Additional Source Material:
Don Barrett,
Andrea Walsh,
440: Satisfaction,
Barry Mishkind,
Stefan Daystrom, Rosemary Earl, Jim Hilliker, Andrew Davis
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The year was 1959.
Dwight Eisenhower was in the Oval Office. Soviet Premier Khrushchev and
Vice President Nixon held their famous "kitchen debate" in Moscow, while
down in Cuba a young man named Fidel Castro seized power. Two new states
were admitted to the Union, bringing the total to 50. A gallon of Ethyl gas
cost about 27 cents, making it pretty easy to fill up your brand new Ford
Edsel. Ben-Hur won twelve oscars at the box office. The Baltimore
Colts were the NFL champions, beating the New York Giants 31-16 in the
playoffs. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson
died tragically in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa.
Bobby Darin topped the charts with Mack The Knife, while
Phil Phillips sang about the Sea Of Love. Playing these hits (and
many, many more) was a small Pasadena radio station located at 1110 KHz on
the AM dial. It had just changed its call letters to KRLA.
Signing on in 1942 as KPAS, the station became country KXLA three years
later. Tennessee Ernie Ford, Cal Worthington and Jim Hawthorne
were three of the announcers.
When the station was sold to Eleven-Ten Broadcasting, they became KRLA,
the second AM top-40 station in Los Angeles, competing with KFWB "Channel 98"
in the early '60s.
In 1964, when the British invaded America, KRLA seized the moment and
became the first southland station to air The Beatles. Emperor Bob
Hudson had the duties of morning man during this time. (Thirteen years
later, KRLA would become known nationwide in a rather subtle way: on the
cover of the album Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl, two show tickets are
displayed. Look closely at the fine print at the top of the tickets. It
says, "KRLA and Bob Eubanks Present".)
KRLA's most notorious competitor arrived on May 7, 1965. A small,
low-rated 5000-watt station known as KHJ transformed itself into the top-40
powerhouse of Southern California. (Rumor has it that when KHJ started up,
they built their music rotation off of KRLA's playlist!) For the next 34
months, top 40 fans had not two but three AM stations to choose from.
In the end, it was KFWB that went down, and KRLA held its own against
The Boss.
Johnny Hayes brought us The Big 11 Countdown every week. Dave
Diamond was another KRLA notable, having worked at KHJ and KFRC as well.
Dave Hull was the real name of the legendary "Hullaballooer". KRLA was
privileged to have two other nationally-known jocks: The irrepressible
Real Don Steele (featured in Grand Theft Auto), and cultural
icon Wolfman Jack (featured in American Graffiti and
the subject of The Guess Who's 1974 hit Clap For The Wolfman.) Many
other "legends" got behind the KRLA mike at various points in history:
Humble Harve, Machine Gun Kelly, Casey Kasem, Mike Ambrose, Dick Biondi,
Roger Christian, Bob Eubanks, Al Lohman, Gary Mack, Charlie Tuna, B. Mitchel
Reed, Wink Martindale and Johnny Williams, to name just a few. In the early '70s, the station was guided by Shadoe Stevens, later
to become TV's wacky pitchman Fred Rated. Studios were at the Huntington
Hotel for many years.
During a brief stint with Country, KRLA's Corky Mayberry was awarded the
Academy Of Country Music's Personality Of The Year award.
Dick Hugg, affectionately known to his listeners as "Huggie Boy",
brought us the best in oldies and soul. For a time, he even hosted his own
dance program, The Huggie Boy Show, which aired weekly on KWHY channel
22 for many years. His popularity continued to increase long after the show
went off.
And how could there be a KRLA page without mentioning Mr. Rock 'N' Roll,
Art Laboe? This man's name is synonymous with the station itself; under his
guidance as Vice President, KRLA was the success it became. Art Laboe's
Rock 'N' Roll School was the source for many a question on KRLA's
Hitrivia, which was often featured on the back of their weekly playlists
until 1979. When you think of KRLA, the name Art Laboe should be the first
one that comes to mind.
Over the years, the station became synonymous with oldies, but kept current
hits mixed in with the gold. Midway into the seventies, billboards promoted
KRLA as the "Elvis-to-Elton" station. (In 1978, a second Elvis would
have a hit single on the KRLA charts.)
A few years afterward, John "Bowzer" Baumann (of Sha-Na-Na fame) did a
television ad for the station which went something like this: "Hey! This is
Bowzer -- and I'm beside myself with excitement -- because I just found a
great new radio station - KRLA. They play today's hits, and the WONDERFUL
tunes of the late '50s and early '60s."
In late 1984, KRLA made a slight format adjustment and went all-oldies,
eliminating most of their '70s (and all the '80s) music. Top 40 on AM was
slowly disappearing: KFI was leaning toward talk; KHJ (which had returned
as Car Radio) played a few new tunes but wasn't strictly top-40;
down in San Diego, The Mighty 690 was becoming 69 Extra Gold. The only
southland station bucking the trend was upstart KWNK 670 in Simi Valley,
which had just signed on and could barely be heard in downtown Los Angeles.
But they, too, soon went talk.
In the middle of the 1980s, KRLA came under the same ownership as 97.1
KBZT (which changed to KLSX), with both studios located in the mid-Wilshire
district. With KLSX's Classic Rock ("AOR gold", perhaps?) and KRLA, oldies
were pretty much covered for the rest of the decade.
The next serious competition came on March 2, 1989. KNX FM (93.1) abruptly
switched from MOR to music of the late '50s and early '60s, and changed
calls to KODJ. Listeners of KLSX heard the "official" reaction from one of the higher-ups:
As the '90s dawned, KRLA drifted toward an R&B-tinged playlist,
featuring lots of Motown mixed in with the doo-wop. Dick Hugg changed his
moniker's spelling to "Huggy" Boy. Still oldies-based, they
retained respectable ratings, not only with those who grew up with the music
but also in part of the Hispanic community, with Huggy Boy's show and
the '50s subculture. Bill Earl penned a book, Dream-House,
chronicling a full fifty years of AM 1110's history. No KRLA jock was without
a copy.
KODJ, apparently getting killed in the ratings by KRLA
and K-Earth, moved their oldies up to the '70s and changed to KCBS FM to
reflect their ownership. (Calling themselves Arrow 93, they may
have had a hand in downing KLSX, which went to weekday talk and weekend rock.)
By the mid-'90s, AM music stations in general were all but extinct: KIIS
1150 had stopped playing rap/funk, KWNK was Spanish, XPRS had abandoned
their long-running nightly fifties program, San Diego's KKLQ ended
its simulcast on the super 600 frequency and 69 Extra Gold had long since
gone talk. KRLA soon found itself the only station still playing regular
pop music on AM, save for the "standards" stations and an occasional
bubblegum tune on children's-format Radio Disney.
By 1998, KRLA had over 39 years of heritage under its belt, and was, as
Andrew Kvammen put it, "the oldest station in L.A. that hasn't changed
format." Over the course of those 39 years, many top 40 stations had graced
the amplitude modulation band in Southern California. Some came and went;
others tried innovations; a handful were legends: KFWB, KHJ, KFI, KTNQ,
KIIS AM, KDAY, KWOW, KROQ AM, KALI, KEZY AM, XTRA --- KRLA had outlasted 'em all.
But talk and sports were proving to be the real money-makers now, and in the
fall of 1998, GM Bob Moore made the decision to pull the plug.
On November 10, 1998, Huggy Boy became the last regularly-scheduled KRLA
personality on the roster; otherwise the station was jockless. Except for a
taped show on Thanksgiving, he continued with his regular morning program
until the 27th, and did a final marathon show on November 29th, KRLA's last
day on the air.
The last selection was a soulful tune by the group War, Don't
Let No One Get You Down. As November 29, 1998 segued into the 30th,
a short piano intro "That's All" was played...and then thousands of
listeners throughout the southland heard the final words of an unforgettable
era: Some recollections of the early days from board operator Ted Shireman:
It was a strange operation for sure. Oak Knoll Broadcasting was an
interim operator, supposedly only for a short time but it went on and on.
Profits, if any, were to be shared with KCET. Therefore it was not possible
to make capital improvements; the ancient transmitter equipment required
operators on duty, so it was decided to play all music and commercials
at the transmitter with engineers employed as board operators.
Finances were so shaky that there were only two announcers, Laboe and Johnny
Hayes (later a very young Manny Pacheco came on board to do evening request
show) Most of the day and all weekends the operation was semi-automated. I
recall when Laboe left Fri at 11 pm he would prerecord 6 weather reports to be
rotated all weekend, plus two others in case the weather changed Sat or Sun. Some recollections from a fan named "Uncle Joe": Most fans will either remember KRLA as an oldies station or as the station that brought the Beatles to Southern California. But I will always remember KRLA as my 1st Radio Love. Right in the middle of the above, early 70's, Shadoe Stevens did a fantastic job of programming what would soon become the standard for AOR on the FM dial. The line-up included some of the best jocks of all time: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?: Dave Hull, the "Hullaballooer", now works at KWXY
Cathedral City, one of the last truly "Beautiful Music" stations in the country.
(See the KWST page for more on that genre.) As for the station itself, even though the music has been silenced, the
memories will go on -- after all, that's what this website is all about. To
Robert W. Morgan, Emperor Bob, The Real Don Steele and Wolfman Jack: you
helped see us through a very turbulent time and brightened many a day. Even
though the four of you are no longer with us, may your legacy live on. To all the KRLA listeners, staff, and oldies fans in general: here's to the station that brought you your music and many, many good times. A station that will live on as long as at least one of us is alive to remember and cherish it, and that other stations could take a lesson from. The station that was all that AM radio stood for at one time, and all that AM radio should be -- KRLA. 
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