Boomers recall 60s music

Last week reader Rick Davis, Laurens native now living in San Antonio, Texas, asked if anyone remembers the Jags, a rock band from Storm Lake in the 1960s.

Our friend Bill Turner came to the rescue. He remembers the first iteration of the Jags from a a few years before.

The band he remembers consisted of Jack Pilling on lead guitar, Jay Shug on bass and Nick Chamberlain on drums.

Bill could hear them practicing Saturdays on the front porch of the Pilling house on College Avenue, across the alley from the Turner home.

A particular memory of the Jags is etched in Bill’s mind more than 60 years later.

In those days there was an annual carnival at Storm Lake High School (now South School) on Cayuga Street. It was “Fete de fous”, French for “Fool’s party,” and it raised money to publish the Hi-Breeze yearbook. At the end of the carnival, a program in the auditorium featured student entertainment. Among the performers in 1959 were the Jags.

“The Jags played a great version of ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’,” Bill recalls as if he heard them yesterday. “It was far and away the best act.” The crowd roared its approval.

Like Rick Davis and most other teens of the era, Bill also listened to the 50,000 watt KOMA radio out of Oklahoma City, the top rock and roll station for the middle third of the U.S. It could be heard across middle America all night. Iowa kids also listened to KIOA in Des Moines during the day, and Fort Dodge had a popular Top 40s station. There was also a rock and roll station in Mexico, run by Americans, just across the border from Texas. It broadcast throughout North America with something like 150,000 watts of power. We could hear it clearly all night up here. These Mexican stations set up to reach U.S. listeners were known as “border blasters.”

Locally, KAYL played some rock music with DJs Dick Fekel and Art Beaulieu along with Shine Anderson’s “Albert City Polka Time” and the noon markets.

All of those stations were AM. In those days AM radio was king. FM was reserved for soothing background music piped into stores. Now the music comes via streaming. We’ve forgotten all about eight-tracks, cassettes and CDs and peach crates in the corner jammed with old record albums.