My wife, Debra, got me this site for Christmas and my son, Steve, is helping - so an old radio guy can tell his stories. I call the mid-50's - 1970 the Silver Age of Radio. This was before de-regulation, when personality was your ticket to the dance! I'm going to jot down some memories of each station I worked at.
I'm going to start with WQUA Moline (thanks to Mark Moskowitz and all my Q friends for the kind words.)
In February of 1965 I sat in my room at the LeClaire Hotel, trying to find WQUA on a cheap radio. I had come to the Quad-Cites to be like Pat Murphy in Louisville, a great all-night guy, very free-form. I kept switching back and forth between KSTT and WHBF, but all I could get was Mummers music (Mummers are strange people who dress up like butterflies and dance up and down the streets of Philadelphia playing kazoos and glockenspiels. Music only a brother could love. That's why they are in Philadelphia.) Who the hell plays Mummers music at 8:15 in the morning?? WQUA. That's who!
The next day I was told the manager, Max Ryder, a nice man with bad taste in music, liked it. I told Joe Murray, the P. D., that I didn't care who liked it - the only way I would play Mummers music on the radio was at gunpoint.
