What’s the ideal July 4th present for a Keenerfan? We got it when the red and green VU meter logo of Bob Green Productions graced our mailbox. The legendary WKNR production and programming ace found a box of cassettes in his vault that yielded these two 1970 Keener gems. There’s this extended Bob Green aircheck that gives you a feel for the Keener vibe during its second run for glory. The jingles are a mixture of Clyde and classic Keener jingles and an eclectic combination of current hits and WKNR gold. Bob’s presentation is straight ahead, playin the hits personality. His encyclopedic knowledge of the hits is in evidence and he makes it look all too easy, even when a planned record doesn’t want to play. Then we have Scott Regen, the night after R. Dean Taylor was his studio guest. Juxtapose this piece against his early Keener work and you’ll instantly feel the evolution into a more mature, yet perfectly executed performance. This was radio that you could leave on all day. Even as the playlists tightened up, the personality kept us coming back for more.

The morgue. In the radio news biz, that’s the place where you save all the raw tape, the typed copy and the actualities that contributed to each daily newscast. At the end of each year, news departments would cull the highlights for a special broadcast retrospective of the year that was.

From 1965 through 1970, WKNR News went a step beyond putting the program on the air. At the station’s expense hundreds of albums were pressed each year with a commercial-free 45 minute summary of the people, places, events and attitudes that contributed to our history as seen from the newsroom at 15001 Michigan Avenue in Dearborn.

Anchored by WKNR News Director Philip Nye, these LPs are now collectors items and have been utilized by current day broadcasters and historians?to look back at what Detroit was like in the 60s.

WKNR Newsman John Maher (Meagher) collected most of them and sent us rips of the 1965 through 1968 LPs which can be heard here.