dore anyone from the southeast remember WAPE radio station?

http://thebushmen.net/BigApe.html
this was the most powerful radio station in the south back in the day ! 690 am.

 

KAAY out of Little Rock and WLAC out of Nashville owned the night in the late 50s and early 60s in the deep South.

 

Listened daily, even went to most of the Big Ape conventions, grew up in Douglas, ga home of the Bushmen and a few other local bands.

 

i remember my mom listening to it at the beach when i was a kid.you can't forget that sound. whatever it was.

 

some pics

 

Btt

 

and we waited around for a clear night to pick up wls in chicago.he sang with a jingle

 

I listened to CKLW "The BIG 8" AM 800 back in the day... Here in Motown..

 

We had XERB, The Mighty 1090, broacasting from Rosarito Beach in Baja California. 100,000 watts. You could hear Wolfman out in the middle of the Pacific. OWWWWOOOO, this is the Wolfman, Baby.
More than nearly anything, I miss radio the most.
Long live KMET, the Mighty Met. Say it loud and proud,Whooya!!!!!!

 

KMET,,,,tweedle dee. If you remember, you know.
The only Socal station I remember playin Zappa.

 

You bettew be weady dawn weinor- cuz at 4 o'clock...

 

WBAM in Birmingham AL was big.

 

Forgot about the Big BAM in Montgomery, also listened to WOWO in Ft Wayne as well as WLS, came in strong late at night.

 

grew up with wls and wcfl in chicago. lived 30 miles from the city.loved the late nite music. they played mostly crap bubble gum stuff in the daytime. but at nite they would play stuff like cream.steppenwolf etc.im suprised that wls was heard this far south.

 

I grew up in WI listening to WOKY and WRIT but we we always had an ear out for WLS and WCFL. Other we would DX would be CKLW, WABC, WCBS, KOA, KDKA, WSM (Ernest Tubb Record Shop show was always cool)...

When the 'skip" was right we could pick-up WLAC and KAAY plus that station out of Shreveport (KWKH?).... plus WOWO and others.

Pretty amazing that some of these 'clear channel" stations had 500,000 watts of power in their heyday. The US and Mexico finally secured some kind of an agreement where the unlimited power Mexican stations would tone it down and the US would cut back power to 50,000 watts on some stations and really pare down others. That's why Wolfman Jack had such a big signal...500,000 watts AM goes a loooong way!

 

KAAY in Little Rock, was listening to them way into the '70s. Beaker Street, and Beaker theater was the chit man.

 

^^^^^2 Yous gotts it benno. Little Rock ROCKED
KAAY

 

Used to be this old rickety looking coffee shop out in the middle of nowhere down in the Ozarks. It was run by these real backwoods looking older folks. They stayed open 'till about 4:00 AM.

You could roll in there about mid night for pie and coffee and listen to the stereo that they had, all night long. You never would have thought that they were the kind of folks to listen to that station. Long about 4:00 they would run everyone off and say, "we gots ta sleep, so's we kin open agin this ev'nun." Good folks and lots of good times in that place.

 

"WLAC" for real R and B and blues. D.J.s were John R.,"Hoss" Allen,Gene Nobles and Herman Grizzard. Another one of those great clear channel stations.

 

I remember the Big Ape and I also remember and listened to WPAL AM 730, Charleston, SC. WPAL wasn't very powerful but the music was hip.

 

what about WTMA and booby nash! they ruled local charleston sc am radio!

 

I also remember the dragstrip comercials(sp) SUNDAY! At Detroit Dragway... Times were very cool back then..

 

Around here it was WKY and KOMA belting it out from Okie City. Cruzin late at night in my '57 Chevy. Old AM would pick up the crackle of distant thunder storms from miles away. Always stronger at night as I remember. But the REAL TREAT came late at night! Around 10:00 or later ya could pick up Wolf Man Jack from his digs down in the south Texas border area. Howlin crazy into the mike and playing that dangerous music ya just didn't hear on the white mans stations! Lots of R&B, Howlin Wolf, Muddy Waters, rockabilly and all. His special offer was the "Official Wolf Man Jack Roach Clip". "What the hell is a roach clip", thought the high school virgins!
Ha, ha, ha!!!

 

Anybody listen to WKIX, Raleigh in the 60's?

 

could the wolfman be heard in the southeast?

 

Grew up in charleston sc and listened to wape my high school years . Later lived in waycross, ga and listen to the grease man on wape..

 

Not in the 60's. Later he was heard in syndication just about everywhere.

Wolfman was really a guy named Bob Smith who married a gal from Hertford, NC. After his long and successful run on AM radio he semi-retired to a small town near his wife's home. He used to keep a houseboat on the Albemarle Sound at Edenton, where I kept a sailboat. Used to see him around the marina from time to time, but never talked to him.

He was doing a syndicated show from a club in DC at the time...would commute to DC, do his gig and come back home when done. One day he came home, walked in his house and dropped dead. Heart attack, I think.

I wish I had taken the initiative to have met him...bet he would have had a million stories

 

Definitely remember WAPE. Listened to them when I was in school at UF in Gainesville.

Growing up in South Florida, WQAM in Miami was the big rock station. In West Palm, it was WIRK.

 

I moved to Jacksonville, Fl in 1966 and WAPE was the biggest thing going around here at the time. They used to hold dances in various locations around town and one of the hottest local bands was the Second Coming. They later became the Allmond Joys and then The Gregg Allman Band. The Greaseman (Doug Tract) came here in the early '70's and really made a name for himself before moving to DC101 in Washington. The only dragstrip was in Green Cove Springs called Thunderbolt Raceway. It was on US17 a few miles down the road from the radio station in Orange Park. They raced on Saturday nights back then and many times WAPE had a late night concert in the field behind the station. Those were some pretty good times.

 

We listened to WAPE all the time in Jax when I was in high school. Then at night, WLAC and WLS were our favorites. Boy, those were the good times....Jimmy Reed, Muddy, and all the others were who we listened to. "Going up....going down, going anyway you want a me to go" was one of the first songs I learned to play on the guitar. What great music!