… Nippin’ that jasmine – I wonder if it’s legal …
[Description by Uncle Ricky]
“Skinny” Tom Cheney is featured on Top 40 legend WTIX/New Orleans,
on October 16, 1972. This unscoped recording ends with a partial newscast that
reports the disappearance of U.S. Congressman Hale Boggs. Boggs, at the time House Majority Leader, disappeared in an alleged plane crash. His body was never found.
No “bugs” and only one stager in the newscast and except for the teletype underscoring and the “time bell”, WTIX was pretty straightforward at this point. There are a few nice acapellas. Cheney is very relaxed and casual, to the point that some of what he says is lost in the music.
Technically, somewhere along the way, some extreme noise reduction (ducking) was
applied to this one, and those appear as ugly dropouts in a few places. Otherwise, this is a clean but narrowband AM radio aircheck, comparable to what you would expect with a consumer variety component AM receiver of the period. There’s little above 7 KHz but there’s a goldmine of memories in this very comfortable sample of WTIX
in “Crescent City”, 1972.