when people think the "old days" of radio were so great they forget Max Richmond, Richard Eaton, Don Burden and so many other ultra-dreadful or capricious owners.
According to Larry Lujack, Max Richmond was the worst owner that he ever worked for. Lujack couldn't wait to get away from WMEX when Richmond owned the station.
There were train tracks to one side of the field. The story goes that on a dark night, Chuck Owens, the Chief Engineer and his crew welded the tips of the ground system radials nearest to the tracks to a heavy gauge wire, which was then attached to several of the rail bolts from beneath. In theory, about 60 of the radials were miles long.
I asked Chuck one time, and he said, "that would be an interesting idea".
I'll match you with Eaton and raise you a Burden.
As I have related previously, when I was about 12 and on a trip to CA with my mother on a stop in Denver I visited the station closest to our hotel, KICN. I was generously given a tour when, rounding a corner, I slammed right into Don Burden.
Burden looked at me and then yelled at the staff member, "who is this little c---sucker?" and told the employee to get rid of me immediately and get back to work.
Burden went on to lose all his licenses in Indianapolis, Omaha and Portland as well due to little things like bribing a congressman and stuff like that.
On the other hand, just a few years later when I was 16, the same scene repeated itself at Grupo Radio Centro in Mexico City. I slammed into Ramiro Garza, the group PD of the market's 5 top stations. He was fascinated by the young gringo's interest in the operation and presented me to the owner. I left his office with an internship at what was the most progressive, successful radio group in Latin America if not the whole world.
Some people are nice. I always tried to appreciate young people who wanted to visit a "real" radio station and a couple went on to be very successful radio people themselves.
Sam Segue??? Did he do airshifts? That would be as much of a self fulfilling prophecy as as John Records Landecker!
I did get out to Lee Rd. Seems like there were a lot of stores out that way. Plus the roads got back to right angle road layouts that the original surveyors of that area and much of the country platted, not five or six roads coming together at odd angles like in Cleveland. By the time I figured out where I was going, it was time to go back to Michigan.
I did get out to Lee Rd. Seems like there were a lot of stores out that way. Plus the roads got back to right angle road layouts that the original surveyors of that area and much of the country platted, not five or six roads coming together at odd angles like in Cleveland. By the time I figured out where I was going, it was time to go back to Michigan.
Sam was a real estate guy, and his name was pronounced seh-guew but he was gone when I got there. Just before I hung out it had been sold to Richard Eaton. The sales staff was somewhere downtown, headed by GM Curlette C. Courtney who seldom came to the studios. Management was white, and at the studios we were all Black except for me and another part timer who ran the language shows on Sunday (Italian, Greek, German, Czech, and about 6 more). It was as nice a group as I ever was part of, and they kind of adopted me and I went to shows, weddings and parties with them. Another era.
Cedar and Lee was a major intersection, with Heights High on the NE corner, and the other sides having lots of storefronts ranging from office supplies, a drug store, a TV and Record shop, a theater, banks, and all the other typical suburban pre-shopping center stores. My favorite was the White Castle, with those little burgers and "Birch Beer". Of course, the tower was a beacon for the main intersection.
The station would not let Heights High students in. For some reason, since I went to another school and identified as a member of a DX club, I got in. After that, they could not get rid of me and ended up putting me to work.
There was a baseball player with a similar pronunciation, but looking it up, it was spelled Segui, probably like a difference between French, Spanish, and Portuguese spellings. Seems like there is a Latin root word that is similar, and probably has the same meaning, like "one closely following another".
Looked it up, the Latin root is "sequor" and it was originally a musical score term.
Sounds like a swell guy
There were, as I'm sure you know some very nice ones. In the early 60s when Gene Taylor was GM at WLS I was with a friend who loved radio as I did. We were up at the WLS studios and Taylor couldn't have been nicer. We bombarded him with questions and not only did he answer them all he took us on a station tour.Then there was WLS DJ Bob Hale who hosted an event I was at when I was 13. During his break, when I'm sure he wanted to kick back and relax a bit, I went up to him and asked him 15 minutes of radio questions. He was really nice and patient. I'd like to think that for every bad one there were many more good ones.
"Sam was a real estate guy, and his name was pronounced seh-guew but he was gone when I got there. Just before I hung out it had been sold to Richard Eaton. The sales staff was somewhere downtown, headed by GM Curlette C. Courtney who seldom came to the studios. Management was white, and at the studios we were all Black except for me and another part timer who ran the language shows on Sunday (Italian, Greek, German, Czech, and about 6 more). It was as nice a group as I ever was part of, and they kind of adopted me and I went to shows, weddings and parties with them. Another era."
Jim Hampton, who was later at WLS, worked at a station much like that with quite a History, WAMM 1420 (WHK was never thrilled) in Flint. It was originally the idea of Ernie Durham, a well known Black DJ and entrepreneur in Detroit. He put up 25% and there were three other partners. Booth Broadcasting (WBBC, WJLB, and as I recall WABQ at one point) made him an offer he couldn't refuse, and the FCC wouldn't let WAMM sign on unless he chose just WAMM, and left WBBC. He chose WBBC and WJLB over WAMM. He commuted with a short time between airshafts at the two stations (before I-75!), and thus became known as "Frantic Ernie". Casey Kasem was an early DJ at WAMM in 1957 (according to Casey). He had worked with Ernie at WDET when they were at Wayne State.
Jim Hampton, who was later at WLS, worked at a station much like that with quite a History, WAMM 1420 (WHK was never thrilled) in Flint. It was originally the idea of Ernie Durham, a well known Black DJ and entrepreneur in Detroit. He put up 25% and there were three other partners. Booth Broadcasting (WBBC, WJLB, and as I recall WABQ at one point) made him an offer he couldn't refuse, and the FCC wouldn't let WAMM sign on unless he chose just WAMM, and left WBBC. He chose WBBC and WJLB over WAMM. He commuted with a short time between airshafts at the two stations (before I-75!), and thus became known as "Frantic Ernie". Casey Kasem was an early DJ at WAMM in 1957 (according to Casey). He had worked with Ernie at WDET when they were at Wayne State.
Sounds like a swell guy
Then there was WLS DJ Bob Hale who hosted an event I was at when I was 13. During his break, when I'm sure he wanted to kick back and relax a bit, I went up to him and asked him 15 minutes of radio questions. He was really nice and patient. I'd like to think that for every bad one there were many more good ones.
I had a similar experience at WLS. When visiting Chicago from Omena, MI (20 Miles NNW of Traverse City, population about 60), I went to WLS. They gave me one of the DJ cards, and allowed me to sit about 8 hours in the lobby and get the DJs who came or left to sign it. They deserved their success.
I was, and always will be, a radio groupie.
"Seguidor" of course is the contemporary Spanish term. I can see the root, and should after 5 years of Latin in school (an amazingly forgettable language unless you are a lawyer or a priest)
"Frantic" Ernie Durham. Quite a guy from what I've heard.
There is a recording of Ernie Durham from 1956 on WBBC online, which was recorded off air by none other than full time hippie activist John Sinclair. It's on his site called Radio Free Amsterdam as I recall. There's also a recording of Jim Hampton interviewing Stevie Wonder at WAMM in 1965, before a concert. I think that interview was an important part of the audition tape that landed him the production job at WLS. Both recordings are definitely worth a listen. Hampton's is available unscoped. Interesting "Period Pieces".
Thanks, I'll try to check them out.
GREAT story! That sixteen hour shift beats my record of fifteen. College radio. 10am-1am, also on a Saturday. Fund raiser for studio equipment. No White Castles in Iowa, but fortunatelly the cafeteria was right down the hall, and the student union was downstairs. Not to mention the men's room was adjacent to the studio on the right....(ladies room on the left). "Coming to you from between the johns" was one of our slogans. We actually exceeded our goal with the fund raiser. Enough left over to finance a kegger!
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