Russ Knight (actually Russ Moore) AKA "The Weird Beard," died recently. Here's a short article with an obituary from The Houston Chronicle. (Check out his intros for The Beatles when they played at the Coliseum.)
I remember the Weird Beard well. He moved from Dallas to KILT in the winter of '64. He worked at Gordon McLendon's Dallas station before transferring to KILT, so they had a big promotional campaign for a few weeks prior to his arrival. They had a jingle that said, "The Weird Beard's coming, the Weird Beard's coming ...."
I remember the Weird Beard well. He moved from Dallas to KILT in the winter of '64. He worked at Gordon McLendon's Dallas station before transferring to KILT, so they had a big promotional campaign for a few weeks prior to his arrival. They had a jingle that said, "The Weird Beard's coming, the Weird Beard's coming ...."
I listened to him a lot. Here's a clip from one of his shows. I was surprised that he left KILT in 1966. I thought he was there a lot longer than that. He had a fan club at Dulles, as you can tell from this picture in the '67 yearbook. [My thanks to Tommy Laird (DHS '67) for the scan.]
KILT had another disk jockey named Jim Wood. He wasn't a shock jock (which didn't exist then), but he liked to 'push the envelope.' He pulled a prank (and caught a lot of flack) when he told kids to put their radios in their open windows and turn them up as loud as possible. When they were ready, he then said, "THIS IS THE POLICE. WE'VE GOT YOU SURROUNDED. COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP." He fooled enough people throughout Houston that there was a mini-firestorm. After a series of incidents, KILT eventually fired him. Here's a tape of one of his shows from 1964.
