Coyote Calhoun Interview

Coyote Calhoun hit the WAKY airwaves in '73 and stayed there through (fittingly) '79, first in early evenings, then in PM drive. In this 2005 phone interview with John Quincy, Coyote shares his memories of working at the Super 79 -- plus tells us what he did before WAKY; about the infamous Top 40 DJ who was his role model; and how he got to his most-recent gig as PD and PM Driver at Louisville's WAMZ, where he started in 1980.

When did you start in radio?

I started in radio in 1969 at a place called KRBB in Sallisaw, Oklahoma. My dad had a radio station in Muskogee, but I wasn't good enough to work for my dad yet so he kind of farmed me out to a little 250-watt daytimer in Sallisaw, which probably didn't cover a whole lot of the town. So, you could be pretty bad there and at least get some experience.

And how long did you work there?

About three months. Then I went to work for my dad in Muskogee and work for him for a year and a half – and then then he fired me.

How come?

Well, it’s one of those stories where I just didn't make it to work one day.

Oh, okay.

I didn't make it to work. It was a friend of mine, and I had a brand-new car. He decided to go out and celebrate, we got to go out and get a bottle of tequila and just have a couple of drinks and solve all the world's problems and all that. So, to make a long story short, he said, can I drive your car? And I said, sure, why not? So, what happened is he totaled the car. We spent my insurance money going out and buying tequila. So, I got back, I lost my car, I lost my job, and my girlfriend quit me on the same day.

Oh, man.

Yeah, it was one of those days you never forget.

I ultimately got a job at KEYN in Wichita, and this was like in 1971 and worked there until July of 1972 where I got a job at WGOW in Chattanooga, and I felt like it was a pretty good move for me because it was a real competitive market. They had at the time three rockers there, and I felt like the quality of radio in Chattanooga at that time was far superior to Wichita. So I went to Chattanooga, but there was only one problem.

I went there thinking that I was going to the number one rock station in town, and that was back when they only had one book a year. So, by the time I got Chattanooga, that spring book came back, and instead of the number one rocker in town, they were the number three rocker in town, and it was a mess there. And I had a chance to go back to Wichita, so I did, and I didn't stay in Wichita very long.

I stayed about five months, and I was supposed to go to Baltimore, but the money was real bad. It was an FM station, of course, at that time, back in 72, early 73, you know, FM with Top 40. They were like the red-headed stepchild back then.

All your good gigs were on your big AMs. Anyway, on my way to Baltimore, I heard about this opening in Knoxville, so I just stopped in and saw Bob Barron and played him a tape, and I got hired on the spot.

If you've heard Jack Diamond on that radio station, and you've heard Coyote Calhoun at WAKY, the style was very similar. As a matter of fact, the screaming type of Top 40 disc jockey was very, very popular in the 70s, especially for night jocks. How did you develop that particular style of being a DJ?

When I was in Muscogee, Mark Driscoll, who actually got his start at KBIX in Muscogee, Oklahoma… Of course, he went on to a lot of bigger and better things, but at the time, he was working at WPOP in Hartford. When I first got on the radio, there was some girl he still kind of liked back in Muscogee, so he would call when we were on the air and say, hey, how you doing? How you doing? Have you seen such-and-such and such-and-such? And then he'd send us airchecks. He sent us this one particular tape of Jack Armstrong's first night at WPOP.

I'd never heard anything like that in my entire life. Never heard anyone have so much fun. And I thought, hey, that's what I want to do.

Now, for a number of years, I really, really tried to emulate Jack Armstrong an awful lot, and I think it wasn't until I got to WAKY where I kind of like broke out of that somewhat and developed my own style. But I will say this, though. If it wasn't for Jack Armstrong and the indelible impression that he made on me when I first got into this business, then who knows if this career would have turned out the way it did.

And you wonder, you know, at times now, you wonder just how many guys, a person like Jack Armstrong influenced, young guys in radio who were just getting their start. And I still, to this day, I feel like he was the greatest high-energy top 40 guy I've ever heard.

Did you ever talk to him?

Yeah, I sure did. I'll tell you what I did. I was so enamored with his style. And like to me, he was a rock star. You know how people have – they look at groups or artists as their idols. You know, to me, Jack Armstrong was as big as anything there was because he was more or less the person I looked up to as being the top gun in my profession.

I got off work one Friday night. This was in the summer of 70. Drove nonstop to Denver just so I could meet him. He was on the air that night doing 6 to midnight at K-Talk. Airchecked two hours of his show, left and drove all the way back to Muskogee, Oklahoma. And went on the air Sunday night at 6 o'clock.

Wow.

I was dead. I've never been so tired in all my life.

But it was a good kind of tired.

It was a great kind of tired. But again, when you're first starting, it's good to have someone out there that you look up to. Someone who you think that their style may suit you. Because what happens, you know, invariably you're going to do what they do.

But eventually, you know, you're going to come out of that. And of course, you know, the influence that that person has will always be there somewhat in your style of delivery. But you'll also be able to come out of that and develop your own style too.

You never know how many guys have listened to Coyote Calhoun and have taken you as their mentor on the air.

Well, I was no Jack Armstrong. Okay. No matter how hard I worked. And it was a very great career. I had Top 40. But I never came close to being as good as Jack Armstrong was. And I'm just happy a guy like that was around that was able to change my whole life.

Anybody else that you consider as an influence on your early career?

Yeah, there were a bunch of people.

You know, he was the biggest, of course. But Lee Baby Sims, I thought was a great jock. I didn't really sound like Lee Baby.

Dick Kemp, the Wild Child, used to work at WIXY in Cleveland. I really enjoyed him. Don Steele, but not as much as Jack Armstrong.

Barry Kaye out of KILT in Houston, I thought was very good. Steve Lundy, when he worked at WLS, he was really one of the first high energy night guys that I heard at LS. I think those are the main people right there.

And of course, I always like to listen to, you know, you get airchecks in from guys in the big markets and all that. And Rich Brother Robbins, another guy, KCBQ. Shotgun Tom Kelly.

I was looking more at the guys that had the kind of style that I thought would best suit me. And I wanted to do nights. I love nights.

I was a kid back then. And so that's what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear a great night jock.

How'd you end up coming from Knoxville to Louisville to work at WAKY?

Well, what happened was I was on the air against WNOX. They had 10,000 watts at night, and I had 250 watts at night. But what we did that one Spring, we went around to all the schools.

We had this movie called The History of Rock and Radio, which Bob Barron had put together. And we were at the schools every single day, every single day. Junior high, high schools, you know, shaking hands, kissing girls, you know.

And then we'd go on the air and take dedications, just doing everything you need to do to get that teen audience, which we were looking for. So the book came out, and at night, I beat WNOX in teens. So, I started getting calls from around the country going, how can this guy, they had 250 watts at night, and he beat the station, they had 10,000 watts.

So, I ended up getting quite a few offers, and I got one from Johnny Randolph. At the time in Knoxville, I was making $135 a week, and Randolph offered me $300 a week. So, I rest my case, you know.

When I first moved to Louisville, true story, I swear to God, usually when you move to a new city, it takes a while to adjust or whatever. But I swear, the first day I was in town, I'm walking across the River City Mall, right across from the WAKY studios, checking the town out. All of a sudden, I look on the sidewalk, and I see a quarter.

So, I picked it up. I immediately look across the street, and I see a sign that says, cold beer, 25 cents. And I knew right away this was going to be my kind of town.

Great story.

It is true, I swear.

WAKY had a national reputation. It's right up there with some of the major market stations. A lot of people knew about WAKY. Was that the case with you?

Oh, yeah. I mean, come on, man. You know, I'd heard Programmers Digest. I was in Wichita when that first came out.

I heard the airchecks of Gary Burbank and Bill Bailey. When I came to WAKY, I've got to tell you something. Within two weeks, I sent an aircheck back to some of my old friends in Wichita and Knoxville, and they couldn't believe how much I improved.

And I'm under the impression that, you know something, when you get around people that are really good, and if you have talent, you are going to improve overnight. Just because I was working around all those great people, I mean, I walked in there, and it was like, hey, I've got to step up to the plate right here because, you know, a lot's riding on me because they brought me in here as the hired gun to get the teens back. You know, at the time, WAKY was underperforming in teens.

Who'd you replace?

Okay, here's the way it worked out. I replaced Gary Burbank. Now, I didn't replace Gary Burbank's shift.

What happened? Gary Burbank got a job offer. He was an afternoon drive, to go to New Orleans and be the PD of WNOE, which meant they moved Lee Masters, who was doing 6 to 10, into Burbank's 2 to 6 shift and hired me to come in and do 6 to 10. Lee Masters and I worked out really, really well. I learned a lot of radio from Lee and Johnny Randolph.

Lee was a very, very smart individual. We, again, went to the schools. We did everything right, and we were able to turn that trend around and get the teens back and win.

What do you think the difference was between when you got there at WAKY and its chief competitor, WKLO?

I think WKLO was more structured than we were. Johnny gave us a lot more freedom, and that's the difference between Wacky and WKLO, it seemed to me, had always been. By the way, WKLO was a very good radio station.

I mean, they had some incredible talent over there. But Johnny really gave us a little more leeway in what we could do.

Who were some of the other guys that you worked with at WAKY there at the first part of your career?

Bill Bailey was the biggest star I've ever seen in Louisville since I've been here, ever.

No one's even a close second. We had Dude Walker, who was really a good jock. Bailey was the one who coined the phrase about Dude Walker.

He said, Dude Walker, it sounds like someone brought his larynx into town on a flatbed truck.

Oh, Dude Walker was great.

Yeah, I used to date his sister somewhat.

Lee Gray, who's now deceased, he had a heart attack a couple of years ago. Tom Dooley, who'd been at KHJ. Chuck Jackson, who's not on radio anymore. He did the 10 to 2 shift.

But when I first got there, okay, it was Bill Bailey doing mornings, Dude Walker middays, Lee Masters afternoons, me 6 to 10, Chuck Jackson 10 to 2, and Kevin McCarthy, who went to WFIL in Philadelphia later on, was doing all nights. It was a good staff.

You know, you had a combination of, you know, like, Bill Bailey and Dude Walker, who were a little older, then Lee Masters and myself and Chuck Jackson were all kids. So, I think at that time we were all either 20 or 21. And having the time of our life.

What was Johnny Randolph like to work as a program director?

He was the greatest PD I ever worked for. He really was. The thing about Randolph is you had a format, but you could work within the format and do a lot of other things.

Here's what he said. He said, okay, everything you do has to be over music. And at Knoxville it wasn't quite like that.

And when you come out of a stop set and you jingle, you can't talk over the intro. Well, you know what? It made me a better jock. And those weren't bad rules to live by.

Okay, you got a jingle, you come out of the stop set, you don't talk after that. You know, you can't be Jack Armstrong and talk over everything. You know? Jack Armstrong talked over, under, between, you know, everything he did.

But, again, I was not Jack Armstrong. So, in other words, I had to learn to do things over music. And I could still put people on the air.

What it did, it tightened me up, made me a better jock. But it was very flexible, though, on what you could do when you were on the air. He was very supporting of the people he had on his staff.

He worked a lot, a lot of late hours. And he was a real friend, too. Easygoing guy.

If he ever had anything that he needed to correct, it was all done in a very positive way. He wasn't a yeller or a screamer or anything like that. And he was creative.

And he hated WKLO. He got fired at WKLO on Christmas Eve. So, there was a vendetta, you know, definitely.

Yeah, he told me that story, and how he got some revenge back with a little cassette recorder of WAKY Jingles. That's a wonderful story.

Yeah, and then he won a contest. He won a contest on KLO. He won $1,000.

He called up and was the correct telephone call. And he said, What's your name? He said, My name is John Aspenleiter. And that was his real name.

They said, Well, you are the correct telephone call. You won $1,000. And the guy goes, You really got a good voice. Have you ever thought about getting into radio?

So, about the time this happened, the general manager, here they're on the air, you know, with a promo with Randolph. You got a voicer from him and everything saying, Congratulations going out to John Aspenleiter of Louisville. The GM just went nuts.

He called Randolph up and said, Hey, now, listen, buddy. Can we, you know, I mean, this is like, you know, it's a joke. We don't have to pay you.

Randolph said, If you don't pay me, I'll sue you. Okay? So that was a lot of fun, though. Again, great PD, though.

I look at him as the benchmark for everyone I've ever worked for. And actually being a PD myself now, I really think that probably a lot of what I've been able to learn and execute during my tenure here, as far as people skills, is I got it from Randolph. And I just hope that I can do as good of a job as he did.

All right I’m going to run some names past you. Some of these you’ve already talked about, but your impressions of these people. Bill Bailey.

He was the biggest star I ever worked with, ever. He was the most popular disc jockey to ever hit Louisville since I've been here. I've been here since 1973. No one's even a close second. Just an incredible talent.

He was the guy on the street. He never came in with any preparation or anything. He just started talking.

He was a very smart individual. He had a very quick wit about him. And, of course, he could be real controversial, too.

Either you love Bill Bailey or you hated him. But everybody listened to him. That was back when he had like 12 plus, like a 30.

Dude Walker.

Worked with Dude for only a short time. You know, I thought Dude was a wonderful midday guy.

You know, had this booming voice that really got your attention. And a nice guy, too. Real nice guy.

You know, he was pretty straight and to the point. But a very good jock. Very good basic, formatic jock.

Lee Masters.

Lee Masters was great. And he may be the most knowledgeable radio guy I've ever worked with.

Even back then, Lee came in, and really, for what we were doing at WAKY, he was really suited to that shift. Because what happened, we were in a big battle at the time with WKLO to get the teen numbers, okay? Which were the big buys like Pepsi and Coke, McDonald's, and all that stuff. When Lee came in, you know, like Burbank, a fantastic jock.

But I think Lee was probably geared more toward the teen audience. And me, myself, anyone over 18 probably hated me. You know, because I was a little prancey and all that.

But he just knew a lot about radio, even back then. Of course, he left. He went to WNBC.

He worked there. He worked with MTV for a while. He worked for the E! Network.

He was a great format jock. And you told him to go after the teen audience. He was on the air screaming in the afternoon too.

No, Lee Masters, nothing but great things to say about him. And I'm really glad that I was able to learn from him also.

All right, Gary King. Did you work with Gary?

Worked with him for a while. Yeah, he was a good jock. I haven't heard or seen from him in years.

Gary Guthrie.

Gary was a good guy. Gary came in, you know, after Randolph, and a different type of guy to work for from Randolph.

But I learned a lot from Gary Guthrie because when he came in, you know, he wanted me to kind of like change my style, back off a little bit, be not quite so up. I was able to adapt, and I ended up being afternoon drive jock and assistant PD. So, Gary Guthrie and I got along very well.

And he came along, and he did a lot of great things for the radio station too. I thought that he came in and, you know, got some maybe newfound energy into WAKY and got the station rolling again for a couple of years.

What about Woody Styles? You worked with Woody?

Love Woody! I used to run with Woody. He was the nastiest guy I ever saw in my life. I mean, I'm going to tell you something.

You clean the house, you bring a date over that night, and all of a sudden, it looked like a hurricane hit it again. You know, Woody could be there for an hour, and all of a sudden, the house looked like it was ready for government assistance. We roomed together for a while.

Really good newsman. His life ended way too early.

How about some other folks that you've worked with during your time at WAKY? Anybody that you recall?

You've really kind of named them all.

You know, Bailey was a biggie, and never had a chance to work with Burbank. I got to be really good friends with Gary, though. Really good friends with Gary.

When he'd come to town, we'd hang out. And Bob Moody! Bob Moody! Oh, my God, Moody! Moody is one of my dearest friends. He did mornings, he did afternoons, he was a news director, he was a music director, he was a PD. Moody did everything.

Let's talk about Coyote Calhoun on the air. Now, you started in, what, 73? And went through, what time?

79 at WAKY.

All right, now, how did your act change from 73, going in as a screaming rock and roll disc jockey, that, oh, man, I loved in Lexington. I lived in Lexington. And I loved to be able to listen to you come on the air at 6 o'clock, and, you know, do the 6 o'clock thing over the record intro. Man, that was one of my favorite things to listen for. And in the wintertime, I was really excited if I could hear that before the power dropped.

Yeah, well, I don't know. You know, I probably carried it a little too far. I think if I would have been maybe just a little, backed off a little bit, it would have been a little more effective. Most of the old airchecks now, it's like, ah, you know, if I could just back off a little, I think I was getting out there just a little bit too strong.

But then again, you know, as Randolph said, this is what the kids want. Go ahead and do it. So it was like, okay.

I thought it was the coolest thing in the world, man.

Well, it sounded a lot more cool to me back then than it does now.

I think that can be said of all of our old airchecks.

You know? It's like, oh, I don't know. I don't know about those things. That's right.

If you think your show was good yesterday, you know, go back and listen to a show from five years ago or ten years ago when you thought it was good, too, and how bad it was.

You're right. You're right.

So, what were some of the other things that you used to do? That were hallmark parts of the Coyote Calhoun show. I remember the Lee Masters girlfriend jokes.

Oh, yeah. Cobra, yeah. You know, gosh, I don't know what I talk about. I had a girlfriend one time, Lori Owen. I was almost getting a cold from her. She'd get a cold. I'd get a cold. So I started calling her Typhoid Lori. So I'd make little bits about her. I'd try to utilize maybe, you know, some phone calls.

And, of course, you know, back in the old days, you know, the one-liner jokes with the sound effects, of course, afterwards and all that.

Did you subscribe to some services?

Oh, hell yeah. You know, The Electric Weenie and all that other stuff.

You know, all those jokes that everybody else used back then. You know, you always tell when a new issue of The Weenie came out, boy, you'd turn on the station and everybody was telling the same jokes.

How did your act change, though, from 73 to 79?

Well, when Guthrie came in in 77, he goes, hey, I tell you what, let's back it down a little bit and see what happens. I wasn't offended. I went, okay. It sounds pretty good to me.

So, I did that. Guthrie really became really supportive of what I was doing and decided that he would make Bob Moody, who was then doing Afternoon Drive, news director, and put me into Afternoon Drive, which I liked. It was pretty good.

I think that was a really good transition for me to be able to go from this one stage of being very frenetic down to this stage of, like, being a little more conversational because when that happened, you know, it really got me ready for what I'm doing now. At WAMZ, now, the only thing that did happen was, you know, we all got fired. Guthrie got fired.

Here's what happened. Okay, first of all, I walk in one day in November, and we got a brand-new general manager. And I went, what happened to Don Myers? He said, well, he got fired yesterday.

The new GM says, yeah, but no other changes. And I went, oh, okay. So I come in in December.

Okay, all of a sudden, walk in, and the sales manager got fired. And I said, well, okay. He got fired, but there's not gonna be any more changes.

I went, okay. So then we come in a couple days later. Well, they fired the news director.

They said, well, no more changes. So they come in in February, and I get a call, and they said, he just fired Guthrie. He was the PD.

They said, well, no more changes. I said, no more changes, I'm thinking. You know something? Let me see.

The GM, the sales manager, the news director, the PD. I'm the assistant PD, and I called Guthrie. I said, by the way, I see a pattern forming here right now.

I said, any chance that I could be the next guy? And he said, they're looking for your replacement right now. So, I walk into March, got blown out, and within six weeks, I got a job in Houston doing nights, and I got that job off of a four-year-old aircheck. They said, well, we want to hear what you're doing right now.

I said, well, what I'm doing right now is not what you're probably looking for at night, but here's one I did back in 74. And the GM so happened to be from Louisville. So I sent him the one I had in 74.

He goes, that's it! You can still do that, can't you? I said, hell yeah. He goes, okay, you're hired.

So anyway, went down to Houston, started the whole thing all over again. I was in Houston about nine months, and my last book there, I beat KILT at night in teens. And then by that time, I wanted to get off Top 40.

I knew Country is where I wanted to be, but it was fun going down there for one last hurrah and screaming and yelling. And I got probably the best CHR aircheck I ever made during that time period. It's the one I did make at KULF in Houston, the one I'm most proud of.

And I can't find it. It's in the house someplace, but I had these big boxes of these tapes that are totally unlabeled. Why didn't I label them back then? By that time, I think I had probably honed my craft to where I was going to be as good as I was ever going to be for doing what I was doing.

Tell me real quickly, what do you think made WAKY a big success? Why is it so fondly remembered by both Kentuckians and people around the country today?

We had a really great airstaff, and as I told you before, Randolph didn't have a whole lot of rules. Here's the format, but go ahead and get on the air, have a lot of fun, convey that feeling of fun to your audience. Let's run promotions that are kind of maybe wild and wacky, things that people are going to talk about, and get out in the community, shake a lot of hands, sound exciting on the air, and you're going to win.

Do you think that would work today?

Sure, it would. Some things never change.