on air staff...

byron tucker

“I love Beach Music” I’m Henry and Doris Tucker’s oldest boy. Grew up, well, somewhat grown up, in Burlington, N.C. I used to listen to Cousin’ Brucie on WABC in New York. Big John R. way down south in Nashville, Tn. on WLAC. And, the Fat Daddy in Raleightown, Charlie Brown on Channel 85 WKIX. So I thought, “I can do that. Maybe not as good, but, I can do that.” My first radio job was ‘part time announcer’ at a local Burlington radio station when I was a junior at Williams High School in 1969. Okay, so now you know. I couldn’t wait until somebody got sick so I could work. We played the Top 40 which included some music that later became known as ‘Beach Music’. In January of 2003 I began another career. Working mornings on Oldies & Beach 920 AM WPCM and loving every minute of it. I do the ‘Oldies and Beach Morning Show’ Monday through Friday from 6a to 10a. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Well, except maybe for a trip to the beach. But, I love coming in early and starting the day with our listeners. Thanks for reading and listening, “I Love Beach Music”   Email Byron.

charlie brown

Charlie has been called the heart and soul of WKIX Radio. He hosted the popular evening time slot from 1964 until 1970 on WKIX Channel 85 in Raleigh. . Charlie became a favorite DJ of WKIX listeners and regularly hosted dances and emceed concerts with the other KIX Men of Music in Triangle during the sixties. He and the guys introduced such legends as Bob Hope, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, Jackie Wilson, Jerry Butler, The Supremes, Ray Charles, Gene Pitney, Sonny and Cher, and many others. His 1967 Anniversary show with the Showmen, the Tams, the Embers, and Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs was the first Beach Music show and dance in the area and sold out Memorial Auditorium. Charlie worked with Atlantic records to produce the first two Beach Music albums, Beach Beat Volumes 1 and 2. Upon leaving the air at the end of 1970, Charlie went into WKIX Radio sales eventually becoming the General Manager of WKIX. Along with Larry Crockett and Barrie Bergman, he was a partner in Beach Beat Records and the company was among the first to sell Beach Music albums and tapes using television advertising. He was the first disc jockey inducted into the Carolina Beach Music Hall of Fame and serves on the Cammy Advisory Board. He is on the air weekdays from 10a-2p playing the best beach and oldies music on Oldies & Beach 920 AM WPCM!  Email Charlie.

dee brockwell

Although I studied to become a Radio Engineer, and received my FCC License in Norfolk Virginia in the mid 1970’s, I have done most anything in the broadcasting world that you can imagine throughout my career! One of my first jobs was flying in a Cessna 150 delivering morning and afternoon traffic reports for WRNL/WRXL in Richmond Virginia. I helped contribute comical voices to the original Robert W. Murphy in the Morning Show with Larry Sprinkle in Charlotte, NC. I eventually landed as comedy co-host to legendary Jack Armstrong’s morning show on WMQX-Oldies 93 in Greensboro. Along the way, I have been a news director, a contributing reporter for WRVA Richmond, VA, and worked in news for WZTK 101 FM and WUNC Chapel Hill. I married into co-owning an Advertising Agency in Charlotte, NC and I have been General Manager of two AM Stations. “I love cars” and “I love music” …” so my current positions are the best of both worlds!” I help manage the Internet Department of Bill Black Chevrolet Cadillac but they let me out of my cubicle to come host the afternoons here at Oldies and Beach 920 AM WPCM. It’s a winning combo of doing what I love. I have two grown sons who are still the apples my eye! They are out on their own, leaving me and my husband John Brockwell, who has a profound career in the world of Sports production  – to reside in Alamance County with our two Standard Poodles, one Australian Shepherd, one gray American Housecat and all the wildlife. This year, the owls and the frogs seem to outnumber everyone else!  Email Dee

carson johnson

I grew up listening to Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Eric Clapton, and George Jones. My earliest memory is hearing The Devil Went Down To Georgia on the radio in my mom’s car, so I was pretty much destined to be involved in music. Later I tossed in a heavy dose of blues and Motown and, just to annoy my parents, a fair amount of Pink Floyd and Nirvana. Somewhere in there I discovered Beach Music through The Chairmen of The Board and The Drifters. I think I was drawn to beach music because it seemed to fit my life long dream of becoming a beach bum. Preferably a rich Beach Bum.

I started in radio when I was eighteen and a senior in high school. I walked in to the studios of 101.1 WKXU and 920 WPCM and asked Byron Tucker and Gails Stuckey for a job. Since radio people have never been famed for good decision making, they hired me and thus began my career in radio. A year later, I graduated from Western Alamance and headed to East Carolina University where I didn’t have any fun at all because there is absolutely nothing to do in Greenville. If only I had gone to some sort of a party school instead. Ostensibly I was there to study Communications, but somewhere along the way I discovered English majors drink more beer and meet more women than communications majors, so I switched to an English Literature and Creative Writing degree, started drinking dark beer and scotch, and tried very hard to smoke a pipe. It didn’t take me long to discover pipe tobacco doesn’t taste as good as it smells, and lighting the thing takes forever.

I continued to work at WKXU and WPCM over the summers, and my sophomore year at ECU took my first on air job at the student radio station, 91.3 WZMB. I spent a very strange year playing “World Music” on Saturday mornings and filling in for any of the other DJs every chance I got. I still don’t know what “World Music” is, but my persistence paid off and I soon started doing a blues show every weekday and a classic rock show Sunday nights. From there my deep love affair with the blues really took off. After college I came back to work at what had become 101.1 WZTK and 920 AM WPCM before leaving for my first big on air gig in south Georgia at Country 92.9 WAAC out of Valdosta. I met some very close friends down there, but after about six months I started to fully understand that Steve Jarrell song “I’ve Still Got Sand In My Shoes”, three years ago I came home to WPCM where I now reside in the evenings from 6:00 to 8:00, occasionally in the mornings when Byron is on vacation, and during the day in my office as production manager. Today not much has changed: I still have a bluesman’s heart , still enjoy dark beer, still listen to weird music and like to quote Dickens on occasion, but I feel I am closer than ever to my dream of being a beach bum. Also, I just checked, I really do still have sand in my boots from my last trip to the beach.  Email Carson.