(home)
A Radio Essay by Larry Shannon
"KLIF - The Mighty 1190"
I grew up, tanned and toughened by the swollen Texas sun, in waist-high, wide-open fields of wind swept green and golden Johnson grass, between Dallas and Fort Worth. We played cowboys and combat in the wet wilderness of the Trinity River's flood plains, waging wars in and among the shadows cast by the four giant KLIF radio transmitter towers in South Irving.
My young resume listed only Central Elementary and Bowie Junior High schools then, but, at least, boasted straight A's in English and citizenship. I'd lie awake in the darkness of the night and, through my bedroom window, watch KLIF's red-topped, blinking transmitter towers, a long, straight country mile away -- due south -- by Mockingbird's flight.
In the daytime, I'd sometimes ride the four zigzag miles to the towers on balding bicycle tires over asphalt and gravel roads then, finally, down an almost hidden Mesquite tree-lined trail. Upon my arrival, the engineer would welcome my company. I'd bribe my way in with bags of Fritos, bean dip and ice cold Coca-Cola just to get a peek inside the concrete block radio shack that housed the green-gray, humming radio equipment and music carousel.
KLIF's transmitter tower and the sounds that came from it were wonder worlds to me -- better than the Barnum and Bailey Big Top -- and Gordon McLendon was the amazing 3-ring ringmaster. I've never used the label of "Legend," lightly. It does have some origins in the Germanic languages, I've heard.
A "Legend," says an old dusty dictionary, is " ... an enchanter, one who speaks magic words." For me, The Mighty 1190 was more marvelous and magical than the State Fair Midway -- and the DJ's and newsmen on KLIF 1190 were as close to being legends as any ones I'd ever met by the age of 14.
The 50,000 watts transmitters of KLIF 1190 were so powerful and close to our homes in South Irving that one almost didn't need a radio to listen. Even to this day, I half expect to hear the melodic KLIF 1190 jingle greet me when I pick up the phone. In those days, we carried on our teenage telephone conversations in between the Pams jingles and the Beatles, Five Americans, Elvis and Pet Clark songs on KLIF The Mighty 1190.
Fistfights were not uncommon in the 60's high school hallways when we debated which was the better radio station between KLIF and KBOX. I grew up on the rowdy KLIF side of the South Irving railroad tracks and boldly defended both its territory and integrity at every opportunity. Vietnam was not yet a country or a conflict in our young vocabularies and geography. Innocence and inexperience were the only daily guides we had.
We KLIF kids listened to 1190's Murphy and Harrigan, then Charlie (Jack Woods) and Harrigan (Ron Chapman) in the morning. KLIF made us smile with Mack the Unemployed Joke Teller. Russ Knight-The Weird Beard let us join his "Knight Club" at night (I was a card carrying member).
We filled up our daytimes with friendly Ken Dowe and the ever lovin', rich, famous and flirtatious Granny Emma. Johnny Dark was "Dark in the Morning" and Chuck Dunaway truly was "The Round Mound of Sound." "Blue skies and green lights" were wished upon us by Charlie Van Dyke. Michael O’Shea, Dave Ambrose, Mike Selden, Stan Richards, Bill Robbins, Art Roberts, Bill Enis, Rex Miller, Don Robertson, Hal Martin (Michael Spears), Dan Patrick (Dan McCurdy), Cousin Linnie, Ralph Baker, Paxton Mills, Dick Heatherton, Chuck Murphy, Bruce Wayne, Mike Scott, Brad Messer, Frank Haley, Joe Long, Dick Glancey, Roy Nichols, Dick Mock, Gary DeLaune, Ben Laurie, Ron McAllister, B. William Johnson, Glen Duncan, Sam Pate, Chuck Broyles, Rod Roddy, Paul Menard, Jack Auldridge, Larry Wilson, Jim O’Brien, James Bond, Bob McCord, Rex Jones and Johnny Payne were KLIF 1190 thoroughbreds along with a dozen others who've since faded from my mind like their photographs have faded from the "KLIF Top 40" music surveys.
I bicycled, bused and motorbiked my way through my teenaged years, absorbing everything I could about radio - listening late into the nights, long past midnight, and calling up the DJ's at Riverside 7-9851, to request records and win contests. I was a Beaver Cleaver in the classroom who became Irving High School's teen radio announcer on the weekend circuit.
After school, packed five to a car, powered by 25 cents a gallon gas, with our Beatle haircuts blowing in the freeway's breeze, we'd cruise to the downtown Dallas broadcasting Mecca -- where Commerce and Jackson Streets flowed like holy water onto Central Expressway -- at the cathedral christened "Triangle Point."
On Friday nights, we'd drive by it a dozen times or more, looking up, hoping to catch a wave from the Beach Boys on the radio or from Jimmy Rabbitt through the darkened, double-plated glass ... When some of my South Irving cowboys and combat friends and classmates marched off to Vietnam, I stumbled through the minefields of college classrooms and 4 radio stations in Dallas and Fort Worth (KSKY, KYAL, KBUY, KVIL).
In 1968, John Borders (Johnny Dark-a KLIF alum) pinned on my silver wings when he took a chance on a teenaged rookie and gave me the opportunity to work at KFJZ 1270. KFJZ ruled Fort Worth and Tarrant County while KLIF reigned supreme in the City and County of Dallas in the mid to late 60's.
I had traded in my kid's cowboy and combat fatigues for headphones and microphone gear to wage war against KLIF 1190. The fields we fought in were still the South Irving Trinity River flood plains. And while some of my friends did their duties in Da Nang, Hanoi and Hue, I carried on my own battles in Bedford, Euless, Hurst and Arlington.
The Mid-Cities separated KLIF 1190 and KFJZ 1270's listeners like the Berlin Wall -- 16 miles of no man’s land, filled with foxholes and Friday night record hops. Neither JZ nor KLIF ever gave an inch or a quarter of a point without a struggle. Finally came the Armistice Day when ARB brought an end to our 10 Years War. Dallas and Fort Worth were combined to form one big metropolitan market.
The Mid-Cities began to overlap, grew larger and lose their identities and loyalties to both Big KLIF and King Z. AM's shoulders slowly began to sag under the weight of the FM's. KLIF 1190 got older in the mid 70's - or maybe it was I who did. The neon lights of The Mighty 1190's magical midway flickered, then dimmed slowly, one by one.
The big top tent finally folded in the late 70's. The Wizard of KLIF's Ahhs came out from behind the curtain -- and the wonder and mighty roars were heard no more. KLIF 1190 was never my own radio home address. I will always quietly envy my many friends who, through the years, climbed up those stairs at KLIF's Triangle Point studios, where they saddled up and rode the mystic airwaves of The Mighty 1190, circling high above the city's flying red horse.
KLIF divorced itself from 1190 and, with that corporate move, lost its passion. KLIF is empty without 1190 and 1190 will always need KLIF to make it complete. 1190 is no longer the mighty that it was and KLIF is no more the Klassic that it was -- and will never be again at 1190.
Not even Gordon McLendon could reach into his Old Scotchman's magic hat and pull from it a cure for the cancer that took him away in 1986. All that remains of The Mighty 1190 KLIF now are the memories in the minds of those who listened and those who learned and labored there.
Steve Eberhart has come as close as any one man can to capturing and recreating The Mighty 1190 KLIF via the newest medium, the Internet, at www.historyofKLIF.com ... You can be sure that Gordon McLendon would have loved the Internet -- and he'd have figured out by now how to make it promotable and profitable for radio.
I hope you'll visit www.historyofklif.com soon to see and hear for yourself what began as a bright spark of 1,000 watts in the basement of the Cliff Towers Hotel and became "America's Most Imitated Radio Station."
And, if you've got the time and are the least bit curious to see a place where dreams for a young man first took flight, drive a couple of miles north of Interstate 30 on MacArthur Boulevard some blue-skied day when Texas is tanning under a swollen sun. Turn east on Hunter Ferrell Road and there you'll see the four, tall red-capped radio towers.
Turn right and go south a block or so on the tree-lined lane. Still standing is the concrete block building that, a long, long time ago, housed the green-gray, humming radio equipment and music carousel of KLIF. If you close your eyes and listen past the sounds of Mockingbirds, you'll hear enchanted echoes and the faint voices of those boyhood legends. They gather sometimes there in the waist-high, wide-open fields of wind-swept green and golden Johnson grass -- between Dallas and Fort Worth -- to tell the tales of the glory days of what was and can never be again -- The Mighty 1190 KLIF.