Elvis died a sad death at home in Memphis 38 years ago this month. He dies again in Hamilton come Labour Day.

We'll also say goodbye to the Supremes, Roy Orbison, Chuck Berry, the Four Tops, the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Buddy Holly, the Four Seasons, Aretha.

After playing rock and roll since the music began, CKOC Oldies 1150 will start putting the jukebox to sleep at noon on Thursday of next week, Sept. 3.

It will take a few days, because the end comes with a final edition of the Big 500 Countdown. And then CKOC, on the air since 1922, surrenders to sports. All day every day. You will scarcely hear the historic call letters anymore. The station becomes TSN 1150.

I mourn the loss. But numbers are down. And advertisers don't much care about over-55s. We're not buying enough stuff.

I've been around long enough to have AM ears. I like hearing those old songs at the same moment as thousands of others. Perhaps we share some memories.

I was happy to read a piece in View magazine last month. Musician Steve McKay, who I know for a fact isn't much past 30, talked about his influences:

"The Beach Boys, the Righteous Brothers, Simon and Garfunkel — that's where all this music comes from. I grew up listening only to Oldies 1150 … People listened not just for nostalgia, but because the music was so good — it was a golden era."

In the early days, CKOC aired old dramas and comedies, and broadcast the Eaton's Good Club live from downtown Hamilton for 20 years. But TV forced radio to find a new life. And in the spring of 1960, CKOC shocked some but delighted more by switching to rock and roll. (To ease the transition, they played four hymns each morning.)

The format was Top 40, but eventually FM came along with a fuller sound. By the early '90s, the CKOC ratings were in the basement. So on Valentine's Day, 1992, the station started playing the oldies.

City councillor Jason Farr was a deejay at Oldies 1150, not even born when many of the songs were hits. He didn't try to fake it, just delivered the energy the tunes deserved.

Mike Nabuurs has been around CKOC for 26 years, a morning man now. But he'll soon go behind the scenes, as program director for Bell Media's TSN 1150. It carries Ticat games, and will add the Raptors, the Leafs, and a noon-to-seven made-in-Hamilton sports show.

Old CKOC transmission towers came down this spring on the outskirts of Caledonia, and six new ones went up. With 50,000 watts, the station pushes east to Oshawa, north to Barrie.

Sports is exclusive appointment listening, Nabuurs points out, whereas there are other ways to hear the Eagles. Downloading, perhaps. Or satellite radio.

Some Oldies fans just won't hear their tunes anymore. Certainly not on Hamilton AM stations — they don't play music anymore. Some people may wander over to Toronto's AM740, which honours the music of decades past — a station where you can hear everything from Ernie K-Doe's Mother-in-Law to Etta James' timeless At Last.

Nabuurs says radio format changes usually come with no notice. "But CKOC is not a station where you can just turn it off and walk away. We needed to pay tribute."

So one more Big 500 is now being compiled. Rock 'n' Ray Michaels and Ted Yates will show up for the final countdown. So will longtime program director Nevin Grant, who has a book coming out soon called Growing Up With The Hits.

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No word what No. 1 will be. Maybe Satisfaction. Or Pretty Woman. Or Hey Jude. Or, from Elvis, Can't Help Falling in Love.

The plan is to hit the top around 6 p.m. on Sept. 6, the Sunday of the Labour Day weekend. When the Cats kick off against Toronto the next day, Canada's oldest continuously-operating radio station will show rock and roll the door for ever more.