Radio Geeks revisits Chicago's Top 40 heyday on WGN-AM

Chicago Tribune

3 days ago

Fire up your AM transistor radio and get ready to travel back in time Friday night to the heyday of the Top 40, when WLS-AM 890 and WCFL-AM 1000 battled it out for supremacy on the Chicago airwaves.
Bob Sirott and John Records Landecker, who held down afternoon and evening shifts respectively for much of the 1970s on WLS, are reuniting on the air at WGN for a three-hour tour of anecdotes, DJ interviews, vintage jingles and listener calls.
'It takes people back to the days before streaming, before cable, before the VCRs, DVRs, DVDs, video games and smartphones and all that,' said Sirott, 76. 'And the No. 1 source of entertainment for people of a certain age was rock 'n' roll radio.'
The show, dubbed 'For Radio Geeks Only,' will air from 7 to 10 p.m. on WGN-AM 720, which has been the new radio home for Sirott and Landecker for the past five years. The idea of taking listeners back to a time when AM ruled the airwaves has been percolating for a while.
Sirott hosts mornings and Landecker evenings at WGN, so on-air interaction between the two veterans doesn't happen very often. Last month, they decided to team up for a one-hour Radio Geeks special, and the listener response was so strong they decided to bring it back and expand the show to three hours.
'We just did an hour, and we didn't do any interviews or play any audio,' Sirott said. 'John and I just talked, exchanged stories and then listeners chimed in on the phone and the text line, and that was basically it. And the response was really great, and it was positive, and people wanted more.'
Friday night's show will include an interview with Ron Riley, an influential WLS DJ during the seminal '60s, digitized air checks from Sirott's own collection of dusty tapes and call-ins from listeners sharing their recollections of being on the receiving end of the radio waves.
The show will also include some mic time with former WGN Radio morning show host Spike O'Dell, who retired in 2009 after 22 years at the station.
Don't expect a 'Boogie Check,' however, Landecker's signature rapid-fire caller segment, which once beamed across the Midwest to millions of listeners each evening via the 50,000-watt blowtorch that was the 'Big 89.'
'That's impossible to do these days,' said Landecker, 78, who nonetheless plans to field listener calls and texts on air and 'see where it goes.'
Landecker arrived at WLS in 1972 and Sirott joined the star-studded lineup the following year, which during their tenure included the likes of Fred Winston, J.J. Jeffrey and 'Superjock' Larry Lujack, who also spent time at rival Top 40 station WCFL.
By the early 1980s, both Sirott and Landecker had left the station, with their post-WLS broadcast careers taking different paths.
Sirott shifted to TV news in 1980, with stints at nearly every station in Chicago over the course of the next three decades. He returned to his radio roots at WGN, hosting 'The Noon Show' from 2007 to 2010 while co-anchoring the WFLD-Ch. 32 news at 9 p.m. Sirott co-hosted middays on WGN with his wife, Marianne Murciano, from 2013 to 2015, and was brought back to helm the morning drive in December 2019.
Landecker, whose middle name really is Records, left WLS in 1981, going through an alphabet soup of radio stations, including stops in Toronto and Cleveland. Most of his prodigious career has been in Chicago, with successful runs at powerhouse stations including WLUP, WCKG and WJMK.
He ostensibly retired from radio in 2015 when he stepped down at WLS-FM, but was lured back behind the mic in 2020 at WGN.
Longtime colleagues and friends, Sirott and Landecker look back at their time together at WLS-AM in the '70s with newfound appreciation, something they plan to share with listeners Friday night.
There was a lot more happening behind the scenes, in between spins of 'Billy, Don't Be a Hero' and ads for pimple cream, Landecker said.
'All of us were really young,' Landecker said. 'So there was a lot of really youthful energy in there, combined with really good ratings, and that's a pretty potent combination.'
Sirott said there was a camaraderie at WLS in the 1970s, where DJs would crash each other's shows on a whim, and socialize together in their off hours.
Listeners picked up on that spirit of fun, which was part of what made WLS — and rival WCFL — such cultural forces at the time, he said.
'One of the great things about Chicago is we had two great Top 40 stations, WLS and WCFL,' Sirott said. 'The beneficiary was the listener. So you had great personalities on both stations, and it was exciting and fun to be part of it and to listen to it.'
While older radio listeners may want to revisit the glory days Friday, the hoopla may be lost on a younger generation weaned on Instagram, Spotify, streaming video and social media.
But if they can find an AM radio, they may want to tune in to understand the power of a clear-channel station like WLS bouncing its 50,000-watt signal off the night sky and delivering a 'Boogie Check' to a listener in Central Ohio or beyond circa 1970-something.
Landecker can tell you.
'It's been evident to me over the years that this radio station of that time made a huge impression on a lot of people in the greater Chicagoland, Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin area,' Landecker said. 'It was a really big deal. And if I do say so myself, I think it was at that time, the best radio station of that kind in the United States.'