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"Hurt"
by Claude Hall
Chapter Seven
We cleaned up the two bodies at the scene of a wreck
at the intersection of Flamingo and Maryland
Boulevard, one of the most dangerous places in America
whether you're in a car or trying to cross the street
on foot. Doesn't matter whether you have the light or
not. People do target practice at this particular
intersection all of the time, day or night, and
anything that has a motor in it becomes, all of a
sudden, a deadly weapon.
It wasn't a great distance back to the hospital, and
J.D. was, oddly, in a talkative mood. He motioned for
me to pull the ambulance over.
"Didn't expect you to work tonight," he said.
"Why not?"
"That moon out yonder looks very big," he said
I pulled the ambulance into the far reaches of the
parking lot at the shopping center and stopped, the
motor running. We were still about a hundred yards
from the emergency entrance to the hospital. Some
attendants dressed in white stood around, waiting for
us. They could see us parked in the distance. I
tried not to notice them.
Moonlight fought among the scattered streetlights and
the random palm trees. The palm trees, like the
streetlights, had been planted in rows just like the
tombstones of a graveyard. Some black crows flew
across the parking lot, almost invisible in the dark.
I poked my left hand out of the window and wriggled my
fingers.
"I can feel it," I said.
"What are the symptoms?"
"The thing that bothers me most is the tight skin on
the back of my hands. Itches like hell. I think it
has something to do with the hair follicles."
"Ever try cortisone?"
I laughed. "That's as dumb as my suggestion about
Coppertone. But, hell, J.D., I've tried everything.
You name it. Absorbine Jr., Vaseline. Even a snake
oil made by the Indians over in New Mexico. The real
stuff. Nothing works."
"Then isn't it a little dangerous to be out tonight?"
"Not really. There are some clouds around. The moon
is not quite full yet."
"There are not that many clouds around."
"I'll take tomorrow off."
"I would appreciate that. There are somethings with
which I'd rather not have personal experience."
"Actually, it's pretty funny."
"How would you know?"
"Videotape," I said.
"You've got a videotape of it?"
"Sure."
"That's perfectly disgusting!"
"Disgusting, perhaps, but not perfectly. Not that.
Actually, there's nothing disgusting about it."
"Too hairy for me."
"I could use a Bic."
"Fun-nee. But not a hell of a lot."
"I thought it was funny."
"You might. Yes. But, no, it is not funny."
I just sat there in the ambulance, looking out at the
moon over toward Frenchman Mountains.
"The attendants are getting nervous," I said.
"As well they should," said J.D.
"Is that why we're stopped out here?"
"One of the reasons," said J.D. "One of the
interesting facets of human kind that I've noted over
the years is that nervous people usually make other
people nervous. Another reason I had you hesitate
here is that I wanted to check out the area for
dervish."
"All I see," I said, "are some pigeons out there under
one of the streetlights."
"Not pigeons. Crows," said J.D. "We seem to
have an
abundance of crows around lately."
So, we waited a while. Neither of us talked. And
when J.D. had satisfied himself that nothing was
wrong, we drove on to the hospital.
The attendants literally leaped at the ambulance to
get the bodies.
"What happened?" one of them asked.
"The engine stalled," said J.D.
"We thought it might have something to do with the
dervish," said an attendant.
They wheeled the two bodies away.
We stood beside the ambulance a moment. I half think
that J.D. expected--maybe even hoped--that Braun would
come charging out of the doorway at us. But that
didn't happen.
"Do you know where they take the bodies?" I asked.
"Somewhere down below," J.D. said.
"Doesn't anyone raise a ruckus? Family? Wives?
Husbands?"
"I guess they do sometimes. But they can always be
stalled off. A typical excuse is that the victim has
been, shall we say, maimed horribly."
"I wonder if there's a connection between the
relatives of the victims and the dervish," I said.
"That, I don't know," J.D. said.
He headed toward the employee lounge. I followed.
His head never stayed still, he was constantly looking
to the right or the left as if he expected something
dangerous to leap out of the dark at us at any time.
I knew that he could sense, if not actually see,
things at some distance. Especially in the dark. I
could smell blood on the wind, he could tell you if
someone was moving around out there.
Nap's shooting a day or two ago had done something to
all of us...put our fear about the dervish in high
gear. Now, we all seemed to be more or less spooked
at even the slightest cause.
And the dervish were on everybody's mind and the topic
of just about every hallway and lounge conversation,
including a random tête-à-tête that erupted between
J.D. and Nap as soon as we entered the lounge that
evening.
The lounge, of course, was there for all of us, but it
had become the habitat of whatever ambulance crew was
on duty when they were not out on trouble calls. Nap
was supposedly part of the ambulance crew. However,
because of his overpowering odor, he had become more
or less persona non gratia and we actually saw very
little of him. None of us knew where he stayed in the
building or what he did these days. But he was seldom
around. Tonight, he'd had the lounge all to himself
until we walked in the room.
"You weren't shot after all?" I said.
"What makes you think I wasn't shot? Didn't it hurt,
too? You want to see the bullet?"
"Not me," I said and beat a hasty retreat to the other
side of the room, mostly to get away from the man's
smell.
Nap thought the dervish were part of a citizen's
action group. His gnarled face seemed even more
twisted and convoluted than usual. From all of these
small Grand Canyons of his face peered two rather
small and rather yellow eyes.
"Vigilantes?" asked J.D. It was a question, but
the
tone of his voice indicated he thought the idea
totally bunk. I had noticed a long time ago that he
thought everything Nap said was nonsense. He didn't
like Nap.
"Why not?" asked Nap. It was characteristic of him to
talk in questions. He made very few direct
statements.
"Because vigilante groups don't wait until dark and
they don't fight from the shadows," said J.D. "They
don't have to." He snapped the pages of his habitual
newspaper open and his head darted inside and was lost
to view. "I should know."
"Couldn't it be some kind of new modus operandi,
maybe?" asked Nap.
"Is that why you ran like a scared crow earlier
tonight?" said J.D.
"Hey, wasn't it me who got shot? Didn't it take one
of the doctors half an hour to get the slug out? You
want to look at the slug?"
"No!" snapped J.D. from behind his newspaper.
Before I could also say no again, Nap walked over to
where I stood by the window and poked a gnarled fist
out my direction. His twisted fingers snapped open to
reveal a copper ball. I backed off a step. The
shooting had certainly not improved Nap's odor
problem. I wondered if he had ever taken a bath in
his life.
"Better look at this," I told J.D.
Wearily, he folded his newspaper and took the pellet
from me and was absorbed for a moment in examining it.
The pellet was about half the size of a marble.
He handed the pellet back to Nap.
"You were very lucky," he told Nap.
Nap placed the small ball carefully away in his
handkerchief before asking the proverbial question.
"Lucky?"
"Definitely lucky," insisted J.D. "They were
obviously aiming for your gonads just for amusement."
He stared at Nap. His eyes blinked once.
Nap was visibly shaken. I swear, his ears twitched.
"How do you figure that?"
"That pellet was fired from an old cap and ball
pistol. Flintlock, I imagine. You don't see a lot of
those around much these days."
"Are you trying to tell me that the dervish used a
ball and that's how you know they were aiming...aiming
for...?"
"In all probability," said J.D. "Because if they'd
been trying to kill you, they would, of course, have
used lead."
With a flourish, he returned to his stock market
reports. The pages of the newspaper continued to
rattle. The sound was chilling. Like a rattlesnake.
"Lead!" It was almost a shriek, but still shouted out
with a questioning tone of voice.
Nap darted from the room, knees bent in that
characteristic manner he has when he's in a hurry.
The newspaper rattled even harder. But I walked over
there and looked over the edge. J.D. was not
laughing.
He glanced up.
I was a little embarrassed at being caught.
"I thought you might be laughing," I said.
"I never laugh."
"I knew that," I said, because I knew that if I
accused him of laughing last night, he would merely
deny it. "But I didn't know you were an expert on old
flintlock pistols."
"I'm older than I look," J.D. said. He didn't even
look up.
"That was a lie, of course, about the lead pellet."
"I never said that I didn't lie. I lie all of the
time," J.D. said. "It is a skill of which I'm
inordinately proud. Though, of course, I'm never
pleased about anything."
He purposely shifted the pages of his newspaper to
hide himself from me. The pages, once again, rattled.
I would have sworn he was laughing.
I poured myself half a cup of coffee.
"Have you ever wondered about all of this? You and
me?"
I gestured at the doorway. Just then, I heard a loud
thump from far down the hallway just as if Nap, in his
great hurry to get away from us, had bumped into the
wall.
"I have pondered it quite often," said J.D. in that
slow, meticulous manner he had when he was discussing
something that he considered important.
"They don't know about us, do they?" I asked.
"The normies? Sure, some of them do. Some of them
believe in us and quite a few of those, I would think,
hate us with a purple, all-consuming passion. But the
greater majority of the people consider everything
abnormal as basically myth. How does it feel to be a
myth?"
"I feel pretty real," I said.
"Don't. Don't even think about it. And especially
don't get uptight about it. Take my word for it: You
are definitely a myth. Just as I am. At one time in
the turbulent history of human kind, the public
appreciated myth. Thor, Hercules, Sky, Earth, Wind,
Fire. Myth provided meaning and guidance to life.
However, these days it's best they have forgotten as
much of myth as possible. There's not much place for
any of us anymore. Those of us left function, if only
vaguely, on the fringes of the real world. We are,
essentially, not needed anymore."
"Perhaps we're still useful," I said. "You know,
cleaning up the debris of humanity."
This was something I'd rationalized as an excuse,
perhaps, for doing what I did. There had to be a
reason behind it somewhere.
"Hogwash," said J.D. "Humanity is quite capable of
cleaning up after itself. The only question I've got
about rampant mythology is whether, just perhaps, mind
you, what exists now might be a pure and simple case
of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Maybe some
aspects of mythology are still useful to society,
i.e., the good. About the bad and the ugly, I'm
philosophically not so sure."
The coffee tasted especially good tonight and it was
quite strong. J.D. makes coffee so strong sometimes
that you can hardly drink it. It's guaranteed to keep
you awake. But I realized that too much coffee would
set my nerves all a jangle, so I set the cup down on
the table.
Since it was obvious that J.D. didn't want to talk to
me at the moment for one reason or another, I
wandered outside. It was still early evening. Barely
past 10 p.m. A moon shaped like a football was
already hanging back off to the southeast. Just the
sight of the moon was titillating. A day or two more
and the moon would be full. No doubt about it. No
clouds this time of year. It would be a very exciting
night.
I had not always been impressed with the moon.
Some weeks after the attack by the dog in Alabama--and
I was still very sick--I woke up one night and felt as
if someone had me by the throat. I had trouble
breathing. I crawled out of the crate in that
Birmingham alley and tried to climb to my feet, but
fell against the wall of a building and down to my
knees. I felt very weak and nauseous and for a long
moment thought I was going to die. My chest ached and
my heart thudded like someone was hitting it with a
sledge hammer.
These days, I thought perhaps that I'd suffered a
heart attack. Maybe. Or something like that.
But at the time, all those years ago, I didn't know
what was wrong.
You must understand that I had no reason for praying.
I'd been in a church a few times while staying in the
orphanage, but it hadn't been a specific church.
Maybe it happened because I was already on my knees
there in the mud left from a recent rain. Maybe I was
just desperate. I don't know. But I prayed to a god
that I didn't really believe in and one which, I was
quite sure, didn't even exist and one who wouldn't
have paid much attention to a kid like me anyway.
It was a very weak prayer. Quite short. I just asked
for help from someone in the sky. If there was a god,
he had to be up there and not down here where there
was only misery. And then I passed out. When I came
to, I was just like I am now. J.D. called me a
"moonie lunie." The French, I'd read, had a more
picturesque name for it: "Loup garou."
They'd made a movie about the illness; the movie had
starred Lou Chaney. "The Werewolf."
The air out in the parking lot of the shopping center
felt great. I thought I'd walk over to the drug store
to get a diet Pepsi. Diet Pepsi doesn't have much
caffeine. At least, not as much caffeine as that
coffee made by J.D.
A man leaned against the wall by the doorway of the
supermarket next door. Two paper bags of groceries
sat on the sidewalk by his feet. He wasn't watching
me, but I had the distinct impression he was aware of
every step I'd taken across the parking lot.
I nodded at him and went into the drug store.
I slipped a dollar bill into the soda pop machine,
then popped the top on the can of diet Pepsi that
rolled out and took a sip.
A nice old lady with silvery hair in a bun came over
and looked at the soda pop machine.
"Say, young fellow. You forgot your change."
"No, ma'am. Must belong to someone else."
She took the change and slipped it into her purse.
The purse was quite worn and I don't think the snap
worked very well.
I liked her smell. She had a very pleasant odor, but
it was old and tired in spite of her smile.
"You do this sort of thing often?" she asked.
"No, ma'am."
She smiled pleasantly. Her eyes twinkled with some
kind of secret delight.
"Heck. 'Cause I wouldn't mind following you around
just to pick up all of the change you say you didn't
forget. Someone leaves change here at this machine a
lot; it's one of my regular stops."
"You probably think I'm strange."
"Just rich," she said.
"Not rich, unfortunately." I laughed. "But
definitely strange."
"We obviously need more strange people in this world,"
she said. "The other kind aren't so nice. Have a
good day."
I noticed the man with the two grocery bags looking
through the window at us. I toasted him with my can
of Pepsi.
When I walked out of the drug store, the nice old lady
was pushing a shopping cart among the cars toward the
street. Her belongings were tucked inside a plastic
garbage bag she'd found somewhere. She walked with a
jaunty step, just as if she was satisfied with her lot
at least for the moment and, for some reason, that
made me sad.
When I was young...or younger than I am now...I used
to think the world was perfect or soon would be.
Today, I knew different. And, sadly, I knew that
there wasn't a whole lot I could do about it. She
wore a dress that had seen better years. The dress
had a hole here and a hole there. The dress was a bit
too large. It was clean, but that was about all you
could say for it.
After a moment, I walked over to the street. She was
heading north on the sidewalk and already a good
distance away, passing slowly from the glow of one
streetlight to another. I think I heard her
whistling. But maybe she was just humming half under
her breath. If it was a song, I couldn't recognize
it.
I turned and walked back toward the hospital.
A few yards away, the man with pepper-grey hair was
fumbling with his two bags of groceries across the
plaza and on the verge of dropping everything before
he reached his Ford Bronco. I threw my empty soda can
in a trash can and walked toward him, but he insisted
he didn't need any help. His face wore a funny
expression. Just then, one of the bags slipped out of
his hands and I caught it out of the air.
"That was a very neat trick," he said. He squinted at
me.
"You should see me juggle tennis balls," I said.
I followed him to the Ford Bronco and placed the sack
of groceries in the floorboard of the backseat so they
wouldn't spill. He was rather embarrassed as he
mumbled over some words. I couldn't understand what
he was trying to say. I guess he was attempting,
belately, to thank me and I was also embarrassed about
his attempted appreciation. There had been a time
years ago when he would have immediately accepted the
help from another person, said thanks, and that would
have been it. Now, no one trusted anyone. They
didn't want any help out of fear you probably had an
ulterior motive in mind.
He kept tight hold of the other paper bag.
I pretended to juggle some tennis balls. He didn't
even crack a smile. He just stood there holding his
paper grocery bag in his hands.
So, I turned and walked back toward the ambulance. I
probably was about thirty yards or a little further
from the Ford Bronco when it happened. A hail of
bullets ripped into the asphalt surface of the parking
lot at my feet, jerked to the left, and climbed up the
lower brick wall of the hospital. Chips from the
exploding bricks flew everywhere. Maybe it was
because of all of those things going on last night
over on Industrial. Maybe it was that luck Doris
O'Connor had given me earlier. I wasn't even
scratched. He'd been in too much of a hurry. If he'd
taken his time, I'd be laying sprawled on the parking
lot this very minute in pieces.
I don't know what I intended to do. It may sound
pretty crazy, I'll admit that, but later when I had
time to analyze the situation, I believe I actually
intended to charge at him. I don't know why I think
that, because I'm not the type. Audie Murphy may have
done that in real life in World War II and then acted
out the scene in his movie "To Hell and Back," but
ordinary people just don't do heroic things like that.
And later I couldn't rationalize whether I would have
hurt the man with the gun or not. Probably. At
least, a little bit. Unless he killed me first.
As I turned, however, the man with the pepper-gray
hair was nervously throwing an automatic rifle onto
the front seat of his Bronco and leaping in after it.
J.D. came running out of the hospital.
He stopped beside me.
"Dervish?"
The assailant started his car and quickly sped out of
the parking lot, tires burning rubber as he knifed the
Bronco between two passing cars and roared north up
the street.
I had trouble talking. I hadn't been scared at first,
but now I was trembling all over.
"Normie," I finally said. "Probably. Unless,
of
course, the dervish look like normies."
J.D. moved to his left into the shadow of a
streetlight in the parking area, almost invisible in
his dark suit.
"Dammit!" he said. "You should have avoided
him."
"How was I to know?"
Talking very slow and, for the first time in a
noticably Texas drawl, J.D. said, "Someone just
spotted you that's all. I've seen that Bronco around
before. Maybe he's spotted us all."
"What are we going to do?"
"In the old days, just the thought of someone finding
me out would set me to flight. The problem is that
I've got nowhere else to run these days."
"I used to run, too," I said. "But, well, you know,
Doris and me...I don't much feel like running
anymore."
"What did the guy look like?"
"I don't know how to describe him. Middle age.
Pepper-gray hair. Fairly big."
"How did he seem? Angry?"
"Not that I noticed. Slightly nervous, maybe. I
mean, he wasn't friendly or anything, but I would
never have suspected he had a gun in that paper bag.
Never."
"Would you recognize him again?"
"Maybe, but I doubt it."
J.D. went over and hunted around in the flower bed at
the foot of the hospital wall. He finally found
something and held it up.
"At least he didn't use a silver bullet. You got
lucky. But you'd best keep a careful eye out. The
fanatics don't quit. They may fail, but it doesn't
stop them from trying again. Nothing usually stops
them short of death itself."
"Why?"
"I don't know why fanatics exist. They're like a
disease, I guess. You've got people protesting
everything from abortions to the killing of whales and
the burning of forests in Brazil. Now and then, one
or more of them gets a little too excited and goes
over the edge. Nuts. Like the IRA. Like the
misguided souls who live in the Middle East. They
don't know any better. But, hell, who's perfect?"
"What should I do now? Maybe tell Gertrude?"
"No! Don't tell anyone for now."
"They might not miss next time," I said.
"People with pepper-gray hair who drive Ford Broncos
miss when they want to," J.D. said. "If he'd wanted
you dead, you'd be dead right now. He would have used
a thirty ought six like he probably uses when hunting
deer. He was just trying to tell you something."
"Yeah. Like get the hell out of town."
"At the very least, someone...or something...sure has
these folks riled up," J.D. said.
(to be continued)
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
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Commentary
by
Claude Hall
December 1, 2003
New York City
1964-71
A Journey by Claude Hall
Part Four
So, I was beginning to be a "voice" for radio as well
as a reporter. After consulting with Bill Gavin, I
even tried to start a disc jockey organization, but
this failed without even a whimper; disc jockeys and
management were afraid of anything that might remotely
resemble a union. But I hoped in some fashion to slow
down the terrible job situation of disc jockeys...they
appeared to have very little job security. Because I
knew the management at one radio station in Cleveland,
when they fired a disc jockey, they offered him fairly
good severance pay and use of the radio station phone
to find another job; I thought that was decent. But
most disc jockeys did not receive this kind of
treatment. I'm sure that a lot were fired without a
valid reason. There was one program director--most of
you know who I'm talking about--who used to call up
the disc jockey--big red lightbulb--while he was on
the air and scream at him for any of myriad
reasons...then expect the disc jockey to return to the
air the next moment bright, cheerful, etc. William B.
Williams was treated well, but guys like Weird Beard
and Long John Silver and countless others probably not
so well.
One disc jockey called to complain one day that I'd
written in Vox Jox that he was fired and how could I
do that? I told him it wasn't any stigma and anyway
I'd help him get another job and I did and so for the
rest of my Billboard years I was operating a
one-person employment bureau, free, as well as
everything else. One of the early disc jockeys who
phoned me promised a bottle of scotch if he got the
job, which he did, and he never sent me a bottle of
scotch and never phoned me again. I quickly surmised
that he felt guilty. So, I set my price on a bottle
of beer. Everyone thought I was joking, though
occasionally someone would show up in my office with a
six pack. I don't know how much beer I'm owed.
Probably a shipload. Doesn't matter now. I don't
drink anymore. But a few people remembered. Years
later when I was studying for a master's degree, Dr.
Tom Durfey, head of communications at Oral Roberts,
wanted me to help him organize a radio meeting on
campus. David Moorhead was en route to the coast, so
I persuaded him to come talk to the students. Bill
Stewart drove up from Dallas. I phoned the news
director of KTOK in Oklahoma City, Josh Kane, and
asked if he would be willing to talk to the students
and he said, "Hell, yes! You don't remember me, do
you?" I seldom lie. I said no. He said,
"You got me
a job once in California. I phoned and you told me
where the job was and I mentioned that I hadn't eaten
in three days and you told me to tell them to pay me
in advance and that you said so. And they did."
Lord, what audacity I had in those days! I don't
think I actually got anyone a job...just told them
where it was. Disc jockeys were always pretty good at
getting their own jobs. But I suppose that when you
hang around disc jockeys and program directors and
general managers...the kind of people I was getting to
know...you do get a little big for your britches as we
used to say back in Texas. The only thing I can offer
in my own defense is that I believed then and I
believe now that my heart was always in the right
place. I remember receiving a phone call back before
the Black Power days from Rudy Runnels in Washington
who billed himself as "the tall, tan Texan" and he
said, "Claude, you may be white, but you've got a
black heart." I've always considered that a great
compliment.
Big britches or not, I made a mistake in thinking I
could keep Bill Drake from ruining a new format that
had it's birth on WOR-FM under a program director
named Tom Reynolds. I don't think Tom wanted the
programming job, he was really a television man; it
had just sort of been shoved on him. And, contrary to
what you might think, it was not America's first
separate FM rock station. Some FM station in Denver
was programming some rock, although I think the
station was more like block formatted. I never heard
it. I think the station was even still mono. But
WOR-FM was more than likely the first major attempt at
a rock format on FM...the first of which I'm aware.
Union contracts prevented Murray the K, Bill "Rosko"
Mercer, Scott Muni and the others from going on the
air and automated rock fared pretty well. Then, once
the dispute was settled, we had personalities on an FM
rock station in the market. Big deal. Murray the K
did his fifth-Beatle thing. Rosko was actually
playing Motown virtually back-to-back in his all-night
slot. Johnny Michaels (I think that was his name; out
of WFAS in White Plains, NY) was playing a countdown
thing, including the British chart. Boring. Block
rock, so to speak. Then Murray the K (Kaufman) hired
a young black named Bobby Calendar to help with the
music. Calendar was a weird kid who wore a robe. He
flipped "Cherish" by the Association and when Murray
the K played "Requiem for the Masses" by the
Association, something happened. Soon, transistor FM
radios were selling rapidly throughout Manhattan.
Soon, kids were having parties and listening to Murray
en masse. I've often wondered if Murray actually knew
what was happening. Didn't matter, he was certainly
willing to take credit for it. WOR-FM during his
tenure was competing quite well with AM rockers. And
gaining ground.
I should point out that Tom Donahue was also doing
quite well with r&b/blues on an FM station in San
Francisco. As musical tastes of the young shifted and
the Airplane and others grew in popularity in the bay
area, he, too, shifted his music. He called his
approach underground and it was. Few people knew
anything about it. I mentioned to Tom Reynolds once
that Rosko was playing too much Motown and Rosko
backed off and began to play more of the same music as
Murray the K. Many shifts were automated. Tom told
me once that he was listening as he drove to work and
he rushed in to compliment the personality on the air
and found only the machine.
Then Drake, who'd had an enormous success with KHJ in
Los Angeles and other RKO stations, got programming
control of WOR-FM in Manhattan. We met in Manhattan
at some bar. Tried to drink each other under the
table (hard to do with Drake in those days of seven
and seven) and I left him thinking that he was going
to keep WOR-FM like it was and let this new format
happen. I'd realized that "underground" was not
the
sort of thing Madison Avenue wanted to hear; I had
started calling it "progressive rock," a direct steal,
I will admit, from the term "progressive jazz."
I
even consulted a couple of timebuyers in the direction
of these new FM rock stations that were beginning to
happen. Most of them were inconsistent in
format...even block programmed to some extent. But
they were going after youth.
First thing I know, here comes Sebastian Stone to take
over programming of WOR-FM. He dumped most of the
staff and changed WOR-FM to virtually oldies. I'll
say this: the change worked. WOR-FM's ratings
climbed even higher. But the new progressive rock
format sprawled a floundering. I finally persuaded
George Duncan, a radio salesman who'd asked for the
managership of WNEW-FM and got it, to try it out.
Poor George. He was nervous about the situation, but
the all-girl personality approach on WNEW-FM wasn't
doing well. He first hired Rosko. And that was the
real start of the progressive rock format. Meanwhile,
Murray the K was out of work; the guy was never able
to take advantage of the new format. Scott Muni
became a hero at WNEW-FM. Rosko became a god at
night. Allison Steele, a holdover, also did quite
well for many years on WNEW-FM. Based on the success
of WNEW-FM, Metromedia Radio soon had similar
successes with KSAN-FM in San Francisco, WMMS-FM in
Cleveland, KMET-FM in Los Angeles and WMMR-FM in
Philadelphia. Those stations made so much money that
it made the television side of Metromedia look weak.
While WOR-FM did well in ratings, I assure you that it
did not even get close to making the profit of
WNEW-FM. WNEW-FM had to be the most successful FM in the
world, probably followed by KMET-FM in Los
Angeles. For years. Out of all of the people
associated with progressive rock as a format, I think
Scott Muni benefited the most. He was not only an air
personality with WNEW-FM, but also the operations
director for many, many years.
We were always trying something new in those New York
Billboard days. Tried covering the commercials field
for a while; that attempt was not successful. But I
remember a brownstone over on the east side where
lunch was served free for anyone in advertising and
the lunch was prepared by a gourmet chef. You sat on
a couch or an easy chair and someone would come by and
ask what you'd like to drink, what you'd like to eat.
Seems as if the name Marc Brown comes to mind. For a
while, his partner (or employee) was one of the jazz
greats. They did music for TV commercials. Lots of
it.
While I may have been making strides in communicating
with those in radio, we needed to keep pace with
everything that was happening in music in New York
City. So, I grew a beard and forgot about haircuts
for a while. Frankly, I soon looked a mess! My beard
looked like some Texas tumbleweed. My hair even
worse. And I had a "coat" I'd bought in Mexico
made
of colored rags. Loose and quite comfortable, if
weird. Suddenly, however, I was okay for recording
studios; I could talk to the musicians. And kids
would ask me directions on the street corners even
though there was a policeman standing nearby. A beard
did a lot for your image in those days. But it also
got me pulled over when I was driving. We had a VW
Beetle then (we lived in the poor-man section of
Ardsley called Hartsdale about 22 miles north of
Manhattan) and two kids and a dog, Popsie, in the
"back-back" (behind the rear seat, a word he knew
quite well) and even with Barbara in the front
passenger seat we would be pulled over by the police
and questioned. I once asked a cop why. The answer
was profile. I finally decided to heck with hanging
out in the recording studios and shaved the beard and
cut the hair.
Award ceremonies could be fun in those days. At one
BMI dinner, Alan Touisant, a record
producer/songwriter from New Orleans, boogaloo'd up to
the stage in his gold tuxedo to accept his award. The
worse award ceremony back then was the Grammies.
Production was always the pits. Mike Gross, talent
editor of Billboard, and I would sit at a table
listing our choices for winners and, of course, they
never won. RCA and Columbia had control! More
members, thus more votes. So, the people who should
have won Grammies seldom won. But the system was the
system and you couldn't have changed it if you'd
tried; Mike and I would often laugh as they announced
the winners on stage.
Best dinner during my New York days? The annual
dinner hosted by BMI. The word lavish didn't even
began to start describing that feast fit for some
ancient emperor. For a while, I received an
invitation each year; the invitations stopped once I
moved to Los Angeles. The dinner was held during the
annual convention of the National Association of
Broadcasters which was always very party oriented back
then. And maybe still is. Triangle used to have a
suite during the NAB and you could walk over to a
table, slice off a chunk of roast beef, slice off a
piece of cheese from a huge pile, slab some mayo or
mustard on slices of bread and have a sandwich that
would have costed $10 or more anywhere in the world
and maybe even more at Lindy's. Huge! But the BMI
dinner? Whew! One such dinner in Washington, Lee
Zhito and I wandered in and found a table and just a
few moments later in walks Sol Taishoff, owner and
publisher and king of Broadcasting magazine, the
magazine for radio business news. Sol was also a nice
guy, to the best of my knowledge; he knew me and I've
always thought he bought those guys over to where I
was sitting just to impress the hell out of me. Which
he did. He was followed, as if his personal
entourage, by six or seven television and radio chain
presidents. Big men. And with them was a guy named
Whitehead, the president's head of communication. To
wit: Even bigger than big. All of these guys were
sort of catering, even pandering, to Whitehead. I
don't remember the menu for that particular dinner,
but BMI was wont to fly in this and fly in that from
distant parts of the world for that feast. It wasn't
just the best, it was the ultimate best. And the
cigars at the end of the meal were these huge monsters
in glass tubes, probably from Castro's personal
humidor. Whitehead was enthralled by the cigars. All
of the chain presidents suddenly decided they didn't
smoke and offered Whitehead their cigars. I smiled
and tucked mine away in my inside jacket pocket and
took it back and gave it to Paul Ackerman, the music
editor of Billboard.
One year, I was a co-keynote speaker at the NAB
convention. It was in Las Vegas that year. With me
on stage were Vince Walsilewski, president of the NAB,
and Miles David, president of the Radio Advertising
Bureau. I suppose there were at least 1,200 people in
the auditorium. I've always felt that I was asked
more questions than either Vince or Miles, but that
could be ego fogging up my memory.
I was taking the shuttle bus in from the airport after
some out-of-town convention and a guy sitting beside
me introduced himself as Kal Rudman. I remember my
fingers feeling greasy. The old barometer. He seemed
to know who I was. Told me that I could make a lot of
money as radio-TV editor of Billboard if I was smart.
I mentioned that I had met Kal Rudman to someone at
the office next day or so; they had nothing
complimentary to say about him. Seems as if he'd
worked for Billboard as a stringer...or had commented
about the music for publication, but the deal hadn't
lasted long. Turned out that Kal Rudman published a
record tipsheet called Monday Morning Quarterback out
of the Philadelphia area. He told some record
promotion man once that he had accumulated more than
$2.5 million in oil stock from earnings from his
tipsheet. And then the price of gasoline went up.
I also recall a record promotion man--and, yes, I can
remember (I think) his name--telling me about pulling
a hitman off the train to Philadelphia. Someone had
grown a little irritated with Rudman and bought a
contract. The record promotion saved Rudman's life.
I don't know how he did it and, frankly, I didn't want
to know at the time. I didn't even ask why. All
this, of course, was more than 30 years ago. (to be
continued)
OTHER MATTERS
Just to explain things, I was thinking about featuring
the philosophies of Musashi in Commentary and Jay
Blackburn, radiojdb@satx.rr.com,
offered to help, to
wit: "Claude, I'm glad you're interested in Musashi.
I've been dragging around 'A Book of Five Rings' and
'The Art of War' for a long time. Eiji Yoshikawa
wrote a novelized biography of Miyamoto Musashi in
the late '50s. It was finally published in Japanese
in 1971, then in English in 1982. Yoshikawa's work is
the most definitive we have on the life of Musashi. I
would be happy to overnite either or both if you
would like them, but you will have to give them back.
My interest in the martial arts is long standing.
That's what happens when you go to military school.
BTW, Bart McLendon was one year behind me at SMA.
And, Claude, this is for Andy: I liked 'Comets'. I
dont know who or why 'Learning to Swim' was written
about or for, but, whichever, they certainly are not
alone. There are days when you finally get the energy
to open your eyes and you find yourself in the deep
end of the pool. And it's not swimming that you think
about. It's how you're going to get your next breath.
Tell Andy Thanks. PS -- Because I studied Kendo, my
dokken is a replica of the one Musashi carved out of
an oar. It is red oak, as is the tradition. Musashi
used it in his most famous duel. It was an overhead,
one-stoke kill."
I had to take a pass on Musashi...and this after
cleaning up the copy on the first two of the books.
Gah! Turns out the entire thing in perfect form is
available on the Internet. Same translation. So,
what I did instead was a diatribe and sent it out to
about 600 on a list that I have. Maybe we can clue
some more people into "The Book of Five Rings" other
than just me and Jay Blackburn and Bill Randle.
I hope all of you fared well over the holidays. I had
several notes regarding turkey, including this one
from George Wilson, KeokiWC@aol.com:
"Hope you guys
are well and ready for a great Thanksgiving...we are
going to Jackie's son's house...then my kids are
coming over here for dessert later...the New York
stuff is great...our very best to you and Barbara."
Jaan Torv, jtorv@hot-tomato.com.au,
CEO, The Hot
Tomato Broadcasting Company Pty Ltd, 60 High St,
Southport, QLD. 4215, AUSTRALIA: "Trawling for data I
came across your online weblog -- how refreshing to
read your writings once again. We met a few times in
Australia and at your home in Los Angeles and you
introduced me, Rod Muir and George Burns -- (I think)
-- to Bill Drake at his home in LA. You might
remember 2SM. I spent 17 years in the US and returned
to Australia last year where we established a
broadcasting company (Hot Tomato) on the Gold Coast in
Queensland. It was a long time ago -- and Claude -- I
hope you and Barbara are well. Keep up the blogging!"
I haven't the foggiest idea was "blogging" means--and
probably don't want to know--but I immediately emailed
Jaan to ask for an update on Australian radio. I had
some great times in Australia, courtesy of 2SM and
Kevin Donahue and Peter Davidson. Met some good radio
people. Jaan wrote back:
"Thanks for your note. We have been on air now for 14
weeks -- located on the Gold Coast in South East
Queensland a one-hour drive south of Brisbane and an
hour's flight to Sydney. This area is an Antipodean
amalgam of The Hamptons in Long Island, Palm Beach,
Florida and Maui. Great surf, beaches and tropical
hinterland. Due to the geography and topography, it's
also one of the best FM transmission for territories
in all of Australia. The economy is jumping and
business is growing along with the population...close
to half a million which swells to a million during
peak holiday seasons...like Xmas, Easter southern
winter and school holidays. The Gold Coast has
sustained growth for almost 10 years. On air we are
1029 Hot Tomato -- Adult Contemporary Top 40 -- and we
get a little tougher towards evening. There are a
bunch of signals coming into the market --most of the
Brisbane FM and AM ers can be picked up clearly.
There are two primary competitors both owned by one
company who have had the market exclusively to
themselves for 14 years. We are at the end of survey
-- first one in three years -- and will know how we
are doing in December. All the signs point in the
right direction, according to our tracking studies,
calls to the station, advertiser results and response
to outside broadcasts. We have our fingers crossed.
Aussie radio has surely changed a lot since we last
met. We are a stand-alone, privately owned
broadcasting property (it's great fun being the
owner). However, we are somewhat unique in that major
metro stations are to a great extent owned by
foreign-funded networks or domestic conglomerates like
Austereo. (DMG - Clear Channel) Austereo is the big
daddy network established by the guy who is now
building the DMG-NOVA group, Paul Thompson. I have
not seen Rod Muir for years but he is out of radio
(that's a loss) and I hear he is well, growing flowers
and breeding champion racehorses. Work calls and I
had better get on with it. I will check your online
musings now that I know where it is."
And I had this addenda from Ginni Velline,
VeeDesigns@aol.com,
about a recent diatribe (she was,
in those days, one of the kids who lived up the
street: "That's great! I always wondered where
Popsie's name came from? I loved that dog!"
Lex Gillespie, Lexgillespie@aol.com:
"Do you happen to
know if George Albert, of Cashbox, is still alive? Or
a contact for his estate if not? Thank you very
much."
I would doubt that George Albert, owner and publisher
of Cashbox magazine, is still alive; I got to know
George pretty well in California (parties, etc.) and
he went back to the early days of the record
business...worked for RCA selling records out of store
fronts, usually vacant stores in city after city that
he'd rent, set up some benches and a record player and
play examples of music that "customers" could buy on
the spot...those old shellac discs. He had a son.
Don't remember his name. It was on the masthead of
the magazine. George owned a printing plant in LA and
a home in Palm Springs. The Cashbox office was in a
penthouse in Hollywood, but that was rented. His son,
or one of them if he had two, was a photographer. I
tried to find more information about the magazine
and/or George on the Internet. Zilch! His name once
or twice, but in connection with a cover of Olivia
Newton-John or something like that. And one guy was
collecting the Cashbox charts. Isn't it amazing how
quick we disappear? I believe George Albert was a
giant in the industry at one point. At least, that's
my opinion.
The friends of Sam Holman may be interested in the
following note.
Holman Stefan, Stefan.Holman@sca.com:
"My name is
Stefan Holman and i am from Sweden. I got Holman from
Sam´s Daughter Christina Holman how i married 1985.
We was in San Francisco 1985 to see Sam, Cristina had
just got contact with Sam and to tell him that he was
Grandfather to my son Andreas Holman. Then we lost
contact to Sam and when we called him to his office in
mars 1987 to say that he had been grandfather again to
my son David Holman we was told that he had died.
Christina was happy that she got the chance to have
met Sam. She was 9 years old when she left San
Francisco and came to Sweden and it was 20 years since
she saw here father. I hope you could read my
letter."
I'm thinking about writing Mr. Stefan. Be nice if
those of you who knew Sam Holman could drop him a note
so his kids would know about their grandfather.
(to be continued)
Claude Hall
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
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