E-MAIL MEMORIES, PAGE 3

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RCONGER:
You've got a great site!

We used to tie up the phone lines forever trying to be the first to call and win a contest of some sort. In the days of rotary dial, you dialed all digits but the last and had it against the stop ready for release at the instant. Then you guys started this " be the thirteenth caller...." stuff.

Listening to TIX in late 1958, the announcer was reading a news bulletin--75mph as usual. There had been a fire in the city and "the fire farters have rushed to the scene!" What a novel way to put out fires. I don't remember the announcer, but he cracked up briefly and the bulletin was over.

Do you remember WYFE on 600, a country station with all female DJ's. Short lived--about 1958?

After WJMR-TV, channel 20, there was KK2XFW-TV that broadcast on both channel 20 and 12 at the same time. It later became WVUE channel 13--then 12 again and finally swapped channels with WYES, then channel 8. All this about 58 or 59.

WDSU 1280 had a cool mobile studio--a trailer with a three sided glass front. It appeared in a lot of strip shopping centers(before the malls). They did the top twenty. The DJ did the show and asked the gawkers inside--especially the good looking chics. I used to think--what a job!

A guy named Jim Mack at WJBW 1230 used to do a remote from a hamburger stand in front of the Jeff Drive In on Jefferson Hwy at 4 M-F. This was a hang-out for Jeff Jr High kids and EJ. He had the cool chics around him too!. If Mics, turntables, and records are chic magnets why did I become a banker? You guys had all the fun.

BOB:
I think they started that "13th caller" stuff because of me. I got to be so proficient with those rotary dial phones and dialing all but the last number, that one week in 1962 I won the entire WTIX top 40, one record at a time, playing "Name It And Claim It." Ken Karlton even played it three times one hour and I won all three times. Maybe that's why TIX eventually hired me in '67...to get me out of their contests.

Remember when you'd dial those contests around '61 or '62 and you got a busy signal, you could shout and talk to people over the busy signal? Quick! What was it called??? ........the SPOOKLINE.

Yes, I remember listening to the short-lived WYFE with the gal DJ's who came and went (no pun intended). And the WDSU Radio mobile studio used to occasionally park in front of a shoe store on Oak Street next to Mater Dolorosa. Every day after school I'd go pester the DJ for free records! In years to come I would run the hell out of kids like me.

Yeah, us guys DID have SO much fun...after all, I was given the privilege of being the first DJ anywhere to play all the Osmonds songs..."NOW....Here's "YO-YO" by the OSMONDS"

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HOLLY DELACROIX:
I was recently introduced to your website by a co-worker of mine who knew that my dad was a DJ years ago. My dad is Richard Delacroix ("Rockin' Richard" on WJBW and Richard Knight on WNOE, WTIX and WSMB) and I was so excited to see his name listed under the radio stations where he worked. I called him and gave him your web address so he can read all the memories. I don't remember him working at any of the radio stations except for WSMB. My sister and I went with him many weekends to the old Maison Blanche building up to the 13th floor to watch him in the big glass window. I owe my appreciation for music to my dad.

BOB:
Hi Holly. Thanks for the nice email. It brought back some memories to me too...many weekends I rode that Maison Blanche building elevator to the 13th floor to do a Saturday & Sunday nite shift 6-midnight behind that big glass window at WSMB in 1967. And, FYI, the kid who answered my phones on those shifts was a struggling Loyola student making a few bucks on the weekends. His name was Arthur Hardy...well before he became Mr. Mardi Gras.

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DIANE THOMAS:
Question: I grew up in Atlanta in 1950s and remember listening to WWL's broadcasts from the Blue Room at the Roosevelt late at night. Do you remember the exact words the announcer used at the start of the show? It was something like "Coming to you from the beautiful Blue Room high atop the Roosevelt Hotel in downtown New Orleans."

Memory: My family lived in New Orleans during the summer and early fall of 1946, when I was four years old. We rented a furnished apartment in the upstairs of a house on the fringes of the Garden District. The furniture was very old and probably quite lovely. Thing I remember most about it was a dining table and console table held up by large carved lions with open mouths. They looked hungry, so I fed them white bread every day, which Mama had to gouge out of their mouths with a table knife when we moved.

I also remember going with my mother to a poultry shop where chickens were kept live in cages. You selected your chicken, then the proprietor took it into a back room, killed it (wrung its neck?) and gave it to you wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string. Not sure whether buyer or poultry shop scalded bird to remove feathers. Believe it was done at shop.

Love your web page.

BOB:
I think your wording is as close as you're gonna get. I don't think any Blue Room broadcast recordings were made, and the announcer Don Lewis is dead, so no help there. But as the Blue Room was/is inside the first floor door on the University Place side of the hotel (right across from the Orpheum Theater) it wasn't "atop," it was "at"...as I recall: "Coming to you from the beautiful Blue Room at the Roosevelt Hotel in downtown New Orleans." Go to Napster and download "Loving You Has Made Me Bananas" by Guy Marks (ABC Paramount, 1967) and listen to very beginning with the perfect parody of that Blue Room intro with I think the exact wording but different hotel and city mentioned.

And do I remember those chickens inside stacked cages outside the market! Whenever a sidewalk buyer would come to look at the chickens to pick one, the cluckers would look the other way hoping to avoid eye contact! At my family's market back in the 50's at Oak & Eagle, Compagno's Grocery, they'd grab the bird and...uh...give its head and neck a fisted 360 degree circular ride so it could be dealt with in a still manner...or just do a Jason and make its throat smile. Once the clucker stopped hopping around (and some took the longest time before they were bled dry) then they'd chop off its head, and run it over a rotating rubber-fingered plucking machine till the bird was as clean and shiny as a baby's ass for the buyer.

Bet you're glad you asked! :-)

WMRY (later WYLD) - The Larry & Frank Show with Larry McKinley and Frank F. Frank. They were the same person, of course, but the voice illusion was the best. Don't think there was smoother voice on the radio besides Larry McKinley, except maybe for Dick Martin at WWL (Moonglow with Martin).

WJMR - Listened to Poppa Stoppa a lot. We was the best. Later in life I met and worked with one of the people he used to mention in his sign-on, Max (Buddy Buddy) Mipro, who was an engineer at the station and later at WJMR-TV (WVUE-TV).

WWL - My fondest memories, as I grew up there. My father was an engineer there, having started working there in 1930. Remember these names from the '40s and '50s: Fred Hammond, Bill Brengle, John Kent, Vince Alletto, Jimmy Steele, Dick Martin, Henry Dupre, Pinky Vidacovich, the Dawnbusters band - Al Hirt and Marion Sutter on trumpet, Bubby Castigliola on trombone, Nina Picone on clarinet (along with Pinky), Dave Weinstein and Jimmy Rush on sax, Johnny Senac on bass fiddle, Godfrey Hirsch on drums, Freddie on piano (can't remember his last name, but he was married to Bonnie Bell, one of the singers), Margie O'Dair, the other singer. Engineers Fred Fabre, Milton "Nick" Nicholas, Bob Grevemberg, Joe Juhas, Joe Gros, Louis Scott, Jim Barnes, Bob Lawton, Charles Fox, Eddie DuTriel. Can't remember all the names. God, those were great days.

Miss hearing you on the radio. Never heard why you left WTKL, or whatever it is they call it. Since Muniz sold it, it has lost its uniqueness. Way too much MoTown, and not enough N.O. oldies.

BOB:
Wow! What memories...the Dawnbusters were such a collection of jewels....and now, thanks to you, we have their names. I do wish recordings of their shows still existed! And Larry McKinley...the best voice ever in New Orleans radio.

Thanks for sharing those memories...if we don't keep them alive here, nobody else is gonna!

BOB:
WE did get older...but so has Jerry Lee!! And those Fridays at the "show" with those Blue Plate coupons were fun. That's how I got to see "Attack of the Crab Monsters" at the Poplar. But times have changed... these days a nickle isn't worth a dime!

There was the Escorille movie house on Banks St. I believe it burned down. Thanks again.

BOB:
I know Cathy in the email above will appreciate knowing that you went to the Escorille movie house. You two could have been sitting side by side one Friday night and didn't even know it, as you both watched the Bowery Boys!

I do remember WNPS...but I was more into "Be Bop A Lula."

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