Jaz McKay

Early life

Jaz McKay was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and grew up after the age of ten (10) in Midland, Texas and Houston. He graduated from Northbrook High School in 1976.

At the age of eighteen, he moved from Houston, Texas to Los Angeles, California to pursue a career in acting and comedy. He was a regular at various comedy clubs on open mic nights.

McKay worked as an extra on several low budget films. He never made any impact or attracted any attention from producers. He attended a broadcasting school and in 1979 began his career in radio

Radio Career

Jaz McKay began his professional radio career at KHJ in Los Angeles when he was hired as an associate producer on the Rick Dees show in 1977. At the time all he knew was he wanted to entertain. He didn’t know what venue would be best suited for him. But after watching Rick Dees do a four hour morning radio show each morning Jaz decided this was his calling. He was fascinated watching it actually unfold before his eyes. He knew then that broadcasting was his future. Rick and his wife and producer Julie helped him produce his first audition tape and McKay began the search for his first real show.

Jaz worked for a few years in various time slots at several stations in California using different “air names” (Danny Daniels, Dan West and The Insane Michael Kane) but didn't receive the chance to host his own morning program until 93.3 KZOZ in San Luis Obispo, California hired him in 1979 for the 6 to 10am time slot. Station owner Gary Owens, and Program Director Mark Driscol gave him the chance to be the rock and roll wake up voice for the Central Coast. And that was the true beginning.

Over the next five years Jaz worked hard to perfect a commercially successful act that would also provide him the artistic freedom he desired. Jaz moved from one market to another until landing the morning show at KLRZ in Salt Lake City using the name Dan McKay, where he put together a group of comedians and local actors as a support staff for his Z-Morning Zoo, all the while continuing to work as a host at the local comedy clubs.

Jaz was then lured away to WQUE in New Orleans, and then on to WHQT in Miami. After a few years in South Florida McKay became somewhat disillusioned with the state of morning radio and decided to reinvent himself.

There was a change coming in radio and McKay picked up on it in 1987. He believed the days of "caned laughter" and goofy sound effects was going by the wayside and would be replaced with a more reality based radio program.

McKay began his search for a station willing to allow him to produce his vision for a morning show for the future. He found that station in the capitol city of Michigan.

WMMQ in Lansing was a six thousand watt classic rocker with a tiny share of the target demo of Men 25-54. When McKay signed on in the summer of 1988 for morning drive and the role of Assistant Program Director, few gave his new brand of "Reality Radio" much of a chance but when the first ratings book came out they all had to eat their words.

garnered an 11 share with Men 25-54 up from a 1.4, placing it in the top three most listened to morning shows in Lansing.

McKay's blend of raunchy jokes and an almost anti radio rhetoric had struck a serious cord with the working hard, playing hard blue collar male radio listeners in Michigan’s capitol city.

McKay was challenged from all sides of the political spectrum in those years in Michigan. Liberals and Conservatives alike all took their turns trying to silence "The Mouth" as he was referred. Jaz McKay’s politically incorrect material was too much for both right wingers and lefties to stomach. But the ratings continued to grow like a weed on a hot summer’s day. Eventually he hit number one all persons 12+ with a whopping 28 share of the audience.

McKay's sense of adventure soon took over and he found himself leaving the snow capped highways and byways of mid-Michigan and the daily grind of a morning radio show for the endless road of comedy clubs in the west and southern portions of the country.

He toured California, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico and Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. Nightly, he found himself doing his act at clubs called The Funny Bone, Punchlines, Cartoons, and Laffers.

On the road an unproven act starts at the bottom, working as the MC or the opening act. Jaz eventually made it up to the middle act and making decent money, but not what he was used to earning in radio. In the end it wasn’t fulfilling enough for him and Jaz missed the radio airwaves. So he decided to give broadcasting another try.

After leaving radio for a few years and working in night clubs Mckay discovered it was difficult to re-enter broadcasting. You see, radio is an unforgiving mistress and when you take any time off for whatever reason it’s sometimes hard to re-enter the business without taking a few career steps back.

In 1992 after a few weeks of sending out resumes and tapes he found himself accepting a morning show/programming gig in the South Pacific Micronesian Islands on Guam.

Jaz McKay shifted the format from CHR to Urban and catapulted KZGZ from fifth place to number one in three short months. The South sea island however was just to small to hold his interest long and in late 1993 he traveled back to Lansing and WMMQ.

Around that same time he decided to try his hand at television and that same year he debuted the “Jaz McKay Show” on a local station. A live weekly one hour broadcast, it received numerous awards and was the number one show on the campus of Michigan State University.

In late 1994 South Florida again came calling in the form of an offer from talk radio giant WIOD in Miami. The next year program director Gary Bruce took McKay with him to WWWE in Cleveland. And when Gary Bruce left a year later so did Jaz.

McKay wound up in Lansing again, this time at WVIC. A year later he was fired by WVIC after they lured the popular morning show Tim and Deb from WJXQ. McKay's old friend Ted Nugent called looking for someone to CO-host his morning show at WWBR in Detroit. So Jaz took the gig and had a hell of a good damn time working with The Motor City Madman on the “Commando Radio Show.”

Once again the format change monster rears it's ugly head and WWBR’s owners flipped from Classic Rock to Urban and sent both Jaz and Ted back to the Michigan hinterlands.

That was when Jaz wound up looking for something new, and something old. This time he headed back to the town that started it all, San Luis Obispo, California, and the same station he began his morning show career KZOZ.

In 2001 Jaz left California to return to Houston to help care for his ailing mother. While there he became the voice of Advance Auto Parts and worked for ADV Films voicing Japanese Anime.

In 2003 Jaz McKay moved to Fresno to work at 580 KMJ, and from there to Bakersfield and 1560 KNZR entertaining audiences from noon till three every afternoon.

In 2008 Jaz made the national news (MSNBC) who reported on his fake Obama '08 campaign signs on his website that say "Obama '08 Hope, Change, Dead Honkys". His station, 1560 KNZR, is quoted as saying it was a joke about the racial components of the presidential campaign and they "didn't mean to offend anyone".

The latest controversy involving Jaz McKay is a so called joke he made on his show. He told listeners on October 21 2008 that because of high voter turnout in the election the Federal Election Committee was changing the voting laws. All Republicans should vote on Tuesday November 4th and Democrats on Wednesday November 5th.

Here's what the local newspaper The Bakersfield Californian had to say:

"Kern County's elections chief had to ask a radio station Wednesday to quit misleading the public about when to vote.

County elections got more than 15 calls after Jaz McKay reportedly recycled the old voter suppression tactic of announcing that turnout is expected to be so high that Republicans are being urged to vote Nov. 4 and Democrats Nov. 5.

Election Day is Nov. 4.

Elections chief Sandy Brockman called KNZR 1560 AM management to ask that McKay stop putting out the bogus information. Management said it would.

McKay refused to apologize and is quoted as saying, "If you're so dumb as to think I was serious you are too stupid to be voting in the first place."

Some have said McKay is trying to suppress Democrat voter turn out and should be investigated by the FBI."

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