Bill Haley & His Comets was an American rock and roll band formed in 1947 and continuing until Haley's death in 1981. The band was also known as Bill Haley and the Comets and Bill Haley's Comets. From late 1954 to late 1956, the group recorded nine Top 20 singles, one of which was number one and three that were Top Ten. The single "Rock Around the Clock" was the best-selling rock single in the history of the genre and maintained that position for several years.
The Surfaris are an American surf music band formed in Glendora, California, in 1962. They are best known for two songs that hit the charts in the Los Angeles area, and nationally by May 1963: "Surfer Joe" and "Wipe Out", which were the A-side and B-side of the same 45 rpm single.
Surf music is a genre of rock music associated with surf culture, particularly as found in Southern California. It was especially popular from 1958 to 1964 in two major forms. The first is instrumental surf, distinguished by reverb-heavy electric guitars played to evoke the sound of crashing waves, largely pioneered by Dick Dale and the Del-Tones. The second is vocal surf, which took elements of the original surf sound and added vocal harmonies, a movement led by the Beach Boys.
Barret Eugene Hansen, known professionally as Dr. Demento, is an American radio broadcaster and record collector specializing in novelty songs, comedy, and strange or unusual recordings dating from the early days of phonograph records to the present. Hansen created the Demento persona in 1970 while working at Pasadena, California station KPPC-FM. He played "Transfusion" by Nervous Norvus on the radio, and DJ "The Obscene" Steven Clean said that Hansen had to be "demented" to play it, and the name stuck. His weekly show went into syndication in 1974 and was syndicated by the Westwood One Radio Network from 1978 to 1992. Broadcast syndication of the show ended on June 6, 2010, but the show continues to be produced weekly in an online version.
Richard Wagstaff Clark was an American television and radio personality and television producer who hosted American Bandstand from 1956 to 1989. He also hosted five incarnations of the Pyramid game show from 1973 to 1988 and Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, which broadcast New Year's Eve celebrations in New York City's Times Square.
Oldies is a term for musical genres such as pop music, rock and roll, doo-wop, surf music from the second half of the 20th century, specifically from around the mid-1950s to the 1980s, as well as for a radio format playing this music.
The Challengers were an instrumental surf rock band started in Los Angeles, California, in late 1962. They represented a growing love for surf music and helped make the genre popular. Their debut album, Surfbeat, was the biggest-selling surf album of all time and helped bring surf music from California to the rest of the world.
Dick Bartley, a popular American radio disc jockey since June 21, 1969, has hosted several popular syndicated radio shows of the oldies/classic hits genre, including the current Dick Bartley's Classic Hits and Rock & Roll's Greatest Hits, both syndicated through United Stations Radio Networks.
Dick Bartley's Classic Hits was a syndicated weekly, four-hour, classic hits program written, produced and hosted by Radio Hall-of-Fame broadcaster Dick Bartley. It was syndicated across the country by United Stations Radio Networks and internationally via Radio Express.
KRLA "AM 870 The Answer" is a commercial radio station broadcasting a conservative talk radio format. Licensed to Glendale, California, it serves Greater Los Angeles and Southern California. The station is owned by Salem Media Group, which also owns 99.5 KKLA-FM which features a Christian talk and teaching format, and 95.9 KFSH-FM with a contemporary Christian music format. By day, KRLA transmits with 50,000 watts, the maximum for commercial AM stations. Since AM 870 is a clear channel frequency reserved for Class A WWL New Orleans, KRLA must reduce power at sunset to 3,000 watts to reduce interference. It uses a directional antenna with a three-tower array. The transmitter is off El Reposo Drive in Los Angeles, near the Glendale Freeway.
WKSC-FM – branded "103.5 Kiss FM" – is a commercial top 40 (CHR) radio station licensed to Chicago, Illinois. Owned by iHeartMedia, its studios are located at the Illinois Center complex on Michigan Avenue in Downtown Chicago, and it broadcasts from a 4.3 kW transmitter atop Willis Tower. WKSC is the flagship station of the syndicated morning show The Fred Show.
The Pop Chronicles are two radio documentary series which together "may constitute the most complete audio history of 1940s–60s popular music." They originally aired starting in 1969 and concluded about 1974. Both were produced by John Gilliland.
Richard Orlando Biondi was an American Top 40 and oldies disc jockey. Calling himself The Wild I-tralian, he was one of the original "screamers," known for his screaming delivery as well as wild antics on and off the air. In a 1988 interview, Biondi said he had been fired 23 times, with both fits of temper and jokes gone wrong part of the tally. Over many years and many frequencies, Dick's closing line was, "God bless, bye, bye, Duke. Thanks a million for dialing our way."
GNP Crescendo Record Co. is an independent record label founded in 1954 by Gene Norman (né Eugene Abraham Nabatoff; 1922–2015). It started as a producer of jazz, then expanded into many other genres, including comedy, rock, and Star Trek soundtracks. Currently GNP Cresendo is run by Gene Norman's son, Neil Norman.
The History of Rock & Roll is an American radio documentary on rock and roll music, first syndicated in 1969. Originally one of the lengthiest documentaries of any medium, The History of Rock & Roll is a definitive history of the Rock and Roll genre, stretching from the early 1950s to the present day. The "rockumentary," as producers Bill Drake and Gene Chenault called it, features hundreds of interviews and comments from numerous rock artists and people involved with rock and roll.
Significant events in radio broadcasting in the year 1969 included the debuts of two documentaries on rock and roll.
Richard James "Dick" Hugg was a radio disc jockey in Los Angeles, California.
Lew Irwin has been a Los Angeles–based journalist for more than 50 years. He was the original anchor/reporter at KABC-TV from 1957 to 1962 and the news director of Los Angeles radio stations KPOL, KRLA, KDAY, and KNX-FM. While at KRLA in the late 1960s, he created The Credibility Gap, a 15-minute news program, broadcast every three hours, that integrated topical satire and music with the news. He also has interviewed Presidents Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan, as well as such show business personalities as The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, David Bowie, Peter Sellers, Jack Nicholson, Dick Clark and Elvis Presley. He is the author of Sinatra, a Life Remembered, a coffee table book about Frank Sinatra and since 1992 has been the publisher/editor of the daily entertainment industry digest Studio Briefing.
Marion Elbridge Herrington, best known as Captain Mikey, was an American disc jockey; voice-over actor, who was the national voice for Sears; and innovative radio program director, who "pioneered album-oriented rock formats at San Jose's KOME and Los Angeles' KMET", and was described as "one of the very best programmers in Top 40 radio as well as what we called progressive rock on FM."
Dick Clark's Rock, Roll and Remember was a weekly American rock and roll radio documentary show hosted by Dick Clark featuring oldies music. It was broadcast on United Stations Radio Networks and its predecessors between 1982 and 2004, with reruns continuing until August 2020.
