Music Man Altered Listening Tastes on Kansas City Radio

Is there no end to Wilt Chamberlain stories? Now, he’s telling us how he changed the music tastes of Kansas City in the 1950s.

Recalling his days at the University of Kansas when he had his own radio show, he said: “I was the only disc jockey going on three stations at the same time. ‘Flippin’ with the Dipper’ was the name of my show, a half-hour program heard in Kansas City, Lawrence and Topeka. I was my own engineer, too.”

He said he introduced the natives to the new sounds from his hometown, Philadelphia.

“I’d get these really hep sounds from my sisters back home, the hits that were happening in Philly,” he said. “In Kansas City, they were heavy into country sounds. They were into Patsy Cline, and I brought them the Chantelles. And I started playing Elvis. Those Kansans would be writing in saying how much they liked the bebop, rock ‘n’ roll stuff.”

The suspicion would be that Chamberlain didn’t spend much time in class at Kansas, but he said: “I got an education from the business school, because they didn’t just shuffle you along because you were an All-American.”

Trivia Time: When the Raiders beat the Washington Redskins, 38-9, in the 1984 Super Bowl, who scored the first touchdown? (Answer below.)

Joe Paterno, the No. 1 celebrity at the American Football Coaches Assn. convention in San Diego, recalled attending his first convention in Dallas in 1950.

“I got on an elevator with Frank Leahy, Bud Wilkinson and Wally Butts,” he said. “I was going to the fifth floor. They were going to the eighth floor. I was so excited to hear what they had to say to each other that I rode up the extra three floors and then back down.”

The way Mark Jackson tells it, Denver actually got an assist from those barking Cleveland fans who were throwing dog biscuits at the Broncos before the game Sunday.

Said Jackson of his game-tying reception from John Elway: “You should have seen all the dog biscuits in that end zone. I think it helped us. It gave me better traction.”

From Marty Noble of Newsday: “Sick of those silly, long and rarely funny messages people record for their telephone answering machines? Then you’ll appreciate the message on one of Reggie Jackson’s California telephones: ‘This is Reggie. I ain’t here. Leave a message.’ ”

Pat Summerall, recalling the 49-yard field goal he kicked in 1958 to beat the Cleveland Browns, 13-10, and put the New York Giants into the playoffs, told Stan Isaacs of Newsday: “Late in the game, with the score tied, Charlie Conerly threw deep to Alex Webster and hit him in the numbers, but Webster dropped the ball. That would have won it for us, so ever since, Webster tells me that if it weren’t for his dropping the pass, I would never have had the chance to come in and win the game and become famous and go on to broadcasting.

“After that, Coach Jim Lee Howell said, ‘Go for a field goal.’ Vince Lombardi, who was an assistant coach then, said, ‘We can’t make it.’ I went out to the huddle and Conerly said to me, ‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ Talk about your confidence-builders. I kicked it toward the closed end of Yankee Stadium. I knew I hit it well and it was far enough. In the celebrating afterward I remember Lombardi telling me, ‘You s.o.b., you know you can’t kick that far.’ ”

Trivia Answer: Derrick Jensen. He blocked a punt by Washington’s Jeff Hayes and recovered it in the end zone for a touchdown.

Quotebook

George Martin, 33, of the New York Giants, saying he still can’t believe he’s going to the Super Bowl: “I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and we’ll be 3-12-1.”