A sketch of Claude Hall, 
circa 1976, by Chuck Blore

"MURDER at the Busted Bird Cafe"
by Claude Hall

Chapter 3

I looked at her a while.
She straightened her legal pad in front of her to align it perfectly with the edge of the table, the pencil in perfect formation, the ballpoint pen now in her right hand like a sword.
I don't think I won the looking war, but she dipped her head slightly.
"Like what you see?"
It was a frank question. Not the sort of response I had expected from my obvious staring. I had anticipated her getting angry and throwing a hissy and
throwing me out the door. That would have suited me fine. However, I had the distinct feeling that she was more amused than irritated with my mental
undressing.
"Can't think of a reason why not," I said after a moment. "I've seen better, but I've dated worse."
"Thank you. That is, if that's a compliment."
I thought about it. I finally decided that it was a compliment. She was pretty, if just a bit older than I like. About 40, I assumed. Tough. Pretty, but tough. Probably ran through too many men en route to her present job because there was no wedding band on the appropriate hand. Probably a "girl Friday" rather than a mere secretary. Probably a lot of trouble in bed. 
"How long have you been with these guys?" I asked, just to break the silence.
"A year or so. Since the department was formed, in fact."
"Are they as good as they seem to think they are?"
Again, she fought to keep a smile from wiping out her cool and aloof demeanor.
"Probably not," she said. 
"I really didn't know what in hell was coming down last night. Do they think I had something to do with it?"
"Probably. They're both very suspicious types. 
Experts in suspicion. That's their job."
"I don't even like guns," I said.
She fussed with her ball-point pen and aligned the legal pad again.
"It does seem somewhat strange that you weren't even scratched by a stray bullet. There were certainly enough shots fired."
"More than enough," I said. I squirmed around in my chair. The chair was about as comfortable as a shoe with a rock in it. "Of course, at the time I didn't
bother to count. I was pretending as hard as I could that I was dead."
"We believe there were probably three automatic rifles at work in the club. Three people. Perhaps you noticed someone dressed in a coat that could have hid a weapon."
"But I didn't. That is, I don't think I noticed anything. I haven't had time to think about the killings at all. And last night, I was in a state of shock and couldn't think. I think I was too damned
scared to think."
"It wasn't last night," she finally said.
"What wasn't last night?"
"The big shootout, as you called it."
"My but time really flies when you're having fun," I said.
"Is that supposed to be funny?"
"I don't know."
"You're drunk, aren't you?"
"Haven't touched a drop today. I swear."
"You certainly hide it well, but, yes, you're acting as if you're just a wee bit drunk."
"I confess. After the big shoot-out at the
not-so-okay corral, I got drunker than a skunk."
She tapped her ball-point pen idly, gently, on the surface of the legal pad. The pad shifted out of kilter. She carefully aligned the bottom of the pad
with the edge of the table.
"Tell me about yourself, Mr. Coffee. Or should I say, Mr. Hedgeworth?"
"Call me Buddy. I've gotten used to the name. It's my nickname anyway. One has to use a professional name in this business. Otherwise, fans would drive
you crazy. It's true that I don't have that many fans yet. In fact, I can't even think of one. But Buddy is good enough. On the other hand, I hate the name
Coffee."
"Why use it then?"
"The general manager stuck me with it. The last music director at the station was Stud Coffee, so I'm Buddy Coffee."
"I see. Tradition."
"Gross management stupidity is more like it. The manager of the station is a materialistic money-crazed werewolf. He can get away with paying a house name
talent less than what he'd have to pay someone such as Don Imus or Charlie Tuna. My personal philosophy is
that a station should build stars and pay them extremely well. Image breeds sales, not over-eager salesmen."
"Why work there then?"
"The program director is an old friend. And I need the money for food and a few trivial items like that."
"I thought you radio people made phenomenal salaries."
"Lady, that was my one and only tie that went down the drain last night. As for my only suit? Maybe it can be cleaned, maybe not. Fortunately, these Levis
and this old sweat shirt are my working uniform, as it were. Before you start feeling sorry for me, I'd like to point out that I do own at least one more pair of
Levis. They have a hole in the knee, though."
"What do you actually do at the radio station?" she asked.
"They hired me to do music research. The last program director was involved in dopeola. He got fired. The new program director hired me."
"Dopeola?"
"He was accepting dope from record promotion guys to put records on the air. The radio station needed someone honest."
"I thought the station played only old records."
"It has an oldies format, I'll grant you that. And an oldies image. But the truth is that very few stations are one thing or another. Generally, an oldies format radio station will play a few recent
hits--we sometimes call them recurrents--to keep the sound more modern. This other Coffee was being paid to keep certain records high in rotation so that the albums of the artists would continue to sell."
"I can't imagine much research would be involved at a station that played oldies."
"You wouldn't think so," I admitted. "However, certain records appeal more to a specific demographic--a certain sex and age of listener--than to another sex and age. It's testing those records and making the best decision that's important for ratings."
She tapped her ball point pen on the legal pad a couple of time before placing it alongside the legal pad. It didn't remain there long. She soon picked it up again. "The radio business appears more...uh,
businesslike...than I had thought."
"A tough, tough industry," I told her. "Just a few decimal points in a ratings book in this particular market can represent millions of dollars in
advertising. Arbitron, a ratings firm, controls more radio than anyone knows...or would care to admit. 
Some stations are programmed specifically to the Arbitron ratings, called the ARBs in the industry. 
You ever notice a heavy bunch of radio station ads on TV or a lot of billboards suddenly sprouting radio station call letters? That generally means that it's
ARB ratings time."
"Fascinating," she said.
She leaned back in her chair slightly and looked at me, suddenly, with a different light in her eyes. Or maybe the light from the window came in differently. 
Or maybe I was looking at her differently.
Being a disk jockey was fascinating. You're part intellectual, part ham actor. You get to talk to a lot of people without having to face them. And sometimes that's extremely important. If you were
Howard Stern, for example, and faced very many people, you'd get slugged in the nose a lot. If the people were human. If they were those snot-nosed creeps that usually hung around him, they'd probably die licking your toenails.
I was aware, of course, that she was evidently pumping me for information. But she was a lot more pleasant to talk with than her bosses--Sorrowful and
Davidson. But, between an astronomical headache and an overwhelming case of fatigue, I was about fed up with answering any kind of questions.
"Have you been doing this sort of thing very long?" she asked.
At first, I thought about not replying. If I shut up long enough, perhaps they'd let me go and I could take my suit to the cleaners. That was going to be an
experience!
On the other hand, while disc jockeys do get to talk a lot, they don't get to talk much about themselves and that's probably one of the reasons most of us got into the radio business in the first place.
"I deejay'd some back in college," I said after a moment. "But small town deejay work doesn't usually pay much. So, I quit to deliver potato chips while
attending school. Later, I deejay'd in more towns that I can remember. A joke I read in the Vox Jox column in Billboard magazine one time is that you can tell the size of market a disc jockey is working by the size of his U-Haul trailer."
"You're destroying all of my illusions about disc jockeys."
"Sorry about that. It's not as glamorous as it may look. On the other hand, I don't think I could do anything else. I wouldn't want to, anyway. I'm radio. I'm a dyed-in-the-vinyl radio bum and that's
probably all I'll ever be. Of course, it's a lot better to be a radio bum in Los Angeles than it is in Enid, Oklahoma."
"Are you good? Perhaps I should listen to your show."
"I only work a weekend shift," I explained. "I'll never be as good as Rick Dees or Gary Owens or Charlie
Tuna...disc jockeys here in Los Angeles. My specialty is research. Hard-core research. Opinion. Fact.  Statistical analysis. Content analysis. Whatever you
need. Library or the field. I don't care what."
Just as I was about to suggest we continue talking about me over lunch, Sorrowful came back into the conference room.
He handed a sheaf of papers--the kind that computers use--to the secretary and continued to stand slightly behind her.
"College student," he said. He made it sound like an accusation.
Although he was looking at me, I realized he was talking to his secretary.
She didn't bother to look at the papers.
"USC?" she asked.
"No," I said. "The University of Texas. Actually, that's just one of my many disguises--your basic, 
every-day permanent college student. I'm fiddling around on a Ph.D. in mass communication. Though they might deny it if you called. Now and then, I get
kicked out of the program and have to get down on my knees and beg a certain Dr. Lou Dorren to let me back
in."
"Why would...why did they kick you out?
"Some of the professors at the University of Texas have a funny idea that students should attend class."
"And you didn't."
"I got busy on one thing and another," I admitted.
Her pen beat a soft tattoo on the legal pad.
"Like what?"
She seemed slightly irritated with me, but was struggling not to show it. I could tell by her voice, the way it sounded. There was something undercurrent in her voice. It did not show in her eyes--they were
like little wide moons--and only a little in her smile. Some of her mouth smiled and some of it didn't; anyway, it was more the smile of a cat who has caught prey.
"Like Max Brand," I said. "Once, I was into Max Brand like crazy."
If she really wanted to get irritated, let her get angry because of Max Brand. He could take it. 
"Who...or what...is Max Brand?"
"A western writer. That is, he was mostly a western writer. Max Brand was just one of about two dozen pen names that he used. His real name was Frederick Faust. Wrote about 300 western novels. I've only read about 160 of them."
"A hundred and sixty western novels?"
"That's absurd!" said Sorrowful.
"That's me in a nutshell. I prefer pecans. I'm as absurd as they come. Runs in my family. You should meet my mother sometime. Matter of fact, I wouldn't
mind seeing her again some day myself. If she ever comes back to the United States."
"About Max Brand," she prodded.
"I fed all of them into a computer. Would you believe it! Tried to prove that Max Brand was actually three people through content analysis. It was interesting research. But I'm afraid that I didn't prove anything." 
"And what else would keep you from working on your Ph.D.?"
"I got into a book called 'Go Rin No Sho'--that is, 'A Book of Five Rings'-- for about a year." 
"Must have been a big book," said Davidson.
"Just barely big enough," I said. "Then, because the great Musashi died in a cave, for a while I was interested in caves."
She almost smiled.
"So, you're a spelunker."
"No. I was more interested in the people who live in caves."
"You mean in ancient times."
"Today. Right this second."
"Absurd!" said Sorrowful.
"Not necessarily," I said. "There are hundreds of thousands of people who live in caves. They may not like it, but it beats living in a burnt-out car or an
old refrigerator crate, I guess."
"In the United States?"
"Maybe a few. But a whole lot down in Mexico. In the mountains around Creel. I bought one of the caves
and lived in it for a while just to see how it would feel."
"How did it feel?"
"I wouldn't recommend it. No television. In fact, no anything much. The bathroom was a spot out behind some trees down the hill and on further down the hill was the drinking fountain--a creek. About the only thing positive about the entire experience was that the closest McDonald's was several hundred miles
away."
"Speaking of food."
"I thought you'd never ask," I said.
She aligned her pencil with the edge of the legal pad and made sure the legal pad was kosher with the edge of the table and the stack of computer sheets
carefully and perfectly on top. Her ballpoint pen, she placed in her purse.
Her boss--Sorrowful--didn't seem exactly excited about his secretary going to lunch with someone under suspicion for terrorist activities. But he didn't say
anything as we left. I realized why a few minutes later when I spotted Davidson tailing us. He stayed way to hell back.
Just for that, I took her to McDonald's.
Actually, the San Fernando Valley is not decorated hither and yon with your ordinary culinary palaces and this McDonald's was just down the street. El Pollo Loco, Taco Bell, that's about it for your basic gourmet in the San Fernando Valley. There had been a great deli on Ventura Boulevard, but it got trashed by
the last earthquake. Or the earthquake before that. 
I was never very good about counting earthquakes.
Isn't it interesting that a good deli gets destroyed by an earthquake and McDonald's seems earthquake
proof?
At least the place was air conditioned. This was the peak of the heat season for the valley. Because the mountains form walls on all sides, the weather goes
through only two seasons--heat and hotter than hell. 
Even the heat season was hot, but you could survive it, maybe, if you ran from air conditioner to air conditioner.
We stood in line. I ordered two Big Macs and two glasses of milk. Someone had left a newspaper on the counter. The Saturday edition. I'd thought it was
Friday!
"Just for the record," she said, "I do my own ordering."
"Naturally. These are for me," I said.
"A Big Mac," she said. "And a glass of milk."
The only thing nice about a McDonald's is that it doesn't take long to eat. This helps because you don't remember the food that much. And remembering a
Big Mac is not exactly the kind of thing you want to have happen to you too often.
The drawback is that she didn't get to hear much more about me from me. As for her, all I found out during a whole Big Mac was that her first name was Tricia. 
Tricia what, she dodged. And she was fast on her verbal feet. On the other hand, this was Saturday and I had an on-air shift coming up in a couple of hours and wanted to get ready for it.
"I've got to go to work," I told her as we walked out of the restaurant. There had been a minor debate about who was to pay for the hamburgers.
I stopped and put on the obligatory sunshades. Us not-so-famous disc jockeys are forced, you know, to
remain incognito. Part of the trade; showbiz! 
Davidson was standing behind a telephone kiosk about a block away. Guess I should have invited him to join
us for hamburgers. Of course, he might have preferred a hamburger at Cassel's over on Sixth Street. Me,
too.
And it occurred to me that I prefer dining with women who participate both ways in a conversation. I'm fascinating, but not all that exciting.
"What's the frequency of the radio station?" 
"Don't listen," I said. "I have a hunch I'm going to be very boring today. Of course, what can you say on an oldies station that would be exciting? I'm always boring."
"Thanks for your help," she said.
"Thanks for the hamburgers," I said. "And tell Davidson he couldn't tail a kite."
As before, her face was expressionless. I don't know if she knew he was following us or not. On the other hand, I didn't care.

(To be continued)

e-mail  claude@claudehallonline.com

Commentary
by Claude Hall
May 26, 2003

They have not, so far as I know, received all of the
credit they deserved regarding the success of the music and radio industries, circa 1950-1980. Many radio men are writing books at this moment, i.e., Jack Hayes, Chuck Dunaway, and John Rook and many already have, including Joey Reynolds, G1boney@aol.com, Pat
O'Day, patoday@interisland.net, Johnny Holiday,
Jholliday6@aol.com, and Jack Gale,
jackgale@adelphia.net, and several men have written
books about the record industry, including Clive Davis
and Joe Smith. There is no book in existence to my
knowledge about record promotion or record promotion
people. But they were definitely there and there was
usually an air of excitement surrounding record
promotion people, and I knew quite a few and met even
more and I think I enjoyed just about every moment I
spent around them. They were  a unique facet of the music business. And radio probably wouldn't have been the radio that you and I knew without them. 
One of the first that I ever met as far as I can remember was Don Graham. He knew a great deal about radio in general and knew a vast number of radio disc jockeys and program directors personally and it was he who told me that Mitch Michaels, alias, as I seem to
recall, Terrell Metheny, was a "cooker," meaning at the time that Terrell was a very big and damned good Top 40 disc jockey. This was some while before Terrell came into Manhattan and tried his hand at programming WMCA, then a Top 40 station. I also met Morris Diamond somewhen about then and my memory has him and some other record guy in a convertible, top down,
waving at me as they went around a corner in downtown
Houston. I haven't the slightest idea why either of us were in Houston in those fading days of the old Shamrock Hotel. I always liked Morris and invited him to come to the party that I held in my Bel Air home as
soon as Barbara and I moved to Los Angeles with Billboard magazine about 1971. I knew a lot of black radio people at the time but at the moment I can't
remember a single black record promotion person from my New York days. Not one. And I find this a pity. 
I must have met several. I seem to remember the name Carl Proctor; this particular guy died a year or so later from some kind of genetic disorder.
Most record promotion people that I knew were likable. And not just professionally, but sincerely. 
And I feel--and quite strongly so--that they were a vital part of the music industry as it existed in my time.
Early on in the business in New York City, I met Juggy Gales and George Furness. George had that air about him; you were quickly aware that he knew what he was talking about. Steve Popovich was then with Columbia Records as head of promotion. Matty Singer was virtually a legend already. I never exactly understood why Matty was such a legend, but everyone
knew Matty and that was just the way it was. 
Everybody considered him to be a legend. Even then.
I'm going to leave out some  names from the 60s. I guess that's only natural. The 60s were a hell of a long time ago. But I remember a great afternoon on the ABC boat with Rick Sklar, program director of WABC in Manhattan, Barry Fiedell, Howard Kester, then manager of a radio station either in Florida or KYA in San Francisco, and David Cassidy, then a hot record act and a few others. We cruised up and down the Hudson River while Howard Kester spoke four hours about oranges and I'm sure that some on the boat
probably gave up eating oranges for several months. I
can't r emember just what company barry worked for at
the time, but if he was on that boat, he was important. Those of you who knew Rick Sklar will know that this is absolutely true.
Tom Noonan left Billboard about that time to take over Columbia Records as head of promotion after Popovich quit and fled back to Cleveland. Probably after this column appears, I'll remember a few other names and be sad that I didn't mention them. For instance, there was one guy famous for offering anyone
and everyone a pair of silk stockings for their girlfriend out of the trunk of his car. I seem to recall his first name was Paul, but I'm probably
wrong. And Joe Calkins once drove me and Paul Ackerman, then music editor of Billboard, from our hotel in Miami Beach during some convention over to Jerry Wexler's house in a big Mercedes-Benz that he'd
bought from Jerry. Whether Joe was a record promotion
man or not, I can't remember. I think those were some of his duties. At this point, though, he'd acquired some of the rights to the Otis Redding masters.
Bob Greenberg may have been doing promotion about that time; later he was to become a topflight record executive. And I may have known Red Schwartz about this time.
In Nashville, there was George Jay and Chuck Chellman. In the old Andrew Jackson hotel one night during the annual country music convention, some of us were shooting the bull in the lobby and the police
told us to move along because the place was very crowded and someone threw a hissy and the police were just about to haul us away in spite of the fact that we were all wearing tuxedos or maybe because of the fact that we were wearing such outlandish clothes and
George Jay, one smooth talker and with the looks of some movie star, sweettalked the police into letting us go.
May 1971, we moved the headquarters of Billboard to
Los Angeles and Barbara and I bought a home in Bel Air and threw the doggonest party you ever saw. We hired two maids for the event and inspite of a couple of hams and a turkey, we ran out of food real quick and I dashed to a supermarket and filled up a cart with corn
chips and junk and when I got back I had to park a couple of blocks away because of all of the cars! I'd mailed flyers to all of the radio stations to post on
their bulletins boards...inviting all to the party. 
For years, people told me that they enjoyed the party, but the honest truth is that I can only remember Morris Diamond being there and the fact that someone tuned my guitar, probably Bobby Vee or Mickey Dolenz. 
There were people everywhere--around the swimming pool, in the study, in the living room, in the kitchen, down the front hallway.
In Los Angeles, you had some phenomenal record promotion people. Jan Basham (a class act with whom I'm still in touch), parvenupooh@yahoo.com John Rosica (just lost his e-mail address), Harvey Cooper, Don Whittemore (see below), Harold Childs (a classy guy), Steve Meyers, Vince Cosgrave, Chuck Thagard, Chuck Meyers. And when John Fisher went to Nashville for Atlantic Records it was like a national event...historic, colorful...John dressed up in a cowboy suit to promote the occasion. Los Angeles never recovered. As for Nashville....
One of the legends in Los Angeles promotion was Tony
Richland. He was without question one of the most-liked, most-appreciated, most-respected promotion
men that I ever met. I remember him fondly to this
day. You got sort of close to  some of these people. 
When Chuck Thagard's kid was bitten by a rattlesnake,
you suffered right along with him and his wife.
But the king of record promotion in my mind--and a
guy I dearly loved, then and now--was Ernie Farrell,
ej@oh.verio.com. And I wasn't the only one. Jack
Thayer, president of NBC Radio, was a devoted friend
of Ernie Farrell going back to his Cleveland radio days until the day Jack died. George Wilson, keokiwc@aol.com, still is. Ernie Farrell was even the godfather to the children of Pay O'Day, patoday@interisland.net, a Seattle radio giant. When
I met Ernie, he was working for MGM Records under Mike
Curb, president. Ernie called himself vice president of special projects. By now, however, he was into a new phase of his career. Previously, he'd been head of promotion for Reprise Records under Frank Sinatra and then he had a wreck and had to spend some time in the hospital. The rumor was that Frank was irritated at this point with Ernie and once you were on Frank's
B list, you were there forever. However, Frank Sinatra Jr., I understand, came and sat by Ernie's hospital bed. In any case, Ernie helped Sammy Davis Jr. get a hit with "Candyman" and I understand that Ernie was on Sammy's A list and even payroll until Sammy died. The story about Ernie going to Seattle and announcing he wasn't leaving until "Candyman" was No. 1 in the city is a classic that the great promotion men will tell at the bars of Martoni's and
Al & Dick's until those places are demolished and the
dust of history.
Ernie was and still is an unusual sort of person...in
a different league, so to speak, and some people get along with him well and some do not. I always got along with him well. Right now, I'm sort of on his B list, but that's probably because both of us are rather headstrong. He wanted me to phone him a year or so ago at his hotel when he came to Las Vegas and I don't do much phone anymore. Period. He could have called me and I told him this and I would have answered (most people, I don't). But I suppose he
didn't want to do that. Mess.  Doesn't matter, I still love the guy and always will. Twenty-three years ago, May 28, he persuaded me to make a phone call to someone I didn't know and actually didn't care
to talk with or meet and I'll always be grateful that I made the phone call because of Ernie.
Ernie could talk you into just about anything. No sooner, it seems, than I arrived in Los Angeles, circa 1971, Ernie talked me into going out to visit a Top 40 station in Anaheim located in an orange grove and drove me there in his Volkswagen Beetle. I cannot recall the call letters of the radio station nor the program director, but both were pretty well known at
the time. Later, Ernie talked me into flying up to Seattle and doing a story on KJR and Pat O'Day, by then the manager. I understand that a picture of that event is in Pat's new book, but you'll have to confer with Pat on that (see e-mail address above). Pat, incidentally, had just hired a 17-year-old as his
evening jock, a kid named Kevin, the son of Top 40
jock Mitch Michaels. The "kid" today is fairly successful in radio as a manager and radio executive, KevinMetheny@clearchannel.com, but, of course, is just one of many who benefited from working for Pat O'Day in those days.
Ernie Farrell once persuaded me and Barbara to catch Sammy Davis Jr.'s act in Vegas when we were over there on a weekend. I had other plans, but Ernie insisted. 
And Barbara and I were standing in a long line in the
casino when Barbara decided to go to the front and mention Ernie's name. We were quickly escorted to a table near the stage and presented a great show. The best acts in Vegas in those years were, without
question, Sammy Davis Jr. and Wayne Newton. Yeah, you'll hear a lot of other names mentioned about those days and they range from Peggy Lee to Frank Sinatra and a bit later Elvis in his comeback, and, yeah, some of them were good. But these two entertainers--Sammy
and Wayne--were in a different class. They had no peers but each other and, frankly, I think Sammy was even a better showman than Wayne, but that would be nitpicking somewhat.
Anyway, I lamented when Ernie left the music business
and became a real estate agent, maybe of necessity, and later when his condo was wiped out in that earthquake in the San Fernando Valley. I had my own problems much of this time, i.e., working, studying on
a master's degree, teaching...but Ernie's problems
were also my problems. Both my wife Barbara and I lamented for him.
I hear from Jan Basham frequently. Heard from Johnny
Rosica a few weeks ago. Just heard from Don Whittemore, donwhittemore@yahoo.com: "Dear Claude,  Looooooooooong time. Don Whittemore, now known as
Dandy Don, the ice cream man. Please visit DandyDons
IceCream.com. Last I heard of you was...teaching college students in Oklahoma. I don't see or talk to many of my old associates in records or radio. No time for that world or the places they habitate. Just 
moving in different universes or galaxies. Thanks for remembering me amongst the sea of promo guys who
washed up at the 9000 bldg in the 70's."
So, obviously, Don has survived. And that's good
news. I sometimes wonder about the others. Last I
heard of Chuck Thagard, he went with K-Tel in the
Minneapolis area.
These people mentioned above and, of course, many others, are fond memories of mine. I hope they've all fared well.
Yes, I am aware that some record companies were known
to "reinvent" the art and science of persuasion somewhat in those days. Frankly, I found little wrong
with some of these "reinventions" of that particular
period in our business. The moral lines were often nebulous in many industries...not just in radio. One black radio personality in the south--and in those
days black radio personalities seldom earned a decent
wage--told me that when his wife needed an operation a
record company that focused a great deal on r&b music came up with the money to pay the hospital bill. I never considered that sort of thing payola. Instead, I've always been grateful to God that the record
company was there. And, yes, I did know a couple of people who were your basic creeps, but every industry has a few of these and, under the circumstances, the record industry probably had less than its share.

e-mail  claude@claudehallonline.com