Rare Audio From The 1980s: Lee Baby Simms – Last Day of Top 40 on KORL 65, Honolulu
In 1980, Honolulu radio station KORL 65 switched from a long period of colorful personalities playing Top 40 hits, staging outrageous stunts, and giving away cash and prizes in complex contests — to a computerized (disc jockey-less) system playing Big Band music of the 1940s and ’50s. On the last day of Top 40 programming, each of the disc jockeys on “KORL, the Station That Makes You Feel Good” said goodbye in distinctive fashion — none more distinctively than afternoon host Lee Baby Simms. He had recorded his final bit, on a small cassette tape recorder, at home earlier that day. Just before 7 p.m., he held the speaker of the cassette player up to the main studio microphone and hit “play.” While it’s possible that he was not smoking pakalolo as he recorded these stream of consciousness ramblings, it is highly unlikely.
Published by Chas Henry on YouTube.
> Read more about the history of radio in Hawaii in our features Art of Radio Hawaii © and Blue Hawaii, Elvis and Hawaiian Radio in 1961