Rock Radio Scrapbook

AIRCHECK OF THE WEEK
For week of October 12, 2014
Edition #804

Talent: DAVE "THE HULLABALOOER" HULL
Station: KRLA Los Angeles
Date: May 27, 1965
Time: 46:13 (unscoped)

"He's crazy, he's insane, he's talented"

 The fun and innocence of 1960s Top 40 radio is personified in Dave Hull.

The Hullabalooer made a career out of being corny and outrageous on the air and it made him popular. How corny? At WFLA Tampa Bay Hull held a corniest joke contest every morning. The winner got a silver dollar and a bag of popcorn. How popular? After Hull was fired from KRLA for playing a Beatle record before the release date, public outcry was such that he got his old job back.

After a stint at Armed Forces Radio, Hull got his start in commercial radio at KGFL Roswell, N.M., in 1965. He next went to WONE Dayton where he got his nickname. "A woman wrote me from a hotel outside Dayton to say she couldn't stand all that hullabaloo," Hull says. "Well, Webster's defined it as a tumultuous out roar, so I used it."

Hull jocked at WQTE Monroe, Mich., and WTVN Columbus, Ohio before beginning his first stint of three stints at KRLA from 1963 to 1969. Hull would spend 45 years in southern California, including stops at Los Angeles stations KFI (twice), KGBS, KHJ, KRTH and KIKF. He retired in 2010 after six years at KWXY Cathedral City, Calif.

"What Dave Hull did for Los Angeles radio cannot be duplicated," fellow KRLA "Eleven-Ten Man" Bob Eubanks told the Orange County Register in 2013. "The Hullabalooer literally took over the town. He's crazy, he's insane, he's talented, but most of all he's a good human being."

Enjoy Dave Hull on KRLA here.

(The Tom Howard Collection)