Rock Radio Scrapbook
Airchecks: 1955
Enjoy some pre-1955 airchecks
here
Talent:
ALAN FREED
Station: WINS New York
Date: March 23, 1955
Time: 26:51
Courtesy: www.alanfreed.com
A look at the Billboard "Best Sellers in Stores" chart from July 9, 1955 shows plenty of the usual suspects. Eddie Fisher is at number-17 with "Heart". Sammy Davis, Jr., shows up at #16 with "That Old Black Magic," and again at #7 with a double-sided hit "Something's Gotta Give/Love Me or Leave Me." Higher up the list, Frank Sinatra checks in at number-five with "Learnin' The Blues," and there's Nat King Cole in the number-three spot with "Blossom Fell."
But there's a new kid on the block. At 30, he's not really a kid but the teenagers just love him. His name is William John Clifton Haley, Jr., better known as Bill Haley. He has a group called The Comets, and on this day he is making history. "(We're Gonna) Rock Around the Clock" is the first rock 'n' roll song to reach the number-one spot in the history of the Billboard chart. It will not be the last.
As rock 'n' roll emerged, so did rock 'n' roll radio. Deejays like Alan Freed, Hound Dog Lorenz, John R., Hunter Hancock, Zenas Sears, Red Robinson and many others championed the emerging genre, often against stiff opposition and ridicule from the older generation. But rock 'n' roll was like a flood, surging against the barricades. Nothing could hold it back.
This aircheck of Alan Freed on WINS New York takes you back to those early days of rock 'n' roll and rock 'n' roll radio.
Enjoy Freed - from March 23, 1955 - here.
(Scrapbook archives)
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Talent:
GEORGE "HOUND DOG" LORENZ
Station:
WJJL Niagara Falls, N.Y.
Date: May 7, 1955
Time: 9:55
"Nobody replaced the Hound Dog." - Dick Biondi
When one thinks about Buffalo rock 'n' roll radio, the names Tom Shannon, Dan Neaverth and Sandy Beach come to mind. But one name towers above them all, that of the legendary George "Hound Dog" Lorenz.
Lorenz was Buffalo born and raised and spent most of his career in Western New York. But what many people forget is that the Hound worked from 1953 to 1955 in Cleveland, with a 9-11:30 p.m. show on WSRS. Prior to his Cleveland stay, the Hound had started his career at WBTA in Batavia, N.Y., in 1947, later moving on to WXRL in Lancaster, N.Y. and WJJL in Niagara Falls, N.Y.
In 1955, powerful 50,000-watt WKBW lured Lorenz back to Buffalo from Cleveland and he never left. At 'KB, he became a Buffalo phenomenon, with a fan club numbering 70,000 and a huge listener following up and down the eastern U.S. and Canada. Not only did teenagers listen to his radio show, they flocked to shows he put on that included the likes of Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino and Buddy Holly.
Lorenz left 'KB in 1958 when that station went to a Top 40 format; he didn't like the idea of being told what to play or how to do his show. In 1964, he founded WBLK-FM in Buffalo, one of the first FM stations to regularly program African-American music. When he died of a heart attack in 1972 at the age of 52, Lorenz left behind one of rock radio's greatest legacies.
Hear Hound Dog Lorenz from 1955 here.
Hear an additional aircheck of the "Hound" from the 1960s on WBLK here. (13:27)
(The Mark Panopoulos Collection)
