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. Always a different color of Twin Cities life. One was a big man about 64 tall, the other much shorter and wearing a white Stetson hat, white boots and a red and white country-western outfit that was so loaded with rhinestones that he literally shimmered when he walked. New furnace, electricity etc. The station is the oldest continuously operating station in the state, dating to December 23, 1923 when Dr. George W. Young signed on with the call letters KFMT. I got my First in 6 weeks at Brown Institute. On August 26, 1974, live at the Minnesota State Fair, the oldies format became boogie, with KDWB alumnus Rob Sherwood heading up a wild and crazy format as U100. This shot was taken around 1969 one weekend when Gene allowed some of my fellow pirate radio friends and me to visit him on the air. The music spanned the black musical spectrum, from bebop to pop, delta blues to Motown, Dixieland to the Philadelphia disco sound, said Adams. Thats what caused the severe distortion, despite registering a 4 on my Wards Airline signal strength scale of 1 to 5. In 1950 it was 1.3 percent, and in 1960 it grew to 2.5 percent. But was this the first opportunity that Twin Citians had to hear what came to be known as rock n roll on the radio? CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE, 1969 photo of Jim Dandy at the control board in the Bloomington studios, Jay J. At night (with 25,000 watts) you could hardly pick up the station 5 miles to the south of the site, but the signal had an effective radiated power of 300,000 watts to the north and went right over the North Pole into the Soviet Union. For his own protection, his real identity was kept secret. In about November 1973, the WMIN call letters moved to 1010kc (formerly polka and country station WJSW). This was a fun station. They kept the WYOO call letters, to avoid the hassle and long process of changing call letters with the FCC. James Brown and His Revue appeared at the Minneapolis Auditorium on April 25, 1967. ARSA: ABOUT: SURVEYS: STATIONS: WDGY 1130 AM. Stephen B. Labunski was made General Manager. Last week Ed Skotch of KUXL announced plans to introduce features designed to cheer up the lonely housewives, and now Bill Stewart of WPBC says he has started a new format of happy music and other features of make people feel better.. This has been the only transmitter location for the station since it signed on the air. The switch resulted in low ratings, according to an article in the Star Tribune on September 3, 1977. The Lucky Lou program was on Sundays and was described as Jazz and Bits and Pieces of Music.. Thats why wed like to call your attention to the music of KEEY-AM at 1400 on your standard radio dial. If you look carefully, you can see the old WDGY transmitter through the studio glass. Not all of the airchecks on this site were in my original personal collection. That kind of ended when Mr. Purcell reminded them that WCCO, like every station, is required by FCC rules to know who their advertisers are. Who had the key? On December 20, 1977, a permit was approved to change the tower location to 5650 St. Croix Ave. in Golden Valley. Station Frequency Format . Ironically, the abandoned WDGY call letters were quickly picked up by the former rival station at 630 kHz. Similar to the biggest Christmas cookie contest of 1963, in 1973 the station sponsored a contest for the biggest snowman. On June 18, 1975, 1280 switched to NBCs News and Information Service (NIS). Herb Oscar Anderson was the first disk jockey on the air with the new Top 40 rock n roll format that morning, and the jocks and the new sounds boosted the station from a tepid Number 4 to second place behind behemoth WCCO. Jeff Lonto says that they became a middle-of-the-road music station for years, also carrying NBC news and NBCs Monitor on weekends. You will enjoy tuning up to the quality sound of sound radio programming on KUXL. Don was probably one of the first newscasters to experience terrorism while at KDWB, and shares this story with us. It is owned by WRPX, inc. and airs a Classic Hits/Oldies radio format. In April 1957 the station was owned by BVM Broadcasting Co. and Victor Tedesco was General Manager, replacing Sam Sabean. Bottom Row: Dan Halyburton, Larry E. Cummins, Jimmy Reed. Later they would admit that the Todd Storz they often disparaged very well may have saved radio at a time when television was stealing its audience. In 1978, promoter Tom Tipton noted that KUXL played only 11 hours of soul music per week. CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE, One of the last music surveys published by WDGY. Not knowing when he was writing the article, one would suppose that the Four Tops was between Ike and Tina and B.B. The station was located at 8th and Wabasha in South St. Paul, conveniently adjacent to the stockyards. It had 50,000 watts during the day and 25,000 at night. 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. Art Hoehn and Ralph Hull left with Wolfman, either to Mexico or Southern California. WDGY is the only AM radio station in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market that broadcasts in HD. In January 1965 it was reported that staff had increased from 19 to 27 since Red Owl purchased the station in 1961. Program Director Sam Sherwood: I so remember how Don French was on the hot seat for getting hit by such a large prizehe and I argued: Ill take the hitno I willno no, I will and thats the way it went until the cookie picture hit the front pages of news papers across the country.THEN.we became heroes, both Don and I. Since one company could not own more than one AM or more than one FM station in the same market at the time, they needed to find a buyer for the FM station, and sought out the owners of various AM stations in the area. Airchecks from 1955 57 on www.radiotapes.com seem to indicate that the music was pretty middle-of-the-road, but they did play Hound Dog on September 7, 1956 Its #1! The station was DJ-driven, with a July 2, 1956 ad touting the Fabulous 4+1: Herb Oscar Anderson, Don Loughnane, Jack Thayer, Bill Armstrong, and Bill Bennett. Preacher Paul (nee Ralph Hull) had come from KDWB and it appears that he was working at both stations until June 1965. He tried to use the phones, but the wires all came into the building through the furnace room and they were already toast. The new owners immediately requested permission from the FCC to change the call letters back to WMIN. WDGY station changed to a country music format in September 1977, around the time when most music stations began shifting onto the FM band. But if you listen to radio to soothe your nerves, reports of mideast tension, recession and crime just might produce the opposite effect. The colors range from bright to blue, from funny to warm, from entertaining to informative. I guess that means no music. Jimmy is very polite and waits for the mother to get her daughter on the phone to see if she could guess the amount. The fact that there were no lights did not compute until I heard the news guy on WLOL say, The radio station studios of KDWB burst into flame this afternoon. From 1969 to mid 1970, Tony Glover held down the midnight to 6 am shift. The report by the St. Paul Human Rights Department, released in February 1969, placed the blame for the disturbances mainly on how the police handled it. So what if a top forty am radio station in Minneapolis/St. When you hear it, youll find youve been missing enjoyable listening Music, mature and distinguished, in distinctive settings and performance . You will hear the WeeGee $10,000 Record Stash promo and Johnny ply "1130 Caret Gold." On May 27, 1965, Will Jones noted that with Daylight Savings Time and sundown getting later Billy G would be able to wail with the records from Cassius Bar until 9 pm. CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE, KOMA Guide. It was payback time. WMIN adopted an all news format in mid-July 1962. Super U100, the Twin Cities powerhouse was the original catch phrase, used on-air and in promotion and advertising beginning on August 26, 1974. In 1933, Dr. Young was granted a license for W9XAT, an experimental mechanical television station. Then I was given stacks of albums of rock, bands from primarily the West Coast, to audition and play once my show began that Spring. KUXLs Preacher Paul is promoting it once more., Oh Oh. Without their help, the site would have many less pages of radio history. Click on the following web address for the museum: http://www.pavekmuseum.org/2006HOF1.htm and click on the following address to see the museum's entire Hall of Fame: http://www.pavekmuseum.org/hall.htm. Ramsburg says, Let me put it this way it was all show-biz. ' (April 13, 1965). Find out by playing this clip. The Impressions made an appearance at the Marigold on Sunday, April 11, 1965. CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE, WDGY Hit Car Photo Contributor, Wild Wilson. Preacher Paul was there three nights a week as a host, and on Saturday afternoons he broadcast from the place. Formula 63 box, courtesy Sam Sherwood. The station was five years in construction, delayed when its two towers in Eden Prairie fell. Suddenly the voice of Metropolitan Radio is clear as a bell on the dial. Long hours! Curtis J Johnson, formerly of WDGY. On September 2, 1951, the station sponsored a concert by the Blind Boys, advertised in the Minneapolis Spokesman. From 1973 to 1976 it was strictly Country. Courtesy Jeff Lonto. Two white youths from upstate Minnesota were arrested in a house when spotted brandishing a shotgun on a balcony. By 1981 it was back to Country, testified by Chris McKay: In 1981 I had just graduated from Brown Institute, and was the CHIEF ENGINEER at KDAN AM 1370! He also said that the Four Tops were two days away with an expected crowd of 2,000 or more at the Marigold Ballroom. The contributed recordings fromfriends and contributors of both airchecks and other material are greatly appreciated. Happy to find and post it prior to Johnny induction into the Pavek'sMuseum of Radio Broadcasting Hall of Fame. MONDAY, MONDAY - Mama's & Papa's. Tonight's Top 20 as heard on WeeGee Wayback Wonders! Financial Fortitude with Vincent Asset Management. Im going to jump back a little into the chronology of events at the station after listing all of the concerts I could find. See Top 30 and Top 40 countdowns from 1966 on Robb Henrys blog. $1,175,000 Last Sold Price. They were born in St. Pauls Swede Hollow. It wasnt until 1964 that the community could support a station that played music that was primarily by and for the black community, and by that time young white listeners were embracing black music as well. See the new transmitter here courtesy www.radiotapes.com, Aerial shot of the 9-tower array courtesy Tom Gavaras. Sixteen pastors gathered to support this action and expressed their concern that the investigation be impartial and representative. Well, at least with the progressive announcers on KRSI. We hope you will enjoy our first birthday edition YESTERHITS FROM YESTERDAY and join us in listening to the second year of Much More Music on 1130 Radio WDGY. The 9-tower array beaming 50,000 watts was used to produce one of the most restrictive signals in the USA. Although Charles J. Lanphier of Milwaukee took out a construction permit for a new broadcast station on October 7, 1957, for some reason it took four years to be realized. 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. Apparently all this time, the station was still owned by Universal Broadcasting, which, when it was purchased, was controlled by Marvin Kosofsky. No audio, but the wires would vibrate in time to the modulation. Right on Super U became a catch phrase on the station and among its fans. Tom was a grad of Richard Brown's American Istitute of the Air, a predecessor to Brown Institute. [4] Faced with much stronger competition on the FM dial, WDGY adopted a country music format, which continued well into the 1980s. In February 2022, the station resumed broadcasting in AM HD. Don K. Martin is in this photo. Guy Lombardo records were used as a transition between the hillbilly songs and religious programs, reported Will Jones in the Trib on August 18, 1952. Almost everybody in the country who had anything at all ailing them, bought into the pitch. I took this from a flight I took in 1977. Here is what had happened. In September/October 1957 it announced new programming, with more music, more news, more often. By October it was a big-time rock n roll station, at least until that December, with DJs Rog Kent, Don Hawkins and Harry Zimmerman. The station pushed the technological limits of the day and provided a lot of interesting exercises for WDGY engineers, but Dr. Young never got into regular broadcasts. They conducted a Music Poll via a coupon in the papers where people could indicate their music preferences and help the station select what it would play on the air. Photo courtesy Curt Lundgren a/k/a Evan Curfew. We were talking and I happened to mention I was a DJ at KDWB (1982-85) and they had this photo stored in their phone picture library. They both became enamored with an air check album that contained KFRC, the San Francisco powerhouse. It was a very high energy top 40 presentation featuring Dr. Don Rose and Ed OBrien. Seven people were arrested the first night. We chatted and laughed on the air for about 15 minutes, talking about his devilish upbringing, singing at the Grand Ole Opry, the weekend shows at the Flame and played his latest recording. The brochure inside the box was a ticket to a huge rock n roll show that would kick off the station. KUXL and Preacher Paul Anthony are the sponsors. Each one of these selections was especially chosen by the WDGY All-Americans, and is performed by the original recording artists. Protests of the new format came in the form of resignations of staff, pickets, KQ Sucks t-shirts, loss of advertisers, and the formation of an organization called People for Progressive Radio, which strove to bring the free-form format back, either at KQ or otherwise. On the second tape from 1971, I noticed Bob Dayton has some spots with a county twang. See more about Harris under his listing on the Disc Jockey page. How could this format possibly be a winner on AM? Todd Mitchell found this article in the March 18, 1977, issue of Radio and Records, an industry newspaper. The studio, transmitter, and a 3-tower directional antenna array were located off Military Road in Woodbury (just east of Newport). in Golden Valley was approved. Meanwhile, they borrowed a little trailer studio from someone and that was our production room for the next month or so. The street address was 6541 Military Road. A license to install a new transmitter was approved on June 29, 1964. Ads to rent out the St. Louis Park studio appear in January 1973 and sometime between then and March 1973 the studio moved to Valley View Road in Eden Prairie. Scads of airchecks and music surveys are posted at, http://twincitiesradioairchecks.com/kdwb630tapes.html. 980 AM was originally staid WPBC from 1949 to 1972. He actually bought the time from KUXL himself and sold commercials to pay for it. Photo by Greg Helgeson, Minnesota Music magazine, Bumper sticker @ 1980 1984. 1936 ad below courtesy Jeff Lonto. Metropolitan Radio moved to a new site, and built a new and modern transmission facility (4-tower complex west of Highway 100 in St. Louis Park) a broadcast service that brings it within clear signal range of thousands who could nevr before enjoy wtcn 1280 as easily as they wished. A 1972 article in the Echo opined that KDWB played new songs that were just released, while WDGY only played nationally-established music. and Louisiana] in St. Louis Park. Many thanks to Jeff Lonto, who is one of the Cities experts on radio history, for much of the information cited here. By 1977, FM radio had arrived big-time in MSP. The paper called the new WMINs format variety.. This aircheck has the music scoped out, but the commercials and promos are left in, providing a glimpse into the times. On December 1, 1964, KEVE was changed to KQRS Quality Radio Station, still playing classical music. The owner, Midcontinent Media, sold the property. See www.radiotapes.com/WDGY.html for airchecks and much more, including the very entertaining history of the station written by Haines. Also my parents listened to WDGY in the mid to late 50's and on the long drive to the lake as well. No matter what I did, the signal was always distorted. As a promotion, in November 1958 Jim Ramsburg cooked up the Radio Wonders basketball team. This month the losses should be fairly slight and we have every hope that June will see the station in the black for the first time in a long time. Did they bring Imogene the horse inside Jennings? Notice the Catman poster on the upper wall. A couple years back I brought you Serutan, the product guaranteed to cure what ails you. The program was one half hour long and started on October 17, 1964. No signal. The station played Country music with a heavy emphasis on local North Suburban news and sports. Minneapolis / St. Paul radio station WDGY 1130 AM survey chart for the week of 1970-02-13. (Will Jones, Minneapolis Tribune). (Storz died in 1964 at age 39.) I dont recall if he spent 21 days up there, but it was a while. A KDWB Fabulous Forty survey that Don donated to the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting called the shack a four-story-high flag pole playhouse. John Pratt saved an article from the Minneapolis Star reporting that four hoodlums set the crepe-paper wrapping on the 40-ft. pole on fire. In the September 1965 issue of Twin City a-Go Go magazine, Preacher Paul had a column called Heres Hip Happenings. At the end he talked about the concerts, and said that as he was writing the article, the most recent one was the Ike and Tina Turner concert on August 1. Advertisement. Will Jones announced the change in his column on June 18, 1963, and said that the format would go to country/western, folk and ethnic programming. As they were limited by their then-daytime only license at 980 AM, they started up WPBC-FM at 101.3 MHz in August 1959, simulcasting the AM station. Found on Radiotapes.com: Ballad of Minnesota!. Suddenly it was true, 63 thats easy to remember. If he plays Polk music, He must be a true Minnesotan. About November 1973, the abandoned WDGY call letters, to avoid the hassle and long process of call. 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