KXOK and Johnny Rabbit and Bruno J Grunion

Ah, but I've left 1964 behind without doing it justice.

Back when I got started listening to the radio, I became
a devoted listener. As far as I knew then, and I
think it's true, the one and only station playing
music for young people was KXOK 63.3 on the
AM dial -- since at that time nobody even knew
there was such a thing as FM. My transistor
radio (made in Japan, of course) couldn't switch
to it, that's for sure.

I particularly liked to listen to it starting about
7:00 PM at night, because that's when the best
DJ came on -- Johnny Rabbit.

I don't know whether or not that was his real name.
Years later, an oldies station had a DJ calling
himself Johnny Rabbit but he could not have been
the same guy, unless he changed his voice and
on-air personality.

Anyway, the real Johnny Rabbit on KXOK was
one of those dynamic funny guys that did a lot
more than just play the records. He wasn't
Wolfman Jack, who I didn't hear about until
I saw him in that movie.

But Johnny had a sidekick named Bruno J
Grunion -- and they were always arguing in
a funny way, like Oliver and Hardy.

Rabbit had a great way of having Bruno say,
"Stick it in your ear, Rabbit."

Well, it doesn't seem so funny in ASCII, but
it was funny on the radio to us back in 1964!

I particularly remember the time when Bruno J
Grunion locked Johnny out of the control booth
and took over the show.

And the highlight of every day was listening to the
Top 10 songs of the day counted down and played
from 9:00 to 10:00 PM. I just couldn't go to sleep
without learning what song was Number One that
day.

Now, I can't imagine why anybody would care, but
I sure did back then.

KXOK played just about everything, both black
soul and white rock. I'm not sure whether that
was true of all such radio stations back
then or not. I can't even say for sure that
black kids listened to KXOK. Did they have
a black only station? I don't really know.

It is generally true that the market was not
as segmented back then. And I think it's
true that most white kids listened to soul
and Motown because both local oldies
stations and nationally syndicated oldies
shows play both, assuming we're all as
familiar with The Supremes as The Beatles.

And for me that did start with KXOK, who did
play a mixture of white and black, including
oldies. Sometimes late at night they'd play
old records that must have been intended
mainly for black audiences such as "The
Lady With the Skinny Legs."

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