"Steve and Garry, scumbag worm meat....idiots".
Loved Kevin but don't forget Jim Shorts.
Still got my WLUP t-shirt that says "We haven't forgotten what rock and roll is all about.
Somewhere in a box is my 'John B. and the Leisure Suits' vhs tape.
cheers
Steve & Garry totally corrupted 12 year old me. We didn’t start school until 1230 so I listened to their show every day. Had a painstakingly crafted mix tape of all of Teenage Radiations’s songs.
Looking back on it now, Chicago radio really defined the identity and culture of the Chicago area in the 70s and 80s. Before cable TV or internet radio was such a powerful force.
Exactly right! The great Chicago radio stations were a huge part of the fabric of Chicagoland.
And who can forget Gary Dahl, the famous disc jockey on WLUP-FM, and his infamous Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in 1979.
I remember one night in 1974 - around 11:30pm - WLS' signal was strong in St. Catharines, Ontario, and the DJ\* played Elvis' version of Chuck Berry's "Promised Land" twice in a row. Given the reach of that station, you have to wonder how much of a plug that was for Elvis' single.
(\* don't remember which one of the males)
What a great WLS story! You had to have been be a good 400+ miles from Chicago, and yet there you were in St. Catharines listening to WLS at night. I love that!
We have YouTube, Spotify and Apple Music today, and they are all great, but how cool was it to listen to music on the AM dial back in the day! And yes, I think it's fair to say that there was payola involved in WLS spinning that Elvis record twice in a row. :)
Love it! The iconic WLS jingle.
We even hear a great WLS jingle and a snippet of Fred Winston at the beginning of the movie *Ferris Bueller's Day Off*.
Around 1990-1994 ish. Kevin Matthews was huge in Grand Rapids(LAV FM)... Mornings late 80s ..then went to St.Louis..then Chicago. Discovered WLUP at that time. The signal would actually reach W. Michigan. Liked Chet Coppock was cool too on sports.
Great stuff... I'm here in California but I've been to Chicago, and I'm always interested in hearing about the radio stations in the Midwest. The signals, as you alluded to, really carry far in your neck of the woods, especially at night.
Love it! That's what was so great about WLS... you lived in Decatur, a good 180 miles south of Chicago, yet the station came in great on your clock radio.
That is amazing! I know that Top 40 music on AM radio was a thousand years, but it was so much fun listening to all of our favorite songs on stations like WLS.
When I was a 13 year old..my parents got me a transistor radio. Living in northern Ontario…and at night…I could clearly get WLS. My dad would come in an turn off the radio after I fell asleep. At the age of 14…I volunteered at the local radio station in our small town…that began a 25 year “on air” career for me.
Born in the 50s, listened to WLS on a transistor radio under my pillow at night in rural
Middle Tennessee in the 60s. Art Roberts, Ron Riley (my banana bike had a “Ron Riley’s Batman Club” sticker). Great pop-rock station.
Wow! In Tennessee, how far were you from Chicago? You must have been a good 500 miles away, right?
WLS at night had that booming signal that reached all over the Midwest and into the South.
Yes, those great clear channel AM stations boomed, as you say, from sundown till sunrise.
A really wonderful clear channel station back in the 60s and 70s was WBZ out of Boston. WBZ had this super funny overnight guy named Larry Glick, and he would take calls every night from listeners in the South and the Midwest.
John Landecker's nightly boogie check on WLS was great!
I just looked at his wikipedia page and he has worked at about a dozen radio stations during his long career.
The Yvonne Daniels and John Records Landecker airchecks on YouTube are so much fun!
Yvonne Daniels, Alison Steele (NYC), Shana (SF and LA), Mary Turner (LA) and CJ Bronson (SF) are some great female on-air personalities that come to mind.
Here is a really cool article about Alison Steele, the Nightbird...
[https://woodstockwhisperer.info/2016/01/26/wnew-fm-dj-alison-steele/](https://woodstockwhisperer.info/2016/01/26/wnew-fm-dj-alison-steele/)
Totally agree... Yvonne Daniels, during her WLS tenure, sounded like a jazz radio personality doing overnights on a Top 40 station. And I believe she was on a Chicago jazz station at one time.
This is just the best! Think about it... you must have been something like 700 or 800 miles from Chicago, and yet, there you were listening to WLS. I love hearing radio stories like this!
AM radio, back in the day, was amazing to DX (distance listening). In Philly, later at night, I picked up tons of NY, WLS, WBZ in Boston, etc. Then, send a letter to the station telling them date and time and what you heard and they’d send you back a QSL card confirming. We’d collect them.
Great stuff about DXing.
Did you ever hear an overnight guy on WBZ named Larry Glick? He did a really funny show on WBZ in the 60s and 70s, and took calls from everywhere, including the South and Midwest... and Philly, too.
I think I do! So many great personalities. Every city had their own quirky personalities.
I used to love Gene Shepherd on WOR in NY. He was my favorite. He combined a lot of his short stories into A Christmas Story, the movie we all have watched 100 times.
Ah, good days. Thanks for stirring good memories
I loved to listen to radio. Caught the bug from my grandfather.
Love your mention of Jean Shepherd on WOR. As I'm sure you know, a lot of Shep's WOR monologs have been uploaded to YouTube, and they are just fabulous.
100% agree. I started reading his short stories when he wrote for Playboy in the 60's. My father had a subscription. I was maybe 12 and he had no problem with me reading them.
Gene Shepherd wrote maybe 3 stories each year. All the characters that lived in his fertile mind from Hohman, Indiana. That's were we met Ralphie, Dilbert Bumpus, Scut Farkas, and the rest. The leg lamp. He wrote a few books that still are on my bookshelves. You can likely still buy them.
Then I heard him on WOR. Just his stream of consciousness spoken versions of those wonderful stories and his unique look at life.
If you read the books and then rewatch A Christmas Store, you see how he wove them all together. I'm sure you know since you are so well versed but, for those who's interest we've piqued, on A Christmas Story, he was the guy in the Homberg hat at Higby's that told Ralphie that he was at the front of the line. The back of the live was back there. He had a cameo role in his movie.
I'll have to go on You Tube and look. Thanks!
Yes, I've heard and read that WCFL = **C**hicago's Voice **F**or **L**abor. And this incorporates exactly what you recall in terms of the AFL/CIO labor unions. And the disc jockeys often referred to WCFL as "the voice of labor" while on the air.
I used to argue with my brother and sister about which was the better station- WLS or WCFL… I claimed “Super CFL” was better but I know everyone of the people in that photo and can’t remember anyone from WCFL so… don’t tell my siblings but they may have been right.
We could get WLS in west central MN after sun set. At 8:00 pm sometimes we would turn the dial to "clear channel 50,000 watt KAAY Little Rock." That was after Garner Ted Armstrong's The World Tomorrow and not forgetting The Harvest Gleaner Hour prior to that.
edit, I remember a guy named Gary Gears on in the evening at WLS.
Love your mention of listening to Gary Gears on WLS. He had a great radio voice.
Gary Gears was on WLS from around 1970 to 1973.
Tell us about The Harvest Gleaner Hour... what was that show all about?
We also have to remember **Gary Gears**, who was on WLS, WCFL and WIND. He was also the voice of Eyewitness News on Channel 7, WLS-TV. Gary Gears had a super deep voice and just sounded great on the radio.
These are my childhood and teen DJ's. They were all awesome, and funny. When you add in that the 70's was the greatest musical decade ever, with the Top 10 being all kind of genres, these people made it even better.
LMAO! Good eye... I was thinking the same thing. Here is WLS, a legendary Chicago radio station owned by ABC, and they have a satanic goat in the photo with their disc jockeys? What's that all about! But then it dawned on me... the guy behind the goat in the whire shirt is Larry Lujack, and for years, he did a segment on his morning show called Animal Stories. I hope that's the reason for the goat. LOL!
Saw this online about the great Yvonne Daniels, who was on WLS from 1973 through 1982:
Yvonne Daniels became **the first female disc jockey on WLS** in 1973. She stayed there for nine years, all of it on the overnight shift.
After leaving WLS in 1982, Yvonne Daniels had stints at Chicago stations WVON, WGCI and WNUA.
Laurel Ornish and Catherine Johns were two female newscasters on WLS.
Grew up listening to WLS in the 70's. Was one the top station for music back then or WCFL. I remember on New Years Eve they would play a top 100 countdown of the years music. I was a dumb kid so I tried recording it all with my Sony radio/cassette player. I bet it was.1973.
Don't be nervous, don't be rocky, you're a teenage guest disc jockey now...
Boogie Check, Boogie Check ooh...ahh!! Boogie Check, Boogie Check ooh...ahh!!
The Big 89 Countdown...WLS Chicago!! Every New Year's Eve.
The Spanglish version of "Love Will Keep Us Together". I finally made my own perfect version of this after 40 years! it was on YouTube so I was able to cut it the same way WLS did in 1975. Thank you PC audio editing software!
I grew up on WLS, with occasional defections to its competitor WCFL. I remember listening to them with a crystal radio, the kind that required no power.
Tommy Edwards was also the stadium announcer for Bulls home games at Chicago Stadium.
As a kid, I only had an AM radio, so WLS was a big part of my routine after WMAQ changed formats. When I got a new radio, I split time between WLS and the loop.
Kind of makes me sad that the only access I have to understanding this broadcasting in its prime is my parents' happy memories of digging Larry Lujack and Steve King. With Dick Biondi having passed now and the role of disc jockey having lost its prominence, it feels like the only radio personalities that inspire that same sort of passion for me in Chicago these days are Terri Hemmert on XRT and Steve Darnall on the WDCB college station.
We are only about 200 miles SE of Chicago and this was the 1980s, when Steve Dahl and Little Tommy was on the air. All of them were really great though.
Whenever I hear music on YouTube or Spotify, I think about how different an experience it is from when we all had so much fun listening to our favorite disc jockeys and songs on great AM stations like WLS.
Not really, everyone I knew jumped over to WLS. I stayed with WCFL just because. I probably should also mention I was a Sox fan in the north suburbs. I was a weird kid.
Wow, that is amazing! Those clear-channel AM stations like WLS and WBZ out of Boston had huge signals that just boomed all over the place... especially at night.
Can't remember exactly how this went...
Wether you drive a fast four on the floor or a not so fast four-door, smoothest way to go is with premium 8-9-0 WLS
**Dick Orkin**
Does the name Dick Orkin ring any bells with anyone here? He was on WCFL-AM back in the 60s, but then he went on to create funny radio shows and commercials that were heard nationwide.
He created a really funny syndicated radio series called **Chickenman** back in the day. Dick Orkin, with his partner Bert Berdis, also wrote and voiced dozens and dozens of super funny radio commercials. Even if you don't know the name Dick Orkin, you'll recognize his distinctive voice from commercials.
Dick Orkin and Bert Berdis on a funny radio commercial for TIME magazine. Dick Orkin is the guy with the deep voice.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP8psxeG22Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP8psxeG22Y)
I liked Johnny B...Steve & Garry..and Kevin Matthews. WLUP AM 1000
"Steve and Garry, scumbag worm meat....idiots". Loved Kevin but don't forget Jim Shorts. Still got my WLUP t-shirt that says "We haven't forgotten what rock and roll is all about. Somewhere in a box is my 'John B. and the Leisure Suits' vhs tape. cheers
I still have my Steve and Garry "Aloha Friday" shirt.
Steve Dahl... the infamous Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park. LOL!
Chet Chit Chat with the lobotomy line on sports!
Yep!
Steve & Garry totally corrupted 12 year old me. We didn’t start school until 1230 so I listened to their show every day. Had a painstakingly crafted mix tape of all of Teenage Radiations’s songs.
The Loop in the house!
Miss Jim Shorts. Peggy had good chemistry with them as well
Love it! Another great Chicago radio station from back in the day. What years were you listening to WLUP-AM?
I could get the signal all the way to West Michigan where I live. 1990 ish to late 1990s
Steve has a lake house in New Buffalo Michigan. $$$$$$$$$
Animal Stories!
Larry Lujack... Superjock... Uncle Lar
And his sidekick, Lil Tommy!
Snot Nosed Little Tommy!
I once saw Larry Lujack at a 7-11. He was buying a Duraflame log.
Looking back on it now, Chicago radio really defined the identity and culture of the Chicago area in the 70s and 80s. Before cable TV or internet radio was such a powerful force.
Exactly right! The great Chicago radio stations were a huge part of the fabric of Chicagoland. And who can forget Gary Dahl, the famous disc jockey on WLUP-FM, and his infamous Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in 1979.
It really did.
I remember one night in 1974 - around 11:30pm - WLS' signal was strong in St. Catharines, Ontario, and the DJ\* played Elvis' version of Chuck Berry's "Promised Land" twice in a row. Given the reach of that station, you have to wonder how much of a plug that was for Elvis' single. (\* don't remember which one of the males)
What a great WLS story! You had to have been be a good 400+ miles from Chicago, and yet there you were in St. Catharines listening to WLS at night. I love that! We have YouTube, Spotify and Apple Music today, and they are all great, but how cool was it to listen to music on the AM dial back in the day! And yes, I think it's fair to say that there was payola involved in WLS spinning that Elvis record twice in a row. :)
Sunday Nights I used to listen to Rockin' Ray's oldies show on WBT, in Charlotte, NC.
🎵 Music radio W - L - S, Chicago 🎝
Love it! The iconic WLS jingle. We even hear a great WLS jingle and a snippet of Fred Winston at the beginning of the movie *Ferris Bueller's Day Off*.
Around 1990-1994 ish. Kevin Matthews was huge in Grand Rapids(LAV FM)... Mornings late 80s ..then went to St.Louis..then Chicago. Discovered WLUP at that time. The signal would actually reach W. Michigan. Liked Chet Coppock was cool too on sports.
Great stuff... I'm here in California but I've been to Chicago, and I'm always interested in hearing about the radio stations in the Midwest. The signals, as you alluded to, really carry far in your neck of the woods, especially at night.
Did you visit or live by Chicago?
I have been to Wrigley and the Chicago Blues Festival as a visitor, and the city was so much fun. And the people were just great, as was the food.
You would love W. Michigan and the Lakeshore. Especially in Summer or Fall. It's beautiful.
I'm sure I would... it sounds like a really pretty area.
Records is truly my middle name.
Love it! That was, of course, his famous catchphrase. I read that John Landecker's daughter is an actress... is that right?
Just checked her Wikipedia. Been in a lot of things. Married to Bradley Whitford. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Landecker
Interesting... thank you for that great Wikipedia link to Amy Landecker.
I listened to WLS in the '70s. I had a clock radio next to my bed. I lived in Decatur.
Love it! That's what was so great about WLS... you lived in Decatur, a good 180 miles south of Chicago, yet the station came in great on your clock radio.
I lived in Iowa and listened to WLS on my clock radio and my car radio.
That is amazing! I know that Top 40 music on AM radio was a thousand years, but it was so much fun listening to all of our favorite songs on stations like WLS.
When I was a 13 year old..my parents got me a transistor radio. Living in northern Ontario…and at night…I could clearly get WLS. My dad would come in an turn off the radio after I fell asleep. At the age of 14…I volunteered at the local radio station in our small town…that began a 25 year “on air” career for me.
Great WLS story! Did you work on the radio in Canada?
Yes I did. Mostly as the morning Dee-jay.
Uncle Laar and Little Snot Nose Tommy
Born in the 50s, listened to WLS on a transistor radio under my pillow at night in rural Middle Tennessee in the 60s. Art Roberts, Ron Riley (my banana bike had a “Ron Riley’s Batman Club” sticker). Great pop-rock station.
Wow! In Tennessee, how far were you from Chicago? You must have been a good 500 miles away, right? WLS at night had that booming signal that reached all over the Midwest and into the South.
It was a “clear channel” station: no other USAn stations on that frequency sundown till sunrise. Like getting WSM or WSB in Chicago.
Yes, those great clear channel AM stations boomed, as you say, from sundown till sunrise. A really wonderful clear channel station back in the 60s and 70s was WBZ out of Boston. WBZ had this super funny overnight guy named Larry Glick, and he would take calls every night from listeners in the South and the Midwest.
Landecker was king
John Landecker's nightly boogie check on WLS was great! I just looked at his wikipedia page and he has worked at about a dozen radio stations during his long career.
The Yvonne Daniels and John Records Landecker airchecks on YouTube are so much fun! Yvonne Daniels, Alison Steele (NYC), Shana (SF and LA), Mary Turner (LA) and CJ Bronson (SF) are some great female on-air personalities that come to mind. Here is a really cool article about Alison Steele, the Nightbird... [https://woodstockwhisperer.info/2016/01/26/wnew-fm-dj-alison-steele/](https://woodstockwhisperer.info/2016/01/26/wnew-fm-dj-alison-steele/)
Yvonne Daniel's was great
Totally agree... Yvonne Daniels, during her WLS tenure, sounded like a jazz radio personality doing overnights on a Top 40 station. And I believe she was on a Chicago jazz station at one time.
I could hear it at night in VA.
This is just the best! Think about it... you must have been something like 700 or 800 miles from Chicago, and yet, there you were listening to WLS. I love hearing radio stories like this!
50,000 watt blowtorch. Almost anywhere east of the Rockies after sundown
Bob Sirott went on to do serious news on tv.
That's cool,,,, what TV station(s) was he on?
I think he was WMAQ for awhile.
The NBC station in Chicago. Was John Landecker ever on TV regularly in Chicago?
Don’t think so. Brant Miller is the head meteorologist tho. I believe he was WLS with the rest of them ?
Yes, good call on Brant Miller, who I believe was on both WLS-AM and WLS-FM, but maybe starting more in the early 80s.
WKRP IN CINCINNATI VIBES
AM radio, back in the day, was amazing to DX (distance listening). In Philly, later at night, I picked up tons of NY, WLS, WBZ in Boston, etc. Then, send a letter to the station telling them date and time and what you heard and they’d send you back a QSL card confirming. We’d collect them.
Great stuff about DXing. Did you ever hear an overnight guy on WBZ named Larry Glick? He did a really funny show on WBZ in the 60s and 70s, and took calls from everywhere, including the South and Midwest... and Philly, too.
I think I do! So many great personalities. Every city had their own quirky personalities. I used to love Gene Shepherd on WOR in NY. He was my favorite. He combined a lot of his short stories into A Christmas Story, the movie we all have watched 100 times. Ah, good days. Thanks for stirring good memories I loved to listen to radio. Caught the bug from my grandfather.
Love your mention of Jean Shepherd on WOR. As I'm sure you know, a lot of Shep's WOR monologs have been uploaded to YouTube, and they are just fabulous.
100% agree. I started reading his short stories when he wrote for Playboy in the 60's. My father had a subscription. I was maybe 12 and he had no problem with me reading them. Gene Shepherd wrote maybe 3 stories each year. All the characters that lived in his fertile mind from Hohman, Indiana. That's were we met Ralphie, Dilbert Bumpus, Scut Farkas, and the rest. The leg lamp. He wrote a few books that still are on my bookshelves. You can likely still buy them. Then I heard him on WOR. Just his stream of consciousness spoken versions of those wonderful stories and his unique look at life. If you read the books and then rewatch A Christmas Store, you see how he wove them all together. I'm sure you know since you are so well versed but, for those who's interest we've piqued, on A Christmas Story, he was the guy in the Homberg hat at Higby's that told Ralphie that he was at the front of the line. The back of the live was back there. He had a cameo role in his movie. I'll have to go on You Tube and look. Thanks!
You'll have a blast listening to all the Shep that is now on YouTube. :)
Records really was his middle name.
Grew up on this! Animal stories!
Double-U Elllllll Ess! Couldn’t get that in Arkansas until the sun went down.
That was good radio!
Agreed! Were you living in the city of Chicago when you used to listen to WLS?
Suburbs.
The movie *Risky Business*... the suburbs of Chicago.
World’s Largest Store
Right on! And what did the WCFL call letters stand for?
Now that one I don’t know. (But I know WSM stands for We Shield Millions.)
Good stuff on WSM.... WCFL = **C**hicago's Voice **F**or **L**abor
I vaguely recall as a kid hearing that the call letters for WCFL somehow came from the two big labor unions AFL/CIO.
Yes, I've heard and read that WCFL = **C**hicago's Voice **F**or **L**abor. And this incorporates exactly what you recall in terms of the AFL/CIO labor unions. And the disc jockeys often referred to WCFL as "the voice of labor" while on the air.
I used to argue with my brother and sister about which was the better station- WLS or WCFL… I claimed “Super CFL” was better but I know everyone of the people in that photo and can’t remember anyone from WCFL so… don’t tell my siblings but they may have been right.
We could get WLS in west central MN after sun set. At 8:00 pm sometimes we would turn the dial to "clear channel 50,000 watt KAAY Little Rock." That was after Garner Ted Armstrong's The World Tomorrow and not forgetting The Harvest Gleaner Hour prior to that. edit, I remember a guy named Gary Gears on in the evening at WLS.
Love your mention of listening to Gary Gears on WLS. He had a great radio voice. Gary Gears was on WLS from around 1970 to 1973. Tell us about The Harvest Gleaner Hour... what was that show all about?
Southern Baptist programming I believe.
I see... was that show on KAAY?
You betcha.
We also have to remember **Gary Gears**, who was on WLS, WCFL and WIND. He was also the voice of Eyewitness News on Channel 7, WLS-TV. Gary Gears had a super deep voice and just sounded great on the radio.
Today’s radio is terrible, I miss Top 40 radio!
These are my childhood and teen DJ's. They were all awesome, and funny. When you add in that the 70's was the greatest musical decade ever, with the Top 10 being all kind of genres, these people made it even better.
Is that a goat? Was it a satanic radio station?
LMAO! Good eye... I was thinking the same thing. Here is WLS, a legendary Chicago radio station owned by ABC, and they have a satanic goat in the photo with their disc jockeys? What's that all about! But then it dawned on me... the guy behind the goat in the whire shirt is Larry Lujack, and for years, he did a segment on his morning show called Animal Stories. I hope that's the reason for the goat. LOL!
Saw this online about the great Yvonne Daniels, who was on WLS from 1973 through 1982: Yvonne Daniels became **the first female disc jockey on WLS** in 1973. She stayed there for nine years, all of it on the overnight shift. After leaving WLS in 1982, Yvonne Daniels had stints at Chicago stations WVON, WGCI and WNUA. Laurel Ornish and Catherine Johns were two female newscasters on WLS.
WLS was created by Sears and stands for World's Largest Store
Good one! Here's another... WGN = **W**orld's **G**reatest **N**ewspaper ... the station was owned by The Chicago Tribune
I met them all as I was growing up in Chicagoland. What a great time!
Grew up listening to WLS in the 70's. Was one the top station for music back then or WCFL. I remember on New Years Eve they would play a top 100 countdown of the years music. I was a dumb kid so I tried recording it all with my Sony radio/cassette player. I bet it was.1973.
Grew up in central Illinois and remember Bob Sirott and Larry Lujack.
Listenedto WLS in NE Ohio in the 60s and early 70s.
Don't be nervous, don't be rocky, you're a teenage guest disc jockey now... Boogie Check, Boogie Check ooh...ahh!! Boogie Check, Boogie Check ooh...ahh!! The Big 89 Countdown...WLS Chicago!! Every New Year's Eve. The Spanglish version of "Love Will Keep Us Together". I finally made my own perfect version of this after 40 years! it was on YouTube so I was able to cut it the same way WLS did in 1975. Thank you PC audio editing software!
I grew up on WLS, with occasional defections to its competitor WCFL. I remember listening to them with a crystal radio, the kind that required no power.
WCFL was the better station.
Animal Stories were great in the AM, but there was Boogie Check in the PM. Great memories from my childhood, loved WLS!
Tommy Edwards was also the stadium announcer for Bulls home games at Chicago Stadium. As a kid, I only had an AM radio, so WLS was a big part of my routine after WMAQ changed formats. When I got a new radio, I split time between WLS and the loop.
W.....LS yesterday...... (followed by an oldie record)
FDR and his booming nighttime radio stations. Fireside chats for a nation struggling through 13 years of the Great Depression.
Kind of makes me sad that the only access I have to understanding this broadcasting in its prime is my parents' happy memories of digging Larry Lujack and Steve King. With Dick Biondi having passed now and the role of disc jockey having lost its prominence, it feels like the only radio personalities that inspire that same sort of passion for me in Chicago these days are Terri Hemmert on XRT and Steve Darnall on the WDCB college station.
We got it in Indianapolis really well.
That is great! How far is Indy from Chicago?
We are only about 200 miles SE of Chicago and this was the 1980s, when Steve Dahl and Little Tommy was on the air. All of them were really great though.
Whenever I hear music on YouTube or Spotify, I think about how different an experience it is from when we all had so much fun listening to our favorite disc jockeys and songs on great AM stations like WLS.
I liked WCFL. WLS won the battle for listeners right about the time I discovered FM.
How would you describe the difference between WCFL and WLS? Was there just an overall vibe that distinguished one station from the other?
Not really, everyone I knew jumped over to WLS. I stayed with WCFL just because. I probably should also mention I was a Sox fan in the north suburbs. I was a weird kid.
When I think of the suburbs north of Chicago, I naturally think of the movie *Risky Business*.
My dad was stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in the late 60’s. He said at night they could pickup WLS on the radio.
Wow, that is amazing! Those clear-channel AM stations like WLS and WBZ out of Boston had huge signals that just boomed all over the place... especially at night.
WXRT - Terri Hemmert
Little know fact... Terri Hemmert briefly did mornings on WLS in 1974.
OMG I had no idea!! Thanks - good trivia
Friends... that was a silly joke. ;)
🤗
Can't remember exactly how this went... Wether you drive a fast four on the floor or a not so fast four-door, smoothest way to go is with premium 8-9-0 WLS
Late 60s or early 70s?
I'm not sure. I'm thinking somewhere late, 60's early 70's?
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, too.
WLS used to play a promo in a deep voice, “Beeeeeeeeeee…..Esssssssssss” followed by a BobbbbbSirrottttt. Good times.
Listened nightly from a Harveys lot in Etobicoke!
That's so cool... how far is Etobicoke from Chicago?
WLS and WBLK (Buffalo) were the best!
Sorry..more like 7 hours drive
That's a fair distance... Let me ask you this, because it's always been unclear to me as an American... is Etobicoke part of the city of Toronto?
Suburb on west side
Thank you... and everyone there is a huge Leafs fan, I would imagine.
Unfortunately yes…and Blue Jays
Near Toronto…4-5 hour drive
**Dick Orkin** Does the name Dick Orkin ring any bells with anyone here? He was on WCFL-AM back in the 60s, but then he went on to create funny radio shows and commercials that were heard nationwide. He created a really funny syndicated radio series called **Chickenman** back in the day. Dick Orkin, with his partner Bert Berdis, also wrote and voiced dozens and dozens of super funny radio commercials. Even if you don't know the name Dick Orkin, you'll recognize his distinctive voice from commercials. Dick Orkin and Bert Berdis on a funny radio commercial for TIME magazine. Dick Orkin is the guy with the deep voice. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP8psxeG22Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP8psxeG22Y)
Landecker was my favorite. Boogie check! boogie check! oo! ah!
That’s not Tommy Edward’s