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"Hurt"
by Claude Hall
Chapter Four
The night became fairly busy. We had two or three
auto accidents, one out on Interstate 15 that was
pretty bad, and there was a fire in North Las Vegas.
Only one DOA. Actually, it was an older woman and she
was killed by the fire. Smoke inhalation, according
to the doctor. We took her with us even though Braun
doesn't like old people. He considers them a waste of
time and money.
Then three guys decided to hold up a convenience store
about 1 a.m. on Lake Mead Boulevard for some extra
gasoline money. They only found seven dollars in the
cash register and that made one of them mad and he
shot the clerk. He was standing over the body opening
the clerk's billfold when the police hit the place.
All three of the guys--members, someone said, of a
gang in Los Angeles--were severely wounded and two
died en route back to HRT so J.D. and I looked pretty
good with the final results of the night. The third
member of the gang had only been shot in the leg and
some police officer patched him up good enough to walk
or the night would have been even better. The police
took him away in handcuffs.
There had been no reason to hurry after the robbery.
So, I drove on down Lake Mead toward Sunrise Mountain
which an active citizen's group wanted to turn into a
park along with Frenchman Mountain. Las Vegas is
funny that way; it has a lot of groups and any time
anyone can find something about which to protest, they
start another group. There was a group, for example,
that believed the government was testing a flying
saucer up at Broom Lake, a place sometimes called Area
51. Another group had formed to prevent the
government dumping nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
No one had ever cared about Yucca Mountain before.
Not even the Indians. Probably not even the two or
three rattlesnakes that wriggled around the two or
three clumps of plant life that gave the oversized
hill its name.
J.D. said there was also a group which wanted to
prevent psychic phenomena "like that counterfeit stuff
that goes on over in Sedona, Arizona, or up in
Lillydale, New York." And, he said, there was at
least one militant group who thought vampyres and
werewolves should be wiped off the face of the earth.
"Everything and everyone that doesn't quite meet their
standards. The whole group is composed of super
rednecks. Not your ordinary run-of-the-mill rednecks.
Bastardly fanatical rednecks with the IQs of
lizards."
That caused me to suggest someone ought to start a
protest group against fanatical rednecks with the IQs
of lizards, but he hadn't responded.
I turned right on Nellis and drove over to Sahara and
then headed west while J.D. did what he had to do.
Four attendants in white met us as we pulled
underneath of the overhang of the hospital emergency
entrance and the patients, though I suppose you
couldn't actually call them patients anymore, were
wheeled away on rolling stretchers.
"Do you know any of those men?"
"Of course, not."
"I mean those attendants just a few minutes ago," said
J.D.
"No. New guys I suppose."
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why so many new people?" J.D. insisted.
"We're always getting new people."
"What happens to the old ones?"
"I don't know," I said.
"Three days ago, I noticed an advertisement in the
newspaper for qualified hospital attendants.
Guaranteed good money and good working conditions.
There's even a school over on Desert Inn that trains
hospital attendants."
"Sounds reasonable to me," I said.
J.D. walked over and picked up the newspaper as soon
as we entered the lounge.
"No, it's not. It's downright strange," he said.
"Yeah, I guess it is," I said. I sat down and watched
the news on one of the cable networks. I enjoy the
news, even though it never has much to do with
reality. The news is usually just like a fantasy
movie. There was some politician on the news talking
about a housing project for the homeless. They had
been talking about it for more than two years; the
foundation still hadn't been laid. Meanwhile, St.
Vincent's filled up every night and the others slept
under hedges here and there and some in the brush
along the draws and arroyos of the city. There had
been a small community of hand-made shacks on city
property among the catclaw. They city bulldozed it
down because "it didn't follow zoning laws."
"How come we never pick up any of the homeless?" I
asked J.D.
"Bad risk. They're usually sick," he said, his voice
thin and raspy as if he was having trouble breathing.
"Would that make much difference?"
"AIDS would make a difference," said J.D.
"I would think you were immune to something like
that."
"I don't know and I don't want to find out," he said
without looking up from his stockmarket reports.
"I'm probably not immune," I said.
"Who gives a damned!"
"Just a comment," I said.
"Go comment somewhere else," he said.
I wandered out into the hallway. Gertrude's office
door was shut, so I guess she'd gone home for the
evening. Sometimes I'd visit with her between trouble
calls. She liked to talk about J.D. I hadn't figured
out precisely just why yet. Although I'd told J.D.
that she liked him, I really wasn't sure; sometimes, I
thought her interest in J.D. was on the macabre side
instead of any personal passion. The honest truth was
that most of the staff, especially Nap, did not want
to talk about J.D. In fact, there was an immense
animosity going on between Nap and J.D. I don't know
why. Something in their past, I guess.
The hallway was empty and silent.
Up front at the reception desk, they were busy.
Everyone ignored me. So I drifted up to the third
floor. I didn't have any real purpose. That is, none
of which I was aware.
I looked in on Doris O'Connor. Her bed was empty. I
just stood there a minute. I felt a vague loss. My
first thought was that J.D. had been wrong. He hadn't
fixed things after all.
But that wasn't it. She'd merely checked out of the
hospital.
"Her parents came to get her," said the nurse on duty
on the third floor.
When I asked for the address of Doris O'Connor, it
turned out she was the daughter of Senator Bangor
O'Connor and lived in the Spanish Trails area.
Spanish Trails is one of the ritzy areas of Las Vegas.
The homes up there cost more than a losing blackjack
binge by a Japanese executive. The cheaper homes.
Every home looks like it belongs in a movie. Andre
Agassi, the tennis star, lives there. So does Randall
Cunningham, the football player. Steve Wynn, who owns
the Mirage and the Golden Nugget casinos, has a home
there. A high wall surrounds the entire area and
there is a guard gate. You don't get in or out unless
you live there or you're invited.
Steve Wynn even has his own golf course up there.
I tried to figure out how I felt about the senator's
daughter. A guy like me can't even get within
whistling distance of someone who lives up there. The
Ethel M Chocolates had probably been thrown in the
trash; she probably ate caviar for breakfast, a girl
like that.
I drifted back downstairs.
"Naturally she checked out. She wasn't even
scratched," J.D. pointed out when I told him.
"It's interesting...I mean, the way she wasn't even
hurt. That was a pretty bad wreck."
"She's not the type," mumbled J.D.
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"Some people are just extraordinarily lucky. That's
all," he said. "If you weren't such a baby, you'd
know things like that."
For some reason, I began to feel pretty good anyway.
Almost happy.
"You can't hurt my feelings," I said. "Not
tonight."
"What a pity," he said. "I must be losing my
touch."
I poured a cup of coffee from the coffee maker. One
thing about Braun: He insisted on good coffee in the
employee lounge. It was some kind of Colombian coffee
that he had someone fetch in.
"What did you do last night?" I asked him.
"Nothing," he said.
"You said you'd fixed it so that the...the doctors
upstairs couldn't touch Doris."
"Is that her name?"
"Doris O'Connor. She's the daughter of Senator Bangor
O'Connor."
"I knew that," he said with a snap to his voice.
"How?"
"I looked in her purse."
"But that's maybe, well, a violation of hospital
rules."
He glared at me. "What a silly statement. Somebody
always has to look for identification on the bodies.
Otherwise, you'd never know who they were. All these
people passing through. I recognized the name of
O'Connor and put two and two together. It came out
13, my lucky number. When I got home I called the
senator and suggested rather strongly that he contact
the hospital and get down here a s a p."
"Wow," I said. "I can't believe I was talking to
the
daughter of a senator...that I asked her to go out to
Red Rock Canyon with me."
"Why not? Senators are no better than anyone else.
And a great deal of them are a lot less better than
anyone. Including a lot of the former people I know."
"But I can't date a senator's daughter!"
"The hell you can't!" he literally yelled at me.
"This is America, isn't it?"
"What should I do?"
"After you wake up this afternoon, give her a phone
call. Likely, her phone number is unlisted, but the
hospital will have it. Tell her you love her and
would like to take her out to Boulder Dam and make
love to her."
"I can't do that!"
"Can't, can't, can't. That's all you know. That's
why America is all screwed up. Nobody can do anything
anymore. This whole damned society is suffering from
a can't fixation." He flung the newspaper he'd been
reading into the trash can by the couch. "Even the
stockmarket is hurting from a can't syndrome. I
simply can't believe that Kodak stock dropped a whole
point. Something's wrong. Probably those god damned
democrats."
"You said the same thing about the republicans last
week," I said.
"And I was right," J.D. said. "I'm right this time,
too."
After we got off work before dawn, I climbed into my
pickup and drove down to Sam's Town on Boulder Highway
and had a cheapie breakfast. You can get sausage
gravy and biscuits for just about a dollar. Coffee is
extra. I usually have a glass of milk instead of
coffee.
Several of the casinos offer deals on meals. Binion's
downtown has a steak dinner for less than three
dollars, but I don't get off work in time to take
advantage of it. The deal ends about 5 a.m. The Rio
has a great breakfast buffet that's extremely
reasonable during the week, but the cost is mishmash
on weekends. Everyone, of course, talks about the
buffet at the Rio, but the place is too noisy for me.
The Hacienda buffet used to be probably the best deal
in town; quality food. But I also like the buffet at
the Flamingo Hilton and the view of the ponds out the
window is fantastic.
Once I had breakfast, I played a nickel video poker
machine for a couple of minutes and lost the dollar or
two I had saved on the cheap breakfast.
Then I went home and slept until late afternoon.
I live in an apartment complex off Rochelle near
Eastern. It's not a very fancy place, but it's good
enough for me. There's a small living room and a
small bedroom, bath, and kitchen. No one bothers me
and because there are a lot of college students living
in the place and they party a lot, no one pays much
attention to any noise I might make every month or so.
Actually, a lot of the times I go out toward the lake
or down toward Laughlin or up on the other side of
Mount Charleston where you don't find a lot of people.
High up on the mountain, up in the pines, the air is
sharp and bites in your lungs as you run in the full
light of the moon. In the winter months, there is
snow everywhere, but I've never let the cold bother me
or stop me.
One night, I may have run a few miles over toward the
atomic bomb test site. This is only a guess, of
course; sometimes I don't know everything that I do
when the moon is full. The newspaper the next day
carried a story about a guard found dead. I didn't
read the story. I don't like those kinds of stories.
They're always depressing. The general gossip was
that some protest group had killed him. They were
always raising a ruckus about the tests out there
until the tests stopped; now they were fussing about
the possibility of dumping atomic waste under Yucca
Mountain. Truth was that the government had been
dumping waste out there for years underneath what they
didn't blow up with atomic bombs. The entire area
would be essentially a no man's land for centuries to
come one way or another. But I don't know how I know
that.
I showered and shaved. As usual, shaving was
difficult. My beard sometimes seems like barbed wire.
She was not home when I telephoned. I left a message
and my telephone number. An hour later, I decided she
wasn't going to get home in time to take my message
and call me back, so I headed off to the hospital.
Doris O'Connor was waiting in the parking lot for me
when I arrived. She got out of her car as I pulled up
in my old pickup.
"New car?"
"Belongs to my parents," she said, standing alongside
a Mercedes-Benz. "I've already had a serious lecture
about my driving habits. I hope you aren't going to
give me another one."
"Nope," I said. "Not me. On the other hand,
I'm not
about to let you drive my ambulance."
"Just ride maybe," she said with a cute little smile.
"Not just maybe. J.D. said it was okay. That's good
enough for me."
"You really like him, don't you?"
"Yes," I said.
"He's a strange kind of person," she said with a
thoughtful tone in her voice.
"I guess," I said.
"Has he arrived?"
I glanced at the setting sun. It was just falling
behind the drug store off to my left.
"Not yet," I said.
She leaned back against the Mercedes, hands behind
her. The posture made her breasts jut out. I had
trouble lifting my eyes to her face.
"What is there about him that you like? He doesn't
appear to be a very likable type, you know?"
"I've never thought much about it," I admitted.
"Father figure?"
"Maybe. I don't remember any father," I said.
"I
don't remember a mother either. I was raised by some
nuns."
"Wow. That's a bummer."
"Well, yeah, I guess. It really wasn't, but I suppose
it could have been." I noticed the question in her
eyes, and tried to explain. "I've never known any
difference. If I'd had a father, I might have missed
him. Same with a mother. But when you've never had
one...."
"I understand," she said with huge, silvery eyes.
"Maybe you can explain it to me, then," I said. I
tried to smile to show that, whatever, it didn't much
matter.
"I'm sorry," she said. "All this psychology shit.
I'm always analyzing things and people. I hope I
haven't embarrassed you or anything."
She said it with a beautiful smile.
"It's okay," I said. "Would you like some coffee?
It's quite good."
"Sure."
Her hand somehow fell into mine as we walked toward
the hospital entrance. It fit just right. Her hand
was soft, like I'd always thought the hand of a girl
would be, yet there was a subtle, almost hidden
strength in her grip and it was very comfortable
walking hand in hand with her. Sort of exciting,
too, to be this close to someone as attractive as she
was. She was stunningly beautiful. And her perfume
was sensational, the odor of a small stream in a high
mountain forest. There were other smells about her
that I decided were woman smells. Some bath power
from a recent shower, the smell of the soap, the
natural smell of her body. I liked everything about
her.
I poured her a cup of coffee. She didn't want cream
or sugar.
"I apologize for the cup."
"Why?"
"Plastic. Girls who drive a Mercedes-Benz probably
would rather have china."
"Not if they're thirsty," she said. She toasted me
with her cup. "And, anyway, I'll be driving a Jeep
tomorrow. My parents have decided that I can't get
into trouble in a Jeep."
"But accidents are accidents. There's always trouble
of one kind or another. Usually, it's just one of
those insurance whiplash things. Or a fender."
"I've also had to swear on a stack of Elvis Presley
records that I will be more careful."
"I'm glad you weren't hurt," I said. "That was a
bad
accident."
"Was it? Everything happened so fast! And then I was
hanging upside down and I couldn't even see anything.
What a bore!"
"It definitely wasn't boring," I said.
"You know what I mean. Next thing I knew, I was in
the ambulance looking up at your friend J.D."
"He told me that when you looked up at him, he decided
you were going to be okay."
"I've always been lucky about things like that," she
said. "Accidents."
"You've been in a car wreck before?"
"Several. You should see the insurance I have to pay!
They really stick the rates to me. This time, my dad
cut back on my allowance. He said I'd have to pay
some of the insurance myself. However, since I'm
going to college--I told you about majoring in
psychology at UNLV--my allowance is just absolutely
gigantic anyway because they were afraid that I
wouldn't go to college after I graduated from high
school. They were terribly afraid that I would run
away to join some commune in Utah or move in with some
blackjack dealer on the Strip and have all of these
kids out of wedlock and they just couldn't face that.
So, when I finally agreed to go to college, they were
happy and gave me a huge allowance. I have to work;
that's part of the deal about me taking responsibility
and all that sort of thing. But here I go again,
talking too much."
She stopped.
"What kids?" I asked.
She shrugged. "None yet."
"You said, 'these kids'."
"Just a figure of speech."
"And the blackjack dealer?"
"A speech of a figure. Muscles you wouldn't believe.
But they were all in his head."
"Good."
"I've never been in a relationship. Is that what you
meant?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"It's nice you asked. In fact, I think it's cute."
"Me, neither. A relationship."
"None?"
"Not even close," I said.
"How come?"
"I...."
"You don't want to talk about it. I can tell. I
guess I'm being a bit too personal. Too soon, that
is. Because, after all, we've just met. Practically.
I'm like that. I want to know everything about
everybody even when I've just met them. Aren't you
curious about me, too?"
"Yes. I guess I am."
"See? I knew that. You know why? Because we have
a
physical attraction to each other. I realized it the
moment you walked into my hospital room last night.
Was it just last night? Time goes so fast. At least,
it seems like that to me. Does it go too fast for
you, too?"
"No. I don't think so."
"Here I go again...talking too much. And sometimes, I
even talk too fast. But the strange thing is that I
think you understand me and you don't mind about the
fact that I talk too much. I don't know why I think
that. It's just a feeling."
"I don't mind," I said. "In fact, I sort of like
it.
I don't know why either."
"Kismet," she said.
"What's that?"
"Fate. It was fate that brought us together."
"Fate didn't have much to do with it," I told her.
"It was J.D."
"It was kismet," insisted J.D. as he entered the room.
He immediately picked up the newspaper and opened up
to the stockmarket page and slouched on the end of the
couch.
"Plastics," I said. "Great stock."
And that made Doris O'Connor laugh.
"Now you kids get the kismet out of here," said J.D.
"Work," I reminded him.
"I asked Nap to help me tonight," J.D. said.
"Out."
(to be continued)
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
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Commentary
by
Claude Hall
November
11, 2003
New York City
1964-71
A journey by Claude Hall
I started about the end of March 1964 on Billboard
magazine in New York City as a reporter. I thought
I'd be there a couple of years. In those days, you
built your career by bouncing from job to a better job
because you knew without question that the chance of
earning a mere promotion in journalism was rare. I'd
previous worked in Manhattan for Hearst on American
Druggist, a trade magazine; then Fawcett on a man's
adventure magazine called Cavalier before going
southwest; it was good to be back. I felt much more
comfortable in New York City than Texas or anywhere
else.
But these were among the most exciting years of not
only the music industry, but the radio industry. And
these industries were addictive. Heady! Glorious!
The people were among the most creative you could
possibly imagine. And they were absolutely
fascinating to be around. Harvey Glascock, general
manager of WNEW, William B. Williams, morning
personality on WNEW-AM; Gertie Katzman, the music
director of WNEW-AM who was just about as famous as
anyone in show business; Gary Stevens, the evening
personality on WMCA; Frank Ward, the general manager
of WWRL; George Furness and Juggy Gales, promotion
people at Atlantic Records, Don Graham, another
promotion man, Morris Levy, owner of Roulette Records,
Murray the K, and others I can no longer recall, but
they were there and a valuable part of my life at the
time. You cannot imagine the power of William B.
Williams. Gertie once told me that she could get a
seat anytime at the 21 by just saying she was a friend
of Willie. Barbara and I once attended a birthday
party for Willie at the Rainbow Grill. Gifts? What
do you give a man who has everything and associates
with Frank Sinatra? A motorscooter that folded up
into a suitcase, a bottle of champagne as tall as a
golf club. And Frank Sinatra Jr. played piano and
sang for the evening...not as a star, just as
background.
There were also a lot of "characters" about. One
had
to be Marty Wexler, who'd been music director at WWRL
until he joined Columbia Records. They had a rule at
the "Black Rock" that all decorations of any kind had
to be approved by a committee. Marty, secretly, had
music posters on his wall, but that wasn't what made
him a character in my opinion. At home, he had a
radio station. All he needed was a transmitter and an
antenna, I was told. The equipment had all been
installed by engineers at ABC, I heard.
When Barbara and I had previously left Manhattan for
Austin, Texas, so that I could become a "famous
novelist," she'd given her job writing for Dr. Joyce
Brothers to Barbara Seaman, later to become famous for
a book against the pill. Seaman had introduced us to
family friend Leslie Fiedler, the renown literary
critic who was teaching at the University of Buffalo.
We knew such writers as Bill (William Molloy) Mason
and TV producers such as Demetris Houtrides,
seven-time Emmy winner with "Sunday Morning" on CBS,
and Marty Iger, the photographer/writer. In fact, it
was Marty who convinced me to leave my job as a
reporter on the Times-Picayune newspaper in New
Orleans. Upon arriving in Austin, I soon discovered
that Austin didn't want me anymore (I'd graduated from
the University of Texas with a degree in journalism).
So I soon landed a job in New Orleans. I hocked a
typewriter to pay for the trip and Barbara and I and
two-year-old John Alexander Hall drove over in our
Beatle and interviewed during Mardi Gras. Visiting
New York City a couple of years later during the
Christmas holidays, Marty and I and Barbara and
Marty's girlfriend sat in his apartment high atop the
city and sipped brandy from a bottle that resembled a
duck and watched the sun come up behind us, the city
slowly changing and changing us, too. "If you're
going to play, you ought to play with the big boys,"
Marty said. Competition. You had to compete.
Both
of us needed to complete. Must compete.
Until that point, my goal was (and still is) to become
a bestselling novelist, quite wealthy or at least
wealthy enough to write my books on the verandah of a
bungalow by the ocean somewhere in the Caribbean. But
writing about radio and about music on Billboard was
fun. I was trapped!
Upon our return to the city, Barbara and I rented an
apartment in Riverdale, then a very nice section of
the Bronx that was a mixture of apartment buildings
and mansions just off the end of Manhattan Island near
the Hudson River. There was a public school and
basketball court across the street and I got back to
playing basketball, though I was never as good as most
of the people on that court-then the third-best pickup
court in New York. There was always twenty or more
people waiting their chance on the court; the best
five kept the court. The best court of all was in
Greenwich Village; the second best in Harlem on 125th
Street where guys like Willis Reed, Walt Frazier,
etc., were known to drop by. However, at one time, I
counted seven all-Americans on the court where I
played-all white. A black kid showed up, brought by
someone else one day; another day, I invited Buzzy
Willis (little All-American), then a promotion man
with RCA Records. Neither ever came back; the court
was just too white. We played from the end of snow to
long after snow fell in the fall and we'd have to
sweep off the court in order to play. And fouls were
the name of the game; if you didn't foul the man you
were guarding when he tried to shoot the ball, your
own team would get you. Occasionally, there was a
fight. Just fists. In Greenwich Village, they
carried knives.
Our two-bedroom apartment was on the fourth floor and
had a balcony. My son John, then about four years
old, kept insisting that a tiger was going to come in
his window. We were never able to persuade him that a
tiger couldn't climb the outside wall of the building.
He knew better. John was worried about tigers;
Darryl, when he grew a little older, was worried about
100-foot tidal waves.
To get to work, I walked a few blocks to a bus stop
and took a bus down to the subway, which was an
elevated railroad at that point (it went underground
after reaching to Manhattan Island). Later, when we
moved to our own home in Hartsdale, the poor-man's
Ardsley, the train took about an hour to reach Grand
Central Terminal, so I usually read. I read "Gone
With the Wind," "Brothers Karamazov," "Crime
and
Punishment," and "War and Peace in the Global
Village"
by Marshal McLuhan. Upon reading "Village," I
became
more or less a McLuhan groupie; he affected a great
many people in this fashion and was definitely a god
in the advertising industry of the day. But full
comprehension of this particular book is not easy. I
would often have to read a page twice and sometimes up
to six times before gaining the complete concept.
Years later, I was a co-keynote speaker with McLuhan
at a conference in Australia and at a cocktail
reception mentioned this to McLuhan and he remarked
that it was okay because many people with "degrees
galore behind their name don't understand it yet."
McLuhan's talk was videotaped for immediate broadcast
on ABC, the public service network of Australia.
About 45 minutes into the hour-long talk, McLuhan
suddenly announced that he had to take a pee and
walked off camera and disappeared. I ran up to my
hotel suite and watched his talk on TV and, yes, the
Australians ran it all, including McLuhan's sudden
announcement and then a three-person panel discussed
his talk, including the fact that older people do have
to use the bathroom on demand on occasion. As a
McLuhan groupie, incidentally, I went on to read all
of his books and later even did a content analysis of
them on an Apple IIe computer; this became the gist
for an article on the uses of humor that was accepted
by the Journal of Pop Culture. Whether it was ever
printed or not, I do not know. In my opinion, no
education is complete without the reading of and the
understanding of "War and Peace in the Global
Village." Good luck.
The first story I wrote for Billboard was about a
gumball machine. Shortly after that, I was sent out
on Long Island to interview a pool table manufacturer.
Both those fields were soon gone from Billboard as
the magazine shifted to cover music virtually en toto.
Gone also about four months after I was hired was a
guy named Bill Wise, the radio editor, who left to
become radio consultant to First National Bank in New
York City.
I was given the editorship of the radio section when
Wise departed. That was fine with me. I'd spent many
hours while writing in that little rock hut that I
lived in the year after I graduated from Winters High
School, Winters, TX, listening to radio...often all
night long. I don't remember many of the names,
except there was a Bob Poole on WWL in New
Orleans-"Poole's Paradise." And I probably heard
Eddie Hill, who did the all-night show on WSM out of
Nashville, and a John Hall on the all-night show out
of KVOO, Tulsa. Often, of course, I listen to CLINT,
which was a Mexican station with a mailbox in Clint,
TX. I've often joked that this was actually the first
format radio station in the world, not KOWH in Omaha,
NE. CLINT played a Hank Williams record and tried to
sell you baby chicks for 15 minutes, then played
another Hank Williams record. You actually didn't
listen to a radio station like that, you just heard
it. I also listened a lot to KVOO out of Tulsa,
especially the live broadcasts from Cain's Academy
that featured Johnny Lee Wills and his band. I still
know and sing in the shower songs such as "I Was Just
Walking Out the Door." Wills, incidentally, was a
younger brother to the legendary Bob Wills. The John
Hall show, no relation, was one of the "Music Until
Dawn" shows on a few radio stations across the nation,
each with an individual disc jockey, but basically the
same. The show started off MOR and evolved slowly to
classical music. I loved that program while writing
all night out on the Texas plains.
The radio-TV section of Billboard, to be honest, was a
mishmash of nothing when I took it over. My job
actually consisted of working on radio stuff about two
and a half days and writing music stuff the rest of
the week. At one point, I handled the country music
section as well. Then I also handled the classical
music section. Then I handled the talent section
while Mike Gross was sick for a few months. And still
did radio and music copy.
What I tried immediately to do with the radio section
was cut out some of the garbage, including a couple of
columns. All the column stuff, I put under the column
title of Vox Jox, which I later learned had been
started by Joe Carlton, then a well-known music
publisher who also had a small record label, and which
Jerry Wexler, then "heavy" as a record producer for
Atlantic, had written for a few years when he worked
on Billboard.
Jerry Wexler talked on two different levels. One was
so erudite you couldn't understand him; the other was
so filthy and gutterish that you were sorry and
sheepish that you could understand almost every word.
I liked him personally and liked being around him, but
I think it was because of the raw intelligence that he
exuded. Once I noticed him reading "North Towards
Home" by Willie Morris, a guy that I had known at the
University of Texas in Austin. Willie was once editor
of the Daily Texan campus newspaper; who'd have
thought he would have written a book? But if you'd
like to know something else, and I think that's the
correct term, about Gordon McLendon, the old Scotsman,
read "North Towards Home." Paul Ackerman, the
music
editor of Billboard, loved Jerry Wexler like a son and
I think Jerry considered him a strong father image. I
know for a fact that Jerry probably produced two
albums just because Paul wanted him to produce them,
including Charlie Rich. The entire editorial staff of
Billboard was once invited to dinner at Jerry's home
in either Little Neck or Great Neck, Long Island.
Pleasant evening.
Atlantic Records had been started by two brothers, or
they had acquired the label in its fledgling years,
Ahmet and Nesui Ertegun, who loved jazz, and were the
sons, I believe, of a former ambassador to the United
States. Turkish ambassador, as I recall. By the time
I joined Billboard, the label was oriented heavily
toward r&b, rhythm and blues. Jerry Wexler, who'd
been a reporter for Billboard, had been with them some
while, but wasn't yet almost a legend (in my opinion,
he was never a legend, just almost. But I think this
was because he sort of later moved aside at the label
for some never explained reason and while he continued
producing acts, something was more or less missing).
Many record labels at the time were involved in some
form of what many might consider to be payola. The
late Tom Shovan once received a packet of tickets for
a round-the-world trip for two that had been sent to
him by mistake; they were intended for an FM program
director in Connecticut that I won't name. Wexler
once boasted that Atlantic had turned "payola into a
fine art." Mostly, it was not outright payment.
It
was involvement on a personal level. If a disc
jockey-and the label concentrated mostly in the black
area-needed money for a hospital bill, and Atlantic
knew about it, the hospital bill was probably paid
someway. One promotion man, and I don't remember
whether he worked for Atlantic or some other label,
once told me that when he got into a town or city in
the south or southeast, he'd call up a disc jockey or
a program director and say, "Hey, let's grab some
steaks and see if we can talk your wife into cooking
them up." They'd go to a supermarket and the
promotion man would spring for enough steak for three
or four meals. The steaks that weren't cooked, of
course, when into the freezer. The promotion man
rationalized that if they'd ate out, it would have
cost even more money than the price of the steaks. By
the way, I never considered this wrong; later when
such firms as Clear Channel charged to play records, I
considered that wrong and felt, to be honest, as if I
and the rest of the potential listeners were being
cheated. As for that FM program director in
Connecticut? Wrong. But on the other hand, who am I
to judge? I've always felt that I had enough of a
problem taking care of my own integrity. There were a
lot of tricks being played with copyrights in those
and previous days. You'll even find Al Jolson's name
on some songs. Louisiana Governor Jimmy Davis.
Murray the K. And some others that I know. In the
final analysis, nobody's perfect. Yet, I have little
respect for those who didn't follow some kind of moral
code. Morris Levy, head of Roulette Records and Big
Seven Music publishing companies, spent a year in
federal prison. As for me, I liked him and respected
him. To the best of my knowledge, he was a moral
human being. Judith Carney once mentioned to me that
if the late David Moorhead went to heave, it was
"because you pushed him in." I can't help
myself, I
loved the man and considered him one of the best radio
people I know and he was always a friend to me. As a
family man, he sucked. I knew that. I was sad about
it, but that was none of my business. One of the
greatest things I've had to learn in life was that a
lot of things were none of my business, including an
an awful lot of the things that I thought were my
business. I told Tricia, Moorhead's daughter, about a
gourmet dinner he cooked one Christmas for me and mine
and she never knew he was a great chef; she only knew
him for "take out." Thus, perhaps we see those
around
us from one or more perspectives and others see them
in a distorted mirror. Or, perhaps, it is us who have
that mirror in front of us. ¿Quien sabe? My
philosophy is that a person, for me to consider them a
human being, has to exhibit some characteristics of a
positive nature...that is, have redeeming facets.
Wexler, Moorhead, Levy had these redeeming
characteristics in abundance.
Jerry Wexler was a damned good record producer.
Produced "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" with
Aretha Franklin that turned her into a star literally
overnight. He also produced Bob Dylan and others. I
recall seeing Jerry was in Miami. We were down there
for some convention and he invited Paul Ackerman out
to his place on one of the canals. Joe Gallo (I've
probably got his name wrong), a record man who owned a
piece of the Otis Redding masters, bought a
Mercedes-Benz from Jerry, picked us up at the hotel on
Miami Beach. We had a pleasant time at Jerry's. His
home was on one of the canals and very comfortable.
Plush, but not lush.
Just remembered: Jerry invited me out to see him
later at the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel,
Los Angeles, to talk about Atlantic getting into
country music. I'd tried to get him to sign Willie
Nelson and Waylon Jennings. He signed Willie and
promoted him only with FM rock stations, which
literally made Willie the success he became (he could
have been considered a Nashville outcast until that
point). I still have that album somewhere. "The
Redhead Stranger" or something like that. It wasn't
very good. Too hip. Too sub-culture.
Shirley, Jerry's wife, was there at the Polo Lounge in
the garden. They were angry. That was shortly before
they got a divorce and Jerry married some young girl
with freckles.
This column, Vox Jox, I wrote at top speed and never
read during all my years at Billboard. It consisted
of phone calls and letters. I dropped these, one by
one, into an old cardboard box below my desk and when
I got ready to write the column took these, one by
one, and jotted down the information as brief as
possible. The column was consistently too long for
the space alloted in the weekly radio section. So, I
would run what I could and use the leftovers the
following week. At Billboard, we called the copy that
wasn't used, "the overset." I've had been a disc
jockey ask for me to send them a copy of the overset,
thinking it was a separate magazine. What's ironic to
some extent is that I once read Vox Jox as written by
Jerry Wexler in an old bound volume and, I swear, you
would have thought I wrote it. And vice versa, I
suppose. Truely, the man who produced hit records by
Aretha Franklin and others wasn't a bad writer.
I concentrated mostly on writing highly researched
articles about radio programming and accidently
stumbled on a gap that then existed throughout trade
journalism: I was the first to write about radio from
the content standpoint. Although the first year or
two were tough, I eventually became well known in
radio not only in the United States, but in several
countries abroad.
Everyone thought that radio had died because of
television. It had, however, resurface vital and
energic in a Top 40 format developed by the late Todd
Storz and Gordon McLendon along with a program
director named Bill Stewart. I wrote about these
people (Todd Storz was already dead at this point) and
some of the young, smart program directors coming up
in the field.
But I never got the big head for a strange reason.
One particular issue of Billboard carried a front-page
story of mine about what radio stations influenced
what record sales in and around the Detroit region. I
spent about six-eight hours doing research on that
article and I suppose it took me two or three hours to
write.
The Billboard in those days was taken from the
printing plant in Cincinnati directly to the airport
and drop-shipped into about seven major cities where
it was taken directly to a post office and put in the
mail. Therefore, many radio stations got their copy
on Tuesday morning when the music director did his/her
research with local record stores before making up the
station's music playlist for the week.
On Tuesday, I received a phone call and the guy on the
other end told me that I'd written a great article and
"it deserves the Pulitzer Prize." Turned out he
was
talking about Vox Jox, not my carefully-researched
article.
Good or bad, Vox Jox became enormous. I mentioned
listening to a radio station in Miami once on a trip
down there and pointed out a couple of programming
flaws and I got a call the next week from a disc
jockey saying that he couldn't work for a station like
that and he'd just quit after reading Vox Jox.
The column was read on Crete, on tiny islands in the
Pacific and even behind the Iron Curtain that existed
in those days, i.e., in Russia. Radio Globo in Rio de
Janiero had my stories translated into Portuguese and
distributed to the other radio stations in the group
throughout Brazil. Disc jockeys read every word! The
reason I couldn't take myself too seriously: Disc
jockeys and program directors usually read Vox Jox on
the john.
But when Dusty Rhodes, a disc jockey working, I think,
in Wichita Falls, TX, was killed in a motorcycle
crash, his parents called me so I could put it in Vox
Jox. And years later the parents of Lou Dorren threw
a hissy when I mentioned his girlfriend of the time,
Nan Bostick, because that was the first they knew
about it. It's sort of funny when you consider that I
became fairly well known for a column and not for a
best-selling novel.
(to be continued)
Claude Hall
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
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