WOW! DAVID KAYE.....MEMORIES OF KDIA "LUCKY 13".... GREAT R&B...
As luck would have it, for just under a year I worked at Swan's department store in downtown Oakland (9th & 10th, Washington & Clay). In those days (1970-71) lots of musicians, KDIA DJs, and various people in the gospel movement came into Swan's. That's how I met everybody from A.J. Kemp (KDIA) and Lou Davis (KABL, et al) to Huey Newton and Bobby Seale (Black Panthers). And over the years I went into Lois the Pie Queen's diner on Adeline and occasionally hung out at a couple of the gospel churches. Lois Davis, of course, was gospel singer Tramaine Hawkins' mother. And Tramaine had begun with the Edwin Hawkins Singers ("Oh Happy Day") just a few years earlier.
Man, being in Oakland in those days was a heady experience! And KDIA was there with its music and its "truth in soul" news spoke to the Oakland community unlike any radio station has ever spoken to its community before or since. At least that's how I feel about it.
Y'know, I don't miss KFRC or KYA or even KEWB to anywhere near the degree that I miss KDIA. And I'm not even black.
