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Welcome Back!
To a time when rock and roll meant the Beatles, garage bands
and Motown, and a 5000 watt AM station in Dearborn, Michigan transformed Detroit
radio. Explore Keener13.com and celebrate the legend! |
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Share your opinions on our new and improved Keener Forum
The WKNR Forums are back and better than ever. Head right this way and you'll be able to discuss 60s pop culture, Motown, Michigan Rock, Detroit radio & TV and anything remotely Keener connected. Please avoid the flames as we're a friendly bunch, but have fun and make some new friends!
Treasures
 What if someone called you one evening and offered a collection of thousands upon thousands of carefully preserved jingles from the golden age of Top-40 radio? Keener13.com curator Scott Westerman tells the tale of how he came to own over 300 hours of 60s rock radio jingles, including every cut that ever played on WKNR.
The Year-Enders
 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. If you have a copy of the 1969 or 1970 albums, we'd love to add them to the Contact News aircheck archives.
Remembering Sounds Orchestral
 Of the instrumentals that populated the WKNR Music Guide, Sounds Orchestral was unique. They were the only British instrumental group to top the Keener charts. Unlike EMI's Sounds Incorporated, they never toured with the Beatles and worked primarily from the studio. Their line up in 1965 included a 40 year old keyboard guy and a 21 year old bassist. And it took a cover of American Vince Guaraldi's "Cast Your Fate to the Wind"  to get them traction in the crowded field that was competing for ears in the third year of Keener's Detroit radio dominance. We remember Guaraldi as the music director for the Peanuts television specials. "Cast" made it to number three in Britain and went top ten on the national Billboard Chart. Although they released several additional albums and were recording into the 70s, they were a one hit wonder on WKNR with a seven week chart run peaking at number one for three weeks, ending on tax day in 1965.
 More Keener13.com News
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Four Decades Later
The Keener Phenomenon Lives On
On Halloween night in 1963, Nellie Knorr changed the call
letters of her Dearborn radio station from WKMH to WKNR.. and made broadcasting
history. Over 40 years later the Keener Phenomenon lives on.
MORE
 The
Very First Keener Promo - Battle of the Giants
Pat
St. John's Tribute on Sirius
WKNR-FM The Roots of Underground Radio
Before WRIF put album cuts into a rotation, there was underground
radio. In Detroit, WABX and WKNR-FM helped pave the way for the next rock radio
revolution. During the summer of 1970, WKNR-FM's popularity was at it's peak.
Here's a trip back.
ALSO:
Keener Q&A
Keener LPs
Turn me on dead man
 Rolling
Stone Mag's 500 Greatest Songs
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