Solid Gold Sunday is back

Formerly heard on KSHN-FM, the local oldies favorite is now available online at HoustonRadioPlatinum.com every Sunday 6-9 p.m. with Andy Waldrop playing music of the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

As before, his show will feature songs by Pat Boone, Buddy Holly, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and many more rock and roll classics.

Waldrop started his career in radio in 1992 working for CBS Radio in Houston, where he remained for 8 years and then worked 11 years as PM Shift Producer for Nokia Traffic. During that time he also worked for a variety of Houston stations, including KIKK and KILT, among others. In 2013, the year he went to work for Salem Communications, Waldrop was inducted into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame.

“I would go to work with my dad a lot when I was younger, and there wasn’t a whole bunch for me to do, so I would kind of just… stay in the car and listen to the radio,” Waldrop said recalling how he first became interested in radio. “I’d hear the guys on the radio, and we’re talking like late 50s, early to mid-60s, and they were playing all this cool music, and they sounded like they were having fun.”

“I thought, you know, this is pretty cool stuff. So I thought I might want to do this some day, and I started my record collecting about that time, thinking, I’m going to get all of these records and one day I’ll have my own radio station and I’ll have all the music here. I won’t need to go and search for a lot of old music because I’ll already have it.”

Then, when he was a little older, Waldrop said, he realized, “Wow, they pay these guys to do this.”

“What more fun can you have than acting a fool on the radio, and playing all this cool music and getting paid for it? So I thought, ‘Yeah, I’m going to do this.’”

That being on the radio might lead the girls to think “Hey, this guy’s a rock star” is what Waldrop said clenched it for him as a career choice.

“The first time I was ever on the air was in Houston,” he said. Then Waldrop worked a couple of positions at a college station in San Antonio. He has since been in radio, on the air or working other radio station jobs, off and on for 50 years at stations in McKinney, Free Port, Bay City and elsewhere, including Liberty’s old AM station.

He remembers KIKK and particularly KILT in Houston as the best places he worked. Waldrop was sidekick for Rowdy Yates and traffic reporter for Yates’ very popular and highly rated show.

Unable to pick a favorite song, Waldrop ran down a list of his favorite artists.

“I have a bunch of favorites. I like just about everything that Ray Charles came out with, his country flavored music from the early to mid-60s and before that his R&B flavored stuff. I loved everything Nat King Cole ever did. Loved everything the Beatles ever did. Love everything the Moody Blues ever did.”

Solid Gold Sunday made its first online broadcast last Sunday on HoustonRadioPlatinum.com and will be on again this Sunday.