Ancient KHJ: This is one of earliest known airchecks of any radio station in the United States. Listen to 2 minutes of radio station KHJ recorded on September 2, 1931 featuring vocalist Bing Crosby:
1931 KHJ (2:00) MP3, 1.84 MB
KHJ Two Minute History: Radio station KHJ at 930 on the AM dial in Los Angeles has been broadcasting since 1922. Using recordings provided for use on this site, I produced a history of the sounds of KHJ for people with short attention spans. You know who you are.
In this Two Minute KHJ History audio retrospective, you’ll travel very quickly from the earliest days as a Don Lee station to Bill Drake to the rhythm of Southern California to the country music format and finally to the Spanish language programming and the return in the year 2000 to the original KHJ call letters:
TWO MINUTE KHJ HISTORY (2:00) MP3, 947 KB
Listen to one of the earliest Boss Radio promos featuring lyrics written by Ron Jacobs, and music and singing by The Beach Boys (adapted from the hit, “Little Duece Coupe") with Boss Jocks Robert W. Morgan, Roger Christian, The Real Don Steele and others. This demonstrates vividly that some White guys can’t rap:
THE NEW KHJ PROMO, 1965 (1:40) MP3, 786 KB
Other promos successfully linked 93/KHJ with highly popular television shows at that time like Star Trek and Batman.
1966 STAR TREK PROMO (1:02) MP3, 491 KB
1966 BATMAN PROMO (1:15) MP3, 587 KB
The catchy productions that became known as Drake jingles were very popular with listeners and radio industry people. Here you can play back recordings of selected jingles and listen to them over and over.
The audio imagery on KHJ in the mid-1960s was very unique because it went against the traditions at the time. Long singing jingles and music beds (sometimes as long as commercials) were “normal” in those days. The Boss Radio format brought to Los Angeles in 1965 a very different sound--much shorter audio imagery and catchy, unforgettable melodies. Listen to these two “Motown-style” jingle melodies without any voiceover:
MOTOWN-STYLE MUSIC BED (:44) MP3, 688 KB
The audio imagery on KHJ is especially memorable even after decades have passed. This imagery included not only radio jingles, but also on-air promotional announcements known as promos, which relied upon a few well-chosen words and slogans that were repeated frequently.
Bill Drake, himself, voiced what become one of the most famous components of the Boss Radio KHJ. He could be heard saying, “And NOW, ladies and gentlemen..."—with a deliberate emphasis on the word “now"—leading into a singing jingle featuring the name of the on-air personality, like this:
Drake: “And NOW, ladies and gentlemen. The Real Don Steele...”
Jingle singers: “KHJ, Los Angeles.”
Listen to that here: DRAKE VOICEOVER: STEELE (:08) MP3, 102 KB
Here is a collection of the most memorable jingles heard on 93/KHJ:
KHJ JINGLE PACKAGE (5:38) MP3, 5.17 MB
Listen to a collection of Drake voiceovers, including a rare bonus track:
DRAKE VOICEOVERS (:54) MP3, 638 KB
After the success of the audio imagery on KHJ--especially the jingles--all the other radio stations that Bill Drake and Gene Chenault consulted started using what became known as “Drake Jingles.” The melodies of the acapella jingles are nearly identical whether they were played in Boston, San Francisco, New York City, Tulsa, Memphis and everywhere else.
ACAPELLA DRAKE JINGLES (0:41) MP3,656 KB
Although the Boss Radio format started on AM radio, FM radio in stereo started to emerge in the late 1960s, so stereo versions of the audio imagery were produced. Here are jingles, music beds and news theme from WOR-FM, New York.
STEREO WOR-FM IMAGERY (3:50) MP3, 3.53 MB
A Brief Jingle History in LA: “I remember when we were
going to do the jingles for KHJ, I first contacted Chuck Blore
who had been at KFWB. Well, he contacted us and wanted
to do the jingles. He had a production company that did
jingles and that sort of stuff. All I wanted was frequency, call
letters and maybe the jock’s name, and that’s it.” But Blore
warned,”’...it will never work in Los Angeles.’ So, we called
Johnny Mann and got five or six singers together, and went
down to the RCA studios and did it ourselves.” --Bill Drake
The Real Don Steele Sign-Offs: If I had to select only one most distinctive aspect of Boss Radio, it certainly would be the Friday afternoon sign-offs by The Real Don Steele. Never before had such a unique radio sign-off been done. Steele would shout his relevant rhymes in the “Neon Fun Jungle that is Los Angeles,” and assure us that “Tina Delgado is alive, alive!” Hear many frenetic audio recordings on reelradio.com since mere words on a screen cannot accurately describe how he sounded.
“You Can’t Sit Down” by the Phil Upchurch Combo (1961) was the song used by The Real Don Steele as his music bed. Or, at least he used two minutes of it. When Steele arrived at K100, he naturally wanted a stereo music bed since he was now on FM and in stereo. Under his direction and guidance, I worked with him in the K100 production room in 1973 and did physical edits (the old-fashioned way using a razor blade and white splicing tape!) to blend both sides of the 45 rpm stereo single into a remix that matched exactly the original KHJ version he had used for many years.
Steele Sign-Off Music Bed (3:15) MP3, 2.24 MB
Posted by Woody Goulart. Filed under: Audio •
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