Lester “Boogie” Michaels was the DJ every teenager in the state of Oklahoma was listening to in the 1970’s. Boogie was on a popular Oklahoma City radio station that had a nightly show that allowed kids from all over the state to call in and speak their minds.
In 1978, Stayton, Todd and I were in Junior High and we would spend evenings listening to the radio show called Boogie Check. Boogie Michaels would come on and take phone calls from kids throughout the evening. The show was actually pre-recorded and then played back shortly afterwards.
For a teen to make it on the show it was a pretty big deal. Each night you had to start calling early on the old dial and push button phones. The first dozen times you called in you’d get the busy signal. Every now and then the phone would start ringing and you knew you had a chance of making the show. If you made the show your parents were charged a long distance phone call.
Most of the calls from kids were short and sweet. Usually Boogie Michaels would ask a question and hang up on the kids as they answered or didn’t answer. He seemed to talk to the girls longer than boys so getting much airtime was almost impossible. Todd was hung up on one night for not moving quicker on scoring with his girlfriend!
For months we’d call in, say something quick and then we’d get hung up on. If you said something really bad it would be edited out of the show by the time it was aired. We ended up being on air several times and had a couple of longer conversations.
One night I caught Michaels in a good mood and he decided to let me run his radio program. We had called in to say hi to the three girls we were trying to hit on even though they didn’t even know we were on the air. That night I was the one holding the phone when it rang.
Michaels picked up and we started talking. Out of the blue he said he was going to leave the room and I asked if I could run the program. He said yes! Before leaving the room he did warn me about saying anything bad. He said his vulgarity squelch box would catch it if I did. I rambled on totally unprepared for as much airtime as I was given but snuck in a few jabs at Boogie thinking he wouldn’t know it.
Luckily we had one of those trusty Sony tape recorders with the microphone set up next to the radio. We would record ourselves every time we made it on the show. At one point we nicknamed ourselves The Animals and would just scream random stuff in the background. Listen closely to this recording and you’ll hear where he cut out me calling him a name.
Those cassettes have followed me for decades. They moved from many, many houses and have sat and collected lots of dust in several garages. I decided to listen to them again when I was in the 50’s and thought they were hilarious. With the advent of digital recording we were able to transfer the recordings to the computer. Our timing was pretty good because the little square piece of foam in the cassette tape wore out and crumbled as we finished.
Below is a recording of me calling into Boogie Check in 1978. I was 15 years old with Stayton and Todd and I believe we were at Todd’s house. If you listen closely you can hear them saying things in the background. Enjoy my first claim to fame as I became the teenage DJ to kids all across the state of Oklahoma.
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