At one time, this radio station’s motto was “The Station You Grew Up Listening To.” For many Angelenos, including me, that slogan was absolutely true. For nearly forty years, KRLA specialized in music from the 1950s and 1960s, becoming a beloved part of Southern California culture.

1110 AM KRLA began as a music station in 1959. It played the rock and roll hits of the day and was often considered one of the best stations of its kind in the country. Legendary DJs such as Casey Kasem and Art Laboe worked there, with Laboe famously coining the phrase “Oldies but Goodies.” As the years went by, the station expanded its playlist. By the 1970s, KRLA was playing music from across the rock era and became the go-to station for everything from Elvis Presley to Elton John.

That format continued until 1984. As Top 40 stations gradually left the AM dial, KRLA decided to focus on the music that had first made it popular. The station dropped most of its newer songs and concentrated on music from the 1950s and 1960s, with a few early 1970s tracks mixed in. This was the version of KRLA that I grew up with.

I was six years old in 1988 when I first began paying attention to the music my parents listened to in the car. As I discovered which songs I liked, KRLA quickly became the soundtrack of my childhood. Elvis Presley and The Beatles felt much more grown up and exciting than “The Wheels on the Bus” or “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.”

Whenever I was in the car, I wanted to listen to KRLA. No talk radio, no other music stations—just KRLA. I listened to it at home as well. Before long, I knew most of the major pop hits of the late 1950s and 1960s, except for some of the traditional pop songs that oldies stations rarely played.

Sometimes I would hear a song for the first time and instantly love it. I often connected those songs to whatever was happening in my life at the moment. One example was “Jennie Lee,” with its memorable “ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba” refrain. I thought the arrangement sounded mysterious and fascinating. My mother was driving me to Burger King when I first heard it, and when we arrived, I was given an extra chicken tender. To this day, I associate that song with unexpectedly getting an extra piece of something.

Other songs became linked to specific dates. “A Lover’s Concerto,” with its charming vocals and melody inspired by Bach, will always remind me of March 15. Likewise, The Beach Boys’ “Surfin’,” with its catchy chant of “ba-ba-di-dit-di-dit,” reminds me of January 2, when my father drove me home from the zoo and I heard it for the first time.

As a young child, there were many lyrics I did not fully understand, leading to some amusing misheard lines. In “Why Do Fools Fall in Love,” when the singers ask, “Why do birds sing so gay?” I thought they were saying, “Why do birds sing okay?” In another song that referred to a “little wallflower on the shelf,” I somehow heard it as “ain’t no fire on the shelf.” Later in the song, I misinterpreted “she’s just a little wallflower” as “she stood for a limited time on the shelf.” Childhood ears can create some very creative interpretations.

Although my enthusiasm for KRLA occasionally drove my parents crazy, they enjoyed the music as well because it was the soundtrack of their generation. I constantly asked them what year they had first heard certain songs. Whenever my father came home from work, I would ask if he had heard any of my favorites on the radio.

“Did you hear ‘Rockin’ Robin?’”

“Did you hear ‘Then He Kissed Me?’”

As I grew older, my mother introduced me to many other styles of music, including Israeli music, classical music, and the songs of Edith Piaf. In many ways, she broadened my appreciation for different forms of older music. Current pop music was not something my parents followed closely, so I would not become familiar with it until later. My father, however, remained loyal to KRLA, and I continued listening along with him.

By the time I reached middle school, KRLA had evolved into more of an urban oldies station rather than one focused strictly on 1960s pop and rock and roll. Through the station, I received an education in 1970s R&B and even some songs from the 1980s, including music by artists who would later appear on The Able Show. Because I still thought of KRLA as an oldies station, I was surprised to learn how recent some of these songs actually were. The station generally avoided the heavily synthesized tracks that immediately sounded like the 1980s, which made the music feel older than it really was.

During the summer of 1996, KRLA briefly rebranded itself as “Oldies and More,” adding a handful of current hits to the playlist. I enjoyed hearing artists such as Toni Braxton and Celine Dion mixed in with the classics, but many listeners did not. Within a few months, the station returned to its traditional oldies format.

Unfortunately, KRLA’s audience had been declining for years. On November 30, 1998, the station ended its run as a music outlet and became L.A. Talk 1110. A year later, the talk format moved to 870 AM and took the KRLA call letters with it.

KRLA spent its final day as a music station playing an unusually wide variety of songs, including many tracks that had not been heard on the station in years. At midnight, the music stopped, bringing an era to an end.

Although I had begun preferring K-Earth 101 by that point, and as a high school student was becoming more interested in the music of my own generation, I was still sad to see KRLA disappear. What made the station special was its variety. It did not limit itself to the 1960s pop heard on K-Earth or the R&B oldies featured on Hot 100.3—it played both. KRLA also aired many songs that other stations ignored, including forgotten jazz, rhythm and blues, and culturally significant recordings from the 1950s.

There once were many stations like KRLA that, while centered on a particular genre, still offered listeners a broad musical experience. Today, those stations are far less common. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 enabled greater corporate consolidation of radio ownership, and many broadcasters became increasingly focused on formats designed to maximize ratings rather than musical variety.

Even the concept of “oldies” has largely disappeared. There are no dedicated oldies stations left in Los Angeles. As the generation that grew up in the 1950s and 1960s has aged, many stations have shifted toward “classic hits” from the 1980s and 1990s. While I enjoy much of that music, many stations tend to repeat the same songs frequently, interrupted by long commercial breaks.

That is one reason I now seek out independent radio stations. They may be low-powered and sometimes difficult to receive, but they often offer a wider and more adventurous selection of music. In many ways, they come closer to capturing the spirit of what KRLA once was—a station that introduced listeners to great songs, preserved musical history, and became part of the soundtrack of their lives.