The Curt Lundgren Collection
Curt Lundgren, KUXL, 1967 
Curt Lundgren interviews Clive Davis in 1975 
Curt, 1999 |
It was his attachment to music which first steered Curt Lundgren toward a 30 year career in radio broadcasting. A native of the Twin Cities, his first station (AM daytimer KUXL/Golden Valley) was a unique introduction. KUXL featured back-to-back radio preachers from sign-on till 1:00 pm, and from 1:00 pm till sundown, the station was R&B. Curt has fond memories of working with classic radio gear like Magnecorders & the venerable Ampex 350 and 601, the famous RCA 77DX microphone, and a first-generation rack of (Collins ATC) cart machines.
Stints at WMIN/St. Paul and WHEW/FM in Ft. Myers, Florida exposed Curt to Country....KYMN in Northfield, Minnesota (under the Twin Cities umbrella) was a good training ground in small market broadcasting. Curt attended Brown Institute and spent 22 years at WCCO-FM and WCCO where he interviewed hundreds of greats and near-greats, ranging from Sha Na Na to Hillary Rodham Clinton. One of Curt's most satisfying gigs was consulting for an oldies outlet in Duluth, MN in 1984. Curt currently freelances from his home in suburban Minneapolis, and is available as a music consultant/historian, in addition to doing weekend air work at Adult Standards/KLBB. He was most recently a content developer for "Rockin' Rhythm 50" and "PreFab 60s" at Netradio Vintage Rock. We are fortunate to have Curt's contributions and ongoing participation. Thank you, Curt! |
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[Description by Uncle Ricky]
The venerable Sam Van Zandt sounds fine here, but the format is insane. I’m sure there was some reason why Sam had to backsell songs after a long commercial set, but any advantage seems lost now. If it was intended to create confusion, it did. It almost sounds like an automation system with bad programming, the pieces out of order. Van Zandt had much better placement at other stations in the Bay Area over the years.
This is a somewhat distorted mono cassette recording of a stereo FM broadcast, so we’re always on the edge here, hoping it will improve. Turns out the best improvements are Sam, and Bill Larson with ABC Contemporary News.
There’s a Public Affairs segment with Leora Johnson, all about clean indoor air, where we learn that We ARE The ONE – KAY ONE OH ONE! There’s a HOT jingle, too.
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[Description by Uncle Ricky]
El Chasero is Eric Chase on the last BIG 50KW to join the Top 40 revolution!
Chase is the exceptionally talented, tested, approved and Professional Top 40 Veteran. And KFI is the most polished, well-behaved AM Top 40 of all time, programmed by the legendary John Rook (KQV, WLS, WCFL).
Stan Brown is also featured with a feature about the 1979 bus strike, a major inconvenience in a city like Los Angeles with limited public transportation. This unsponsored feature was called public service programming. If you need more information on this, call your local station. If you’re lucky, a person will actually be there and answer the phone.
Only one KFI Whisper in this all-too-short aircheck, but gee, what a great idea. Instead of playing songs back-to-back, why not find a clever, quick, non-intrusive and effective way to identify your brand? That way your listeners would know what they are listening to and .. oh sorry. I forgot. I’ve exceeded your attention span.
I taped this the same day as the KDWB Bobby Wayne aircheck. They were, in fact, up against each other. I never saw an Arbitron (or Pulse, for that matter), but I know Jim Dandy won that battle. His numbers were always good.
Check the length of the ad-lib “learn to fly” spot. If memory serves, Jim was taking flying lessons from them at the time! Note that KOMA in Oklahoma City also had a Jim Dandy at the time; no relation. And not in the same talent league, either.
I later came to know Dandy (Jim Everts) during his second term at ‘DGY. In fact, I slept on the floor of his Bloomington apartment at more than one party aftermath. Dandy used to have a case of vodka delivered to the station every Friday evening.
I particularly remember him deciding on the spur of the moment to drive to Northfield, MN (fifty miles south) to scout some St. Olaf College girls who’d been tantalizing him over the phone. Fine. Except for the raging snowstorm at the time. Off we went in his Coupe De Ville. He was a party guy, but could always get it up for the show.
Jim passed away on October 20, 2010.
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This REELRADIO exhibit from contributor Curt Lundgren is presented in recognition of the induction of The True Don Bleu into the Minnesota Broadcasters Hall of Fame on October 29, 2005. Curt taped this on a Saturday in October 1968.
Bleu is a native of East Grand Forks, Minnesota, and started his radio career in 1966 at hometown station KILO with the encouragement of University of North Dakota classmate Shadoe Stevens. A step up to KQWB in Fargo eventually led to KDWB in the Twin Cities, where he enjoyed major success for ten years.
Be true to The True Don Bleu, 4-7 p.m.
The True Don Bleu, from a 1968 KDWB Heavy Hit List
His success in Minnesota opened the door to KHJ in Los Angeles, and in 1980, he moved to San Francisco, where he was twice named National Adult Contemporary Air Personality of the Year by Radio & Records. As of October 2005, Bleu was continuing a long run as Morning host on Star 101.3 FM in San Francisco.
REELRADIO congratulates Don Bleu on his induction into the Minnesota Broadcasters HOF and on his long and successful career in music radio.
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[Description by contributor Curt Lundgren]
If all you want is the jings and the jock and the news and the spots, this version’s for you! Please remember that in addition to music licensing fees for the mostly UNSCOPED version, there are bandwidth and hardware costs for this ‘SCOPED version, and anything streamed from REELRADIO. We welcome your support.
This was recorded Tuesday, January 2, 1968 on the return trip to Minneapolis from Florida. Just like the WIFE aircheck made the following day in Indianapolis, I’d been forced to quit driving by bad weather. In this instance, some really nasty freezing rain in “middle Tennessee” had made U.S. 41 too icy to continue. I stopped at a motel in Murfreesboro, 40 or 50 miles from Nashville. You’ll hear a lot of weather-related closings or delays here, including all public and private schools.
Contests were Cash Call and Guess The Golden. Jack Edgar is heard with news headlines at the bottom of the hour. Gene Clark apparently did 11AM to 3PM on WMAK at the time. A close listen reveals Dick Kent did morning drive. Musically, this aircheck is pretty surprising. Nashville, of course, ruled Country music. But this exhibit starts with with some classic “deep soul” by Percy Sledge  Cover Me. In fact, there’s so much soul represented here that
I was playing half the music on the R&B daytimer I worked at then (KUXL in Minneapolis). Only one out-and-out country title here, and it was a pretty large crossover: Skip A Rope by Henson Cargill. WMAK was a good month ahead of Billboard on Playboy by Gene & Debbe, a big southern regional record. Joe South’s Birds Of A Feather was another big record in the South.
This was not a particularly polished station, but it does have a lot of history. The call letters were first assigned to a station in Martinsville, New York, and still survive today in (oddly enough) Murfreesboro, as WMAK-FM, with an oldies format.
Gene Clark passed away on August 10, 2006. He was 66 years old.