… where’s the fire, bay-bee …
This is the earliest aircheck of Rick Dees that I can find in my files. When Pat Patterson (PD) made Rick full-time at WKIX in 1971, he put him in the 6 to 9 PM slot. Frankly, Rick wasn’t ready for it, and he sounded very uptight on the air. So, after only a few weeks, Pat moved him to 9 PM to Midnight, which Rick saw as a demotion.
At first, Rick was somewhat depressed about it, and he stopped caring about what he did on the air. Ironically, this helped him to loosen up, and he actually started sounding better. I’ve always remembered the moral of this incident: sometimes it’s helpful not to care so much. In any event, here’s Rick in one of his earliest outings in the later air slot.
(Apologies for the fidelity, but I think I made this on a battery-powered cassette recorder when I was 13 years old.)