EARLY '70S RADIO: KLIF (Dallas): Top 40, 1954-1972

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

KLIF (Dallas): Top 40, 1954-1972

KLIF in Dallas ("The Mighty 1190") stands among the most celebrated stations in Top 40 history thanks to radio industry legend Gordon McLendon. He ran KLIF like a flame tank across the North Texas plains, commanding, at times, an audience share of over 50 percent. Among the station's widely copied promotional practices was the type of compilation album I've discussed previously, featuring representative playlist entries and DJ head shots on the cover. Volume 6 of the "KLIF Klassics" series, which was released in 1972, captures the station at a cruxpoint. McLendon had only just sold the station (for a bundle) the previous year and the Mighty 1190 eventually found itself sputtering amid changing radio industry terrain.

The tracklist reveals a station attempting to cover all of the newly emerging format bases while grappling for a unifying sound - tricky business in the crossover-oriented early '70s, when fragmentation masqueraded as a cheerful olio. (Not evident in this album is the station's concurrent attempts to behave like an MOR station and cash in on the housewife market by featuring a daytime Feminine Forum-style "sex talk" show with Dave Ambrose's Girl Talk). DJs featured on the back cover: Mike Selden, Cuzzin' Linnie, Dave Ambrose, Jim Taber, Paxton Mills, Chuck Murphy, and Michael O'Shea.

Tracklist: "Band of Gold" (Freda Payne), "Oh Girl" (Chi-Lites), "Too Late to Turn Back Now" (Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose), "I Gotcha" (Joe Tex), "Easy Livin'" (Uriah Heep), "In the Summertime" (Mungo Jerry), "Garden Party" (Rick Nelson), "Help Me Make It Through the Night" (Sammi Smith), "A Horse with No Name" (America), "Timothy" (The Buoys), "Join Together" (The Who), "Stick Up" (The Honey Comb), "Walking in the Rain" (Love Unlimited), "I Saw the Light" (Todd Rundgren), "Popcorn" (Hot Butter), "On My Own" (BW Stevenson).

3 comments:

UnknownOctober 19, 2021 at 6:19 PM
loved KLIF back in the 60's in rockin Dallas, Tx !
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TheOldRangerJuly 25, 2024 at 2:25 PM
I graduated from a Dallas high school in 1960, and I had a little over 2 years of radio experience. I was offered a job to come to KLIF and I was really excited. However, a couple of months before graduation, I also was contacted by 20 different colleges and universities for scholarship offers. No one in my family had ever gone to college, so I decided to go to Baylor Univ in Waco. I was never sure for a long time if I had made the right choice, but I met my future wife attending graduate work in a Wisconsin university. I've been married for 56 years and have 2 great daughters, so I made the right decision.... but I still have wondered over the years how I would have done being on the airwaves of KLIF
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AnonymousSeptember 1, 2024 at 4:46 PM
growing up in rural East Texas in the 60s KLIF was our connection to the top 40 British invasion music scene. fond memories.
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Good Words About Early '70s Radio

"Kim Simpson does a superb job analyzing the manifold factors that contributed to the radio format revolution while advancing the reader’s understanding of a transformative period in American culture. Ultimately, Simpson’s astute assessment of radio’s second heyday adds richly to the ever-growing canon of media studies. Early '70s Radio is must reading for anyone interested in the unique role specialized audio programming played in an era of historic social change."

–– Michael C. Keith, Author of The Radio Station

"All of the men and women, though the latter were few in music radio for many years, took radio programming seriously not only as a career, but also with passion for its viability. This included the disc jockey, the program director, and the general manager as more and more of them graduated from programming into management. Thus, I’m pleased to read this wonderful, compelling book by Kim Simpson. He treats with respect what all of us in the 60s and 70s took seriously. It was our life! And he employs penetrating wisdom and astonishing perception to correlate music with the cultural mores of our times and depict what really was and why. Great book!"

–– Claude Hall, B.J., M.Ed. Radio-TV Editor, Billboard, 1964-79, and Assistant Communications Professor, State University of New York at Brockport, 1983-89

"Too often we separate the agendas contained in business plans from the decisions of daily life. Kim Simpson’s Early ‘70s Radio reunites the items found on playlists with the passions and polemics that infused a complicated decade. His skilful scholarship and attention to detail clarify that what we listen to and how we lead our lives do not march to separate beats, for our actions and our aesthetic preferences bear subtle and significant harmonies."

–– David Sanjek, Professor of Music Director, Salford Music Research Centre University of Salford, U.K.

"Early '70s Radio is a fast-paced romp through the formatting revolution that changed the ways pop music continues to be sliced and diced. Surprises pop off every page. Examining everything from monster hits to obscure and often-hilarious novelty tunes, Kim Simpson shows how Top 40 splintered into middle of the road soft rock, album-oriented hard rock, crossover soul and disco, and country pop. Each format promised to serve up a distinct listening demographic to hungry advertisers. Yet Simpson uncovers fascinating commonalities across the dial—including the increasing desire of stations to attract women instead of men—that fundamentally changed the sound of pop music. And who knew there were so many songs featuring children in the era? If you ever wondered about the roots of the Miley Cyrus/Justin Beiber phenomenon or how Glee learned to appeal to parents and their kids at the same time, Early '70s Radio delivers. I’ll never listen to 'Yummy Yummy Yummy' or 'Rubber Duckie' the same way again."

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"Music historians are only now discovering what most everybody in the 1970s already knew: commercial radio formats really really mattered. Looking at the five key strands (Top 40, MOR, rock, R&B, and country), Kim Simpson surveys a moment when identity politics and counterculture were becoming niche marketing and new kinds of mainstreams. You can't explain what happened to American popular music after the 1960s without understanding these processes, and Simpson provides an able, accessible guide through a daunting range of sounds and contexts."

–– Eric Weisbard, University of Alabama and editor, Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music