Atlanta was lucky enough to have a good radio station for popular music. This wasn’t true everywhere. In South Georgia we had pop music playing only a few hours in the afternoon and evening. Late at night your tinny transistor could maybe get Memphis, Chicago or even Cousin Brucie in NYC. But in Atlanta you had 

Quixie in Dixie

WQXI first went on the air in 1948 as an all music station, playing pop standards. Their independent status was unique. By the 1960’s WQXI was Top 40 with the moniker “Quixie in Dixie“. Among the stations personalities was Dr. Don Rose in the late 1960s, who went on to near legendary status at KFRC in San Francisco. His fame made ever-lasting by his inclusion as the 1967 entry in the popular series of “Cruisin’” LP records.WQXI was the inspiration for the television sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. Series creator Hugh Wilson dealt with the station when he worked in advertising. WKRP episodes which included dropping turkeys from a helicopter and the “dancing ducks promotion,” with ducks dancing on hot plates, were actually done by Jerry Blum at WQXI. Blum leased an 18-wheeler and tossed hundreds of live turkeys from a suburban Atlanta shopping center.

From 1968 Atlanta Radio Time Warp: Atlanta was on the verge of being a boomtown in 1968. Residents and visitors flocked to the new Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown to ride the bubble shaped elevators up into the canopy of the atrium lobby. The rotating floor of the Polaris Lounge on top of the Regency gave a panoramic view of the city through the transparent blue dome over the lounge. The Braves on WSB-AM and the Falcons on WQXI-AM were new teams in town and the Hawks were on their way with WSB-AM to be their home. Atlanta had just discovered live theater and theater reviews were becoming common on the radio. The now defunct Theater Atlanta was a ground breaking class act which went to Broadway and performed a play that spoofed then Governor Lester Maddox who, in the early ’60s, gave out pick ax handles at his Pickrick fried chicken restaurant as a symbol of resistance to integration.

The Vietnam war was raging and tearing the country apart in 1968. Atlanta was a magnet in the south for hippies and youthful war protesters. The sidewalks in the “Tight Squeeze” area around 10th and Peachtree Streets were packed with so many hippies that pedestrians literally had to walk in the streets. People driving through the area stopped to stare, creating massive traffic jams that snaked for blocks around the area. The alternative newspaper The Great Speckled Bird was hawked by vendors wearing tie-dyed T-shirts from street corners for 15 cents a copy. As a sign of the changes that were to come, Plough’s WPLO-FM would soon convert to an automated underground rock format.

Military service was mandatory in 1968. The young men who were drafted that year who were fortunate to make it back to Atlanta would find a big change in the radio scene. When they left, people were listening to AM. When they returned, people were listening to FM.