Great Moments In Radio--Volume I

My radio career might’ve been brief, but it yielded more than a fair amount of funny stories, which I’ll share from time to time here.

Back in 1987 at the "Mighty 1030" in Blue Springs, MO, I stumbled across an album in the files one day by Huey "Piano" Smith, who did the original version of "Rockin’ Pnuemonia-Boogie Woogie Flu", which Johnny Rivers later successfully covered in 1972.  On the back of the album jacket, someone scrawled a huge note next to that particular track title that read, "DO NOT PLAY—IT SKIPS IN THE WORST POSSIBLE PLACE!!!"  So, just for shits and grins, I put the record on the turntable (off the air, of course) and sure enough, midway through the line, "I wanna squeeze her, but I’m way too low…" it skipped.  Imagine the horror the poor unsuspecting DJ had to deal with: "I wanna squeeze her but [CLICK]/I wanna squeeze her but [CLICK]/I wanna squeeze her but [CLICK]…"

Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather once told a similar story about when he worked in radio back in the '50s and was playing this religious program that was on a vinyl record.  The record got stuck on the last three words of the preacher's sermon where he said something like, "If you fail to do so, you will go to hell," whilst Dan was outside smoking a cigarette or something.  Thus, the radio audience was treated to a good five minutes-worth of "Go to hell!"  Fumble!!!