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Baby boomers have fond memories of a rock “n” roll station that grabbed the market in the 1960s and dominated listenership among teens and young adults. But KXOK had a long and admirable history even before it hit the top spot with good old rock ‘n’ roll. It also faced a long history of challenges.

On Sept. 22, 1936, the Star-Times Publishing Company was granted a construction permit for a 1,000 watt radio station at 1250 kHz. The station’s transmitter was across the Mississippi River in Venice, Illinois. A couple weeks later, on Oct. 10, the station was given the call letters KXOK. But a challenge to these actions by the owners of WIL kept KXOK off the air.

Aside from fears of competition in the marketplace, there were a couple of other motivating factors behind WIL’s action. The publisher of the St. Louis Star-Times was Elzey Roberts, and there is evidence that he may have been involved in the ownership of WIL as late as 1928. But in the 1930s, Roberts was one of many newspaper executives who were quite vocal in their opposition to news broadcasts on radio. Many of these executives had embraced the development of radio in its early days 10 years earlier, but as the stations realized they could read news and disseminate the information quickly, scooping the papers, they began scheduling regular news broadcasts.

Also, WIL’s owners, Missouri Broadcasting, wanted to move their station to the 1250 dial spot so they could increase WIL’s power. In the end, Roberts won the battle and KXOK’s license was issued in November 1938. The fourth floor of the Star-Times Building in downtown St. Louis was transformed into radio studios. A thesis by Charles Suits at the University of Missouri-Columbia notes the station actually went on the air at 6:00 a.m. on Sept. 20, 1938, and the first show was a broadcast from the studios of KFRU radio in Columbia, MO.

That station had been purchased by Roberts in 1936, and in 1939, the station’s owners applied for permission to swap frequencies, which would put KXOK at 630 kHz. But once again there was a challenge from a St. Louis radio station – KSD, which was owned by Star-Times rival the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. KSD had been forced to share its frequency with KFUO and was looking for a way to end that arrangement. A three-way frequency swap was granted to the Star-Times which allowed KXOK to land at 630, KFRU moved to 1370 and an Indiana station which had also been at 630 was changed to 1250.

In 1951, Roberts sold his newspaper in St. Louis to the Post, and KXOK was eventually sold to brothers Todd and Robert Storz in 1960. Their new ideas, from programming rock hits and using strong personalities as disc jockeys, quickly propelled the station to the top in popularity in the market.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 2/98)

Listen to a KXOK newscast from 1963.

In the decade of the 1960s, one radio station stood out in St. Louis, and an assessment some 40 years later finds that it still stands out in the memories of many people. Anyone who lived through those years understood the later premise behind George Lucas’ film “American Graffiti.” The radio – or more importantly one specific radio station – played a big role in the lives of teenagers in just about every market. Everyone listened to that station, and the disc jockeys were real people who became friends to the listeners. In St. Louis, that station was KXOK.

KXOK was owned by Todd Storz as part of his chain of AM stations known for their rock and roll formats. A stroll down memory lane, compliments of station vet Dick Ulett, who now owns Clayton Studios: Mort Crowley, Danny Dark, Ron Riley, Peter Martin, Robert R. Lynn, Bob Shea, David D. Rogers, Dan Allison, Johnny Rabbitt, Don “Stinkey” Shafer, Richard Ward Fatherly, Nick Charles, Bruno J. Grunion, William A. Hopkins, Big Ears Bernard, Steven B. Stevens, Bobby Shannon, Delcia Corlew, Chickenman, News at 55, Radio Park, “The station with the happy difference.”

Ray Otis was the station’s program director, coming to St. Louis in 1962 at the age of 24. Manager Bud Connell had “opened” the station, and it was Otis’ job to move it through the next stages of evolution. “There was magic at KXOK like no other place I’ve seen,” he says.

“Everything just fell together. The synergy was incredible.” The station was located in a small grove of trees at 1600 North Kingshighway, which it dubbed “Radio Park.”

Across the street was the old Parkmoor. There was an old house on the property and the studios were built as an addition, with the a room in the house serving as the reception area and the rest being used for storage. Out in front, facing Kingshighway, were the 3’ high green letters “KXOK” which had graced the side of the building it had previously inhabited, the old Star-Times Building downtown.

Jim Bafaro, a former radio journalist here and now working at Boeing in public relations, remembers being confused as a five-year-old: “As a kid, I heard the term ‘Radio Park’ and assumed there was some little park somewhere with a big microphone in it.”

Richard Ward Fatherley was KXOK’s production director, and he often did substitute work by doing dj shifts on the air. Like Ray Otis, Fatherley joined KXOK at the age of 24, coming to St. Louis in 1964. “In 1966,” he says, “The Pulse radio ratings research group completed its ranking of the nation’s top five most-listened-to radio stations. Two of them were in St. Louis; KMOX, the CBS-owned “At Your Service Station,” and KXOK, the Storz-owned Top 40 station.

“This ratings battle between two differently programmed radio stations signaled the beginning of the end for the reign of the AM “Rockers” and a green light for the AM “Talkers.”

Both Fatherley and Otis remember how KXOK capitalized on the construction of the Gateway Arch, tying in its dial position with the monument’s dimensions (630 Kc, 630’ high, 630’ wide). Fatherley notes the station “took advantage of every opportunity to embrace the structure in its sales brochures, business cards, promotional pieces and listener contests.”

Otis remembers the day an audition tape was played featuring the work of a young entertainer named Don Pietromonaco. “I’d never heard anything like it. We had a fairly rigid framework for our jocks, but when we brought in Don and made him ‘Johnny Rabbitt,’ things loosened up. Todd Storz used to say some guys need the framework of a format. Others don’t. The proof is in the ratings. We turned ‘Johnny’ loose, and he owned nighttime radio in St. Louis.”

And then there was the time a guy drove up to Radio Park towing a speedboat behind his car. Lou Cooley told the station’s manager he’d like to make a deal. If KXOK would allow him to paint the station’s call letters on the side of his boat, he’d win a high profile boat race. He kept his word, and an interesting relationship was born. “Lou ran a laboratory shuttle service,” Otis says, “and he had a telephone in his car. He’d phone the station with traffic reports and we’d put him on the air.” Otis also put the station’s janitor on the air. “Eddie Simpson, the janitor, lived in the house behind the studios. Sometimes when he’d be cleaning in the studios I’d sit him down at the mic and we’d talk.”

Robert R. Lynn, who was news director in those years, has fond memories of his experience there. “We were actually gatherers, writers, editors, not just news readers like many other stations. The newscasts were full of gizmos, echoes and beeps so they’d fit the format. It was a bunch of people having a good time.”

And those good times sometimes took the form of pranks. Lynn remembers a psychology student at Washington University who sent the station a press release. The student had constructed a body-length black bag (cutting out two holes so he could see out) and he wore it all over campus, recording reactions of other students. The young man scheduled a press conference in which he would detail his findings. “Steven B. Stevens’ mom sewed up five more bags and five of our guys went to the campus wearing them. Each of our guys held a press conference claiming to be the student, blowing away any chance he had of getting attention.”

Then there was the time Fatherley came back from vacation and had to do an air shift. He conducted the station’s “Bingo” game without reading all the instructions, giving out six numbers at once instead of the usual single number. As Lynn tells it, hundreds of “winners” blew out the phone circuits and other multitudes drove to Radio Park, gridlocking North Kingshighway. For the rest of his St. Louis stint, Fatherley became the target of Ray Otis’ ribbing, enduring shouts of “Bingo” at unexpected moments.

A young lady who began her on-air stint as a sponsor’s spokesperson has fond memories of KXOK. Delcia Devon (later Corlew) was the voice of Famous- Barr beginning in 1964. She remembers the brilliance of Don Pietromonaco, who was known to his listeners as Johnny Rabbitt. “I would be recording my commercials in the production studio and Don would come in to record his Bruno drop-ins. He’d just sit down and start talking in his Bruno voice, doing wild tracks. Later, when he was on the air, he’d carry on a conversation with those recordings. I was amazed how he could remember what he’d said on the tapes.”

Everyone interviewed for this article gives the credit for KXOK’s success to one man, Bud Connell, the operations manager. “He pulled the right strings and brought in the right people,” says Robert R. Lynn. Ray Otis says “Bud was the best market opener I’ve ever seen.”

Connell came to St. Louis from Miami. “Storz gave me carte blanche,” he says. Arriving in July of 1961, he monitored the market for a month. “KXOK had 4% of the market while WIL had over 20%. KXOK’s jocks were Ken Reed, Peter Martin, Jack Elliott and Don Shafer. Bob Shea and Robert R. Lynn were the newsmen. My first job was to brighten the sound and beef up the news. I brought in Shad O’Shea and Danny Dark as jocks and David D. Rogers and Steven B. Stevens for news. Our news department had four of the biggest voices in radio.”

“It was a bunch of people having a good time,” says newsman Lynn, “and the jocks made as much on the side from personal appearances as they did on the air.”

Connell says he brought in outstanding people, but his main criterion boiled down to a simple requirement: “I looked for a capacity to entertain and the intelligence to entertain without using bad taste. The big stars in radio today wouldn’t even have been considered for jobs on KXOK. Don Pietromonaco, for example was the ultimate Johnny Rabbitt; the defining Johnny Rabbitt. He was an absolute entertainer.”

The veterans of KXOK all say it was the finest job in their careers. “In a word,” says Robert R. Lynn, “it was fun!” Delcia Corlew says “It was unique, exciting. There was a lot of discovery in it, a chance for all of us to learn about ourselves and our listeners.” Connell says “My nickname around the station was ‘Mr. Kx-OK. Those were heady days for a young man who loved playing radio. I am convinced the old KXOK would blow away all of today’s broadcast wunderkind, including those in the smut-filled control rooms of the present day audio-porn purveyors. And wouldn’t it be fun to do it all over again?” The comment by Ray Otis says it all: “In retrospect it was almost euphoric. I’d go back in a heartbeat.”

(Reprinted with permission of the St.Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 5/01.)

Bob Hille has fond memories of his work at KXOK and the day the station signed on.

“KXOK went on the air with a really impressive staff. We had a full studio orchestra. We had a classical quartet which included a man who played first cello with the Symphony. We had Skeets Yaney and the hillbillies in the morning. Eddie Arnold was a young kid who played with them. I went on as a studio announcer, which meant I was literally working for nothing. When I finally got a job that paid, which was in April of 1939, I made $40 a week, which was pretty good money in those days.

“The biggest name talent,” according to Hille, “was a young man named Paul Aurandt. He now goes by ‘Paul Harvey.’ Paul was kind of a second fiddle on special events. Allen Franklin did most of the really special events, as well as being program director.

“We had a very big studio set-up, including one studio with a full organ. The night before we went on the air, the union came up with the idea that we couldn’t do it because the organ had not been made by a union shop. Ray Hamilton, the manager, had to hire a guy to come in and sit down and put a hot soldering iron on every connection in the organ.”

The KXOK studios were on the fourth floor of the Star-Times building at 12th and Delmar, occupying the part of the building that faced 12th. The other side of the building housed the paper’s linotype operation, which caused a lot of noise and vibration. Hille says, “All three studios were mounted on springs, which was fairly innovative at the time. We had a disc recording set-up that was designed to escape the vibration from the linotypes. They mounted a Presto recorder on legs that ran down about three feet to a huge concrete block. The block was set on top of a large, inflated truck inner tube that kept the vibrations out.

“We did a lot of remotes. We were at dance halls practically every night. I remember we carried a live broadcast from the big circus that was playing at Kiel. Allen Franklin bribed the charioteers who were racing to stage a huge crash right in front of his broadcast position. Allen was really good.”

One might assume today that the Star-Times owners would realize the radio station would cannibalize some ad dollars from the paper, but in those days, more than money was at stake. “They were watching that combination down the street, the Post and KSD (at 12th and Olive). And there was a different group of advertisers, those who couldn’t afford ads in the newspaper.”

As a night announcer, Hille was required to do station breaks, news cut-ins and commercials. “If a half-hour program was on the air, you sat and, theoretically, studied your script, which is a laugh. Almost all our commercials were done live, since there were few recordings. Those would have to be done on disc, which was expensive. We did 15 minutes of news at 6 and again at 10, and a sign-off news at midnight.”
Later, after he was hired as a full-time announcer, Bob Hille was made host of a daily remote broadcast from various grocery stores where he would conduct a live quiz with shoppers. The program was sponsored by Forbes Coffee Company. After awhile he hosted a daily half-hour luncheon show at the Forest Park Hotel, which would feature celebrity guests.

There were seven or eight radio stations serving the St. Louis audience in the late 1930s, and Hille says the big difference in the stations was determined by whether the station had a network affiliation. “NBC was split into the Red and Blue networks at that time. We had the Blue. KSD had the Red, which was the premier. KMOX had CBS. KWK, with Mutual, was not as big. So that made KSD an even bigger competitor for KXOK, and in this case, the competition was accelerated because of the personal competition between the newspapers’ publishers.

That competition even spread to talent raids. In 1951, Bob Hille was hired away from KXOK to work as an announcer at KSD and KSD-TV.

(Reprinted with permission of the St.Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 09/03.)

In 1947, KXOK was owned by the St. Louis Star-Times, and the station was making a strong effort to reach out to the community. Part of that outreach involved the publication of a monthly newsletter for listeners. While the only purpose of the newsletter was the promotion of the station, it provides insight into the way radio operated in St. Louis in the middle of the last century.

There’s an announcement that KXOK sports announcer Harry Caray has become a father again. This time the son is named Christopher, and he joins a family of two other kids, “Skippy” (also identified as Harry Junior) and Patricia. A publicity photo shows Harry in a boxing stance with the great Joe Louis. Caray is also shown in a photo of a party for a young Cardinals’ catcher by the name of Joe Garagiola, who sports a full head of hair.

The program “Junior Fone Quiz” is described as “the only telephone quiz for young folks…exclusively for boys and girls between 6 and 16 years…offers valuable awards for submission of questions used and correct answers.” Those awards included dolls, bicycles, baseball equipment, games and ice skates.

There’s a large photo of a dozen college students receiving a tour of the station’s transmitter site and another photo of news director Bruce Barrington in front of the “new KXOK Field Car, a station wagon that is being equipped with Radio Telephone, transcription equipment for recording programs and events, and a ‘mobile’ transmitter, making the car a veritable radio station in itself. Its use will facilitate the station’s ‘on-the-spot’ reporting of news and sports events, agricultural features and special events.”

Farm director Charley Stookey is shown between two Ferguson tractors parked on Grand Boulevard in front of the Fox Theater. He’s receiving gifts from two local farm girls in honor of the showing of the movie The Farmer’s Daughter. Sports director France Laux is shown interviewing Lloyd Mangrum, the 1946 National Open Golf Champion.

KXOK disc jockey Rush Hughes was asked to be a guest lecturer at the annual Educational Radio Conference at the university in Norman, Okla. Hughes, who is described in the KXOK newsletter as “one of the leading ‘Disc Jockies’ in the country, will give demonstrations and lead the discussion on his type of program.” While he was out of town, his daily programs would still be heard on KXOK, via transcription.

One of the longest newsletter articles begins: “Have you ever thought about becoming a radio announcer? If you have, you are similar to many people who frequently inquire of radio stations whether their voices are well suited to the microphone.”

In this way, the anonymous writer leads readers into an article promoting the KXOK announcers of the day. Fourteen announcers are mentioned. There’s Don Phillips, who hosts the Manhattan Coffee and Dixcel License Quiz shows. Bob Hille is “the dean of the KXOK announcers, with the station since it went on the air in 1938, [he] is recognized by many listeners as the quizmaster on the Forbes Food Store Quiz.” Bruce Barrington and Bertram Hughes are cited for their newscasting efforts, and the station’s only woman with on-air duties is Kay Morton, who is featured on the daily Musical Party Line.

(Reprinted with permission of the St.Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 06/03.)

Elzey Roberts had every reason to be proud, and a little nervous, on Monday, Sept. 19, 1938. That was the day his new radio station, KXOK, went on the air. It was a long time coming.

The station was officially owned by Roberts’ newspaper, the St. Louis Star-Times. By the time they signed on, three years had been spent fending off challenges of competitors that had been filed with the Federal Communications Commission. Thousands of dollars had been spent building new studios and offices on the second and fourth floors of the Star-Times Building at 800 North 12th Blvd.

The paper touted its studios in an article on Sept. 9, just prior to sign-on: “The studios, three in number, are located on the fourth floor…The reception room will be decorated with a chocolate brown floor trimmed in white, with buff walls and ceiling. Opening from the reception room will be an observation alcove where programs originating in studio ‘C’ may be observed. The studio will be decorated with a jade green floor, sea green walls and a buff ceiling.

“Studio ‘A,’ the largest of the three, will be furnished with varying tones of terra cotta, ranging through three shades from the dark floor to a lighter ceiling…[The] observation room for this studio will have theater seats arranged in tiers for the accommodation of visitors.”

The new station was born near the end of what was called the “press-radio war,” during which the nation’s newspapers flexed their collective muscle in an effort to prevent radio stations from broadcasting news. As it was becoming obvious that the effort was a failure, the Star-Times felt it would be advantageous to promote the working relationship KXOK would have with the newspaper: “As edition after edition rolls off the presses the news will be rushed to the radio newsroom on the second floor of the Star-Times Building, there to be edited and put into the fast, clear bulletins the air requires.

“If news is breaking even faster, if the radio deadline is near, Bruce Barrington, news editor, will dash into the city room to get the stories as they come ‘take by take’ or paragraph by paragraph from the typewriters of the reporters and rewrite men. From the point at which the news breaks to the broadcasting microphone can on occasion be a matter of less than five minutes.”

Management put a lot of thought into the station’s programming. Like other, successful stations, KXOK offered a wide variety of shows. Several singing groups were hired, as were different program hosts for shows featuring advice to women, news analysis, a solver of “life problems” and locally produced dramatic presentations. Weekly live broadcasts of college football games were scheduled, along with wrestling, hockey and boxing matches.

So it was, with sufficient fanfare, that KXOK signed on at 6 a.m. with “Rudy Ramsworth and his ’Sunrise Round-Up,’ a program of music, time and interesting facts for those who must leave their homes for work.” The added gimmick was that the program originated live from the studios of KFRU in Columbia, Mo., a station also owned by the Star-Times.

The readers of the paper were also treated to an interesting demonstration of class in the form of a large ad the day KXOK signed on. The ad copy read, “KMOX and the Columbia Broadcasting System congratulate the St. Louis Star-Times on the opening of Radio Station KXOK.”

(Reprinted with permission of the St.Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 12/07.)

“Radio Park.” It’s a name that prompts a variety of visual images, which is why it was a perfect home for a radio station that relied on theater of the mind. Listeners usually had a much different mental image and many were somewhat disappointed when they saw it, but that didn’t change the way they felt about the station at Radio Park.

The real estate was purchased from Florence Eilers, widow of St. Louis patent attorney Roy Eilers, in July of 1955. Elzey Roberts, Jr., and Chet Thomas announced they planned to move their radio station, KXOK, to the two-and-one-half acre tract of land at 1600 North Kingshighway between Warwick on the south and Aldine Place on the north. Buildings on the land totaled 10,000 square feet. The move took place Sunday night, Aug. 28, 1955. By the time they opened for business that Monday morning, all 110 employees were in place at Radio Park.

The work atmosphere at KXOK had been strained over the previous couple years. Original owner the St. Louis Star-Times had ceased publication in June of 1951, but the station’s studios remained in the newspaper’s building at 12th and Delmar. In 1938. when the station signed on, the studios were the best money could buy, and the operation was designed to work in tandem with the newspaper’s staff. There were many locally originated programs and a large broadcast staff to put it all together.

By the late ‘40s, KXOK had become little more than a plug and play ABC Radio affiliate, running all the national shows and supplementing with local news. By then, the radio business was changing, and a station that relied solely on network programming was headed on a downhill track. Management hired some prominent disc jockeys and used the move to Radio Park to establish the image of the “new” KXOK.

And anyone who drove past 1600 North Kingshighway remembers that sign in the front. It was the first impression young Bud Connell had when he arrived to begin his job programming the station. “I was greeted by a massive all-weather sign announcing the famous call letters, KXOK. Each big, green letter, more than five feet tall and a foot thick, was mounted on a heavy, imposing 12-foot frame that appeared to have permanently grown from the block-long grounds known as Radio Park.”

Those who worked at Radio Park in later years have many pleasant memories, due in part to the fact that the radio station was not a sterile, business environment. The grounds were filled with huge oak, elm, mulberry and pine trees. Next to the building a walled patio provided a break area for employees. Author Robert Hereford wrote, “Three huge trees rise from the brick floor of the patio…Flowers, ferns and creeping ivy add to the Spanish motif.” Former newsman Robert R. Lynn remembers, “We often did our newscasts with the door to that patio open and the birds singing outside.”

KXOK occupied a newer two-story building, which was attached to an old former residential structure that the station used for storage. There was a small house behind the station where the caretaker lived with his family. There was even a hand-carved totem pole on the grounds.

Entry to KXOK was from the south on a circular drive. Most offices were on the second floor, studios on the first. Walking past the receptionist, who operated the old-fashioned patch cord switchboard, visitors went down a couple stairs, passing the door to a very messy newsroom (the opinion of Steven B. Stevens) into a viewing area to watch the disc jockeys at work. The main studio was about 1,000 square feet, and at one time, there were seats for a live audience.

In its earlier years, KXOK fed the ABC network signal to all affiliates west of the Mississippi from a master control room on this level. The echo that gave KXOK its full, rich on-air sound came from a wall in this room. There, housed in a plexiglass box, was an echo amp designed by corporate engineer Dale Moudy. It came from an old Hammond organ and consisted of three tubes and springs.

Another large studio on this level was used for commercial production. It housed the massive Ampex 300 reel-to-reel machines. Richard Ward Fatherley, who became the station’s production director, remembers “a lonesome, aged grand piano hugging the studio’s south wall, a testimony to radio’s good old days.”

The newsroom was eventually moved behind the main studio, and as Steven B. Stevens remembers, “the worst part of that was that those who needed to use the rest room (a facility described by Robert R. Lynn as ‘acoustically perfect’) behind the newsroom would go there and think up things to do. One trick was to come out with a large soda bottle filled with water and pour it slowly into a bucket of water during a newscast so it sounded you were broadcasting from the KXOK toilet.

“More than once I had my script lit on fire by a jock cruising by; I would simply ad lib my way on through the newscast.”

The magic of a place called Radio Park was summed up in the words of programmer Bud Connell: “Radio Park was an image, indelible in our minds and hearts, and in our loyal listeners – and it will never be repeated. It will be sadly missed by those of us who were fortunate enough to work there.”

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 6/08)

The video link below is to an 8 mm film shot by Richard Ward Fatherley while he was an employee of KXOK in the early ‘60s. It shows the grounds of Radio Park and a KXOK All Stars ballgame at nearby Forest Park.