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KLOS - Albuquerque radio (early 1960s)

L

Lisa_Wheeler

Hey all - Need some help regarding an album I just found, to add to my Web site, http://www.radiouseonly.com

The album is Poemas de Luz y Sombra - Recitales de Jesus Buenrostro

Album is from KLOS in Albuquerque (before KLOS became a Los Angeles station in 1968).

Does anyone remember this station? Was it a Spanish language station? Any help would be appreciated.

Lisa
 
Hi Lisa- When I Arrived in Abq in the early 60's, KLOS was an AM top 40 station that broadcast out of the KIMO Building, downtown. Based on the Lp you mentioned, It might have been a Spanish station prior to my arrival and flipped to a Top 40 station. The DJ's included Pal Al Tafoya (Deceased) , Tom Barsanti (recording artist "Tom Barsanti and the Invaders", currently living in Chicago) a young future Doctor Jarrett Galbreath (recorded with a group "The Chessmen", still resides in Abq). I seem to recall KLOS disappeared in the late 60's. That's about I recall, hope that helped.
 
Lisa_Wheeler said:
Hey all - Need some help regarding an album I just found, to add to my Web site, http://www.radiouseonly.com

The album is Poemas de Luz y Sombra - Recitales de Jesus Buenrostro

Album is from KLOS in Albuquerque (before KLOS became a Los Angeles station in 1968).

Does anyone remember this station? Was it a Spanish language station? Any help would be appreciated.

Lisa
Click to expand...
Lisa, I can’t help you with your quest on the Spanish album, but here are some hints about KLOS in the late 50s and early 60s.

Read the “RADIO THRU THE YEARS” (by AZJerry) thread on this board, which began on Feb 15, 08. A lot of historical comments there with some relating to KLOS.

I began listening to KLOS in Jan 1957, mainly night time, and I don’t recall it doing Spanish language programming at that time. Al Tafoya had a half-hour slot (9 pm?) which he dubbed “Night Train”. He used the Jimmy Forrest recording of Night Train as his open/close theme. Al’s son Henry, is still in the Albuquerque area, he used to do sports on TV and I think he currently runs KDEF-AM. You might try him for some more KLOS history. Bobby Box, a long time DJ currently on weekday and weekend mornings on BigOldies98.5 also may be able to help you. He has been on the Albuquerque scene since 1968 (?) and he knows his music. E-mail: [email protected]

Good luck.
 
E-mail from Bobby:

Hello Lisa; KLOS existed in albuquerque in the LATE 50'S AND EARLY 60'S, ANOTHER COMPANY BOUGHT KLOS AND CHANGED THE CALL LETTERS TO KQEO. i WORKED AT kqeo for many years in the late 60's and the seventies.

Unfortunately I still don't know when the station was Spanish language. Based on the board entries (“RADIO THRU THE YEARS”), the station was not Spanish language - that anyone could recollect - although this LP shows otherwise.

Thanks again to everyone trying to solve the mystery.
 
KLOS didn't become KQEO. In the early-60s, KLOS and KRZY swapped frequencies to give the then-country station, KRZY, a 24-hour signal (albeit at low power). I believe KLOS was briefly a Spanish station, but don't recall the owner at the time. They went through several other formats as well. I worked for KQEO from 1967 to 1977, and as PD and assistant CE from 1974 - 77.
 
Thank you for remembering!

To clarify things just a bit - KLOS, after the frequency switch, wound up on 1580. They were bought by John Deme, and it became KZIA. KQEO, OTOH, started life as KOAT Radio in the 1940s, then became KQUE in the '50s after its purchase by Handy Broadcasting. Then, in the late '50s, it finally became KQEO after its purchase by Swanson Broadcasting. Swanson also installed the 4-tower nighttime directional for the station so they could go to the blistering 500 watts at night on 920.

However, during the days before and after the frequency switch, KLOS tried lots of formats to try to find a formula that would work. As a rock station, they served as a starting point for some great talent, including Frank Cody, Peter Benson (Michael Young), and several others. It was even a Bohemian Jazz station for a while, as well as a Spanish station.
 
Thanks for the great info Gary! Wish I could pinpoint the exact year of this disc.
Based on all of this info (and knowing that KLOS went to the West Coast in 1968),
anyone have any best guesses?
 
Lisa - I'll try to find out and let you know by posting the info here. I know a couple of people who worked there at the time. I'll test their memories.
 
WOW! Gary Diamond...a "KQEO Good Guy" child idol of mine :) You and Joe Clayton used to do weekends...and then you moved to fulltime as I recall. I remember KQEO signing off...Sunday night at midnight...for a few hours of engineering maintenance...right? I think that was the only time they were off during the week.

Bohemian Jazz format on KLOS? Now that's one I hadn't heard about! :) Gary...thanks for the clarification on KQ's past call letters. Of course those calls are elsewhere now KLOS in Los Angeles (ABC Radio's Classic Rocker 95.5 FM...ooops, Citadel now) and KQUE in Houston (1230 AM "Radio Ranchito").

You mentioned the 4-tower array...before that, was 920 a daytime frequency? Was that nightime pattern a tough one to maintain? I'm assuming you had to protect KELP-920 in El Paso for one...right?

Speaking of KLOS and great air talent like Frank Cody...do you remember Frank's protest broadcast on the roof of the KIMO Theatre (where KLOS studios were at the time) to protest the frequency change to 1580?
Frank was a year ahead of me at Sandia HS, and he told me how to study and take the FCC test when the FCC Regional office would come to ABQ twice a year to administer it. I took my test at the old ABQ HS cafeteria in early 1967. Gary do you or any other board readers/contributors know what Frank is doing today?

You mentioned Peter Benson...I stumbled across his podcasts of his daily talk show on KNKT-FM (107.1)
the other day at their website, and when I'm in Tucson on business, I hear his voice on American Furniture radio ads :)
 
KQ was pretty rough on part-timers! The shift was Saturdays from 6 PM to 2:30 AM Sunday morning, then you had to come back in and play religious tapes from 6 to 9 AM. Then back at 6 PM to midnight that same night. Before mid-days (I took over from Pete, who went to KOIL, IIRC), I worked nights 6-12 midnight...a brutal shift by itself. The 4 tower DA at KQEO was problematic because the phasing equipment was built for another frequency, then modified for use at 920 - a second-hand system. It never worked right, and the new solid-state transmitters had VSWR problems with it. It was the toughest DA I ever dealt with of the 3 stations I worked for that had DA systems - the others being KRKE and KOB. KQ protected co-channel stations in Colorado, El Paso, Arizona and Texas. The pattern looked like an offset-cloverleaf with the biggest lobe over the northeast heights. I saw Cody at a NAB Convention some years ago, and we talked for a while - then, he was managing an NBC programming service called "The Source." I lost track of him after that, but someone once told me he was still on the east coast. I think Art Ortega has done a better job of keeping track of Frank than I have. I called the format at KLOS "Bohemian Jazz" because in the 50s, there were "beatniks." They used to hang out in coffee houses and smoke and drink coffee all night. This was their music - small 3 and 4-piece ensembles that played jazz variations for people of that generation.
 
Lisa - I spoke to someone who worked at KLOS at the time, and had a hand in recording the album you referred to. KLOS was Spanish from roughly 1960 - 63, and that album was sold around 1962. The person I spoke with also has a copy of the album.
 
Hi all,

I spent about a year in Albuquerque in the mid 70's programming KRST's then-AOR format, under the ownership of Ray Moran, who also owned KRZY at the time. The talented Frank Cody and his partner at the time, the now-consultant Jeff Pollack, were our competitors cross-town at the short-lived, but very interesting KMYR. I have not talked to Frank since I was in Albuquerque, but I know that he essentially invented the Smooth Jazz format in the mid-80's at KTWV (the Wave) in Los Angeles, and is now working with the smooth jazz artist Dave Koz in a music-promotion venture.

I recall Gary, that you ran a very tight playlist in those days at KQEO, but you rolled in the ratings big-time.
 
Personally, I was never a big fan of tight lists - but when you are running a stand-alone low-power AM, you have to use every trick in the book to keep treading water. I think the fastest rotation was around 45 minutes.
 
Gary,

To this day, I remember the sound of your audio chain at KQEO. Very impressive--hard for me to describe because I'm not a tech guy--I remember a fair amount of reverb, but it was very kind of "clean", for lack of a better word--a definite presence but not intrusive.

Speaking of tight--or "un-tight" lists--I was considered radical by some-both in-house and out-of-house at KRST for moving out of an essentially free-form "non-format" into a system in which our hottest tracks were played every seven hours. Just a couple of years later, I believe Lee Abrams was rotating his powers 3-4 hours apart.

One other thing, Gary. I got to know a rather pleasant guy you had working there--I think his name was Frank Ragan--think he handled your music. One of my biggest challenges at KRST was getting record service from some labels--on a couple of occasions he gave me albums (yes, vinyl in those days), that I had been unable to get my hands on. A nice guy Frank was.
 
Thanks for your thoughts! The processing was cheap and simple: A Kahn Symmetra-Peak followed by an original DAP. A little clipping in the MW-1 transmitter, and that was all! The reverb was a Hammond spring reverb on the wall in the control room (which would bong and bang on the air anytime someone would slam a door in the station), and it was just on the CR mic. The nighttime antenna system was very reactive and desperately needed to be re-done, but the money wasn't there for the project. So it sounded good during the daytime and at night was fair, but not great.

Frank was a great guy. I worked with him twice. He was my MD at KQEO, and we worked together again some years later at KRKE. He passed away a few years ago from COPD complications. At the time, he was still working part-time doing audio at KOAT-TV.

I haven't heard from Lee since he was at XM. He was never a real tight-lister, but was really into target audience research. One of the sharpest idea people I ever had the pleasure of meeting.
 
talkjim said:
I have not talked to Frank since I was in Albuquerque, but I know that he essentially invented the Smooth Jazz format in the mid-80's at KTWV (the Wave) in Los Angeles, and is now working with the smooth jazz artist Dave Koz in a music-promotion venture.
Click to expand...

The format created for KTWV was, in its inception, more new age than smooth jazz. And it was codeveloped by Frank and Owen Leach. Owen created the "smooth jazz" name later so that WNUA in Chicago could do the format without infringing on the service market "Wave." Frank and Owen were the founders of Broadcast Arcitecture, which syndicated the format, too.
 
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