1240 WINN

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WINN Surveys

June 24, 1967 - Outside

June 24, 1967 - Inside

December 31, 1971

Top Hits of 1974

Top Hits of 1975

November 12, 1976

WINN DJs

Bucks Braun writes: "Congratulations and good luck on this project. It's very exciting to have some folks remember a couple of fun radio markets that produced so many fine stations and personalities. Especially today in the era of bland corporate formatting and voice tracking.

"I went into WINN in Louisville in the summer of 1971 after getting out of Ohio University. Danny King was the PD and I did 10-2. Within a few months, Danny was gone and Moon Mullins moved into the PD slot. I moved to mornings.

"In late summer '72, the GM of an AC station in Jackson, Mississippi drove through Louisville, called and offered me 100 bucks more than I was making to do afternoons at WSLI there. I took it and moved on. In early '73, I left Jackson to do mornings in a new format in Phoenix: all news. There I reunited with an ex-girl friend, Jane Hoffman who was from Madison, Indiana. In '74 her mom died, and she wanted to be closer to her dad, so we moved.

"I moved back into WINN in the morning slot, and Jane began a long run at WAVE radio. Moon was PD at WINN and had put together a great radio station. Middays were done by BJ Koltee and Al Risen. We also had Karl Shannon who later spent years in Lexington as a morning power. When Moon moved on, Dickie Braun came in and became one of the most inventive personalities I've ever heard. We also had Dan Breedon, who worked overnights for over a decade. He was once offered another shift and said 'No. These are my people, the cops, cab drivers and whores!'

"Moon came back for a time, and then, once more, the big time called and he was off to Kansas City, and later New York. He was a patient, thoughtful programmer and challenged me continually. He's a great radio man. BJ Koltee (Richard Upton), who passed away a couple of years ago, was also a great radio personality. I can only wish I had some airchecks. I've never heard anyone as good as BJ at working the phones. And of course, the late Wretched Richard developed into a Louisville legend.

"In '79, Bluegrass Broadcasting sold WINN and moved me, as PD and morning guy, along with GM Max Rein, to its stations in Orlando, Florida. I still miss Louisville, come back for Derby every couple of years, and do a getaway weekend in the bar at the Brown Hotel every few months."

Today Bucks Braun is the morning man on Ohio's My Classic Country network.

Today Moon Mullins is the morning man and PD of WBKR in Owensboro, Kentucky.

1975 Buck Owens Letter to Moon Mullins

1978 WINN Moon Mullins Flyer

WINN Memos

WINN Ink

This article appeared in the Today's Living section of the Courier-Journal on Saturday, September 27, 1975

Behind the microphone at country's WINN…
Dick Braun is Wretched Richard
By John Flynn
Courier-Journal Staff Writer

A time or two Dick Braun has wondered what happens to old disc jockeys. Do they just spin away? Do they go out to a rock beat? Or are they discarded like worn 45s?

"Sometimes," said Braun, "I think I'm crazy to be a half-wit disc jockey at my age. I wonder why I'm still doing it. I figure if I had any sense I'd own my station by now."

Deep down, however, the 46-yeard-old Braun, who is WINN Radio's afternoon, drive-home disc jockey, knows why he's still playing records instead of producing or reading news: Its fun.

Behind the mike, hidden from thousands of car-bound country music fans, he becomes Wretched Richard, fleet of tongue, impish, witty and inventive.

"I guess I'm really two people," he said. "I'm not much good in front of a live audience because I'm always wondering what they're thinking about my physical condition. But on the air the real me probably comes alive."

His physical condition is the result of polio which he contracted at the age of 4. It left him badly crippled and unable to get around without crutches.

On the air, however, he stands tall, although his talent generally hasn't been recognized except by those who make their living in this business.

"The little guy over at WINN, Mr. Dickie Braun, is a hell of a jockey, about as good as they come in this town," said WAKY's disc jockey Bill Bailey, the renowned Duke of Louisville.

Dick Braun of WINN may think he's "crazy to be a half-wit
disc jockey," but he's still at it for one reason -- it's fun.

While you wouldn't know it from his long string of radio jobs, from Ronceverte, West Virginia, to New Orleans, to Buffalo, to Cincinnati, Braun figures that his polio damage may have held him back in his career.

It's a business where gall counts as much as talent, where a Bailey demands star treatment. Braun, on the other hand, never has been forceful in pursuing the top of the ratings.

"I've always been apologetic and sort of surprised when nice things happened to me in this business," he said. "Fact is, I haven't felt like a star since I was a polio kid back in Pittsburgh.

"I was a child star. They ran pictures of me in papers and said what a nice thing it would be to help out little jerks like me who had polio. I was a spoiled brat until my parents died and they shipped me off, screaming and kicking, to a crippled children's home when I was 12.

"But it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I still remember the old place. It was called the Industrial Home for Crippled Children, but the woman who ran it called it the Cheerful Home for Crippled Children. Later she died an agonizing death. I figured the Lord must have smit her for being corny."

This, of course, is the charming irreverence of Dick Braun, the trait which may have kept him going in front of a microphone for the past 23 years.

Nothing in his sometimes zany, always odd, way of looking at the world is too important to gouge it a little, including himself.

"My parents had dreams of me leading a sedentary life, making my living with pen and scroll in hand," he said. "So I went to the University of Pittsburgh and majored in accounting.

"I might have been a big, famous accountant by now if I hadn't heard about this radio job in Ronceverte, West Virginia. I still remember good ol' WRON. I lived at Mrs. Kearn's rooming house, next to the jail, and had a sweetheart from Slagle, West Virginia. We used to swing on Mrs. Kearns' front porch and watch Ronceverte go by."

"From WRON, Braun advanced to WWNR in Beckley, West Virginia, where he did a little bit of everything including the classical music show on Sunday night "because I had been to college and could pronounce some of the names."

In Beckley he bought his first car and learned how to drive it. He also met a girl named Genevieve Shrewsbury, who later became his wife.

She's the same woman he calls his "300 pounds of love" on his WINN show. In reality, she's his love, minus about 200 pounds.

It's typical of Braun and his sense of humor that he remembers more about WWNR than the powerhouse stations which he later worked for, including WTIX, New Orleans, WKBW, Buffalo, and WSAI, Cincinnati.

"The WWNR station had a little apartment which it rented out to employees," recalled Braun. I lived there for a while. One Sunday morning the guy who was supposed to turn on the power for the radio preacher didn't show up. The preacher knocked on the my door and we found the poor slob passed out in my bathtub. It made quite a Pearly Gates scene with the preacher standing over him."

It's not easy to describe Braun's magic on the air, or why it occurs. It's usually spontaneous and unexpected, straight off the top of his head.

"For the most part I wing it on the air," he said, "although I sometimes sit down and write a few things when I think that the show's losing all consistency and continuity.

"Probably, though, I'm better off the air than on," he added, "When the mike's off, I change the words of the songs I'm playing and make them dirty. That sometimes helps me to think up something clean to say on the air.

"But once I've said it, it's forgotten. I have people telling me all the time that they heard me say something funny, but I never can remember what it was."

On the other hand, Braun can recall some of the conversations with fans who call him when he's on the air.

"Like the woman who called the other day," he said. "I told her I was in an iron lung, and she said that was terrible. I said it wasn't so bad. In fact, I told her I would have someone bring me over if she would read to me.

"I like to get calls," added Braun, "but it bothers me sometimes when people call me up and ask me to play a record for their dying brother."

That's Dickie Braun - not easy to describe but nice to have around.

 This article appeared in the Today's Living section of the Courier-Journal on Saturday, November 8, 1975

Putting the country sound on the air
By John Flynn
Courier Journal Staff Writer

If you're a country music fan in Louisville, chances are your station is WINN radio which spins country 24 hours a day and has a monopoly on most of the audience.

These facts alone make WINN's music director, Moon Mullins, a dictator of taste for what you may hear on the air if your music is country.

An example is Faron Young's new single, "Here I Am in Dallas," It hasn't been played on WINN because Mullins doesn't like the use of the word "hell" ("Here I am in Dallas, where in the hell are you?") in the song.

"Normally, 'hells' and 'damns' in a song don't bother me," said Mullins, "but in this instance I felt as if Faron was being frivolous with his 'hells' so I decided that we wouldn't play the song."

"It's not often that Mullins, who also is WINN's noon to 3 p.m. disc jockey, makes such an arbitrary decision. But since he took over as WINN's music director from Al Risen a few months ago, there has been a subtle change in WINN's programming.

Mullins, through tighter programming and less freedom of choice for WINN's disc jockeys, has given the station a more traditional country sound than under Risen's music direction.

"I don't think there has been a detectable change in the sound since I took over," said Mullins, "but we have returned to the basics of radio - play the hits and balance the music.

"Before I took over," added Mullins, "the disc jockeys had become islands to themselves. They were playing what they wanted to hear but not necessarily what the audience wanted."

Under Risen, who left WINN about two months ago in an economy move, WINN's five disc jockeys were allowed to play three or four album cuts, along with the current hits, in an hour's time.

Risen, who had the noon to 3 slot currently occupied by Mullins, often spices his show with cuts from old Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson albums.

Jennings and Nelson, along with David Allan Coe and Jerry Jeff Walker, often are referred to as the "outlaws" of country music as compared to the traditional Nashville performers.

"What I tried to do," said Risen, "was to take WINN away from 24-hour 'chicken' country, to at least make the outlaws available to the public and remove some of the 'assembly line' sound from country music.

"In my opinion," he added, "most of the country music stations in America, including WINN, are still treating their audiences as if they're a bunch of idiots who can't understand anything unless it's approved by the Grand Ole Opry."

Cases in point, according to Risen, are Jennings and Nelson - bearded, long-haired individualists who have ignored the traditional Nashville route in their careers.

"I was accused of playing too much Jennings and Nelson," said Risen. "They weren't supposed to appeal to the masses. Yet Waylon was just named 'Country Music Singer of the Year' and Willie had a crossover smash with 'Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.'

"By programming more album time, it gave us an opportunity to play some of the great stuff these men have recorded in their careers, because I feel as if radio stations have an obligation to help performers on the basis of their music alone."

Risen, for example, attempted to give Nelson's "Phases and Stages" - an album about a broken love affair with the woman's story on one side and the man's on the other - some air time.

Mullins, however, took it off WINN's play list.

"Nobody sounds more country than Willie Nelson when he's doing soft, pretty stuff like he cut on his 'Redheaded Stranger' album," said Mullins. "On the other hand," he added, "'Phases and Stages' was too hard and brusque for my ear."

WINN's music director Moon Mullins listening to new records

This illustrates an interesting point concerning what audiences hear on country stations; it often depends of the ear of the music director.

There are no hard and fast smash hits in country unless the record crosses to the pop lists. A 100,000 seller in country is a monster hit, meaning that probably no more than 1,000 singles would be sold in the Louisville market.

Risen often checked the Gavin Sheet, a survey out of San Francisco indicating what other country stations are playing in making up WINN's Top 40 for a given week.

"It helped some," he said, "but on the other hand you can have a song that's red-hot in the Atlanta market which you couldn't give away on the streets of Louisville."

Mullins, meanwhile, composes his Top 40 chart by calling record stores to check what's selling, by what's requested from the audience and, he added with a smile, "with my own ear."

While Mullins and Risen have their differences on what's good country, they agree that the music director's job often is a stab in the dark.

In a busy week the director will receive as many as 100 new singles, making it an impossibility to listen to all the new cuts.

"It doesn't take a genius to put a new Merle Haggard cut on the air," said Risen. "His track record is foolproof. Often, though, it's something that catches your eye - maybe the song title - that causes you to listen to something new."

As an example, Risen mentioned a song called "Third Rate Romance" which he helped put on the country charts by playing it on WINN.

"First of all," he said, "that title caught my eye. Then I noticed it was done by a group called 'The Amazing Rhythm Aces.' I deducted," he concluded, "that a song with that title, sung by 'The Amazing Rhythm Aces' just had to be a hell of a tune."

It was, as it turned out. Just as often it isn't, however.

"You can't take this job too seriously," said Mullins. "After all, what does it mean? It's all pretty much forgotten in two months anyway."

WINN Airchecks

Dan Davis (July 1961)
7:42 - 2711 KB

Burt Mathis (1966 #1)
21:30 - 7563 KB

Burt Mathis (1966 #3)
2:51 - 1006 KB

Ken Douglas (Summer 1967)
5:12 - 1830 KB

Dick Wagner (March 5, 1968)
4:16 - 1505 KB

Moon Mullins (February 1970)
24:38 - 8664 KB

Moon Mullins (July 3, 1971)
22:50 - 8032 KB

Like many radio stations in the country, WINN set aside their regular programming when they heard the news about the death of Elvis Presley. On this scoped aircheck you'll hear Moon Mullins taking calls from WINN listeners about the impact the King of Rock and Roll had upon their lives as the station temporarily took on an "All Elvis" format...plus there's several reports about Elvis' death from the ABC Entertainment Network.

Moon Mullins (June 20, 1978)
26:27 - 9299 KB

Wretched Richard (October 1979)
11:29 - 4040 KB

Wretched Richard (December 21, 1979)
22:55 - 8060 KB

Wretched Richard (February 1981)
12:42 - 4467 KB

WINN Production

Hack Miller Auto Sales Commercials
2:17 - 806 KB

Peter Pan Dry Cleaners Commercial
2:17 - 806 KB

Summers-Herman Ford Commercials
2:05 - 735 KB

WINN Jingles

WINN PAMS Series 30 Jingles
9:48 - 4595 KB

WINN Atwood-Richards Jingles
2:34 - 1205 KB

WINN PAMS Series 44A and LS '75 Jingles
7:43 - 3617 KB

WINN PAMS Jim Clancy Liners
14:24 - 6757 KB

For more information on PAMS jingles, go to the PAMS Website.

All audio is in downloadable MP3 format.