Hi, my name is Cal. I was born in Oakland, California in 1945 and I will be your guide through the portals of time, to the decades of the 1950’s and 1960’s (a simpler time). This website will try to give you an idea of what it was like for those of us that were growing up in this era. I will recall some of my childhood memories from a bygone era. What were some of the news events that were happening? How much did certain items cost? What was happening in the world of sports? What were some of the TV shows that we used to watch? These will be some of the memories from this time period. This website will also feature music from this bygone era. Entertainers that will never come our way again. This time period will usher in the golden age of rock and roll. Rock and roll will burst onto the musical scene in 1955 and the music would begin to change. Although I liked a lot of the popular music from the early 1950’s, the new music would become the soundtrack for our generation-it wasn’t our parent’s music anymore, it was ours. This website will talk about some of the songs that were playing on the radio in the early 1950’s, but our specialty will be the music from the Top 40 Era in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area (radio stations KOBY, KEWB, KYA, KFRC, etc). Radio station KOBY, 1550 on your radio dial, was our first Top 40 station in the Bay Area. It would come on the air on October 7, 1956. Below is a KOBY music survey from March 18, 1957.
KOBY would be a very popular station in the Bay Area until competition would come it’s way. This competition would come in June of 1959 with the arrival of KEWB. Eventually KOBY, the Bay Area’s Top 40 pioneer, would become a listening music station.
KYA had been playing Top 40 music since 1957, but their popularity wouldn’t soar until they received an influx of radio personalities from the East Coast. Bobby Mitchell, “Big Daddy” Tom Donahue and Peter Tripp would lead a new group of KYA disc jockeys. The early 1960’s would be the glory days for KYA.
KFRC (610) would also be a major Top 40 station in the Bay Area in the latter part of the 1960’s.
KFRC would become a major force in Top 40 radio in the Bay Area beginning in 1966. Some of their disc jockeys would include Royce Johnson, Mike Phillips, Bobby Dale, Steve O’Shea, Howard Clark, Ed Mitchell and Glenn Adams.
Join us now as we travel back in time-what was happening at this time and the music that was playing (also, some of the disc jockeys that played our music). Hopefully the music listed in some of these articles will bring back pleasant memories of a time gone by. Most of the songs listed are on youtube. If you are reminded of a song that you haven’t heard in a long time, then I’ve accomplished my goal.
