Modern Hill Woman

WLS

I have always loved rock music.

As a teenager biding my time in the hills of rural southeast Missouri until I could escape and live what I thought was “the good life” in the city, my daytime musical listening choices were limited.

Sure, we had records, eight tracks, and later, cassettes. All those options required some effort; flipping the records to hear each side, smacking the eight track to stop the double tracking, rewinding the cassette with a pencil when the player ate the tape. Oh, the many times I have seen a fully unspooled cassette tape on the side of the road fluttering gently in the breeze, glistening in the sunlight, having been chucked out of a car window in anger the night before.

I just wanted to rock, and the local country and western radio station didn’t do it for me, but when darkness fell, something magical happened. By magical I mean scientific.

The ionosphere, one of the layers of the atmosphere, reflects certain frequencies of radio waves. The composition of the ionosphere at night is different due to the absence of sunlight, so some radio stations are picked up better at night because of these improved nighttime reflection characteristics.

When the sun went down, WLS came on.

“Music Radio WLS, Chicago!” played the soundtrack of mine and my friends’ lives throughout our high school years in the 1970s. Popular disc jockeys like John Records Landecker, Yvonne Daniels, Larry Lujack and others helped us navigate those years with music.

WLS, a Chicago based AM radio station was founded in 1924 by Sears, Roebuck and Company. The call sign WLS was an abbreviation for Sears’ “World’s Largest Store” slogan. WLS’s contemporary hit radio era from 1960-1989 was its pinnacle in creativity and ratings. Sadly, since 1989, WLS has been a full-time talk radio station.

Our nights back then were spent back-roading or around a bonfire, car doors open and blasting Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Journey, Steve Miller, Bob Seger, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and taste-testing new songs that are now considered classic rock. It was our time, and WLS was always playing in the background, at least at night.