Talkin’ Music with Jack

Talkin’ Radio

By Jack Coll

     As my memory goes, I can remember listening to music on the radio going back to at least 1961, (I can remember listening to Phillies games in the late 1950’s) I know this because my parents would listen to 610 WIP back when they played music and had news in the morning.  I  remember when Patsy Cline died in a plane crash on March 5, 1963 (her plane went down in Camden Tennessee) I remember the station playing “Sweet Dreams” about a thousand times, and by the way I love that song, it still gives me chills.

But I’m sure like most of us I grew up on WIBG AM radio.  Here’s a little trivia, what does the WIBG call letters stand for?  We’ll answer that a little later in the column. By the time I tuned into WIBG it was known as Wibbage 99 and they were playing the coolest records on earth.  The disc jockeys were fast talking, could talk right up to, and finish their sentence just as the vocals started on the record, and you just knew that when they said this record just entered the charts with a bullet on it, yea, you knew, you knew the record was going straight to number one on the charts.

The disc jockeys were known as the “WIBG Good Guys”.  Perhaps the best known jocks in the early sixties were Joe Niagara, Bill Wright Sr., and Hy Lit.  Other early DJ’s included Jerry Stevens, Frank X Feller, Dean Tyler, Jack Star, George Gilbert, I think Jerry Blavat worked for the station and Don L. Brink.

The thing about Wibbage was they were the only game in town, they generated huge ratings being the only station devoted to rock and roll.  Today’s number one stations draw between eight to twelve percent of the listening audience.  In the mid-sixties Wibbage had a listening audience of 37 percent. Keep in mind, there was no FM radio, and no other station playing the Four Seasons,  Lovin Spoonful, Young Rascals, Turtles, Mama’s and Papa’s, Beach Boy’s, and even more important than playing the Beatles and the rest of the British invasion was that Wibbage played Motown, they had a Motown artist on the air about every ten minutes.  It was a very exciting time to be a young teenager and tuned in to WIBG radio.

Now for the answer to our trivia question, WIBG radio was founded in 1924 as a religious station for St. Paul’s Episcopal Church located in Elkins Park.  Dr. Theodore Eisner applied for a broadcast license from the Department of Commerce and chose the WIBG call letters because it stood for “Why I Believe in God.”  Dr. Eisner sold the station in the 1930’s and the station went through a number of format changes including Dance Band Music, Big Band Music and in the mid 1950’s it was Joe Niagara who began feeding rock and roll records into the mix.  The Memphis sound of Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis, along with Chubby Checker and some of the early Motown acts.  Niagara also acknowledged Philadelphia’s strong R&B roots playing everyone from Chubby Checker to the Drifters.

Things were sailing for Wibbage, but in the fall of 1966 WFIL radio station moved to a top 40 format.  It didn’t take WFIL long to skate past Wibbage in the ratings with a format known as “The Pop Explosion”.   The Pop Explosion was described as a bright exciting sound of truly modern radio, WFIL disc jockeys were known as “Boss Jocks”.  A number of Boss Jocks included George Michael, Jay Cook, Dave Parks, Jim Nettleton, Frank Smith, and Chuck Browning.  In later years WFIL added morning man Dr. Don Rose, Jim O’Brien, Dick Heatherton and Banana Joe Montione.

Many professionals in the industry had gone on record stating that WFIL would never knock WIBG out of the number one spot, but they didn’t count on WFIL’s strategy.  While WIBG was basking in the number one position, everyone wanted to advertise with them at any cost.  Wibbage reached a point where they would play a record, and do five, six, seven minutes of commercials.  WFIL played very few if any commercials for the first six months playing up to between eight and ten more records per hour.

WIBG responded in 1969 when they tried to regain their former ratings by bringing in an all new air staff, and tried a newer, hipper approach including a progressive rock in the evenings.  Members of the new staff included morning man Don Cannon, Long John Wade, J. J. Kennedy, and Gary Brooks among others.

By the mid 1970’s both stations were struggling, FM Radio, and eight track tape players installed in most of the young drivers cars diverted their attention from AM radio.  Both stations changed formats for several years before dropping off the ratings chart.

For everyone who was young and part of the radio wars, it was a wonderful time, it lasted less than ten years

So let’s hear from you,

Were you a Wibbage 99 listener?

Or did you dig the Boss Jocks at 560?

In the morning were you tuning in to Don Cannon at Wibbage?

Or Dr. Don Rose at FIL?

Did you dig the Spoonful, Paul Revere, The Rascals, or were you all Beatles?

Answer to last week’s Trivia question.

Gonna find my baby gonna hold her tight

Gonna grab some afternoon delight.

“Afternoon Delight” was performed by the Starland Vocal Band

Sky Rockets in flight,

Sing it!

This week’s trivia question

Philadelphia Disc Jockey Don Cannon started his Philadelphia career in 1969 at WIBG, and he finished his career when he retired in 2004 from WOGL Oldies 98.

In between he worked for four other Philadelphia radio stations as an on air personality, can you name one of those other stations Don worked for?

Answer next week