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Claude Hall
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Gone
and Also...
- a work in progress -
by Claude Hall
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A sketch of Claude
Hall,
circa 1976, by Chuck Blore
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So
many of us are gone today
Some merely walked away
Forgotten soldiers of a war
Others ran, convinced that they
Had better things to do than play
Records for an unseen crowd
Some of us will never leave
Believing in the magic wave
Unto distant belated grave
That opens for us suddenly
Behind our back, a mystery,
Before we've cued our final song
David Moorhead, son of a doctor to the pope,
Oft played, a child, in the Vatican's hallowed halls
With radio had the magic touch,
But perhaps loved radio much too much
Still prayed for the chance to spin again
Just before death caused hope to end
Sam Holman was found alone
Unknown, his Las Vegas apartment
No palace, and WABC
Distant bitter memory
Others - Gordon McLendon
Biff Collie
Murray (the K) Kaufman
Dick Starr
Buzz Lawrence
Al "Jazzbo" Collins
The Real Don Steele
Roger Barkley
Robert W. Morgan (May 22, 1998)
Fell to cancer's long goodbye
Bill Stewart, alone, suddenly
All too few wondered why
Billboard didn't remember his name
Most in radio said the same
Few, too, knew Detroit's real Bell Boy
Too many borrowed his fame
Thus he escaped, perhaps, the blame
Like others such as Alan Freed
Peter Tripp
Mel Leeds
And how many more found the game
Called because of mystic pain?
Though, most suspect, Jack just the same
Knew many ways in which to score
We all go, there's no doubt
Some with grace, some without
Some with a whimper
Some with a shout
Rick Sklar sought to repair a foot
So he could run in a New York race
But died of a hospital's mistake
Never saw a doctor's face
Jack G. Thayer's heart finally gave way
Like the hearts of Donahue (Tom)
Bloom (Howard)
Spector (Jack)
Duncan (George)
Jackson (Sammy)
Thayer's son Todd went more gloriously
If any death be less than vain
His glider crashed uproariously
On barren desert plain
He was buried in jogger's shorts
With a bottle of champagne
I know of no one who has outgrown the medium
It has always been the master of our fate and when
Mikel Hunter died (November 1997) of leukemia
Maybe it was actually from selling real estate, but then
The greatest tragedy may have been
When (Todd) Storz died at 29
I've heard it said his brain exploded
A cruel trick fate played that day
Once dead, his empire slowly eroded
Like his programming concepts, faded
Like his memory, degraded
Until they named him to the Hall of Fame
But prior to that, he stood the blame
For destroying radio's golden days
(It wasn't Todd, it was probably TV
Before the "wasteland" it was to be
Virtually permanently)
Todd, along with Gordon (and the help of Bill), actually saved
the medium
From a fate worse than Oral Roberts or Jimmy Swaggart
At least to some extent, at least for a while
And not even Ken Draper's renown goodbye to format
Has killed format yet, nor the "more music" of Bill
Drake and "even more" of Lee Abrams
God bid that Todd's format never dies
Like those of us passing by
Though we all die
Some die err fame wrecks us
Tommy Carl in Oklahoma
Dusty Rhoads in Texas
Don McKinnon in California
Emperor Bob Hudson in California
Take your choice-food, wreck or whiskey
Radio has always been a risky
Business; the pressure of wooing
Listeners seen vaguely now and again
At a record hop or center opening
Does some in and others out
Whether victim or winner, still a rout
What a price, fame.
Few like Willie B. (Williams) and Eddie Hill
Legends, as was Charlie Parker
Die well into their years.
Most who fade from glory
Die of the usual ratings story
Or wild, wild women and wilder living
Too much song and not enough giving
Thought to life.
Wolfman Jack, né Bob Smith, was
More than likely one of these
He howls no more.
Others still chase the grave
Down path dead white, soon grey
Then black, totally black, save
For the lucky few who always knew
What others sought could not be found
The world was square that they thought round.
Like others, I'm not the man I used to be
But I probably never was
Life has been a fantasy; all's left?
Vague names, call letters in nebulous memory
What I think I know-or knew-may not be so
Yes, I still remember Joe
A Boston jock, not a Laker fan or a record man
But Joe's alive, this tribute stays
To the not-so-honored gone
Once I knew without question that I knew
Everything that was worth the knowing
Now I know, again without question, that I know very little
And I've grown too old to chase the mysteries
Histories are more appropriate to my mien
Sadly, all that I am today, I've been.
True, the world has changed, but I have, too
For better or worse, Marconi's toy
I hear no more, but watch TV
And spend my time counting coup
On graves and memories like I do
Till someone else counts over me
We-those left-oft lament the beast
Never becoming in mind's eye
The abundant feast of music and news
It should have been, it could have been
Yet no other game was quite the same
And if radio, sadly, never became
What we strived for it to be
It was the best that we could do
At that particular time you see.
Afterword
Please feel free to forward this to anyone
you wish.
Yes, I know there are many, many names
missing, but these, above, are the people who, for one reason or
another, affected me immensely among those who have gone
on. I will never forget the day Harvey Glascock, who'd
been head of Metromedia Records for John Kluge and prior to that
general manager of WNEW-AM-FM in New York City, told me that
Kluge had offered him the managership of the Cleveland station,
"and I told him, John, I've done Cleveland."
I never knew Don McKinnon, but I was told by
many that he was the best disc jockey who ever lived. And
I've had the distinct pleasure of knowing so many tremendous
radio personalities. For example, Robert W. Morgan who one
day on KMPC in Los Angeles took me and my nefarious ancestors to
task in explicit detail on the air for perhaps 45 minutes, then
later, a friend from New York City phoning me up from the
Beverly Hills Hotel and asking how much I'd paid for all of that
publicity; just FYI, Morgan was irritated with me about
something and called earlier to make sure I'd listen. My
ears are still red. But, of course, I loved it then and
laughed like hell and still find the situation amusing after all
of these years.
George Duncan, Jack Thayer, L. David
Moorhead, Bill Stewart--special and very close friends.
Duncan, a former fertilizer salesman, begging for WNEW-FM and me
and him walking across Manhattan to eat on a tradeout in a
Chinese restaurant. Me, talking Duncan into hiring Bill
"Rosco" Mercer at WNEW-FM (I tried to get him to hire
Murray the K, too). Me trying to get Moorhead not to fire
Jimmy Rabbitt and failing and we were in Australia at the time;
Rabbitt probably holds the record for long-distance
firing. Me having the privilege of telling Eddie Hill that
he was the reason I was radio-TV editor of Billboard purely
because I used to listen to him when he did the all-night show
of WSM and had grown to love music intensely; at the time Eddie
was in a wheelchair and immobile from a stroke, but I was told
he could hear me and understand me. Willie, because he
invited me to sit in on his show and he wouldn't even let the
program director of WNEW into what he considered his private
domain (believe me, it was!). Rick, because he knew so
many great radio stories that he never told to anyone unless he
knew he could trust you; like the joke of Howard Cosell bursting
into a music meeting at WABC with Mohammed Ali and accusing the
radio staff of being racists and telling Ali to "take care
of them."
Then there was the time that Gordon wrote me
he was thinking about suing the NAB just so they'd learn to
spell his name right. I think this was the same letter in
which he told me he'd given an island to Australia to use for a
monument to World War II.
As for Sam Holman, I never gave him all of
the credit he really deserved; I took most of the things he told
me with the proverbial grain of salt. I'm very sorry about
this now. He was a greater program director than we all
knew.
Dick Starr and Buzz Lawrence left early in
their careers. A great pity. I will always wonder
what might have been.
Mikel Hunter, because he finally forgave
me. Back when the Shah was head of Iran, I helped one of
the Shah's key people line up three radio personalities for
"an American" radio station in Tehran (with tremendous
salaries, lavish treatment, and everything paid). There
was Hunter and, I think, Greg Anthony, and someone else.
However, all they were promised didn't happen (their phones were
bugged, etc., etc.) and they ended up having to literally escape
the country. It was both a hilarious story and a scary
story, depending on whether you felt like laughing or felt like
crying. The Shah ended up sending me a pound of
caviar. Second best to Russian caviar, according to L.
David Moorhead (who knew that sort of thing and was also a
gourmet chef), so I gave the caviar to him. Maybe that was
what Mikel was really mad about, eh! Just FYI, many
considered Mikel Hunter one of the very best programmers in Top
40 radio as well as what we called progressive rock on FM.
DJ Tommy Carl, by the way, had a Ph.D. under
his real name of Tom Durfey and drove all of the way to
Brockport, NY, just to give me a copy of the videotape of
"The History of Broadcasting" that he'd
produced. The tape features interviews with the first disc
jockey, the first newsperson, the first real radio engineer, the
first weatherman, etc. A treasure. Tom was one of
the first into low-power FM.
I don't know how Tom Clay died or I would
have put him in the poem, too. Clay could tell a story on
radio better than anyone I ever heard. And he was one of
many radio personalities to also have a million-selling record.
I know a few other stories, perhaps, but
neither the heroes/villains nor myself are dead yet.
My very best,
Claude Hall
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com |
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