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"Murder
at the Busted Bird Cafe"
by Claude Hall
Chapter 14
My pickup was still parked at the police
station. I
felt reasonably comfortable that no one had wired it
for a bomb. But I looked under the hood anyway. Of
course, some villainous person with any imagination
could have planted the bomb anywhere...under a fender,
underneath by the gasoline tank. It was easy to get
psychotic about something like that.
I started the pickup and since I was still there a
moment later, I waved good-bye to Sawyer and drove
off.
It was funny. I had no place to go. I had a pickup
and a camper, which was like a home on wheels. And I
had no place to go. Must be something enormously
psychologically symbolic about that. I wondered what
it was.
It was late. I thought about driving out to Leo
Carillo State Beach. Might be a campsite left. A few
years ago, I might have pulled the camper onto any
side street and parked and gone to bed. These days,
that was almost an impossibility. Someone would steal
the tires right off the pickup. Or the pickup with me
in it.
For a while, I parked in one of the parking lots that
rim the beaches from Redondo Beach up to Will Rogers
State Beach. The moon hung high up in the sky to the
west. The reflection danced like a ghost out there on
the slight waves.
But I couldn't stay. After a while, because I
couldn't think of anywhere else to go, I drove back
east on Sunset Boulevard and turned up Benedict
Canyon.
The narrow, virtually one-way road off Benedict that
leads up to Jo's place goes a little further, maybe a
few hundred yards, and ends in a small circle where
cars can turn around and go back. I pulled the pickup
over to the side in a small area out of the way,
locked the cab, went around to the camper and got
inside.
It gets cold in the hills of Los Angeles at night,
especially, this time of the year. I crawled into the
two sleeping bags that I had zipped together and slept
like a baby until sometime shortly after dawn when the
most godawful noise you can imagine work me up.
You remember the last time the world ended? The noise
was something like that. It was followed by a
thumping against the door of the camper.
Getting into a sleeping bag is a lot easier than
getting out. The bunk extends over the cab of the
pickup. I slid over the edge of the bunk, my feet
still tangled in the sleeping bag. After shaking
loose, I stumbled over to the door and looked out.
It was Jo's dog making all of the racket.
He backed off a couple of paws, growled, then barked
twice as if to say "Here he is." He sat there on
his
haunches glaring at me.
"Fancy finding you here," said Jo, trotting into view
from the side of the camper. She continued jogging in
place.
"Welcome to my new home," I said.
Her dog barked at me.
"Your home is in Chuck's way," she said.
"I apologize, hound," I said. "I didn't
know this
was your road."
"We jog up the trail there every morning," she said.
"What happened? They finally toss you out of your
apartment and your new girlfriend wouldn't take you
in?"
"I'm allergic to bombs," I said. "When
someone
planted a bomb in my television set, I decided the
situation was a little beyond the capabilities of
Neighborhood Watch. Viola! My new abode. Would
you
like to join me for a cup of coffee?"
"No, thanks. You're allergic to bombs. I'm
allergic
to people who stay bombed."
"I'm sober. Cross my heart and hope to eat a dead
pizza if I'm not telling the truth."
"Bye," she said. "Chuck and I have to run
along."
Still running in place, she turned and then jogged up
the trail. Her dog passed her in a burst of speed.
"I don't have a new girlfriend!" I yelled after her.
She didn't stop. I watched until they disappeared up
the trail.
A woman walked past, also going up the trail, but at a
more leisurely pace than Jo and her dog. She stared
at me, but didn't say anything and didn't stop. She
continued up the trail.
Then I realized I was completely naked. In Mexia,
Texas, I would have stopped traffic. But not in Los
Angeles. Of course, in Mexia someone would have also
probably called the cops.
I got dressed and heated some water on the camper
stove and had some instant coffee. Jo and her dog
still hadn't returned.
No need to worry. Not with a dog like that for
protection. But after the second cup of coffee, I
thought I would take a short walk just to stretch my
legs.
No, I wasn't suddenly changing my lifestyle. Yes, I
have been known to exercise. Slightly. And walking
is just about it. Otherwise, I consider almost all
forms of exercise a spectator sport.
The woman who hadn't stopped was dead. I found her
body about half a mile up the trail sprawled off to
the side in some scattered, half-dead manzanita.
Someone had pounded her several times in the face with
a heavy instrument. Just a guess, but I'd say it was
either a pistol butt or the butt of a rifle.
I checked her pulse. Very dead.
There was no one else in view. I ran from bush to
bush, hunting for Jo.
Then, I heard a soft, hurt whine. The sound came from
behind a low oak tree.
Jo's dog was still alive. But he was bleeding from a
bullet wound.
I jerked off my tee-shirt and placed it over the
wound. He tried to lick me in the face.
"Just a bullet wound, old man," I said.
"Hell,
nothing to get all emotional about."
Lifting him was not easy. He was huge and he was
heavy and, in effect, he was a dead weight. He whined
again as I got him across one knee and my arms
underneath his body. Literally, I staggered to my
feet and staggered down the trail. The fact that the
trail was mostly downhill helped some. But I was
breathing hard and fast by the time I got to the
pickup.
I fumbled the passenger door open and got him inside
onto the seat, ran around and drove down to Jo's
place.
"Stay here. I'll be right back."
Her door was shut. I kicked it down and ran to the
telephone. Sawyer had his cellular phone on and
that's how I got him. I told him I needed a vet
quicker than hell and he might bring an ambulance. He
tried to ask more questions, but I told him "hurry
with that vet, dammit!" and that I'd answer more
questions when he got there. He took down the
directions and hung up.
I grabbed a couple of towels from the bathroom and ran
back to the pickup.
"You're going to be okay, hound. Just hang in
there,"
I said.
His whine was much weaker. I could barely hear it.
One of the towels, I placed under his head and used
the other against the wound. My tee-shirt, soaked
red, I chunked out into the driveway.
"Good boy," I said. I cradled his head in my
hands as
best I could. "Just hang on. As soon as the doc
gets
here, we'll worry about getting Jo back. They won't
hurt her. You'll see."
His whine was even weaker.
Sawyer got there first. I heard his siren plowing up
Benedict Canyon. He pulled into the driveway near the
pickup and, gun drawn, was at my side.
"What happened?"
"They've got Jo," I said.
"Who?"
"I don't know who. Jo and the dog went up the trail
at the end of the road up there and when they didn't
return after a couple of cups of coffee, I walked up
the trail. The dog had been shot."
"A veterinarian is on the way," Sawyer said.
"You
said something about a body?"
"A woman. Up the trail."
"You okay?"
"Yeah. Just get that goddamned vet here!"
"On his way," Sawyer said. "The same guy
who handles
the K-9 crew. I'll be back in a couple of minutes."
He got in his car and sped up the road.
Just then the veterinarian arrived. He quickly took a
hypodermic out of his bag and injected something into
the dog. By that time, I don't think the dog knew. I
think he'd passed out.
"He's lost a lot of blood," I said. "I'm
type O."
He grinned slightly.
"Don't think that would work out too well," he said.
The veterinarian came well prepared. Within a minute,
he'd rigged up a device and was giving the dog a
transfusion of dog blood.
Other police cars arrived, along with an ambulance. I
told one of the officers that Sawyer was up the trail
at the end of the road. Several went up there, along
with the ambulance and driver.
In a while, the ambulance came back and continued on
down the road.
Sawyer returned, a haggard expression on his face.
I'd realized that he wasn't as young as he looked. At
the moment, he looked older than the hills, to use the
only cliché that fits.
"How's the dog?"
"Hey, he was shot," said the veterinarian.
"But he's
going to be okay. Lost a lot of blood from a bullet.
And someone kicked him. Probably after he was down
from the bullet."
"Nice people." Sawyer jerked his head toward the
bloody tee-shirt on the driveway. "That your's?"
"Yeah. The dog," I said.
"Talk to me," Sawyer said.
I told him about Jo and the dog jogging every morning.
About parking my camper at the end of the road.
About them coming by this morning.
"You see anyone else go up the trail?"
"I slept until the dog woke me up barking. He must
have caught my odor or something. I don't know."
"So someone could have gone up the trail earlier?"
"Yeah," I said. "But no one came back.
I'm positive
of that."
"You know that trail?"
"No," I said.
"I had someone check. Comes out on a road up there
about a mile or so."
"Shit," I said.
"Yeah."
"I need to take the dog with me," the veterinarian
said.
He gave me the address of the animal hospital where I
could find Jo's dog.
"Be careful," I warned. "He bites."
"I don't think he'd going to be able to bite anyone
for a while," the veterinarian said. "What's his
name?"
"I don't even know," I said. "Hound, I
think."
The veterinarian glanced at the dog's tags. He wrote
something down on a pad.
I helped him transfer the dog onto a pad in the back
of his van. He backed the van out and slowly drove
down toward Benedict Canyon.
"Seems like he knows dogs."
"He does. You kick the door over there down?"
Sawyer
asked.
I nodded. "To get to the telephone."
He motioned to a uniform. The uniform nodded and went
through a small gate into the yard and sat down on a
bench under the oak tree. The waist-high fence around
the yard was for appearances only. The dog could have
hopped over that fence without even thinking about it.
Of course, he never did. Jo had told him he had to
stay inside. He followed orders from her real well.
She should have told him not to get shot.
"Let's take a walk," Sawyer said.
I grabbed a sweat shirt out of the camper and slipped
it on.
"Now we both look like detectives," I said.
As we walked up the road, we talked about the various
possibilities. Obviously, the kidnappers had known
where she lived and about her morning habit of
jogging. The dog had been shot trying to protect Jo.
The dead woman had stumbled on the kidnapping scene;
they'd shot her. They were extremely ruthless.
Virtually uncaring about any consequences.
"The profile on that type of person usually is someone
who is radical or terrorist," Sawyer said, half in
thought.
"But in this case, we have no cause."
"There's always a cause for every effect. Affect,
too, I suppose," said Sawyer, still with that lost
tone of voice. "We just don't know the reason yet.
That's all."
"The good news," I said, "is that Jo's body
wasn't
there, so she's still alive."
"That's logical. I'll buy that. The question
is:
Why bother to kidnap your girlfriend?" Sawyer asked.
"Seems like a hell of a lot of trouble to me. For no
purpose."
"Same here."
We reached the trail. The odor of sagebrush was here.
And dust. The trail was beaten fairly well. In some
places, every step brought up a puff of dust. The
trail went ahead for about 30 yards, then doubled back
up a small rise and angled by a couple of trees.
Beyond the trees was a grassy slope. The grass was
mostly dead this time of year, waiting for a rain that
seldom came.
Several detectives were at work. They wore sports
jackets and slacks and looked as much like young
college professors as members of the Los Angeles
police force. Off in the distance in the manzanita,
three uniformed officers searched for clues.
One of the detectives shook his head.
"Nothing?"
"Not even an empty shell," the detective told him.
"Someone checking for possible witnesses up on the
road?"
"Don't see much hope. A passing car, maybe. But
how
would we know? A couple of black and whites are
checking out both directions."
"Good," said Sawyer. "Try to wrap this up,
will you?"
"Right."
"The woman?"
"Lives down the street. A uniform is talking to the
husband now."
"Thank you," said Sawyer. He looked at me.
"You
notice anything?"
"I'm afraid that I was in a state of shock," I said.
I showed him where I'd found the dog.
He shrugged.
We walked down the trail to the bungalow. Sawyer made
a cursory examination of Jo's home.
"Nothing." Sawyer's voice sounded very
disappointed.
"Nothing," I echoed.
"I'm getting tired of that word," said Sawyer.
"Interesting," I said.
"That one, too. She have any enemies?"
"None."
"You know that for a fact?"
"No."
I began digging through the drawers beside her bed.
"What are you hunting for?"
"Her phone book. She's the daughter of somebody rich.
I've got to call them. Let them know."
"You've never met her parents?"
"No. I think she was trying to live a life her
parents wouldn't have approved of. A lot of people
look down on rock'n'roll." I showed him a picture of
a couple that she'd said were her parents.
I couldn't find her personal phone book. We searched
everywhere.
"Did you try to unlock the door when you came back?"
"No. I just assumed it was locked."
"Don't touch anything else until we've dusted the
place for fingerprints," said Sawyer. "There's a
possibility her kidnappers have been here."
He wouldn't let me use the phone by her bed, but he
let me use the city phone book and offered to let me
use his cellular phone. But there were too many
Munsons listed. I couldn't remember her mentioning
either her mother's name or her father's name. They
had just been "Mom" and "Dad."
"She had a Saks credit card," I said.
We couldn't find her purse either. Then it dawned on
me: A lot was missing beside her purse and phone
book. I'd been in such a state because of her
kidnapping, the killing, the shooting of the dog that
I hadn't even noticed.
"I just thought of something," I said. "Her
car's
gone."
I described the car as best I could.
Within minutes, he had checked the registration on the
Maseratti on his cellular phone. He wrote something
down and handed me the note.
"This is the name and address of her parents," he
said.
"Travoti?"
"Real estate," said Sawyer. "That address
is in
Beverly Hills."
"This is Beverly Hills."
"Not really. Poor man's Beverly Hills at best.
This
place is worth a few hundred thou tops. That address
there is south of Sunset. Mucho donero. Mucho."
We
walked out to my pickup. "I could send a uniform down
there."
"I think I'd better do it," I said. I waved the
piece
of paper.
"If you need a place to park that thing tonight, call
me."
"Thanks."
A few minutes later, I pulled up at a gate and,
without getting out of the pickup, spoke into a
speaker that I was Buddy Coffee and I wanted to talk
to Mr. and Mrs. Travoti about their daughter. The
gate opened slowly and silently. I drove through and
along a winding road up to the front of the house.
The next few minutes were horrible. Almost as bad as
the moment I discovered that Jo had been kidnapped.
They were very nice people. And they knew an awful
lot about me, but it was pure fantasy and the image
that Jo had painted had little to do with reality. I
didn't recognize myself at all in their conversation.
Her mother, Ethel, went into a state of shock at the
news of the kidnapping and had to be put to bed. A
doctor was called.
Her father, William Travoti, walked me to the door.
Jo was their only child.
"The police?"
"There's a young detective named Sawyer. If you
should get...a ransom note or a phone call or
anything, call the police station in Los Angeles and
ask to speak to Jesus Sawyer. He's handling the
investigation. I think he's good."
He said he would do that.
"How do we reach you?"
"They found a bomb in my apartment. I'm now living in
that pickup camper out front. No phone."
"Just a moment," he said.
In less than a minute, he was back and handed me a
cellular phone. "Use this," he said.
"The phone
number is on it there."
"Mr. Travoti, the police feels that if they bothered
to kidnap Jo she's still alive. They shot her dog
when he tried to protect her. They killed a woman who
accidentally walked upon the kidnapping scene. Tell
your wife that Jo is probably still alive."
He nodded. "God hope. God hope. What are
you going
to do now?" he asked.
"I don't know. This is just not my line of work, you
know?"
"How did they discover Jo was my daughter?" he asked,
suddenly pensive. "She used the professional name of
Munson, as you probably know."
"Maybe they don't know. But I suspect they know
everything about her. Someone raided her place and
found her phone book. And they took her car."
"Find her, son. Get her back."
"I will," I said.
But that was a spur-of-the-moment statement, I
realized as I drove away. I had absolutely no idea
about where to start hunting for her. Nor how.
Worse, I really was a coward. Maybe a lot of radio
guys cried when they heard about the death of Todd
Storz. But I'd also cried at the death of John F.
Kennedy. Hell, I'd cry for anybody. I was even
crying now.
(To be continued)
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
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Commentary
by
Claude Hall
August
11, 2003
I don't think I can possibly tell the full Bill Randle
story. First, I don't know it all. Second, I don't
think I could tell it right. Third, there are many
Bill Randles.
I did write a novel for fun once called "Snake and the
Spider Lady," strictly camp, about a super hero and I
modeled the hero, Snake, after Bill Randle. Strictly
fiction. Still unpublished. Bill told me once that
he once wanted to be the world's most deadly weapon.
What a great line! Especially for a radio personality
or a mere fictional character in a novel. Also very
strange. But even a comic book character is as naught
when compared with the real man. The real man is
myth. Not mythical. Pure myth. To some extent,
we
invent myth about our heroes and even about ourselves.
Whether you believe the myth or discount it is your
business. But, personally, I believe in myth not only
in regards to what was, but perhaps what will be.
However, the myth of Bill Randle grows regardless and
it doesn't need my input. Type in Bill Randle on any
search engine and you'll find other Bill Randles, but
among these he still stands out. Ten albums of Shaker
music? You've got to be kidding! Movies? UFOs
and
autopsies of aliens; not on your life! Elvis?
Be aware that, for us, myth is good. For those of us
who have journeyed through real radio have no
star-reaching pyramid to remind those yet to come that
we passed here in the never when. The media barons,
the Clear Channels and the satellitic mind cleaners,
are quickly destroying everything that radio was. We
have very little real radio today; it is mostly
artificial. I've seen that TV commercial by Willie
Nelson and think, poor guy, he doesn't know. But, I
suppose it doesn't matter. Our fate was sealed and
the coffin closed and waiting to drop when those
idiots in Washington allowed anyone to own more than
seven radio stations of this and seven of that.
Instead, the rule should have been that you could own
perhaps seven AM or three FM, but certainly not in the
same market. These are arbitrary figures, of course,
but competition would have been forced, not
complacency and mindlessness encouraged. I have no
respect for Colin Powell's offspring, although, of
course, under "the buck stops here" modus operandi
maybe others are to blame.
So, as the radio coffin is now being lowered in the
grave, we are left to a great extent with just myth.
I think the myth of Todd Storz and Gordon McLendon is
established, though I lament the rewriting of Bill
Stewart out of the picture and certain fingers trying
to rewrite even the myth that exists of Todd and
Gordon. Ron Jacobs once mentioned to me via e-mail
that he thought he was being left out of the myth of
KHJ, Los Angeles, but I believe he has rectified that
situation with his book.
We have other myths, of course. And the greatest of
these may be William M. Randle Jr., otherwise known as
Bill Randle, who may not have become in mind's eye the
"world's most deadly weapon," but certainly was
without question, at least for a while, the world's
greatest radio personality. In retrospect, larger
than Martin Block, Alan Freed, Paul Harvey or Arthur
Godfrey or Walter Cronkite or anyone else you may wish
to name of any motif, any of radio's divisional
genres. In fact, it was only after an accident (I
believe he wrecked his motorcycle) when Bill Randle
gave him blood in a transfusion at the hospital that
Alan Freed actually became the Alan Freed of radio
history...a very odd coincident, eh?
The first time I met Bill Randle, I really had no
valid concept of who he was. I think a record
promotion man named Don Graham in New York City may
have told me about him, but it was probably a public
relations man who handled Captain Kangaroo for sure
and maybe Arthur Godfrey and knew everyone at CBS who
actually set up the meeting (I wish I could remember
his name; he was damned good at public relations and I
learned a lot from him not only about radio, but about
public relations). I was in the position to some
extent of still learning my field. I was already
adept in my craft--news coverage--but still learning
radio per se. Some of my "teachers" during this
period were Gary Stevens, then still an evening rock
jock on WMCA with an alter ego called the Woolly
Booger; Harvey Glascock, general manager of WNEW;
Frank Ward, general manager of WWRL; William B.
Williams, the morning personality on WNEW who
literally was king of Manhattan, and Paul Ackerman,
the music editor of Billboard who introduced me to a
vast bevy of his old cronies at lunch at Lindy's,
including the man who wrote "Rudolph, the Red-nosed
Reindeer." Billboard magazine had been around more
than 70 years by the time I arrived on the scene, but
it was still covering stories about pool tables,
gumball machines and not entirely directed at the
music business. The first story I wrote for the
magazine was about a gumball machine. But three
months after I joined the magazine, the radio-TV
editor left to become a radio consultant to First
National Bank, as I recall, and I was given the radio
section and, of course, also worked on music stories
two or three days a week. There were just five of us
on the editorial staff at the time in addition to
myself: Hal Cook, publisher; Lee Zhito, editor, Paul
Ackerman, music editor, Aaron Sternfield, a writer who
knew the jukebox industry; and Mike Gross, who had
worked for Variety and knew Broadway better than
anyone I ever met (Mike later stepped out of a window
at the office and I've always regretted the fact that
I was by then working from the Los Angeles office; I
still believe that he would have talked with me and I
would have talked him out of it; he was a very
brilliant music writer, highly respected on Broadway,
a very close friend, and a good man).
Billboard magazine wasn't doing very well financially
at the time I joined the staff in March 1964.
Floundering, to some extent. Cashbox was the number
one magazine in the field and Billboard was pretty far
behind along followed even further behind by Record
World and Music Business, all weekly trades. I had
been a reporter on the New Orleans Times-Picayune in
the early 60s and on a trip over Christmas to New York
City, Barbara and I ended up one dawn sitting with
Marty Iger, a very successful photographer, and his
girlfriend in Marty's apartment high over Manhattan
watching the sunrise and drinking brandy from a bottle
shaped like a duck. Marty said the words that got me
back to New York for my second stint in the largest
concrete outhouse in the world; "If you're going to
play the game, it's better to play with the big boys."
Soon, I took a job in publications at Rennsalaer
Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, but this was only
so that I could do interviews in New York City. One
day, I interviewed at both Reader's Digest and
Billboard. I turned down Reader's Digest because of
their womb-to-tomb employee concept at the time and
also turned down Billboard because Lee Zhito only
wanted to pay $150 a week. Then on Monday, they
dropped the college catalog on my desk at RPI and told
me to revamp it and I immediately phoned Zhito and
told him I'd take the job on Billboard and he said he
would pay me the $175 I wanted. So, here I am, back
in New York City, swearing that I would never leave
again, and a lot of things were just beginning to
happen in music. And radio. It was a very
interesting, virtually exciting job because on one
hand was Dan Daniels and Murray the K and on the other
was Bob Dylan, Felix Pappalardi, the Blues Project,
and Fred Neil; I was enmeshed in both happening radio
and happening music. And Lee Zhito was a different
person in those days than later. I swear.
Bill Randle was still the major radio personality of
Cleveland at WERE as well as a major factor in radio
in New York City with only an hour show daily on WCBS.
To illustrate his importance to the music industry,
record promotion people lined up at the airport to
welcome him to New York City each day. Strangely
enough, it was at WCBS that he fostered the
best-selling book "Up the Downstairs Case"; he bought
20 copies and mailed each out to a person who phoned
in; the reader was to pass it along to someone on a
list included with each book. Viola! Bestseller!
And it was later made into a movie.
It was thus I first met the man who is myth. We swam
in the rooftop swimming pool of the Loew's on Eighth
Avenue, lunched on deli sandwiches with dill pickles
alongside the pool, showered, he went his way to WCBS
to do his radio show and I went back to Billboard,
then located on the 11th floor of an office building
just around the corner from the old Palace Theater. I
wish I had a copy of that story; I'd like to know what
I said. But I remember him looking like some Greek
god with blonde hair, being extremely poised, vastly
confident in who he was and what he could do. He
probably told me very little about the real Bill
Randle, but that proved to be always the case. You
got pieces and puzzles of Bill, never the real and
complete person and though I doubted many of the
things he told me, I never caught him in a lie; what
he told me always turned out to be true, including
running guns to the Israelis during the so-called Six
Day War, driving race cars in competition, serving as
a guerrilla fighter against the Nazis in World War II,
producing records, music publishing, operating a jazz
nightclub when quite young in Detroit, and on and on.
Spending a vacation with John Huston, spending a few
days with Lena Horne and her husband. Mythical,
unlikely, impossible things.
As a disc jockey, although his work is difficult to
analyze by the same standards you would affix to
Robert W. Morgan, Dan Ingram, Charlie Tuna, Rick Dees,
Gary Owens or almost anyone else, I doubt that he
could ever have obtained a job with Bill Drake or many
other program directors in the United States. Yet, he
was offered a percentage of the ownership when he
finally went back on the air in Cleveland. So, when
the radio station was sold, the rumor is that Bill
walked away with a couple of million. He probably
didn't need the money. I listened to him live one
night when he was sitting in at KMOX, St. Louis, for a
friend. He rattled papers. There was silence as he
said, "Wait a minute" and hunted for something.
His
chair squeaked. He certainly had no great voice. No,
he was not rusty; he was just Bill Randle, bigger than
any program director or general manager, larger than
life.
What he had, obviously, was something that most radio
people would die for: Command. It is true that he
once suggested his Cleveland listeners order an album
over the phone and 30,000 people phoned.
A year or so later, Billboard magazine has grown and I
didn't even know the name of some of the people on the
staff and the magazine was just beginning to reap the
whirlwind of dollars that grew to an enormous figure
during the next dozen years. At one point, we were
among the top 10 or 12 moneymakers among magazines in
the world. Circulation alone paid all expenses; all
advertising was cream. We had began to acquire other
magazines, even some overseas. And Bill Littleford
(the magazine had been in the Littleford family for
generations) ordained a corporate meeting at King
Island in Cincinnati. These were deadly events;
people who hadn't done a hell of a lot and I didn't
even know stood up and told how great they were. By
now, I knew exactly how much I was worth to Billboard,
but I'll be damned if I was going to tell anyone. In
addition to the entire radio section, which alone had
put Billboard far on top of Cashbox and had literally
forced a couple of other music trades out of business,
I was writing two and three music stories each week
for the front page and several music stories inside.
I frequently also wrote for the classical music
section and the country music section, etc. I was a
one-man army; if you were a teasipper with a degree
from the School of Journalism at the University of
Texas in Austin, you were generally pretty damned fast
and probably pretty efficient (Dr. DeWitt Reddick,
Paul Thompson, and Dr. Norris G. Davis were our
mentors). I had also changed a lot of things about
the way Billboard operated. For example, I stopped
staffers from selling their review albums to a store I
can't remember below 42nd Street which shrink-wrapped
them and sold them at discount because I considered
this unethical. I'd also set the rule of one by-line
per page. I go back and look at an old issue of
Billboard, I'm astonished at everything I was writing
and everything I was doing. I also produced a
consumer music magazine called SoundMakers for
Billboard Publications that was actually the
forerunner to Rolling Stone and I did a nationwide
talent promotion for the Tea Council of the United
States that fetched Billboard $60,000 plus expenses,
and worked on various special issues, including the
World of Country Music magazine series. Etc. For
this series, I interviewed many songwriters, including
Jimmy Rabbitt's grandfather Leon Payne. I also help
raise funds for the Country Music Hall of Fame in
Nashville and wrote linernotes, artist bios, etc., on
the albums sold by radio stations nationwide. (Much
later, after we moved headquarters to Los Angeles, I
even brought in a deal that earned royalties from the
Casey Kasem syndicated radio program "American Top
40," initiated a royalty deal with the research
publications of Joel Whitburn, came up with the
Billboard "tipsheet" that was extremely misused--to
put it mildly--under the aegis of Bill Wardlow who
headed the charts, the entire airlines programming
division which was a huge profitmaker, etc., and if I
hadn't been cheated by Lee Zhito, I was about to found
an ungodly profit center via a consumer weekly; I'd
already completed the research, had initial
distribution set up, etc.) I also revamped the
graphics of the entire Billboard with a graphic
artist; it had long featured a "circus makeup" as
opposed to something normal. Eliot Tiegel, when he
was named managing editor, changed the graphics, but
they were at least good for a while. So, at the
Cincinnati corporate meeting, I merely stood up and
said I was Claude Hall and that I was radio-TV editor
of Billboard. And I went out driving and shooting the
bull with Bill Randle. Our chauffeur was, believe it
or not, Jim LaBarbara, the music professor, who I
think is still on the air at WGRR in Cincinnati and
was then a major personality at the leading MOR
station in the city. WLW? I still don't know why Jim
was our chauffeur; I think he, like I was soon to
become, was a disciple of Bill Randle. This was
entirely an honorary elitist position, but I gather
there were many such and we all wore this imaginary
feather in our caps with some pride. Too many years
have passed to remember much of that evening, except
that Bill commented in passing that he'd produced more
than 150 hit records in the city. This, he said,
included a couple of million sellers by the Crewcuts.
By this stage of my Billboard career, my jaw did not
drop, I merely took the comment with the proverbial
grain of salt. Make that a whole salt shaker. Jim
vanished. Bill and I ended up that evening at one of
the few really five-star restaurants in America. He
was greeted warmly as an old and dear friend by the
maitre d'. Now I should point out that Bill lived and
worked in Cleveland and this was Cincinnati. I later
saw George Wilson greeted in the same fashion in one
of New Orleans' greatest restaurants (reservations
must be made two months in advance, please), but that
maitre d' was George's old racetrack buddy from his
days in the crescent city; in fact the first time I
talked with George was via phone and I had to track
him down; his secretary at the radio station told me
he was at The Office, which turned out to be a bar in
New Orleans. Different story, eh? (Randle and Zhito
and me to be continued)
OTHER MATTERS
Gary Allyn, gallyn@adelphia.net,
"Claude, you've done
it again. You've agitated my memory bank (just as the
oyster does when making a pearl) and prodded my recall
of the famous 1959 DJ convention in Miami Beach. This
is the one that most who were there refer to as: 'The
MOTHER of all DJ Conventions'. In fact, it was so
rowdy and ribald that Bill Gavin promised that HIS
conventions would be held in more-restrained
communities like Kansas City, etc. What a convention
this was in '59. Everyone was there. More than
1500
DJs, music industry leaders, and recording talent.
All the top DJs did remote broadcasts from the lobby
of the Diplomat Hotel. Mitch Miller was there, Bobby
Troup and Julie London, Peggy Lee, George Shearing,
Count Basie, Pat Boone, Tony Bennett...well, the list
was endless. The three-day event culminated with a
dinner show that lasted over three hours. Martin
Block emceed and introduced Lloyd Price who sang his
hit 'Personality', Dodie Stevens did 'Pink Shoelaces';
Pat Boone remembered his father-In-law Red Foley in
song...and on and on until the crowd grew restless
waiting for the Disc Jockey of the Year to be named.
It was my on-air idol: Dick 'Moonglow With' Martin
from WWL, New Orleans. I happened to be standing
talking with him when his name was announced. He was
shocked. Dick thought of himself as a mere staff
announcer. As for this 21-year-old 'kid' from Ohio
with only four years in the biz...well, I was
bedazzled and thrilled with excitement. Then the
dinner was transformed into a 'Breakfast Dance and
Barbecue' with Count Basie & Joe Williams...the night
turned into morning, and the place jumped until
sun-up. You may remember that Roulette records
released an album with that title recorded 'live' that
night. The evening before, Capitol recorded the
'Beauty and the Beat' LP with Peggy Lee & George
Shearing and released it shortly thereafter. Everyone
in attendance was sent a personally autographed copy
of that great album a few weeks later. Wish I still
had it. For those of us who worked at stations in the
Miami market during this stupendous convention missed
a lot. I remember WQAM, the Storz number one-rated
station there at the time, really hyped its station to
the max. WQAM's on-air tempo was torrid and approached
hysterical proportions at times. They even had a promo
on the air warning listeners to 'Not Be Alarmed' at a
low flying UFO in the South Florida skies....it was
ONLY the new WQAM weather satellite! What a time to
be alive. Everything was alive. Especially radio. It
was later learned that the booze bill paid by the
record companies was in excess of $250,000! That is
in 1959 dollars! I attended many radio conventions
and get-togethers over the years, but none came close
to the grand scale this was held on. Thanks for
allowing a gentle tug at those memory strings 'One
More Time', as the Count would say. Kindest regards."
From Ron Bacon, ronbacon@commspeed.net,
"I was just
out of college and working as a staff announcer at
WMAN in Mansfield, OH, in 1952, when Jerry Spinn was
hired for the afternoon shift. We became friends and
later shared a basement apartment in a house owned by
a former madam named 'Billy' from Pittsburgh. She was
immensely fat and had diamond rings on all of her
fingers, and she could talk for hours about her former
business and her clients. Jerry was tall and thin and
had a shrunken ear on one side of his head. He was a
very colorful and interesting guy. For some reason I
looked up his name on the Internet and ran across
your article. I wonder if this is the same guy you
are looking for...I would sure like to know more about
him."
Lee Bayley, Lee.radio@verizon.net:
"You're right. The
article about the convention was of interest. There
are a lot of stories. Your comments about Bill Drake
and someone wanting to punch him brought back
memories. When attending conventions the Drake people
always hung together and on many occasions we would
run into some young hotshot who wanted to argue...we
never let them get to Bill."
Burt Sherwood, Burt Sherwood & Associates Inc.,
bohica1@comcast.net:
"Claude: the writing is
brilliant, as always...the novel is superb. You bring
back so darn many memories...I can just see the
Century Plaza Hotel...back from the street, curved and
tall. Bill Hennes and I walked into the lobby at that
convention...and it was a scene that you could never
forget. The egos parading through, endlessly!"
Joe Wade Formicola, jformicola@wralfm.com:
"Just got
elected into the Career College Hall of Fame in June.
Type in 'Career college association' and this will
take you to their website at cca.org or cca.com."
Claude Hall
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
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