This essay, which I originally wrote for my MySpace blog in 2006, has been slightly edited to update it, and to correct some lousy word choices and phrasing.
At this moment I am listening to a one-hour internet audio stream of what people were hearing 56 years ago today, on station KLIF Dallas.
This is the anniversary of the JFK assassination, and as time wears on it isn’t the big deal it used to be. I remember, as perhaps you do, just a few short years ago when this date was marked each year with TV specials and lots of media coverage. Not so much anymore. I think for a lot of people, the 9/11 atrocities make the death of one man 56 years ago seem a great deal less significant.
But context is everything, and those specials that used to air always stressed that the JFK shooting was the end of innocence, a bloodstained marker of the shifting of America from happy-go-lucky to crazy hippies and shootings.
It isn’t that simple, obviously. But it was a shock of inconceivable proportions to Americans at that time.
That’s what makes this grubby, echoey-sounding audio so interesting. KLIF was a Top 40 rock ‘n roll station, and the tape begins about 10 minutes before the first news break-in. It’s typical ’60’s Top 40 radio:
SONG
COMMERCIAL
COMMERCIAL
D.J. CHAT
COMMERCIAL
COMMERCIAL
D.J. CHAT
SONG
This is back when if you played 2 songs right in a row, people would think the disc jockey had been struck deaf and dumb.
Early on in the aircheck, there is news coverage–more than you’d expect to hear on a Top 40 outlet–of President and Mrs. Kennedy’s traveling party beginning at Love Field and moving to the motorcade. Eventually, at 1:09:10 in the YouTube video, a song by The Chiffons is interrupted. Just a quick blurt along the lines of, “KLIF News reports that 3 shots were fired at the presidential motorcade in the Big D. More details to come.” (Throughout the coverage, even when it gets really serious, they refer to Dallas as “the big D.”)
Then, for about 15 minutes, it’s a freakish mix of quick bulletins and business-as-usual. Like this:
NEWSMAN: Shots definitely were fired at the presidential motorcade…a white male reportedly armed with a 30 caliber rifle… Mobile Unit #4, 1190 and out!
WACKY MOVIE TRAILER ANNOUNCER: Sandra Dee has her troubles!
SANDRA DEE: Wait’ll you see the scrapes my dad Jimmy Stewart gets into!
I’m not making these up. Another one I just heard:
NEWSMAN: …The police department still trying to confirm that President Kennedy and Governor Connelly were cut down by assassins’ bullets.
JINGLE SINGERS: Wow-ee hey! It’s an Aunt Jemima day!
Being in the radio business myself, I just have an inkling that the following conversation took place in the hallways of KLIF that day:)
1963 NEWS DIRECTOR: Listen, we need to bump off some spots here. Somebody shot at the President….he might be dead.
1963 TRAFFIC DIRECTOR: Hey, I don’t think so! That Sandra Dee movie opens tomorrow, and then we can’t make ’em good! And don’t even THINK about moving the Aunt Jemimas….those are agency spots!
(On the morning of September 11, 2001 at KCOW we very quickly dumped all commercial inventory, with one extremely awkward exception. I had to do a live read announcement for a local video rental store…they were a 5-day–a-week sponsor so it had to get on that day. Oofa.)
Eventually, they are able to wrestle control of the airwaves out of the hands of the disc jockey. But before the KLIN coverage goes all-news, the jock plays a song by Gene McDaniels….it’s not one of the 200 or so songs you hear all the time on oldies stations…it’s called “Point of No Return,” and the lyrics provide haunting commentary on the fact that America was experiencing the first of some rough years.
You just can’t get off a train that’s moving down the track
I’m at the point of no return a-a-nd for me there’ll be no turning back.
Crazy.
As I listen to this I am reminded of being in the middle of a very typical morning show, finishing up an hour with the Osgood File, and a 2 and a half minute song. The song just before 7am always has to be 2:30. So another perfect bit of backtiming, a Legal ID, and then: BUM-BUM-BUM-BUMMMMMMMM….”From ABC News….I’m Doug Limerick……We have word just in of a breaking story in New York…apparently a commercial jet has hit one of the two World Trade Center towers…”
And America had another “point of no return” moment.