Skip Nelson was a student at Suitland High School in the mid '60's. Late in December 1965, he visited the station to interview several of the DJs including Bob Raleigh (Paul Carmen), Harv Moore, Marvelous Marv Brooks, Dean Griffith (Larry James), Gentleman Jim Madison (Bob Benson) and news guy, MacNamara. The interview was published in his school newspaper on January 12, 1966. You can read the article here.

Soon afterwards, he got his start on the air at the University of Maryland's WMUC (as at least half of Washington radio personnel did!) where he was Music Director for three years. While in school he did weekends at WINX then went to WSID (later WLPL) in Baltimore before returning to WINX where he later became Program Director, Music Director and morning man. He later managed Variety Records in Wheaton Plaza.

In 1981 when Scott Shannon left WPGC for Q105 in Tampa, Program Director, Steve Kingston who had succeeded Shannon hired Skip to do the Sunday Night Oldies Show (ironically, it had been Skip who had first hired Kingston at WINX years before).

In the Fall of 1982 the asinine decision by station management to change the format to Adult Contemporary was made. Steve Kingston was out as Program Director and along with his ouster, Skip soon left too.

By 1983, 'American Top 40' had been relegated to Sunday nights and the Oldies Show moved to Saturday nights where it was hosted by Lee Chambers.

On this brief aircheck the night of the Fourth of July, 1982, Skip mentions the WPGC 'Coke Is It' 4th of July Summer T-shirts. Over 10,000 of these had been distributed on the Mall for the Beach Boys concert that day, much to the chagrin of Q107.

Curiously, for a station that had such a wealth of jingles over the years, era appropriate ones were not being used on the Oldies show as they later were. And dry segues between the songs (highly atypical of the era) were heard. The one WPGC 'Whisper Drop' played exiting a commercial set was from a package created by JAM in 1980.

Sadly, Skip passed away on 02/18/19 at 70 after suffering a seizure.

Special thanks to Matt Craig of Big Apple Airchecks.com for the above.

 

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