KMPX 106.9, San Francisco
Larry Miller Handbill
Circa February 1967

The original disc jockey at pioneering free-form FM station KMPX (106.9) in the February 1967 was Larry Miller, who also served as the artist for this handbill advertising his all-night show on the station, for which he earned $45 a week. Described in Susan Krieger's monumental history of the station, "Hip Capitalism," as "comic in personality and eclectic in musical style," Miller simply referred to his approach as "Folk Rock," as further proclaimed here in the flowing letters surrounding the central photograph on the bill.

It was Miller, selecting music randomly from whatever category struck his fancy at the moment — rock, folk, classical, jazz — and adding his own comments on the sounds without regard to a format-dictated "hot clock," that led to Tom Donahue's arrival at KMPX in April 1967 and the subsequent expansion of the "underground" programming style at the station.

Miller remained at KMPX following a strike by station personnel which eventually landed many of them at KSFR (94.9), which shortly thereafter became KSAN. After KMPX, Miller (pictured in 2006, near right) was a core member of Detroit's progressive WABX air team in the early 1970s, and later earned his master's degree in education from Cambridge College. He has been teaching courses in radio, speech and communications at the New England Institute of Art since 1979.

SOURCE: Bay Area Radio Museum Collection, courtesy of the artist.

RELATED EXHIBITS:

• Broadcast: Tom Donahue on KMPX FM 107, May 5 1967

• Broadcast: Edward Bear on KMPX FM 107, October 11, 1967