Chuck Dunaway

Chuck and Kendall visit with the Bush family in Houston (click photos for larger views)

The Way I Remember It (Episode Ten)

It is amazing to hear from all the radio people who got started in the
business in ways similar to mine. At the beginning of my career, I thought
anyone who wanted to do radio work could do so if they tried hard enough,
but after a while, I learned that not everyone had the ability. Some of us
were "naturals", while some of us had to work harder to get it done.  But
we were a unique group, to be sure.

I've always believed the privilege of communicating on the radio was
tremendously important, and was never to be taken lightly or abused. I was
aware that to eliminate negatives from my rap would leave only positives,
and that's what I concentrated on. Everyone has a down day, but to let
your down day come across on the air could cost you listeners, who think you
should always feel great.  And they want you to make them feel the same
way. Norm Wain said it best: "The guy driving home listening to his car
radio is worried about paying the bills and needs radio to give him relief  from those   thoughts."

I always felt that if I could knock on every door and talk to the people
one-on-one, I could convince them to listen to my program. I think I've
tried that a few times, too. Radio has always been a 24-hour-a-day job for
me. And it was exhilarating to stand in the control room with your
headphones on, knowing that in a minute you would open the microphone and
speak to thousands, who were listening in houses and cars all over town.
What a wonderful gift you've received when you're allowed to be "on the  radio."

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Fort Worth was a medium-sized market, and KXOL was Fort Worth's most
popular station in 1954, when I was given the opportunity to work there.
Up  the road about 35 miles was Dallas, and KLIF, where program director Don
Keyes was Gordon McLendon's right-hand man. One afternoon, I decided to
drive to KLIF to show Mr. Keyes what Kent and I had done with the KXOL
printed record survey. I arrived at KLIF without warning, while Don, who
did afternoon drive, was still on the air. The lady at the front desk told
Don I was there and, to my surprise, he recognized my name and asked her
to show me to the control room.

So there I stood in the control room of KLIF, much similar to ours at
KXOL.  But it felt different because it was Dallas, and it felt different
because it was KLIF.

Don was very nice and paid me several compliments on my air work. I showed
him our survey and he asked to keep a copy. After about forty-five minutes
of watching Don on the air and visiting during the music, it was time for
the news, and time for me to head back to Fort Worth.

I had noticed that Don played his own records on the air.  He kept them in
a metal box made especially for 45s. The box was red, with a white cover.
I  had to have one just like it, and I found it at Big State Record 
Distributors, where they gave me one as a gift. Now I had my own records
and record container, just like Don Keyes.

The records were placed in numbered dividers based on their relative
popularity. All stations assigned numbers to records based on requests,
Billboard Magazine, the opinions of station personnel, or a combination of
all those factors. But as far as I know, in late 1954 or early 1955 KXOL
printed the first radio station survey, and it was a "top twenty" list.

One of the early surveying methods implemented by McLendon and Todd Storz,
who originated the Top 40 format, was to obtain the actual number of times
songs were played on juke boxes. McLendon's stations would have their own
survey sheets, which evolved tremendously over the years. Across the
nation they were called by many names: "Top 40 Survey", "Forty Star Survey",
"Silver Dollar Survey" "Million Dollar Survey", "Good Guy Survey", and
many other variations.

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About three weeks after my visit to KLIF, I received a call from Don
Keyes, saying they wanted me to join the McLendon organization and move to
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The pay was $120 a week, and they would pay all
moving expenses for my family of three (which soon became a family of four
with the birth of my beautiful and very smart daughter, whom we named
Julie). Even though I was receiving new blessings in the form of lovely
children, I was still just a kid of 19 years, well aware that my loved
ones needed me to feed, clothe and protect them. I felt I'd better start making
some money, and soon. I gave the usual two weeks' notice, and it was
"Goodbye Fort Worth, hello Milwaukee." We arrived with just a few pieces
of  furniture, but soon acquired enough to fill a two-bedroom apartment in the
northern section of that city with the great German heritage.

McLendon had purchased the frequency of WEMP 1340, and had taken over the
WEMP studios. WEMP was issued another frequency, 1250, on which they could
operate with more power, and they moved their number-one rated DJ staff
into better studios. McLendon had purchased only the 1340 frequency, not
the WEMP call letters, so our call letters became WRIT: a new station with
a new air staff, on a well-used frequency. WEMP had some powerhouse
personalities, including Shamus O'Hara and others. They were good, and the
city loved them. But WRIT was going to be different, with less personality
-- except in the morning -- and a lot more music.  Downplaying
personalities was unusual for radio in that period, but it was part of the
approach that made McLendon the marquee name in radio broadcasting for
years.

Program director Gene Edwards gave me the leeway to play some
rhythm-and-blues on my nightly 7:00-10:00 program to test how it worked.

It worked like a charm.

It wasn't long before I had a fan club, lots of fans, and great ratings.
Tom Snyder, who was attending Marquette University, was our night reporter
in the WRIT news cruiser.

News cruisers were an important part of the McLendon formula: we'd break
into music programming with reports from traffic-accident locations, or
any other stories the reporters felt were significant. The exciting intro
often gave the news break-ins more importance than they deserved, beginning with
a tympani roll and the powerful, deep voice of Joe Long: "First News First
 . . . from W-R-I-T mobile news unit number 5! Here's Tom Snyder with
 another W-R-I-T on-the-scene news report!" Each reporter had his own
intro, and we assigned various numbers to the news cruisers from which they
reported, although in reality, the station owned only one mobile news
unit.

WRIT was an exciting radio station, and my program was extra-hot, because
was cleared to play rhythm-and-blues music, which the other guys weren't
allowed to do. Tom Snyder has mentioned several times on national TV that
"Chuck Dunaway would play this black music at night, and all day the
phones would light up wondering why the rest of the station wasn't playing the
same music as he did." Tom and Little Richard talked about this phenomenon
on one of Tom's last network shows.

I encountered Tom at The Palm restaurant in Los Angeles many years later,
and we had a nice visit about those years. Tom had such fond memories of
the station that he bought the foot-and-a-half-tall WRIT call letters from
the side of the building, and displays them at his home in Los Angeles.
Those were great years. And it didn't take long for WRIT to beat our
competition in the ratings.

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One day, Dot Records sent Pat Boone to Milwaukee to do one of our teen
hops at the YMCA. Pat came by the station before the show, and we talked about
Fort Worth and how good things were going for us both now. The hop was a
big success.  Then Pat mentioned that he had to get an early flight out of
Chicago the next day, and was having trouble getting to the Chicago
airport that early. In those days, no record promotion people hung around to
attend  to the needs of their artists. So I volunteered to get up at 4:00 a.m. and
drive Pat to the airport in Chicago.

Not too many years later I'd see Pat again and he wouldn't recognize
me.  Ain't that a shame.

Thanks for reading.

Edited by Stacy Richardson

© 2003 Chuck Dunaway
All Rights Reserved