Rhythm and blues, which is to say rock, music has no better friend in the Kansas City area than Chuck Haddix. If he were only the director of the Marr Sound Archives in the Miller Nichols Library on the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus, that would be a significant achievement in preserving our area’s music history. But since 1985, Haddix has devoted his Friday and Saturday nights to playing “the finest in blues, soul, rhythm and blues, jumping jive and zydeco” on the “Saturday Night … [Read more...] about Consider donating your KC rock history items
Radio
Carney Rock
Kansas City amusement parks were often the site of rock concerts in the 1960s, '70s and '80s. The tradition of "School's Out" concerts at Fairyland sponsored by Top 40 radio station WHB goes back farther than I realized in my earlier "World's Happiest Broadcasters" post. Those events took place in the early 1970s. I have since found a newspaper ad (above) from June 1965 touting such a show with Len Barry of "1-2-3" fame as the headliner. That song came out the following month on Decca Records … [Read more...] about Carney Rock
Calling all shutterbugs!
Among the holy grails of the Kansas City Rock History Project, in terms of photos, is the Jimi Hendrix Experience concert Nov. 1, 1968, at Municipal Auditorium. If anyone out there has photos of Jimi, Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell on stage in Kansas City, please be in touch with me. And anyone who attended, please feel free to share your memories by commenting below. I have found some ads for the concert, whose opening act was Cat Mother and All-Night Newsboys, on the back of a KUDL Boss 30 … [Read more...] about Calling all shutterbugs!
World’s Happiest Broadcasters
I got a chance to talk to a boyhood idol this past weekend: Phil Jay, formerly the #2 on-air personality on WHB-AM, Kansas City's dominant #1 radio station during rock's golden era of the 1960s. As Phil and many other reference works tell it, WHB owner and Omaha, Neb., native Todd Storz was the inventor of Top 40 radio. WHB was one of the first to employ the format 24-7, starting soon after Storz bought the station in 1954. Phil Jay joined top dog … [Read more...] about World’s Happiest Broadcasters