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Read "Gone and Also ... A Work in Progress" | Claude Hall
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The Lost Cow Award There is nothing better in this world than a glass of buttermilk in the morning with a hot biscuit while working in a small radio station in a small market. You know the place. Most of us start out there. Sweeping the floor and producing local spots. Filing the music. Learning the basics. But it’s also hell if you’ve got some big ideas and no one understands what you’re talking about, including the owner and general manager who’d worked once in Denver and knew just everything there was to know about radio and just about everyone in it. Ken Palmer knew people like Art Wander, Ted Randal and Mike Joseph – big-time radio consultants, I’ve heard. Ken Palmer also knew Buzz Lawrence and Pogo Pog. George Wilson, too. It was already quite obvious to me that knowing famous people like these added to your business perspective. But that was just one facet about radio and maybe not the most important one at that. Knowing radio, in fact, seemed to involve a lot of things. Because, as big as “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was, I just don’t think it could happen now. People had moved on. Radio had moved on. Things change, in my opinion. But I was willing to learn. Even unto listening to something like “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Should I mention that it was a bad record? In my opinion. A town like Blaster, hey, you know most of the people living there and a goodly bunch of them know you and if you don’t say “hi” back, they might think you’re getting uppity or you’re sick. “What’s wrong with a lost dog show?” asked Ken Palmer. “Nothing much, I guess, but people want to hear music and a dog barking is not exactly a hit record,” I told him. “It fouls up the image of the radio station.” “Not everyone likes music all of the time,” said Palmer. “Some people, in fact, prefer to hear the meow of a cat or the chirp of a bird. After all, Buddy Holly hasn’t had a hit in weeks now.” “Very true,” I said. “On the other hand, I’ve never heard a hit record by some dog. Bird either.” I didn’t bother to tell him that Buddy Holly had died in a plane crash several years ago. Don McLean had even come up with a hit called “The Day the Music Died.” No, that wasn’t the title. The title was “American Pie.” The other stuff was just a hook in the song that made it popular because no one understood what he was singing about when the record first came out. And just maybe we still don’t know. “Well?” demanded the general manager. “Water,” I said. He laughed. “That’s not the response I expected,” said the general manager. “I thought I’d get a lecture on how Buddy Holly died in a plane crash out of Clear Lake, Iowa, with Richie Valens and J.P. Richard, otherwise known as the Big Bopper. Viola! No more records.” I didn’t bother to mention there had been several singles by Holly released by Decca that they had in the can. “Are you trying to irritate me?” I asked. Actually, since Ken Palmer owned the radio station, he could irritate anyone he wished. But he just grinned and walked on down the hallway to his office. Ken Palmer, just like me, was in love with radio. It’s just that we liked different kinds of radio. His was old-fashioned. You know, dollies and lace. This was just my opinion, of course. Not that he hadn’t done the big market tango. Denver, I’d heard somewhere. Me, I planned to get there one day. Maybe even a market larger than Denver. Just as soon as I learned the basics. But how could you learn the basics working in a place like this? I mean, there was no question but that Ken Palmer was a legend. Everyone said so. Someone went against him in Denver once, giving a new car as a prize. Palmer, so I heard, went down and made a deal with a used car lot and gave away every car on the lot. I got the message. You do not tell a legend how to program his radio station. The station was old-fashioned in more ways than one. For example, we were still playing 45 rpm singles. I think Ken Palmer could have afforded carts. He just liked to cue the records on the turntable himself on his noontime show. “There’s something about a record,” he once told me. However, he’d been hacking for several days – make that at least three weeks – about this hour show he did personally every Sunday morning. A lost pet show. I didn’t have a dog. Nope, not even a cat. I’d been given the bird a few times, but that’s as close as I’ve come to owning a pet. But I’ll tell you the truth, I would drive in on a Sunday now and then to watch the legend work. With a live audience. There were always a couple of dozen people there. With pets. Palmer would tell a woman her dog had fleas and “here’s a can of flea powder courtesy of the General Pet Store here in Blaster. If you go in there, say hi on me to Bill Pearson. Great fellow. Knows his dogs, too.” And there’s be a “woof-woof” from a little sound-effects gadget Palmer had. It sounded an awful lot like a real dog on the radio. Now this is utter corn. You and I know that. But Palmer not only got away with it, they ate it up! He did the cat noises in person. Just a “meeow.” The result was something else. People yelled and clapped! To this day, I do not know why. Mostly, though, I studied how he handled the men and women in the audience and those who phoned in. The man was absolutely great at indicating just the right touch of sadness when someone told about Fido or Mytle being gone. “Old Fido is out chasing female dogs, I suppose,” said Palmer. “Dogs will do that sort of thing now and then.” “No, Ken. He was, well, fixed.” “Then Fido is out there looking the crop over and wishing he could take advantage of it, I assure you, Mrs. Brown.” And he would let out a huge guffaw and stomp his foot and the audience would shout and stomp with him. I mean, Palmer was good! He would have made a great Top 40 jock. In fact, come to think of it, he probably was…only way back when…but I mean right this moment. He had a certain joie de vivre in his voice. No chance, of course. After all, it was his station and he was doing pretty good as a general manager except for, naturally, this weird obsession of his on Sunday morning. Then, wouldn’t you know, someone lost their cow out on the edge of town. A cow? Right. And Blaster got turned upside down over that dumb cow and I sort of believe radio was changed forever as well. At least, it was changed for me. “Just a cow that wandered away,” I said. “Just a cow?” demanded Ken Palmer. “Not so. That cow belonged to a widow woman on the edge of town. To her, it meant milk, cottage cheese, and butter. She traded milk with a neighbor for eggs. No cow, no milk, no eggs.” And when Ken Palmer went on the air, he made that cow seem like America’s greatest tragedy. I almost had a tear in my eyes halfway through his plea to help find Bessie. The police phoned in. They were out looking for that dumb cow. And when that cow was found several roads off munching on some grass alongside the fence, the audience exploded with a cheer. But the great cow incident wasn’t over. Ken Palmer gave the police his first-ever Big Moo Award. And he left it up to me to figure out what that was. I finally placed a cow’s picture on a plaque with the name of the award and our call letters. It looked pretty sharp, in my opinion. I presented the award on my show the next day right before a record by Linda Ronstadt, “When Will I Be Loved.” The tune seemed to fit. Ken Palmer said he liked the show. My opinion of his acumen improved slightly after that. I mean, I knew he was good. But a lot of good people aren’t very perceptive. Maybe, just maybe, this old man was as bright as he was good. “But you didn’t milk the cow, Hal,” said Ken Palmer. “An award is only as good as the presentation. You should have asked the mayor to present the award on the air.” “He was probably busy,” I said. “In a town like Blaster, the mayor is never too busy to go on the air. Not a chance. That’s what mayors do.” “I don’t even know how to reach the mayor,” I said. “Call City Hall and ask for his secretary. Tell her that Ken Palmer said she was pretty and you’d like to invite the mayor to present an award on the air.” I was skeptical. “Is that all?” “Well, I suppose you could tell Lucile, that’s the name of his secretary, that it’s Hal Moore on the phone. I don’t know if that will shake her up. But you ought to get your name out to the public in every way you can. Also, if I were you, I’d start making a list of important people and their phone numbers and also put all of the secretaries you can find on that list. Always good to have that kind of information handy.” “That’s good advice,” I said. “Right. Because we deal with people, not just listeners.” “Okay. Message received.” “You ever heard of Lee Baby Simms or Jay Lawrence?” “Of course. He and Weird Beard and Long John Silver, Scott St. James. Good radio men.” “There were a lot more. Hundreds more,” said Ken Palmer. “Like Happy Hare and Gary Owens and William B. Williams. The Old Scotsman, too. A lot of people thought that we were, let us say, unusual. Though, of course, I’ve heard stronger words used. Some even said we talked too much.” “Well, that was radio then, this is supposed to be radio now,” I said. “Bah! I can remember when the latest hot shot consultant would come to town to inform the station that I was working on of the ‘received wisdom’. Invariably they would spend the first 30 minutes relating to me some 'bit' that they had heard me or Tom Clay, Bill Ballance or Happy Hare do when they were teenagers and how much of an influence we had been upon their careers. Almost always they would end the conversation as I walked away with ‘Oh, and another thing Lee or Ken or Tom, you talk too much’. And you know what Lee Baby Simms used to tell them?” “I can guess,” I said. “Lee would reply, ‘Hey, lightweight, screw you’!” “I will start making my list immediately,” I said. “You know another thing that used to really piss us off? Audience research. I heard Lee Baby say one time that when he and Chuck Blore and Bill Stewart and Todd Storz and Gordon McLendon were inventing Top 40 radio, they never asked, they told them.” I shook my head. “I believe in research,” I told him. “Sorry about that. And, yes, I’ve heard you frequently talk too much.” That caused him to fume a little. Ken Palmer could fume really well. But his fits of anger never lasted more than a moment. And he never held them against me. I hope. “Ahh, they don’t make ‘em like us anymore!” And he retreated down the hallway to his office. Just the same, I understood what he meant. Those guys in the days of George Wilson and Bill Stewart did research, okay, but it was more on a casual basis, not as a rule the formulized official sort of thing. All of a sudden, he popped out of his door. “Another thing,” he said. “I got the message already,” I said. “Not quite,” he said. “Okay. I can tell you’re trying to tell me something. What is it?” “Old is not necessarily bad. New is not necessarily good.” I could see that the only way I was going to be able to escape this flow of ancient philosophy was to agree and agree again. “Point taken,” I said. “Good,” he said. I’d learned something else in that verbal handball match: We were not going to dump the lost cow show. He evidently got a kick out of doing it. And it was his radio station. However, over the next few days I began to wonder if that was what radio was all about anyway – having fun as a listener. And a listener can’t have fun if the disc jockey or announcer isn’t having fun. I tried from then on to be cheery and upbeat. The music? We had a record store in Blaster. But they didn’t sell many singles. I looked at a couple of jukeboxes, but they weren’t all that well serviced. So, I talked with the kids at the local high school and to people who had breakfast at a local coffeeshop and looked at one of the trades. So, I had a music list and I asked for requests. It’s tough to work a good music list in a small market. Palmer suggested I Xerox a list and put it on the counter at the coffeeshop. “Which coffeeshop?” “Any coffeeshop.” And he was right. In just a couple of weeks, the “playlist” was in demand and some truck shop south of town had asked for copies. Then, at Palmer’s suggestion, I did a tradeout with a printshop in town and my playlist looked a lot better. We promoted some of our clients on the playlist, so things worked out pretty good. They even pinned it to the bulletin board at the community college, too. “Put your picture on it,” said Ken Palmer. “Why?” “So you’ll get famous. You think I want you working for me forever?” “Being famous in Blaster doesn’t mean very much,” I said. “Better than not being famous at all. And, who knows, maybe you’ll be surprised.” He was right about that, too. One of the tipsheets called and asked if I’d be a reporter. I said okay. And I also asked why me. You know how it is when you’re still learning. And he said he’d seen my playlist. How, I don’t know. First thing I know, Blaster – and me – is considered a breakout market and I no longer had to worry about getting records to play on the air. I had more than I wanted! They came in the mail. Some good, some only fair. But I listened to them all. It’s odd how quick you begin to pick up some knowledge of what a good record is. What might appeal to your listeners. I still didn’t care much for “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” After a while, I was asked to speak to the students of the local community college. I talked about the process of learning, threw in a couple of jokes from Orben. I think I was a big hit. Especially when I pointed out the chair where I used to sit. A few days later, Palmer asked me about Enid, OK. “I didn’t want to live there. Not even for a moment. You ever been through Enid?” “Yes. I’ve had that dubious pleasure. Well, as long as you don’t have the idea you couldn’t learn something by working there. “Anything that I could learn there, I think I already know,” I said. “One never ends up knowing it all,” Palmer said, “and that includes me.” “Me, too. And please considered me one of your most grateful students.” I laughed. And he laughed. “Good,” he said. “But by the way here’s something to file away in your Ken Palmer College of Radio Knowledge…I’ve also turned down jobs in Wichita Falls and Cedar City, wherever it might be. But I said I’d consider Albuquerque if they’d let me do a Sunday morning lost cow show. They thought I was kidding, even after I said I’d include lost dogs and cats, just for their sake. But no alligators.” After all, man has to draw the line somewhere. “I’m proud of you,” he said. - 30 - e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com |
Commentary There’s a movie out now called “Pirate Radio.” Most of us knew some of the disc jockeys involved. The real people. Not the actors, per se. And some of us knew that Gordon McLendon was involved. Jay Blackburn called me. Wanted me to interview Art Holt, his mentor, about pirate radio. I would have enjoyed interviewing Art Holt. To me, he has always been a radio man of mystery. To a great extent. A teasipper. A collector of rare cars, I believe. Station owner. Involved yet in radio like you wouldn’t believe! But I just can’t do interviews anymore and even if I could I wouldn’t have the energy to type them up. Art, however, was kind enough to write down some of his thoughts about pirate radio. As it really happened. PIRATE MATTERS/Art Holt It began, the Pirate Radio era, in Scandinavia, not somewhere in mists of the English Channel. In point of fact, Pirate radio is loosely considered to have begun in 1958 with Radio Mercur, which targeted Denmark with privately owned radio, but with notably pedestrian programming. Then, into the government controlled and non-commercial world of European broadcasting, came Radio Nord. Radio Nord blazed the way for a whole new kind of radio…a successful pioneer, but ultimately a financial failure, because the Swedish government just could not stand the whole idea of pop music and commercials befouling their Nordic airwaves. Along the way the jocks had fun…and the owners could, after all, certainly afford to lose a few million kroner. Radio Nord, a Gordon McLendon creation, was notable for operating from a ship located close to Stockholm, Scandinavia’s largest market, and to playing the hits to Stockholm with USA-style Top 40 in the same way that back in the USA KLIF played radio for Dallas, with jingles, contests, jocks, and all! Gordon, and his close friend Clint Murchison (owner of many things, including the Dallas Cowboys at the time) set out in 1959 to bring Top 40 radio to Scandinavia…broadcasting from a ship in international waters. Not literally a pirate station, because Radio Nord actually followed the laws of the USA and of Sweden. Motivation...well, Gordon was frustrated because the FCC would only allow a single individual have a maximum of seven AM radio stations…and Gordon, being an impatient genius, was perfectly willing to go all the way to Sweden to slip around the FCC’s burdensome and archaic ownership regulations of the time. This was, one must remember, long ago in 1959, when Top 40 was actually very mellow, without most of the music that we call rock today…no Beatles, (who were still in Middle School), and no hard rock…and still it was enough to drive the Swedes who ran the government nuts when it came rolling in from offshore. And in fairly short order the government, perhaps anticipating the year 1984 by a decade or so, found a way to shut Radio Nord down…but before the axe fell, there were some passably interesting times. To do Pirate Radio, first you gotta have a boat. Gordon and Clint sent Jim Thompson, a Murchison executive and later a featured actor in McLendon Radio Pictures’ epic movie “My Dog Buddy,” on his way off to Germany to buy the Ms Olgat…an acquisition task hampered by Jim’s misplacing the bulky bundle of currency while making a quick overnight stopover in Paris. Mitch Lewis from the McLendon office in Dallas was promptly dispatched off to save the day…and buy the boat from the owners in Kiel, West Germany. Renamed the Bon Jour, it was time for the boat to become a radio station. Work set about on the old tub…a 1921 schooner now requiring studios, staff quarters, transmitter hall, and a large antenna mast. Glenn Callison, Gordon’s national Chief Engineer, was sent from Dallas, and worked on the scene along with widely respected US antenna designer John Mullaney setting up the innovative medium wave transmission system using Continental 317B transmitters made in Dallas. Work proceeded under the supervision of Captain Kaj Hallonsten, with aid and translation from a local engineer named Pepke. On the operational side, from KABL in San Francisco, GBM sent Sales Manager Bok Reitzel to organize the sales strategy…and from WYSL we sent over PD Ron Baxley to instruct Swedish program chief Gert Larkin on the strange ways of American radio circa 1960. No imported jingles though...these were recorded locally in Scandinavia, there being a notable shortage of authentic Swedish vocalists at either the PAMS or CRC studios in suburban Dallas. After some false starts due to bad weather, and a curious inability to find the correct anchorage at Christmas time (I recall that the national beverage of the Swedes at that festive season is called gloog (with an umlaut over the first o, but not on the US version of Word 2007), but surely gloog had nothing to do with the persistent anchorage problem). Anyway…by February 1961 the good ship Bon Jour was anchored and the program tapes were being sent out by boat from the studios in the city for airplay. The station had contests, weekly Top Tunes sheets, and all the other elements of long-ago early Top 40. Radio Nord’s programming actually started in March, and continued to almost the end of the year. Occasional severe storms in those Northern latitudes caused problems which interrupted broadcasts…as did another interruption. This one was in the form of a station giveaway promotion in which Nord manager Jack Kotschack’s secretary, the so-lovely Kerstin Tived, had the extreme good fortune to win the Radio Nord contest giving away a Peugeot convertible…providing the Svenska Dagbladet their best All-American scandal of the decade! It was only for so long that the Swedes-who-ran-things could tolerate the infiltration of their national airwaves by such dangerous and subversive 1962 hits as Bobby Vinton’s #1 seller for the year, “Roses Are Red” or Ray Charles with the #2 ranked “I Can’t Stop Loving You” or even that truly dangerous David Rose large orchestral instrumental of “The Stripper.” Predictably, thinking like a Parliament, their elegant solution was a new law which disallowed business expense tax deductions for advertising placed outside the country…thus effectively making it impossible for Radio Nord to obtain income from Sweden. And so Bobby Vinton, Ray Charles, and all the other culturally threatening Americans went away…along with the nifty, if incomprehensible, jingles recorded in Swedish, and the talented gang of jocks and production guys who had put together this pioneering raid by modern radio into European waters. The good ship Bon Jour…after major refits and another name change, this time to the M.V. Mi Amigo…showed up in the English Channel a few years later when the Brits xeroxed the Radio Nord concept. The original Nord ship slipped into modern history as the Radio Atlana component of Radio Caroline’s broadcast service, anchored offshore from Harwich, England...and the rest, as they say, is history. And now, even a movie! So Radio Nord could be considered a failure...and yet, without Gordon McLendon’s foray into the chill waters of the Baltic Sea to open up staid European eyes to what could be done with modern radio, it just might be that Top 40 and Rock and Roll would never gained a major foothold in Europe…and we would have been forever denied the Zepp, Kinks, Beatles…and even, conceivably, Herman’s Hermits. Way to go, Gordon! KIWI MATTERS Regarding pirate radio, it should be noted that Radio Hauraki operated off New Zealand for a while and resulted in a book. The station was eventually invited onto shore and I suspect is still in operation. And, just FYI, Art Holt sent me a Swedish jingle. I think. OTHER MATTERS Don Whittemore, regarding last week’s short story: “Aah Claude, what was I doing in that phone booth and with whom? And for what? Thanks for the mention. I miss Sal Marino. Your piece on the evolution at Billboard today was almost accurate. You always gave more than you received to Billboard. To radio, the jocks, the personalities, the PDs, the GMs and higher-ups as John Kluge, Jack Thayer and more. To music people, just getting the name of your record in Vox Jox was a big deal. Your every move was the right move especially after you left Billboard. You've got a life in balance. Friends and family that love you. Friends, whose lives were changed by the altruism in your soul and your typewriter. So much praise and I've got nothing to promote. I guess you'll just have to accept a hard truth -- you're loved and respected by those you admire. Not too bad.” I’ve just received a note from one of the characters in a recent short story featured on this website (“The Hong Kong Cat,” “Jimmy Rabbitt and the Hong Kong Cat”). “Mister Claude, my name is really Mau Chai. It means ‘Small Cat’ in Cantonese. I was not trained for anything because I will not obey humans, with the exception of slashing Bill Drake in the face.” I apologize, Mau Chai. I actually thought it was the blonde because I know for a fact that they’re trained in such matters. A new generation is out there. Our sons and daughters. Sharon Sharpe is the daughter of Bill Stewart, truly one of the gods of Top 40 radio along with Todd Storz and Gordon McLendon. Here’s just part of an article she wrote for the New Orleans Times-Picayune: “With marching, blessings and the beating of many drums, members of the Chahta Indian tribe recently welcomed Cyril Neville as its new ambassador. Neville led a procession with Chief Warhorse Elwin Gillum from Northshore Boulevard to Bonfouca near Slidell where family, friends and guests had gathered for the tribe’s Out of Exile celebration.” Cyril Neville is the youngest of the renowned musicians the Neville Brothers. His grandfather was a member of the tribe. There’s a loose organization of Columbia/Epic alumni. Launched by the late Tommy Noonan. Headed now by Jim Charne, ceralumni@yahoo.com. He just notified us that Jim Jeffries, once a superb radio man who became a record man, has died of a heart attack. We come, we do, we go. And, via Bill Hennes’ AllAboutCountry.com I learn that Dene Hallam has died. He'd been in intensive care at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta for several days. For the past two years, Hallam worked with the Moby In The Morning Network, prior to that he was news editor for AllAboutCountry. We come, we do, we go. I will miss these men, Jim Jeffries and Dene Hallam. They were part of my life. Even if you didn’t know them, even if you’d never heard of them, they contributed vastly to your life. We are each, us who have been in radio and those who are still in radio, are a part of John Donne’s main. Thus, never send for whom the bell tolls…. HOMELESS MATTERS One of them – maybe both – is preparing to steal some food. He has been in the restroom at Vons. Not long. Then stopped at the water fountain for a drink. But he is actually watching the guard. The guard is not really a guard. He is a handicapped person – slightly tilted head, awkward, you know the kind -- that Vons has hired and who is intense about doing his job. The other homeless person – they seem to be about 22 or 23 years of age – has drifted down one of the rows of shelves. He is seeking something that he could grab and hide quickly in a pocket without the television camera spotting him. Something small. Something he can eat. I know how its done. People talk to me. A guy named Larry, once homeless and now a lawyer in Las Vegas, would wander by the bin where a store would keep the quarts and half gallons of milk. He kept a straw in his jacket. While leaning over, as if looking, he would insert his straw and in a moment consume several ounces of milk. Does he feel guilty these days? No. A man has to stay alive! And the world that exists, whatever world, must provide. In one way or another. You cannot ignore your fellow man. Nor should you try. We live amidst a secret nation of the homeless and the almost homeless. You want to get a heart shock, wander into a shelter one evening in any city. Women, kids. God! There was an article in the local newspaper the other day about people living in the drains of Las Vegas. Under bridges. The drains were constructed for floods. It seldom rains here. Some have picked up bits and pieces of lumber from here and there, not really stealing, you understand, but putting the wood to good use and they have built racks out of the occasional water from lawn sprinklers and they. One guy and his girlfriend had a mattress on a rack they’d mad and they were living there. During the day, in their best clothes, they wandered through the casinos of downtown Vegas seeking leftover change in slot machines…change left by drunks. On a good day, $20. On other days? I watched the two homeless men for a brief moment, shook my head sadly, and moved on. I’m retired and Barbara and I live on a very fixed income; Barbara does what she can via the Methodist Church. One or two people cannot do much. Nor any chuch. Certainly not enough. In my opinion, however, these two men didn’t slip through the cracks, as the cliché goes…they were pushed. We have many problems in the United States at the moment. This is certainly one of them that must be dealt with! e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
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