The Classics IV (Dennis Yost, second from right)

Dennis Yost, the distinctive lead vocalist of the Classics IV on such hits as “Traces,” “Spooky,” “Stormy” and “Every Day With You Girl,” died on Sunday (Dec. 7) at the age of 65.

Dennis had been hospitalized since suffering a brain injury in a fall in 2006, according to an Associated Press report, and his death was caused by respiratory failure.

From Dennis’ obituary in the New York Times:

Mr. Yost’s throaty, resonant baritone defined the sound. Buddy Buie, who with guitarist J. R. Cobb wrote many of the group’s songs, said in an interview with Mix magazine in April that Mr. Yost drew passion from his youthful devotion to R&B and doo-wop and had been a James Brown imitator.

“Dennis had one great voice,” Mr. Buie told Mix, “a voice that filled up the whole spectrum. It was so round, so full.”

More at the Classics IV website…

If you’ve been listening today, you’ll probably notice that we’re doing something a bit different.

Because of a catastrophic server crash, we lost a ton of data from our network. Thanks to the quick work of Ron and Robert Purl of Purl Computers, we were able to minimize the damage and get back up and running despite not having full server capability.

Right now — and probably for the rest of the weekend — we’ve patched together a makeshift network and will be running classic KYA airchecks from the late 1960s and early 1970s featuring old friends like Chris Edwards, Tom Campbell, Bwana Johnny, Dave Stone, Gary Schaffer, Pete McNeil and Johnny Holliday.

I’ll be spending the weekend recovering the file structure and moving everything to our new server.

Wish me luck.

– Super Harlow

Joel Selvin, the Chronicle’s senior pop music critic, has a very interesting piece about Doors and their new CD (“Early S.F. Doors show breaks on through to CD”) in this morning’s paper:

Only a few tables of curious spectators showed up at the club each night, so the musicians pretty much played for themselves. In between two weekend engagements at the Avalon Ballroom, a little-known rock group from Los Angeles called the Doors played Tuesday through Friday at a 100-seat Marina district club called the Matrix. Even the musicians might have forgotten all about the gig if the club manager hadn’t decided to tape the shows.

The Doors were making their second trip to the thriving San Francisco ballroom scene in March 1967. It was an unseasonably chilly end of winter before the Summer of Love and just three months after the little-noted release of the band’s now-historic debut album.

“We were on the lip of great success and we didn’t know it,” drummer John Densmore says. “Neither did the audience, which was very cool.”

Read the full story here…

Super Harlow

Greetings from Super Harlow at KYA Radio Master Control! We’ve launched this blog to keep you up to date on everything that’s happening at the station that plays your favorite Golden Gate Great Oldies — whether it’s new programming, local events, or just something that we’ve found interesting and thought we’d share with you.

Gary Mora and I will be posting our thoughts, news and comments here, and we invite you to add your thoughts and comments, too. (For example: our music mix concentrates on the late 1960s Top 40 Pop sound. Do you prefer more ’50s or more ’70s … and what artists and songs should we add?)

I’ll lead with this, too: we’ve just upgraded to a new, more powerful transmitter/server, with much better AM stereo sound and greater capacity to serve our growing audience. If you’ve been listening online, our audio links will be changing in the next few days.

If you find that your link no longer works, go to our website at www.kyaradio.com and click on the “listen live” link at the top to activate our new player, and away we go! Or, if you prefer to listen on Winamp, iTunes, Real Player or Jet Audio, grab a new link on our popular media player page.

Oh … and we’ve just been picked up by one of the largest satellite radio providers in Europe, and the result has been a ton (or tonne, as they say in England) of requests from Ireland, Germany, Denmark, France and the Netherlands. Welcome to all of you joining us across the pond and on the Continent!

– Super Harlow