Wednesday, December 3, 2008

More KILT Memorabilia

Blog reader Charles Fairchild sent me this link to a flyer promoting KILT's Go Texan Hootenanny in 1966 (PDF file) along with an explanation:

"I attended that show when I was 12 because our family was friends with Terri Sharp's family. I looked her up recently living in Kerrville
and we had lunch and she is still writing and has a gold record for a
song Hank WIlliams Jr recorded called Cant Blame the Train. She also
wrote some songs that Don McLean recorded. Anyway while I was looking her up I found that program somebody had put on the internet under a google search of "Terri Sharp, a love that will last" which was her hit in 1966 and I sent her a copy. I think back then, KILT started using the rodeo for musical acts which has become a big event now. But in 1966 all those acts performed two shows in one day I think, each singing two or three songs depending on their ratings.

I got interested in looking up the old deejays listed on the program
which led me to your site. We had a dog named weird beard, all white with a black tuft on his chin (Russ Knight, I think he used to
broadcast from his house if I remember correctly). And I remember
staying awake with a transistor radio under my pillow listening to
Alex Bennett, who is on Sirius radio now according to the link on your
site to his. I guess I was hooked early on to talk radio, and later
was an avid listener of Alvin Van Black, Howard Finch and now there
are lots of them. I pod cast Dennis Miller but don't have time to
listen to all of them. Also a news caster from the 80s at KTRH named
Howard Phillips is in a Barbershop chorus I sing with these days.

Thought you would like it, and glad to help your interesting website,
I sure wish I could go back to Houston in the 50s and 60s for a day.

Charles"

Thanks Charles, I'm sure other blog readers will get a big charge out of this.

UPDATES: James Bond 008 used a fake British accent and became Alex Bennett, talk show host before leaving KILT. Alex Bennett at Wikipedia. Alex Bennett's website.

Bill Young became the long time and very successful program director of KILT-AM/FM and since leaving has run Bill Young Productions.

UPDATE 2: The Coastliners have been identified in a discussion on another forum:...'a group from Baytown/Lynchburg that came very close to hitting the big time and had several regional hits. They opened for many of the top rock acts that visited Houston in the mid-to-late 1960s. They were about the only white group that Don Robey signed for his label.'

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you remember Alex Bennett telling some really scary stories? I think it was on Halloween during the sixties. I had my trusty transistor radio and earphone and loved listening to the radio at night when I should have been asleep.

Bruce said...

I wasn't around Houston much in the 1960s. I think I heard Bennett maybe twice, once on mornings, once on his talk show.

Stephen Knight said...

About Russ Knight broadcasting from his house...no, he didn't do that. But as my mother always said, "Dad never turned off his microphone."

Bruce said...

Condolences on the passing of your father, Stephen. Thanks for the comment.