Last week, we looked at CKEY’s early days as a challenger to CFRB and the CBC. But in 1959, the station went in a very different direction – taking on CHUM for a Top 40 audience.
 


 
The path to rock and roll wasn’t really all that smooth. They switched format to attract a teen audience, going after CHUM in 1958, only to revert back to a “sweet 60’s” playlist, trying to get the CRTC’s favour so they could get a TV licence. (More on that in a moment.) When that didn’t work, they reverted to a bizarre mixed bag – MOR during the day, and Top 40 at night.
 
Despite that divided format, some familiar names quickly came over to the new rocker, including one that may surprise you.
 


David Mickie (later Marsden) made a big splash doing nights on the station. He was one of the “Good Guys,” a familiar phrase for on-air staffers that came from other stations in the U.S. While he was the nominal star, he wasn’t the only personality there.


1963 CKEY Good Guys. J. P. Finnegan, Duff Roman, Big G Walters, Lee Vogel (in drag), Bill Brady and Dave Mickie.
 

(Photos courtesy of Doug Thompson)
 
For decades, CKEY had been sitting at 580. In 1962, the station made a surprising move to improve its signal.
 

 
When Al Boliska departed CHUM for CKEY, it was a huge blow to 1050, where he’d become a big star. But it also paved the way for Jungle Jay Nelson from Buffalo, who became so popular he left many to wonder “Al who?”
 
Here’s the station schedule from October 1963, which included all those Good Guys, and even an early morning Farm Report.
           

(Photo/schedule courtesy of Doug Thompson)
 
If you look closely at the photos below from 1964, you’ll notice some other soon-to-be famous names. There’s future CHUM star Duff Roman. John Dolan would go on to have a long career at CFRB. Big G Walters became a notorious name at several radio stations. And Norm Perry would find bigger fame as a newsman at CFTO-TV.
 

(Photo courtesy of Doug Thompson)
 
It’s not that ‘EY didn’t try to keep up with notoriously promo happy CHUM. They advertised everywhere, including the subway.

(Photo courtesy of Doug Thompson)
 
When CHUM “Checked from The Ex”, CKEY sent its colourful Circus Wagon to get attention.


(Photo courtesy of Doug Thompson)
 
There were special cards, giveaways and contests designed for a teenage audience.
 



(Photos courtesy of Doug Thompson)
 
They even tried to compete with the CHUM Chart, besting their Top 50 with a Top 58.
 

 
In a July 7, 1963 Silver Dollar Survey, CKEY remarkably referred to CHUM without actually naming their competitor, wondering who was first in Toronto teen radio in many innovative ways and implying 1050 was copying them.
 

(Chart courtesy of Doug Thompson)
 
They even tried to get your “vote,” as the station for the hits – and election coverage.

(Photo courtesy of Doug Thompson)
 
When the station eventually changed to an easy listening format, Al Boliska made a surprising choice for his next gig.
 

 
The rock may have continued but Jack Kent Cooke became embroiled in a bizarre series of events involving WKBW and KRLA in Los Angeles that eventually led to CKEY being put up for sale.
 


 
In the end, it was Cooke’s plan to head to the U.S. that spelled the end of ’EY as a rock station.
 

It finally went to a new owner for big bucks in 1961.
 

The format went from the “Silver Dollar Survey” to a shade of gray, as CKEY shifted to MOR. They soon went after CFRB in a big way, appointing Keith Rich as their longtime morning man. But as it turns out, this wasn’t his first go round at the station, as this blurb from 1962 proves.
 

 
They also went about hiring well known names to populate a rapidly growing newsroom.
 

 
Among the famous voices that called 590 home over the years: Pierre Berton, Charles Templeton, Stephen Lewis, Ian Brownlee, Bob Crabbe and Tom Gould.
 

 
Pete McGarvey was a wonderful man who did a wonderful job on air.
 

And then there was morning newscaster Joe Morgan, with whom I had exactly one run-in around 1977.
 

It started when my late grandmother – whose own mom ran a rooming house on Parliament St. – told me that Morgan had once stayed there. “He was a bum!” she told me in a very frank way. I started my career in the ’EY newsroom, located at the top of the Toronto Star Building, and one day, when Morgan had finished his morning news, he walked by this newcomer with a newspaper folded under his arm.
 
I wanted to see if what my grandmother had told me was true. So I timidly approached him. “Hey, Mr. Morgan,” I said. “My grandmother told me you once lived in her mother’s rooming house.”
 
I’ll never forget his response.
 
“I never lived in the slums!” he shouted at me in a voice that sounded like rough sandpaper mixed with gargled glass, before ending with, “I’m going to the shithouse.” And with that he walked out of the newsroom and I never spoke to him again.
 
Nor did I want to.
 
CKEY tried endlessly to branch out. In the early 60s, it desperately wanted to get a Toronto TV station.
 

 
And it also tried to start a record company.
 

In the end, the MOR was no more and CKEY tried country, oldies and others, but nothing worked. The station switched frequencies with CJCL, with the former moving to 1430 and the latter taking over 590 as The Fan. By this time called CKYC, the station was sold to Fairchild, a company that would turn it into CHKT – still on the air as an all Chinese language radio format.   
 
It was a sad ending for a station that had been a big player on Toronto airwaves since 1924.
 

 
One last weird mystery. Some here will remember when CKEY proposed a swap with all news CKO, hoping to change its 590 frequency to 99.1. It didn’t go through and although CKEY desperately wanted an FM station, it never happened. Which leads to this question: whatever became of the one they were awarded back in 1949?
 

Special thanks again to Doug Thompson, for his terrific additions to this week’s Instant Replay. Next week, Radio: The Way We Were - some things about Toronto’s early radio dial you may never have known.