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The Mighty
state-of-the-art
Super Harlow
On The Job |
A radio station does not run on music
alone. It requires a state-of-the-art studio with
cutting-edge technology. It takes talented personalities
behind the microphone, and passionate, dedicated people
behind the scenes.
And it takes something extra, something
intangible ... something called
Super Harlow!
The heart and soul of
Classic KYA Radio
is Super Harlow, with its keen sense of musical themes
and moods, working alongside
Gary Mora and
instinctively knowing just which hit record should be
played at just the right time.
Does the moment call for something by The
Beatles ... or something by Jackie Wilson? An obscure
nugget from 1958, or the #1 song of the year for 1969?
Buffalo Springfield or Dusty Springfield? Is it "Monkey
Time" or time for the theme from The Monkees? Unit 4 + 2,
The Three Degrees, The Four Tops, We Five, The New
Colony Six ... whatever the number,
Super Harlow has it
ready to go!
The music is not picked at random -- the
records you hear on Classic
KYA Radio come from actual 1260/KYA
playlists and music surveys from the 1950s, 1960s and
1970s, meaning that the music you hear today is the same
music heard on the Boss of
the Bay in its original incarnation.
 (But
don't worry -- Super Harlow also plays your requests by
email and off the KYA Action
Line from around the Bay Area and
Northern California!)
In
addition, the presentation -- from the sequencing of the
great 1260/KYA jingles to the patterns that song genres
are played -- is based directly on the blueprint KYA
used in the 1960s, when the station was at the height of
its popularity as Golden
Gate Great Radio.
Archival airchecks of KYA, including
those preserved by the
Bay Area Radio Museum, were dissected,
studied and reconstructed to create the foundation of
Classic KYA Radio's
hourly programming schedule, meaning that your Monday
morning wake-up music mix will be different than what
you hear at eight p.m. on Wednesday evening, and your
Saturday night will sound quite unlike what you'll hear
on Sunday afternoon.
The name "Super Harlow" is a loving
tribute to
Russ "The Moose" Syracuse's engineer on KYA's
"All Night Flight To International Nowhere," the
legendary Harlow Meyers. The original Super Harlow
passed away in 1999, leaving behind an incredible legacy
as one of the greatest radiomen of the era.
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Harlow Meyers:
In Memoriam
A funeral
has been held in Minnesota for Harlow
Meyers, a San Francisco disc jockey and
radio engineer known as Super Harlow, who
was a mainstay of Top 40 radio station KYA
during the 1960s.
 Mr. Meyers,
78, died February 22, 1999, in a suburban
Minneapolis nursing home after a stroke.
Mr. Meyers
was born in Minneapolis and attended the
University of Minnesota. He was a Navy
veteran of World War II.
In the
1950s, he came to California and attended
broadcasting school in Los Angeles. He
worked for a time at a San Luis Obispo radio
station before joining KYA in the '60s and
becoming the engineer and sidekick for Russ
"The Moose" Syracuse on the "All Night
Flight" show.
He was
perhaps best known for helping Syracuse
"bomb" mediocre records with aircraft sound
effects. Halfway through a particularly
awful song, the aircraft sounds would begin
and the music would abruptly end.
"Mission
accomplished, Super Harlow!" Syracuse would
holler.
San
Francisco radio historian Ben Fong-Torres
said Mr. Meyers was "part of what made
personality radio what it was in the golden
age of Top 40."
Syracuse
recalled his old partner fondly.
"Super
Harlow was a wonderful guy," Syracuse said
yesterday. "I never could have found my way
to international nowhere without him."
Mr. Meyers
was also an accomplished handball player and
a member of the South End Rowing Club.
He is
survived by cousin Julie Gainsley of San
Francisco and several cousins in Minnesota.
Photograph of the real Super
Harlow courtesy of Kent Hedberg. |
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