In the early winter of 1973, upon returning to school after Christmas vacation, we found a new radio station on the band in Pittsburgh. That was WKTQ (13Q). 1320 AM and WSHH (also 13Q) 100.7 FM. For the rest of the school year, the AM and FM sides broadcast the same program (simocast), with the FM station offering a monophonic but notably higher-fidelity version of the AM content.
The AM side of 13Q radio had been station WJAS, which, if I remember correctly, played jazz and big band instrumental music. Not my favorite music at the time, I was thrilled to learn that “the new sound of 13Q” consisted instead, of rock, pop, and some novelty hits that they played until we got so sick of them that we couldn’t bear to hear them anymore. One of those was Chuck Berry’s My Ding-A-Ling. A hit from the fall of 1972, they played it several times a day, well after it had gone off the charts; as late as the summer of 1973, trying to resurrect it. The 13Q radio DJs commented that the other Pittsburgh stations had ripped us off when it came to this song, and that 13Q would make up that shortfall by over-playing it, a lot! They did play it excessively as well, along with Cheech and Chong’s Sister Mary Elephant skit. Both pieces gave us all chuckles as we got dizzy on the push merry-go-round.
13Q radio was the station of choice in the spring of 1973, for [First Love] and me. In sixth grade we loved meeting during the social hour on the boys side playground from 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings. In my sixth grade year, I had no portable radio of my own. So, [Tad] loaned me his almost every night, to take to the merry-go-round, and make some romantic musical memories with [First Love]. 13Q played some good ones too, including The Four Tops hit, Ain’t No Woman Like the One I Got, Focus’s progressive hit, Hocus Pocus, and Skylark’s rock ballad, Wildflower.
We listened mainly in the evenings, when DJ Jackson Armstrong talked fast and yelled into the mic, announcing each song and doing little bits of humor. Armstrong made comments that bordered on the obscene, and made us grade schoolers giggle endlessly. Another 13Q DJ, Batman Johnson, followed Armstrong at 10:00 PM. But I never listened to him much because in those days, I got to bed by 10:00 or 10:30 at the latest. In fact, Armstrong is the only 13Q personality that I remember well. 13Q would not have been 13Q without him. Unfortunately, he passed away the day before Easter in 2008 from falling down the stairs in his home.
Of course, we listened most to the FM side, which though in mono, sounded so much better than the AM version. Even at the age of 12, I knew what good audio fidelity was and sought it relentlessly in records, tapes, and FM radios. I remember fiddling with receivers for hours on weekends at home in Altoona, trying to pull in 13Q FM (WSHH). One chilly but sunny Saturday afternoon in the back yard at home in March of 1973, I picked them up just barely above the FM radio mixer hissing noise, heard on frequencies where no station is coming in. As they played that Loggins and Messina hit, called Your Mama Don’t Dance, I frantically whipped the telescoping antenna around on the Panasonic portable that I’d borrowed from [Jackie] for the weekend, overjoyed that I’d been able to pick them up at all, and desperate to get them in more clearly. But WGMR FM in Tyrone at 101.1 Mhz., interfered in one direction, while WVAM FM in Altoona at 100.1 Mhz. interfered from another. Still though, I was proud of that Panasonic radio, even though it was not mine, for how sensitive it proved to be. Panasonic made really great radios in those days.
While I enjoyed listening to the FM side (as hissy as it was) in Altoona, I soon grew bored with all the static. So I tried tuning in to the 13Q Radio AM transmitter one night. I got it fairly well, occasionally. But it faded in and out quite a bit and I got interference from WTRN in Tyrone at 1340 Khz, and WFBG in Altoona, at 1290 Khz. Nonetheless, I kept listening to 13Q whenever possible and however I could get them, because it made me feel closer to [First Love] just hearing the songs on the weekends when she was not around, that she and I enjoyed during the week at WPSBC. One night in early May, 1973, my parents drove to Pittsburgh to see me play trombone in my first WPSBC spring concert. Then, as we drove back to Altoona afterwards, I kept my ears glued to 13Q for as long as they lasted. At night, they cut back their AM transmitter power and we weren’t too far out of Pittsburgh before they faded away. The FM that night wasn’t much better. That didn’t matter though because by the time we got home at around midnight, I’d been sleeping in the car for over an hour anyway.
13Q radio made a big splash in Pittsburgh playing fewer commercials than other local stations, along with all the money they gave away. They often ran this telephone contest, where they’d call random numbers. The person answering the phone was to say, “I listen to the new sound of 13Q!” If the person said this first, they’d win an unsightly large cash prize; thirteen thousand dollars became typical and then later on, they grew the jackpot to twenty-five thousand and beyond. Neither my school mates nor myself ever knew any winners, and to my knowledge, none of us ever received a call ourselves from this seemingly endless cash radio source. But hearing others yell and scream who had won, was really cool.
In the fall of 1973, approximately a year after I’d begun listening to 13Q, the FM side changed format to the so-called beautiful musicgenre. Gone was the high fidelity pop music that had seriously sweetened the spring of 1973 with [First Love]. I discovered this upon return to school to start my seventh grade year, and felt sad over the loss for several weeks. Fortunately however, a new FM station, WPEZ had begun broadcasting over the summer at 94.5 Mhz., and they turned out to be every bit as good as 13Q radio, in my humble opinion. Besides, after [First Love] and I broke up, 13Q became a painful reminder of what we once enjoyed together, but did so no more. So with the FM side gone along with [First Love], I didn’t listen to them much after this; not until 1978 anyway, when I thought [First Love] and I might get back together again.
One never heard any dead air on 13Q radio. Everythihg from the announcements and commercials, to even the music itself was played fast, and DJ Jackson Armstrong set this sort of tone for the rest of the station with his rapid-fire zingers and shouting. Listening to 13Q was like pounding down a few cups of espresso; just hearing them raised the blood pressure and heart rate a little, and usually made me smile.
I took the radio to Flagstaff Hill in Pittsburgh’s Oakland section a few times with [First Love], in the spring of 1978, and then a couple times by myself during the fall of 1979, as I reminisced about the good times there with her the previous year. Then, their big slogan went something like, “13Q keeps you humming along.”
WKTQ AM 1320 (13Q) continued broadcasting until 1981, and I listened a lot during the fall of 1979, when they had adopted a calmer, more adult sound. They played the gentler side of top 40 then with songs like Neil Diamond’s hit, September Morn and the Dirt Band’s Let’s Make a Little Magic along with Linda Ronstadt’s hit, Hurt So Bad. In 1981, they went back to what they’d been playing before becoming 13Q; returning to their old call letters (WJAS), and started playing the music-of-your-life format once more. This included popular jazz and big band sounds.
The disappearance of 13Q weighed heavily on my heart. But by the mid 70s, a few other FM stations in western PA were playing top 40 music in addition to WPEZ; the elevator-music era on FM radio was coming to an end. The additional pop music stations made the loss of 13Q radio bearable, though I’ve never forgotten them and how they really spiced up my sixth grade school year with all sorts of great music and funny talk. Thus, I’ve written this piece in tribute to 13Q, to express my heart felt appreciation for what they were and how they made me so happy as a twelve year-old boy. Thanks for everything, 13Q radio. May you rest in peace.
Tom Hesley
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