[Dixielandjazz] AM radio

[Don Kirkman]

On Thu, 9 Jan 2003 12:59:04 EST, JimDBB@aol.com wrote:

>In a message dated 1/9/03 11:09:49 AM Central Standard Time, 
>dingle@baldwin-net.com writes:

>> Indeed, many of us caught the late nights live broadcasts from NY with some
>> good jazz bands to hear.
[...]

>> I still have an old Philco radio, tube type, that I had in college in E.
>> Lansing, MI that could pull in about every major station in NY, N.O.,
>> Denver, Houston, and the famous Del Rio station in Mexico . . . A station
>> in Toronto had a staff orchestra and some good arrangers and did some
>> marvelous live broadcasts with charts much like the old Alec Wilder
>> broadcasts. Marvelous players.
>> We were fortunate enough to live in those times. But then I am not un happy
>> to be still kicking today, even if no longer as likely to receive anything
>> of much musical (jazz) merit on AM.

I'm witchu, Don.  I think XELO and some of the other Mexican stations
existed solely to sell stuff to USians on those powerful clear channel
stations.  :-)

>   My parents purchased a huge Philco console that sounded great.
>   As you point out, Don one could pull in stations from all over the 
>country.  MY question to you and radio afficiandos is...were AM radios better 
>in those old tube days.  I certainly remember pulling in stations from all 
>over with fine clarity.  

We had an old Kennedy when I was pre-school, and possibly the next one
was an Emerson.  On winter mornings the radio in the barn played
stations from Salt Lake City and Tyler, Texas, among others, for the
cows at our place in central California.

I think one of the big reasons we got distant stations so clearly was
that there were far fewer stations, and a lot of them went off the air
at night leaving frequencies clear for the others.  On the AM band
frequencies cold winter nights really allowed propagation and reception
we can't hope for these days.

Even when I got to UC Berkeley I had an old AC-DC portable that
regularly picked up Los Angeles stations at night--as well as LAPD
police broadcasts.  That's where I first heard of pea pickin' Ernie Ford
and the remarkable (Jim?) Hawthorne, on a Pasadena station.

Those were the days, my friend.  (Hey, maybe someone could do a song
about that!)
-- 
Don
donkirk@covad.net