Noise For No One: Records is his middle name. No, really.

"Once again the boy in the box, who is I, searches for the alleged humorous phone call, which is you." -John Records Landecker

In the mid-70's I discovered radio. Okay, someone else actually had discovered radio years before me (I'll get to that in a future posting) but the mid-1970's was when radio became a passion for me. I had listened to plenty of radio starting in the late 60's with Greensboro's Top-40 station, WCOG, and every morning before school with my father's favorite, WBIG (anyone else remember Poole's Paradise?). In high school I got into CB radio, Shortwave listening and Ham radio. And sometimes late at night I would sit up in bed and tune around on my parents' old Zenith receiver, circa 1948 vintage, to see what I could hear. That's how I learned about mediumwave DXing...listening to far-off AM broadcasters. My favorite was WLS 890 in Chicago.

WLS is a clear channel station, which essentially means it is the only station broacasting on its assigned frequency after dark and therefore suffers little or no interference from other stations. WLS broadcasts with 50,000 watts of power day and night and can be heard regularly in 38 states. Not only did it have a strong signal, but it sounded powerful. In the 70's, announcers on WLS had that distinctive reverb that made the station sound big even when the signal was weak. The fact that it came in loud and clear in Greensboro, 575 miles from the transmitter site in Tinley Park, IL, was one reason it was my favorite AM station. The other reason was John Records Landecker who, to my ears, represented the perfection of the Top-40 DJ: fast-talking and quick-witted, with a booming voice. His sarcastic edge also appealed to me, and nothing showcased this better than his nightly "Boogie Check", wherein listeners would call in by the scores for a chance to get on the air and say pretty much anything, sometimes managing only a second or two before Landecker cut them off and moved on to the next caller.

Landecker, whose middle name actually is Records, was on WLS from 1972 to 1981 before moving on to other outlets and formats (he's been hosting in talk radio for years now). Since 2007 he's also on with a weekly syndicated show called Into The Seventies, which finds him back in his old Top-40 milieu. The only thing missing from the new shows are the original 1970's advertising and news reports.

I think I still have a cassette recording I made of one of his Boogie Check sessions in about 1975. If I can find it I'll get it digitized and put it online. In the meantime, enjoy this remarkable 1977 Columbia College film school project of the master at work.

Studio A: Profile Of A Disc Jockey

A Documentary Film Directed by James (Jim) R Martin in Chicago.