"Charlie Brown" by the Coasters is No. 3 this week on the Top 40, and DJ Chris Borden, aka the Big Kahuna, is spinning the platters. Next comes a weather jingle, followed by the warning: "If you don't want it heard on KTKT news, don't let it happen."
Welcome to the week of April 9, 1959, as encapsulated on the new Web site, www.ktkt99.com/.
Designed by former KTKT DJ Ray Lindstrom, the site brims with old airchecks — live recorded demos of DJ patter, weather, news and commercials — as well as audio interviews with the disc jockeys who made KTKT the most popular station in town back in the '50s and '60s.
Men such as:
● Frank Kalil, who got his start while still in high school and walloped the competition on his afternoon drive-time show.
● Jerry Stowe, who broadcast live for three weeks from in front of the Tidelands Motor Inn — while inside the cage of an emu stolen by a bunch of frat-house boys.
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● Chris Borden, a practical joker who sneaked rock 'n' roll records into the lineup of KTKT's classical FM sister station.
"We would put in something like the Coasters or Elvis. And then the phones would light up," says Borden, 72, who now lives in Northern California.
KTKT-FM is where Lindstrom got his start in radio in 1957, working as a teenage announcer, along with chum Burt Schneider.
Little wonder "an old woman who lived in the Foothills" kept calling to complain that the boys were mispronouncing the names.
After bouncing around at other radio and TV gigs, Lindstrom landed a job at KTKT-AM in 1962, working his way up to the Top 40 countdown on Saturday mornings.
"It wasn't just all rock 'n' roll," says Lindstrom, 66. "We might have Frank Sinatra, then the Rolling Stones, then Percy Faith."
And all of it delivered in the format known as "Color Radio," with every second filled with music, news spots, weather and commercials — many sounding like they'd been recorded inside a reverberating oil drum.
"Our engineer even made the turntable one rpm higher, 46 rpms, not 45, says Lindstrom. "That made the records sound a little brighter, a little faster."
Like other DJs, he, too, did the wacky remote broadcasts.
"We did something called Spooktaculars during the midnight hour at the Fox-Tucson," says Lindstrom. "We showed 'The Fly,' or Vincent Price movies. It cost 99 cents to get in."
He also remembers when John F. Kennedy was shot, November of '63.
"We said, 'How can we play rock 'n' roll music at a time like this?' We agreed to play patriotic music. Jerry Stowe went down to Rubitom's records and came back with a couple of albums and we played them until after the funeral."
Started as an independent station in 1949 by Tom Wallace, KTKT went from 1490 to 990 on the AM dial in 1956. It also boosted its wattage from 250 to 10,000 watts and adopted a new rock 'n' roll format.
Lindstrom left the station and Tucson in 1965 for other radio and TV gigs, then opened his own advertising agency.
During the last few years, he began creating Web sites strictly for fun. Along the way he got to know C.J. Brown and Chuck Simms.
Brown, who grew up in the '60s listening to KTKT and now lives in Ohio, has spent years researching Tucson radio history and collecting memorabilia, along with recorded airchecks, some of which now grace the KTKT Web site.
Simms, who started producing programming for KTKT in 1976 and still works for its owners, Lotus Communications, calls himself the "de facto" historian for the station.
A few years ago he began interviewing people associated with the station, disc jockeys to station managers.
"As I interviewed people, more came to light," says Simms, who also interviewed Lindstrom.
Eventually, Simms, Brown and Lindstrom all agreed: "We ought to do a Web site."
"It was, 'You do the Web site, we'll supply the material,' " says Lindstrom, who retired to Tucson a few months ago.
Sadly, the KTKT so many of us loved and remember is no more, done in years ago by the surge in FM radio.
Today, it still holds down 990 on your AM dial — as a Spanish-language sports station.
Ah, but in its day, "it was just plain fun," says Lindstrom. "Everyone got along. We all just wanted to be on the air."
In a way, they still are.
Did You Know . . .
In 1957, TV personality Art Linkletter became part owner, for a time, of KTKT.
Share memorabilia
Got some KTKT memorabilia or recordings you'd like to share? E-mail Chuck Simms at certrix@yahoo.com.
discuss the past
Ray Lindstrom is available to speak about the golden age of Tucson radio and television, circa 1950s and '60s. E-mail him at colorchannel99@yahoo.com.
