The 1960s - The Heyday - Part 1

The 1960s, arguably, was one of the most historically significant decades in history. It included the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, assassinations, riots, a drug culture and sexual revolution and men going to the moon. And it marked the "heyday" of local Top 40 radio.

As Jack Fisher recalls, "radio had emerged out of the shadow of TV and forged its own identity in this decade by adopting and defining music and news formats that were designed to appeal to specific demographic audience groups. It not only had a willing and receptive audience, but a whole lot less competition for their attention. There were only three TV networks to watch, no Internet or video games. The DJ playing the hits and doing wild and crazy stunts was a real star in the local markets where he worked.

The WROV Crew, 1962: Jim Carroll, Jerry Joynes, Ron Sunshine, Don Hudson, Fred Frelantz, George Calomaris

"Radio also was supporting the new and more independent lifestyle that the young were just starting to explore. It was portable and as mentioned, the rock format was directly talking to them, reflecting their desires and interests of the time." This was certainly the case in Roanoke, Virginia where WROV was such a dominant station that it could boast of having "more listeners than all other local radio stations combined."

The WROV of the late fifties through the mid-sixties was perhaps best known for its "chimes" format, which featured "Big Ben" chimes on the quarter hour along with voiceovers by Jess DuBoy & Bob DePugh. The chimes were taken from an electrical transcription record. Anyone near a radio in Roanoke back then can recall Jess announcing that it was "half past the hour on WROV" as well as the "WROV Housewife of the Hour" and the "WROV Call to Aid."

Bob did the "Wax To Watch" and "Cobweb Corner" drops and Jim Carroll did "the WROV Star-oscope" intro. Jess and Bob alternated on the top-of-the-hour ID. Jerry Joynes remembers that the "chimes" gave the station consistency. "The personalities were still totally different. When you signed off and the next person came on, the show was different. We didn't really have a station sound until they got the bells."

A WROV Pop 1240 Chart from December 25, 1961. (See more on the musicards page).

Jess Duboy was married to a former Miss Virginia who was recorded singing the call letters, a capella, becoming known as the "WROV Girl". For years, the entire format was on one reel of tape with about a second between each cut such that the disk jockey could play one, press "stop" and know that the next was queued up and ready to play.

Finally, around 1963, the station got a new Gates control board and RCA cart machines which made things much easier and allowed for the disc jockeys to drop "The Girl" in between songs, over song intros, anywhere she would fit. The chimes format was used through 1966 in its original form, then scaled back when WPXI "Pixie Radio" came on with hot jingles that made it sound dated. After Pixie's demise, it returned with no hourly chimes and some cuts re-recorded.

Jess Duboy went on to fame and fortune running a Richmond agency that specialized in advertising for car dealers and featured Jess standing in front of chroma-keyed pictures of various car lots while telling you to come on by for a great deal.

George Dyer a 1961 WROV DJ, was also a drummer (shown in the large version of the photo with Jeanne & Bill Purcell and Bob Biggs. Click George to see it.)

Years later Jess ran into Bob Lackey (Bob Dale on WPXI) who recalls "Several years ago, I had a chance to speak with Jess DuBoy. He was in North Carolina doing a commercial for a new car dealership and I told him that the old WROV format that I heard for years growing up in Roanoke sounded as if "two" people where on it. He confirmed that was the case and the other man is Bob DePugh.

"DuBoy said DePugh had become a dentist in Florida. DuBoy gave me the name of the town and I called and sure enough a dentist by that name was still in practice. I got the number from information and called his office and they put Dr. DePugh on the phone. And he DID confirm he did the WROV "chimes" format with Jess DuBoy and he is the one that does the WROV weather watch, the Wax to Watch and the Cobweb corner. Jess DuBoy did say that about 1966 he recut much of the "chimes" format to make it fresh, but the DePugh cobweb corner intro remained on the air. Jess then said by 1968, Burt had put most of the old stuff back on the air."

Ron Sunshine and Angie Dickinson made an appearance at the Lee-Hi Drive-In Theater in 1961.

Most Roanokers did not know that Burt Levine owned another radio station in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He purchased WEET "1320 Fun Radio" in Richmond, VA in 1959 and owned it until 1967 when he sold it to another Roanoke radio man, Ray Bentley. For a while, WEET was programmed by Jess Duboy.

WEET's announcers included Gene Werley and Big John Belt and a few who eventually made it to WROV in the 1960s, including Buddy O'Shea and H. Gale Henley. And the manager of WEET was Don Foutz, who became the General Manager of WROV in the late 1960s. WEET called their weekly playlist "The Thirteen and Twenty Survey" and it was broken down into the "Top Thirteen" songs followed by twenty more called "The Roaring Twenty." And like sister station WROV, the surveys included "Wax To Watch" records and "Winners Picks."

Ron does a record hop at Crossroads Mall, 1961.

WROV entered the 1960s with a staff that included Jerry Joynes, Barbara Felton, Ken Tanner, Jim Gearhart and Gary Cooper. Gary left and was replaced on the all-night show by Leigh Jones. Ken Tanner departed the morning show and was replaced by Fred Covington, who simply went by "Freddy" on the air. By early 1961, the all-night show was taken over by Don Hudson, who called his show "The Hudson Hassle."

Barbara was no longer doing "Woman's World" and was now working in production and public affairs with the title of "women's director." Jim Carroll had recently joined the staff and for the next 40+ years would serve two roles: salesman and sports director. In the spring of 1961, Freddy left and Burt saw this as a chance to make the station sound "big" by bringing in someone from a big city, a great entertainer with lots of show business connections.

WROV Record Hop at Crossroads Mall. They expected about 500 people. Thousands showed up.

So he hired Ron Sunshine . Ron was from New York City, where he had done record hops and knew many show business people including Freddy Cannon and Del Shannon. He studied broadcasting at the University of Oklahoma and worked part-time at KOMA in Oklahoma City until leaving school because of illness. After recovery he decided to pursue a job as a disc jockey and applied to many radio stations including WROV, where Burt was impressed by his skills and his "big name" friends. According to Ron, Burt wanted "personality AND show business" and wanted him to play the records and "talk about Freddy and Del and the others and make it personal."

The Early 1960s WROV Sales Brochure featured ROVer the Bulldog. Front (top left), Back (top right), and Inside (bottom).

So in early 1961, Ron came to WROV and soon was immensely popular. Ron and Adam Hill were heard on the Saturday morning WROV show "Teen Town" which featured two kids from each local high school who rated records and featured appearances by nationally known stars such as Bob Denver, Burt Ward and Neil Sedaka. Ron was the first local radio personality since Jivin' Jackson to do local record hops and worked out a deal with the local Coca-Cola bottler to sponsor them. Most were held at Crossroads Mall because it was the only indoor space they could find that was big enough for crowds which exceeded 8,000 people.

Ron Sunshine & Fred Frelantz during an appearance at Crossroads Mall, 1962.

During the summer of 1961, Tim Lockart left for a job in Louisville and WROV needed to find someone talented and witty enough to replace him on the morning show. When Burt asked Ron if he knew of anyone who fit the bill, he immediately suggested his former college roommate from Oklahoma, Frederick David Wilson Mugler III. Fred and Ron had attended Oklahoma together where they ran the school radio station.

While in school, Fred worked at KOCY in Oklahoma City then for a station in Lake Charles, LA. Then to KIRL, Wichita, where he came up with the name Fred Frelantz (a comment on the wandering nature of rock disk jockeys) but management wouldn't let him use it. So he went by the name "Derf O'Day" (O'Day was the last name of another well-known local personality and Derf was "Fred" spelled backwards).

The April 1962 Rock & Roll Songs magazine made Fred & Ron famous across the US & Canada.

Upon arriving at WROV, Fred was an instant hit. In addition to being a great disc jockey, Fred was a comic genius, spontaneity was one of his great virtues. He never prepared anything before he went on the air, he just talked about whatever came to him and could ad-lib better than anyone who has ever lived. Fred and Ron roomed together in an apartment on 1st Street with a third guy who was the manager of Sears until Ron left WROV in 1963. Feeling he'd done all he could do at WROV, Ron went to Dallas then back to New York where he became a show promoter.

On WROV, Fred originally called himself "Dr. Fred Frelantz" and said he was broadcasting from the "Feltbetter Clinic." He had a high-pitched female character (Fred, using a high falsetto voice) called "Gertie". Other times, Fred would put piano bar music in the background and say he was broadcasting live from the C. More Broads Auditorium.

Fred announced a "Disease of the Day", a made-up illness for listeners to use when calling in "sick" to work (one was "detnitisflopdoodus" which was "cross-eyed knee caps"). He was a genius of self-promotion and often had himself paged in restaurants to increase his name recognition. He was also a prankster and did such things as drive around town talking into a light blue Princess-phone receiver attached to a cord, pretending to be talking to someone just to get people's attention.

The WROV Pop 1240 chart from August 8, 1962. (See more on the musicards page).

Ron, Fred and Jerry were constantly playing jokes on each other. Jerry remembers one that he pulled on Ron: "There was a production room and the studio and they faced each other. Everything—and Al Beckley was great for that—was remoted. You could do everything in one room that you could do in the other room. I could start a tape machine in the production room from my machine in the control room. And everything came up on patch boards. And we'd have great fun making TT 1 come up on TT2 and TT2 come up on TT3 and those kinds of things.

"And we'd do this to each other and laugh and laugh and laugh. I got Sunshine one time, I never will forget. He was trying to cut something in the production room. They used these big huge Gates tape machines to dub commercials onto carts. And everytime he'd start it I'd have my hand on the stop button and stop it. And he did it again and again. And I was just sitting in the control room looking like I was reading the newspaper. And he'd stop and look all confused, then I'd start it again. I'm sure he had to have figured it out, but he couldn't that day."

The 1961 Hooper Ratings showed WROV was the dominant station in Roanoke. To see the entire booklet visit the clippings page.

Ron and Jerry were also participants in a series of weekly all-night poker games with Policeman Alvin Hudson and show promoter Pete Apostolou. Jerry recalls "Al Hudson...he became a captain, then he became a councilman. He was a motorcycle policeman. And I hung out at the record store, which DJs at that time tended to do, the Globe Record Shop downtown. And Al was downtown a lot. He walked a beat downtown then he got a motorcycle later. Then he became a lieutenant. But we had started the games when he was a policeman.

"Al also worked at Toots Drive In on Williamson Road. Cruising Williamson Road was a big thing at that time and Toots was a big thing too. And you could drink on the curb and stuff. Anyway, Alvin was the officer, he was there, he did it on his private time. Anyway I got to know him that way. And Pete Apostolou. I also did ring announcing for wrestling. And he did that. And we were going to together do a promotion for the downtown parking garage. We had it all figured out, the dance equipment we'd need, all the stuff we had to do. We had it pretty well set and ran into some trouble with the insurance, with the amount we'd have to have. People jumping off of there wouldn't be very good."

Fred Frelantz, Freddy "Boom Boom" Cannon and Ron Sunshine, 1962.

WROV's ratings during the early 1960s were incredible. The station routinely attracted well over fifty percent of the audience. Jerry Joynes, who did both the morning and afternoon shows, remembers "Oh yeah, yeah, I did two shows on there. 9-12am and 3-6pm. The funny part about it was, I knew nighttime was going to decline because TV was really getting strong in the early 1960s. But what I didn't realize was what a solid audience you had at 9 o'clock in the morning because work people listened at work, and home people listened at home, and they didn't cut it off.

"So I had this thing running with Fred after he came, he never could beat my ratings, but that was the reason. Morning was in transit, but I came along and had his audience then got to build on it. Fred was solid but he never got a 55 share."

Another WROV personality of the early 1960s was Don Pugh. Don was from Bedford and had worked at WBLT with Jack Shields . Don worked the all-night show on weekends and this led to him meeting his wife. Don's son Steve tells us "Mom worked at Globe Records for 25 years (late 50’s to early 80’s). She had a lot of ties to the local radio industry herself. In fact, she met my Dad through WROV!!

"He worked the late night shift on the weekends and Mom and some friends of hers from work had a slumber party at Globe Records in downtown Roanoke (they actually spent the night). They called in to the radio station to request a song and ended up talking to my Dad, who was DJing that night. When his shift was over in the morning, he stopped by Globe Records and took my Mom and her friends out to breakfast. The rest is history!! They were married six months later."

Don Pugh did the weekend all-night show in the early 1960s.

Jack Shields remembers that Don always used to pronounce the word "arab" with an emphasis on the first syllable ("AYY-rab") instead of the correct pronunciation when he was reading the news, etc. So they sat down with him and said "Don, you need to say 'arab' instead of 'AYY-rabb' because if there are any local listeners of middle eastern descent they may be offended." So he started saying "arab" instead of "AYY-rab."

Well, about two weeks later, Ray Stevens released his song Ahab the Arab (and if you’ve ever heard that one, Ray pronounced it "AYY-rabb" so it would rhyme with "Ahab"). So Don went on the air and said "Now, here’s Ray Stevens with 'Ahab the Arab'. So then they had to go back and say "No Don, this time you pronounce it 'AYY-rabb' instead of 'arab'." Eventually he got it right. Don later worked in sales at WROV, WFIR, WSLS and WBLU. Sadly, he passed away in 2005.

Bernie Mann became GM in 1962.

In September, 1962, WROV hired Bernie Mann of New York to be manager of WROV. Bernie, 27 at the time, had been sales manager of WTRY in Troy, NY and also put in time at WAKE, Atlanta and WEAV, Plattsburgh, NY. Burt, at the time, was also owner of WEET, Richmond and had just sent WROV salesman J. P. Morgan to become the station manager of WEET. This created an opening for a manger of WROV which was filled by Bernie. Bernie's real name was Bernie Mandel but he changed his last name to "Mann" to follow the current craze of radio announcers coming up with slick-sounding air names.

Also in 1962, the station was given permission by the FCC to raise its daytime power from 250 to 1000 watts. This change was approved for all 1240 stations in the United States and allowed WROV to cover a larger area with a better signal during the daytime hours.

Why was WROV so popular? There were many reasons. In addition to those cited above, geography played a role. There was no competition from out of town. The nearest "big" city is Greensboro which is about 100 miles away, and because of the nature of the Roanoke Valley—Piedmont Airlines pilots used to say landing in Roanoke was like trying to land an airplane in a big cereal bowl—most distant radio signals weren't able to penetrate the market.

The 1963 Radio Pulse survey showed that WROV DID have more listeners than all other stations combined!

Another reason was weak, non-focused local competition. A few local radio stations including WSLS, WHYE, WRIS, WBLU and WPXI briefly offered credible competition but for the most part other stations that tried offering the "Top 40" format paled by comparison. FM radio had yet to come into its own; in the sixties FM was little more than a vast wasteland which featured classical and elevator music and most automobile and portable radios weren't equipped to receive the FM band.

Also, thanks to the engineering expertise of Al Beckley, WROV sounded better than any other station on the dial. But the biggest reason for the station's dominance was Burt Levine's business strategy of staffing the station with talented and popular personalities.