By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Long time St. Joseph disc jockey Rick Reynolds has retired after 47-and-a-half years in radio, much of it spent on KKJO 105.5 FM.
Reynolds says the lure of radio came early in his life.
“When I was eight years old, I heard some really crackerjack DJ on WHB in Kansas City and thought, I want to do that,” Reynolds tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “Of course, I was eight years old. I never thought I’d really do it and somebody talked me into doing it, saying you have a voice to do that, adding I know a guy. And then I got into radio stations and started making audition tapes and bugging the hell out of everybody.”
Reynolds began in Cameron on KMRN in 1974. He moved to St. Joseph two years later to be on the now defunct KUSN/KSFT. Then, Reynolds moved on to Topeka, to Boise, and to Seattle. He returned to St. Joseph where he worked the mid-afternoon shift on K-Jo.
Why radio?
“Because I would just be a bum otherwise,” Reynolds jokes (we think). “What do you do when you’re a total loser? You get into radio.”
Reynolds took on a short, punchy style on the air, saying he loves quips and gives an example of his style.
“A song that was a hit at the time I got into radio: Olivia Newton John ‘Have You Never Been Mello?’ And I would say, here’s Olivia Newton Jaundice ‘Have You Never Been Yellow?’ You know, stupid stuff like that. But it was fun.”
Reynolds wrapped up his career on KFEQ and Joe Town 107.5 FM.
“One thing that I really love doing, to the last, is on Joe Town 107.5, ‘Super 70s Saturday Night,’” Reynolds says. “It was basically, okay, I have five hours of radio show here, what can I get away with?”
Reynolds says technology has changed considerably over the nearly 50 years he worked as a DJ, going from vinyl 45 rpm records to carts, to discs, to digital; moving from being on the air live to recording nearly every segment.
Times have indeed changed and not just technology.
“I did get called (out) for one word that I said,” Reynolds recalls an incident early in his career. “I said the word ‘crap’ even on the radio. I said, ‘Well, what a load of crap.’ The program director thought that was awful and I was thinking a couple of years earlier Kodachrome by Paul Simon was a hit and it had that word in it.”
When Eagle Radio created Joe Town, playing classic rock, Reynolds felt right at home.
“That is more me,” Reynolds says. “It’s kind of like leaving on Joe Town is leaving on a high note for me, because doing afternoons on Joe Town is kind of doing the radio that I got into this business to do.”
Reynolds hopes he leaves before the audience wants him to go.
“Here’s the one thing I was really hard core about and I hope I’ve achieved; you always want to leave people wanting more,” Reynolds says, adding he never wanted to be pushed into retirement or have people question why he hadn’t retired yet. “Leave them wanting more.”
A native of St. Joseph, Reynolds plans to retire here. He says he wants to read more, reflect more, exercise more; work on self-improvement. He adds he might want to get engaged in civic matters, perhaps even attend a few candidate forums and lob a question or two at the candidates.