STATION PICKS WJZR KANAPOLAS CHARLOTTE

[thatwasradio]

Yes, Nerleman, when WRFX signed on, 80% of the music was vinyl dubbed to Capitol Blue Carts, brand new, out of the box. Chrysler always said a music cart was only good for 300 plays, then the tape was worn out and had to either be re-strung or new carts ordered. Of course, Metroplex bought all new carts (They threw all the old Z-100 carted music, on Blue Capitol carts and the brown tension Scotch Carts, in the dumpster out back, I quickly recovered them the next morning, they are in storage here in Louisiana now).
It did take a long time to dub the Fox library to cart, but, then again, I have always been very meticulous and precise, so if a song was dubbed and did not start EXACTLY when the "start" button was hit, I re-dubbed it again, or if the fade didn't come out right. Metroplex bought a lot of the vinyl, but most of it came from Mary London's personal collection.
One thing we had on the Z-100 carted music (since this IS a Z-100 thread!) that we didn't need on the Fox carts, was post intros for the songs. I had always put one or two post intros on a cart label before I worked at Z-100, but 'Mul and Van showed me the need for EVERY post on an intro, some songs, like "Obsession" by Animotion, had almost 8 post intros! It made for a good sound on the air when the jock could do that "Larry Lujack style" slight pause at each post.
I have never worked at a station that played vinyl directly on air, it was always too dangerous, and could wear the records out too soon (no one wants to hear a cue-burn!), even at WAYS in the late 70's, where I did limited intern work, all music was on cart.

Kahuna
www.thatwasradio.com
www.myspace.com/kahunaradio

 

[eacalhoun1]

When Metroplex came in, they completely re-did the entire studio and audio chain, and put in brand new TomCat cart machines, and we started playing some of the music from "Compact Laser Disc", as it was to be called on air.

So, Kahuna, am I to understand that anything the Fox had on vinyl initially was dubbed to carts? Wow! Dubbing a classic rock library to carts must have been extremely tedious and time consuming!! But I wish we could have done it that way at XRC. It was very obvious that we were playing some stuff straight from vinyl. In 85 and 86 when I was a part-timer there, the station was in uptown Hickory, right next to the railroad tracks. And any time a train went by, it always rattled our foundation a little. It never caused any records to skip, but it created some really bad wow-and-flutter. I noticed it the worst during the organ intro of "Free Bird".

I don't mean to change this WJZR post to a WXRC one, but Nerleman you raise some questions. I was a huge fan of WXRC when it was Top40/CHR "X-Rock" and was even happier when the tower moved to Smith Mtn in Burke County vastly improving the signal. But, then Top40 was dumped for AOR "The Rock" and well, I didn't like it. But, anyway did you work at WXRC during the Top 40 or AOR period--or both? I believe the old studios you refer to--near the RR tracks--were in what would be the IWANNA building. Butch Grider used to work there--he gave me a tour once, along with Justin Phelps(JP) and I'm trying to remember the longtime WIRC/WXRC news director. He is or was a Public Information officer for either Catawba County government or one of the municipalities. Then in 1988, WIRC moved to the old WSPF building after it went dark in 1987. If WXRC was ever in the WSPF building, it was a brief period.

(Jtudor, if you're lurking around you will remember the name of the WIRC/WXRC news director!)

Eric

 

[nerleman]

The WIRC/WXRC news director during that time was Dave Hardin and he really knew his stuff!

I worked there from July 85 to January 87. The format change from X-Rock to The Rock was done in September 85. So I was there during some of both formats. I worked with Justin Phelps (JP), Boomer (not the same Boomer that worked at Magic), Bill Young, Shelli B and Morgan Thomas. We also had Tall Charles who did the Sunday Jazz Brunch. Greg Mull was the PD during the entire time I was there.

 

[nerleman]

Actually I enjoyed doing both formats, but for different reasons. During XRC's Top 40 days, our music was played exclusively via automation (with live assist) off of TM's 10" reel tapes. We also had six cart "carousels" for playing spots. The only stuff that was played from the actual control room were Scott Shannon and Casey Kasem; we played those directly from vinyl. But I enjoyed the music and the style of announcing that Greg Mull wanted from us.

When we switched to AOR (The Rock), the DJ'ing was more "hands-on" as we were actually pulling and playing music manually, from vinyl and CDs.

Yes, the station was in the Iwanna building in uptown Hickory. However, that building is now occupied by Griffith Security and Iwanna has moved to another location.

January 1987 Greg Mull left and went to a station in Ft. Myers, Florida. The new PD Bob Raleigh canned me and brought his own staff in. I was never able to confirm this because I didn't listen, but some of my buddies told me that the part-timer Bob Raleigh hired to replace me even used my on-air name. It was after that when XRC bought Channel 1 WSPF and shut it down. They then moved into the channel 1 studios at the corner of Tate Blvd and 127.

 

[eacalhoun1]

Nerleman...I remember the days of the live-assist automation, and even farther back to when WXRC used the TM Century "announced" reels -- using THEIR announcer which could be heard nationwide. I also believe WIRC/WXRC had the same automation as WMNC (Morganton) -- an SMC. Those carousels were great at destroying carts! And, yep thanks for jiggling my brain with the name Dave Hardin as news director. I had also forgotten about Greg Mull, who worked at WMNC prior to moving to WIRC/WXRC. I also did the very last morning shift on Channel 1 WSPF -- Dec 31, 1987.

Ahh...the memories.

Eric

 

[jtudor]

I also believe WIRC/WXRC had the same automation as WMNC (Morganton) -- an SMC. Those carousels were great at destroying carts!
Eric

That SMC Automation was a real beast. WMNC's was the second generation that actually used silicon memory, WIRC / WXRC's used magnetic core memory which was a lot more volatile.

Yes the carousels were real pieces of work, and required constant babying, adjustment and TLC. You may have seen carousels with other names on them such as Harris or IGM, but they were all made by SMC. I believe they are now out of business, Google yields no information about them.

Now I thought that Willis Deal was never able to find a buyer for WSPF, because he wanted to sell the station and all his rental properties together. Since he could not find a buyer, he took the station dark before he died. Then WIRC bought the building and moved there. I got that information from a good friend and former co worker who worked at WSPF in its last years.

 

[CrazeeCarroll1]

OOOOOOOO YUCK!!! I hated those SMC Carousels... Like the name said SMC and it lived up to its expectations every time... CC1 ;D

 

[nerleman]

Hey Eacalhoun...did you work at Channel 1 when Rick Reynolds was there? Last year I helped him at a Hickory High School class of 71 reunion gig. Most of the folks there remembered hearing Rick Reynolds on the air at Channel 1 during their high school days.

I know Channel 1 WSPF flipped to country sometime in the early 80s but I fail to recall exactly when.

 

[BIG APE]

I'm looking for a friend of mine that worked in Florida at WKKO with me and later worked at Channel 1, Scott Hubbs aka "Scott Conley" Anyone know his whereabouts, I would appreciate it! APE

 

[eacalhoun1]

Nerleman and Big Ape...

I only worked at Channel 1 during its last year on the air (1987), and primarily weekends except for its last 2 weeks on when I did the mornings. I don't recall Rick Reynolds--but I quickly learned everyone had an alias and I'm not sure payroll even knew their real names ;D

As for Scott Conley, he was set for WKGX (Lenoir) when WSPF went dark. He was there a few years and then later showed up at WTLK (Taylorsville). Not sure if Scott was still there at the time -- I think he was -- but WTLK's claim to fame is getting its tower destroyed by Hurricane Hugo in 1989. WTLK was zapped off the air at the very moment that Leon Everette's "Hurricane" was spinning on the turntable. It was also reported that portions of the tower--or ceiling parts from the tower's impact -- literally skewered the vinyl 45 on the turntable. Oh, and for you young'uns...Leon Everette is a LONG forgotten country artist who made a mediocre impact on the industry in the mid 80s.

Oh, and Scott may still live in Granite Falls...he did when at Channel 1 and WKGX.

Eric

 

[vasser]

OK I know Kahuna will love this topic ;D. I found this station by accident one night back in early 1984 and fell right in love with Z100... This station had the sound and feel of true big city radio something that a lot of other stations were unable to pull off... Now it is your turn gang... Have a good week and we will catch ya from time to time... CC1

Z-100 was one of the best stations I ever worked on. I did part time there as Chris Brothers because I was using Brother Dave on WABZ FM 100.9 at the time. I previously worked with R.C. Chrysler when he programmed WDEX AM in Monroe also. Van "Van Man" Radford was on WDEX AM at that time too. Bob Chrysler is one of the smartest programmers I ever knew. He sure drew up a mean format clock. I also worked for a while in the 1970's with Kent Burkhart and I think Mr. Chrysler was an even better programmer.

Those Z100 jingles were hot. Yes the station sounded big city.

Once while I was doing a show on Magic 96.1 about 1997 or 98 Animal called me up to say hello and let me know he was listening. He sounded bad. Said he had been sick. I didn't know how sick he really was at that time.

Animal. We miss you!

 

[thatwasradio]

Nice mention about 'Mul there, Dave, he will never be forgotten by those of us who knew him, those who loved him, and even those who only got to hear him on the radio but never knew the man. We used to sit up all hours of the night at his mother's house listening to airchecks, and the biggest boost to my career was when he told me if I ever wanted to do mornings the "right" way, as he handed me a 90-minute cassette tape, he said "Listen to this guy, he did it right", it was Jack Gale on Big Ways. I must have worn that tape out over the next couple of years, and it was that inspiration that gave me the boost and creativity to do mornings for 20 years and be successful at it, but, most importantly, to make a living from it and be happy.
And, you too, Dave, you probably don't remember it, but when you had me do my first piece of production at WABZ, I completed the vocal track and you said "Sounds more and more like WLS!!!", I knew I wasn't that good, but it was a great boost of confidence I will never forget! Gawd I hated that production room...
Kahuna
www.thatwasradio.com

 

[vasser]

Gawd I hated that production room...
Kahuna
www.thatwasradio.com

Well that makes you a member of a big club. The secret to that room was...if you could get something that sounded OK out of it you could make it sound awesome almost anywhere else...and thus you were a better person for it. Seeing as how well you did it elsewhere, it must have been a good learning experience. Sometimes it was hard to tell exactly what you had because the Radio Shack monitor amp sent 3% distortion through the Sanyo home stereo speaker. The phrase, "That which does not kill me only makes me stronger," comes to mind. After six years of it, I was a regular Mr. Universe.

At least the AC was cool and the coffee hot! Let's not forget that with all the churches in the neighborhood, parking on Sunday for the noon shift was a hoot too. And of course it was the only station where I ever worked that had a walk in vault!

I still see Leon Warren frequently who does mornings at WZKY in Albemarle and I see retired salesman Dick Norwood now and then at the grocery store. More updates on 1980's WABZ people: Wendell Rummage is a police detective in Charlotte and Mark McGuffin is doing afteroons on Oldies 94.1 in Lexington. I've lost track of Ted Bell, Magic Mark Robinson and Larry Thomas. Last I heard Ted had left Blowing Rock but I don't know where he landed. I think Larry Thomas is still around the area but I don't know where. Larry was in the Uwharrie Players theater company for a while and that was the last I heard from him.

Apologies for going off topic folks...Kahuna and I were having a strange interlude! Z-100 yeah that was the topic. I went from Z-100 to WROQ-FM and at that time they had a gorgeous all new control room with all new gear but it wasn't very ergonomic and other than the fact that WROQ had Shure SM7 mics (which are STILL my favorite) I liked Z-100's overall sound better. A large part of that of course was because of the best FM audio guy I've ever known named Gary Hattaway. When he put the Dolby system in for the carts Z-100 sounded like a whole new station because he could eq it better.

Brother Dave

 

[MusicDoctorRadio]

CrazeeCaroll;
Ahhh, yes, you started a good one here, I can't wait to see more posts!


To all who posted about Animal, he was truly a one-of-a-kind, wild, crazy and growly on the air, and the nicest, most calm guy in person you would ever meet. I have plenty more airchecks of his to put on my site AS SOON AS I FIND THE TIME!!! I am trying to find some of his stuff from WOKI-FM 100 in Knoxville, TN, from when he left Z-100 to go back to get custody of his daughter. A little known fact: 'Mul was the first male in the state of Tennessee to gain full custody of a child, he was so relieved and happy.

Yo Kahuna!

It's been awhile. How's it going? Good to hear others on here talking about Animal.

Let me know if you ever find some of Mul's old WOKI stuff from here in Knoxville where I'm at. I would love to have copies of it.

 

[MusicDoctorRadio]

I have to say that the short time Animal did mornings at WOKI here in Knoxville, TN, I really did enjoy hearing him.

I remember one morning not long before Animal left Knoxville and went back to Z-100, he and former WOKI 7pm to midnight shock jock, "Shotgun Stevens" teamed up together on the air. I really regret that I never did record that show. They were both hilarious on the air together.

 

[thatwasradio]

Chris;
Good to see you on this board, I spent some quality time with Robert Murphy and Larry Sprinkle in Charlotte a couple of weeks ago, I have added a Murphy In The Morning section to my site at thatwasradio.com, and Murphy has commissioned me to build his own website so be looking for that soon, he's a real nice and down-to-Earth guy, no ego at all, and, of course, Larry Sprinkle is still the kindest gentleman you will probably ever meet in radio and TV.
Back to Z-100, if I ever get my hands on an Animal aircheck from WOKI, it will definitely be on my site ASAP!!!!

 

[RobynWattsV2.0]

Since this topic was brought back up, I'd thought everyone would be interested in this aircheck of RC Chrysler & Panama Jack from 1984.

www.radiotimeline.com (Scrool down to WJZR)

Robyn

 

[NewsNow]

I had forgotten about the vault at WABZ.

I would never forget that production room.

or using old style AP teletype paper for a different type of TP because the owner was too cheap to buy any. Ahhhh..... small town radio. They were so proud when they were able to dump their 30 year old studio gear and install some brand spankin' 20 year old gear.

When I started there was the exact moment WABZ and WWWX were seperating, but staying in the same building. The AM technically no longer had a production room, which was fine because they only had one commercial - Harmamco's, voiced by the girlfriend of the owner who had a 5 pack a day and brown liguor habit, trying to sound like a little girl.

I did my production during George Purcell's shift because he wouldn't have cared if I set fire to the place, as long as I dragged him out. RIP.

 

[JOHNNY on the RADIO]

I had forgotten about the vault at WABZ.

I would never forget that production room.

or using old style AP teletype paper for a different type of TP because the owner was too cheap to buy any. Ahhhh..... small town radio. They were so proud when they were able to dump their 30 year old studio gear and install some brand spankin' 20 year old gear.

When I started there was the exact moment WABZ and WWWX were seperating, but staying in the same building. The AM technically no longer had a production room, which was fine because they only had one commercial - Harmamco's, voiced by the girlfriend of the owner who had a 5 pack a day and brown liguor habit, trying to sound like a little girl.

I did my production during George Purcell's shift because he wouldn't have cared if I set fire to the place, as long as I dragged him out. RIP.

Ahhh...the memories of Albemarle radio. I miss WABZ. It still doesn't feel right not having 100.9 on the air in Stanly County.

 

[itzawlgud]

I don't mean to change this WJZR post to a WXRC one, but Nerleman you raise some questions. I was a huge fan of WXRC when it was Top40/CHR "X-Rock" and was even happier when the tower moved to Smith Mtn in Burke County vastly improving the signal. But, then Top40 was dumped for AOR "The Rock" and well, I didn't like it. But, anyway did you work at WXRC during the Top 40 or AOR period--or both? I believe the old studios you refer to--near the RR tracks--were in what would be the IWANNA building. Butch Grider used to work there--he gave me a tour once, along with Justin Phelps(JP) and I'm trying to remember the longtime WIRC/WXRC news director....Then in 1988, WIRC moved to the old WSPF building after it went dark in 1987. If WXRC was ever in the WSPF building, it was a brief period.

Good heavens! I never thought my name would actually show up on here in an old radio story, but there I am! I am/was JP--Jay Phelps now for the last 20 years or so and I remember those WXRC/WIRC days very fondly, even though it was anything but "big-time" radio. (We really tried hard on a shoestring. )

I was hired by Greg Mull when WXRC was still "X-Rock". He wanted to get away from the John Leader back-announced reels and use the actual humans who were in the building anyhow to do live assist. As you might remember, that didn't work out so well in many of the cases. Most of the people who had never done more than hourly weather reports turned out to be not so good at doing live.

I don't have many strong memories of that brief period. I do I remember the mid-day guy was Steve something and was basically a liner guy. The afternoon woman, who's name I've never been able to remember, was a big curly-haired Eileen-Brennan-in-"FM"-type who had a very odd delivery, and another woman named Brenda Jean something who was easily THE most hateful person I've met in my entire career. (Yes, she made a lasting impression on me! LOL)

Butch Grider was across the hall on WIRC live in the mornings when i was on WXRC. He was nice enough to do lots of voice-stuff for me for the morning show. (I thought I was SOMETHING, doing a big morning show. But in hindsight, I'm sure I sucked.) We both worked with ancient automation systems that were not designed for live-assist, so we were always cutting off songs by accident. (To do a voice break, you had to throw it into manual, then hit the correct button of the reel playing, then punch the button that put the studio on the air and then punch the correct next reel before you threw it back to automatic.) And a gambler could have made some cash betting that the first spot in a stop set would be followed by two seconds of dead air because we always forgot to put it in automatic to play the spots back-to-back.

The spots themselves were in mono, and remained that way well into the "The ROCK" days for WXRC. Only one channel was used for audio; the other channel held the encoding of the spot title, code, etc.. so it would print out everything on a hard copy showing the exact time, roatations, and such for billing. The best part was you could hear the encoding playing in the background of every commercial for the first :10 or so. A lot of beeping and chirping was present, especially on dry voice commercials. It sounded like we we sending Morse Code to the ships at sea!

More later, following your late local news, over most of these NBC stations!