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"MURDER
at the Busted Bird Cafe"
by Claude Hall
Chapter 4
There is something absolutely fascinating about
going on the air and doing a radio show, cueing up a 45 rpm
single on the turntable by listening for the start of
the vocals in your earphones so as to not waste time with that
instrumental stuff at the front, talking jive stuff like
"hot ball of wax from the Coffee stacks" into the
mike, lifting your finger and letting the record spin, knowing
that maybe a couple of thousand people or more are so damned
excited they can barely wait until the record's over so they can
listen to your dulcet tones again.
That isn't the way it happens anymore, of course.
Those were the old days when guys like Frank
Ward in Buffalo, Guy Williams in Tucson, George Wilson in a lot
of places, the Magnificent Montague in Los Angeles along with
Peter Potter and Al Jarvis, Hound Dog Lorenzi in Buffalo, Jack
the Bellboy in Detroit, Paul Berlin in Houston, Joey Reynolds in
whatever city he was in at the moment, Alan Freed in Cleveland
and New York City, Bill Randle in Cleveland, Murray the K in New
York City, and all of those other giants ruled the airwaves with
as many as 50 percent or more of everyone listening to radio!
Those were the days when Joey Reynolds in Detroit turned the
market not only upside down, but almost wiped out a radio
station!
Those were the good old days of radio, not to be
confused, of course, with the so-called Golden Days of Radio
when you had shows like "Fibber McGee and Molly,"
"The Red Skelton Show," "The Fred Allen
Show," and "The Jack Benny Show."
I secretly longed for the day when I could join the Pacific
Broadcasters Pioneers. A good friend named Harry O'Connor,
producer of the "The Ronald Reagan Show" that was
aired on more than 400 radio stations coast-to-coast and turned
a B actor into presidential timbre, had been president of the
organization for a while. I also knew Jack Brown, a former
president. Jack had taken me to a lunch one time. I'd
spotted Julie London and her husband Bob Troupe in the audience,
along with Bob Sterling, George Burns, everybody. The
entire King Family were on stage.
You had to have 20 years of experience in radio or television to
be a member of Pacific Broadcast Pioneers.
As I mentioned to the lady at the Society for Critical Studies,
I'm not just a disc jockey. I'm a real aficionado of the
genre and the sport. Maybe the business, too.
When I was a kid, I used to lay awake nights listening to radio.
At night, some of the giant signals--KVOO in Tulsa, KWKH in
Shreveport, KMOX out of St. Louis--used to waltz into my little
AM wooden box. I grew to know some of the names--the guys
like Eddie Hill out of WSM in Nashville who did the record shows
that were prevalent in those days--but I would have listened if
Mickey Mouse had been on. It was radio!
Today, you sit down at a console and the music with title,
artist, intro time and outtro time, total time, and some other
garbage is listed for you on the computer screen. If the
program director wants you to say something, it's there on the
screen and you read it off. A pro makes it sound as if he
or she is not reading it, but they're reading it. You
never touch a record; you never even see one. You're lucky
if you get to touch a cart.
Everything you do is shown on the
screen--commercials, news, weather, psas. Everything.
Like I told the lady, it's as boring as
you can possible imagine. You're more of a mechanic than a
personality.
Why do I do it? I've asked myself that a few billion
times. The only answer I've been able to come up with is
that I'm a radio man. The college studies are there and
one of these years I'm going to knock down a Ph.D. Maybe
teach English or journalism in some college. But I'm
really a radio man.
Some of the smaller markets still operate without computers,
without the necessity to compete for a percentage point of an
ARB rating. Now and then I daydream about going back to
one of those places where there's less hassle. But I
probably never will. Instead, I keep fighting for the
opportunity to do a better job within the system.
Something whispers in the back of my head that I could take this
computer and make it dance and still do great radio.
But only the great god Bill Stewart knows if I ever will or not
and he hasn't bothered conferring with me lately.
Poor Bill. When the National Association
of Broadcasters honored both Todd Storz and Gordon McLendon by
inducting them into the Hall of Fame, they overlooked Bill
Stewart, the man who made both of those geniuses tick. Of
course, old Bill was also a genius, I guess, up until that last
second when, virtually ignored by the business he'd helped
create and alone in the upstairs study of his home in Dallas, he
died.
It was Todd Storz and Gordon McLendon who started the Top 40
radio format that saved radio after the popularity of television
almost bumped it off in the 1950s. "The Fibber McGee
and Molly" show was one of the first to run to television;
for a while, it had been simulcast on radio and TV. Then
there was a flood of desertions to TV and radio almost
disappeared.
Both Todd and Gordon would have run in horror and taken up
something sensible like ditch digging or picking cotton if they
seen this computer console at K-Oldies.
Stoney Graham got up as I came into the studio. I sat down
at the console. The seat was still warm. I don't
think I've ever sat down in a cold seat in all my years in
radio.
Graham didn't even say hello. Matter of fact, I don't
think he has ever said hello to me. But that's all right.
I don't think I've ever said hello to the guy with the shift
behind me. Not since Dudley "Dude" Daniels
had a staff meeting shortly after taking over programming at
K-Oldies and announcing the "new direction." You
get to meet a lot of people in radio, but you don't get to know
many of them very well.
Anytime a new program director is hired by a radio station, they
announce a "new direction." Guys who've been in
the business for a while merely nod their
heads. Whatever. Some know they'll fit. Others
know they've got to make a few phone calls to check out the job
market. Dude had already kicked out the music director.
First few minutes after getting the job.
On his way out of the studio, Graham pointed to Friday's
newspaper laying on the console counter. It was folded to
show the story.
I hadn't made the news. Just as well. Because
Sherbert had. Some of him. The upper half. A
tremendous price to pay just to get on the front page of the
Valley Gazette.
Chuck K. Davis was quoted at length. I guess he'd also
called his publicity agent last night. You don't get that
kind of exposure by accident. Not in Los Angeles.
The full-color photo on the front page of the newspaper showed
Davis pointing at what was left of Sherbert on the floor of the
Busted Bird Cafe. A police officer was trying to stay out
of the picture, but had got caught anyway.
Standing in the background in the picture, so help me, was
someone who looked like Wesley Bird.
I flung the newspaper into the trash and put a cart into the
machine. The cart features a jingle to introduce my show.
The machine would play it automatically when the current record
ended.
There have been many great record promotion men in the business.
Juggy Gales, George Furness, Ernie Farrell, Tony Richland, just
to name a few.
Wesley Bird isn't one of them. Wesley Bird is your basic
payola record creep. One of the reasons I came to K-Oldies
was that the program director, Dude Daniels, agreed I didn't
have to mess with people like Wesley Bird. I don't have to
even talk to them.
Payola, of course, is a two-way street.
Most of the radio guys involved in payola--taking money to play
a record--think they're pretty cool and
think no one knows. But word gets around fast in this
business. Anyway, mistakes happen. A guy named
Leafowitz at an eastern FM station wanted his appreciation as
something that couldn't be traced--a trip around the world that
had been paid for with various credit cards by the record
person. However, the tickets and the schedule were mailed
to the wrong
person. So, quite a few people know these days that
Leafowitz is a payola creep.
Payola, though, has been around a long time, under one guise of
another. In fact, it was right there alongside Al Jolson
and those guys back before records, back when sheet music was
the big thing. For example, there are many, many
"legends" in the business who have their names as
songwriters on songs and they can't write a note of music and
wouldn't know a clef from a flat. Music and payola seem to
go together.
Alan Freed and a few others got caught in payola back in the 50s
after those famous newspaper headlines of "Babes,
Booze, and Bribes" and it ruined the career of some of them
like Alan.
Today, however, payola has been turned into a pure science.
Maybe even a business. Now and then there is an uproar
about it, but nothing ever happens. The good stations
don't want to mess with it in any shape or form. But many
a general manager and even a lot of the owners turn their backs
and hope it will go away and try to pretend it isn't happening
at their radio station.
It is.
All of that stuff about payola was immediately brought to mind
at seeing Wesley Bird in the newspaper photo. Bird
personifies everything bad in radio and records. There may
be some good aspects about payola. I don't know. But
if I tried a few dozen years I doubt if I could find one good
thing to say about Wesley Bird. The man has no redeeming
qualities. Not one.
That's why the phone call shook me up somewhat.
The phone has eight lines. Only one of the buttons is red.
Someone was trying to phone in on one of the ordinary lines; you
answer those phone calls if you want to and when you can.
The red button is different.
How he got the phone's red number, I don't know. That phone
number is supposed to be confidential--the program director, the
general manager, the jocks. It's strictly for emergencies.
Believe it or not, a jock can be talking to a few thousand
people and still not know what's really going on, especially on
a weekend shift where you're alone in the station and the front
door is locked. An earthquake, for example. That's
where the red phone comes into play. Someone can reach you
and tell you, maybe go live on the air with a report.
"You're doing a great show, Buddy," said Bird.
I hung up on him.
I wasn't even really on the air yet. How could I be doing
a great show?
A record called "Under the Bridge" by the Red Hot
Chili Wingos was winding down. The record had hit its peak
on the charts just about the time of some riots in Los Angeles.
No connection. Not much.
The next record on the computer monitor was by Sherbert.
Normally, you'd suspect that the radio station was attempting to
capitalize on the newspaper headlines. Since that record had
been slated several days ago, I could virtually guarantee you
there was no connection.
Disc jockeys on K-Oldies do not have authority to change a
record. They must play them as they see them on the screen
in precisely that order. Actually, they have no choice
anyway. The computer has that particular record on line
and that's what it's going to play.
Dude Daniels could have changed the list of records on the
screen by reprogramming the music sequence. So
could I.
And I would have. A Sherbert record was appropriate at the
moment. Ratings are absolutely crucial. You go for
it in any way legal. To hell with morals. Almost.
Actually, it's more a matter of good taste. To hell with good
taste, too. I'll opt for better ratings any time.
Thus, Sherbert.
I opened up the intro time--the time that a disc jockey has to
talk over the music bed before the vocals start on a record--and
mentioned one word. "Sherbert." Waited.
Another word. "Dead." Waited. Then the
rest of the bit.
"Gunned down, along with several other people. In the
Busted Bird. I don't know why I was left alive. Three
creeps with automatic weapons killed everyone else. Even
executed a girl who was still alive. Last I saw of
Sherbert, he'd been ripped in half by the bullets. The big
question is: Who did it? Another question:
Why?"
I punched the button to trigger the record and
leaned back.
Then I trotted down to the disc jockey lounge to pick up any
accidental mail and any note that Dude Daniels might have left
for me. Stoney Graham had not fixed coffee and I didn't
want to bother so I got a Diet Pepsi out of the machine.
Seventy-five cents. That shows you what kind of bastard
the owner of the station was: Making money off his staff.
Probably pocketing every damned penny of it, too!
A note from Dude said the press were trying to reach me.
Lots of them. There was a list of people and phone
numbers. "Get the calls in," Dude said at the
bottom of the note.
I stomped on back to the studio and sat down. I damned
well didn't feel like answering any more questions; I'd had
enough questions for the day.
Perhaps a few seconds later, I noticed the phone.
Several phone lines were lit up! No sound. Just
lights. It took a few seconds for the reaction to take
place. Nothing is instantaneous in radio. Or in
life. Everything follows the typical cause and effect
pattern. But fairly rapidly, one after the other, all of
the buttons lit up.
This was the first time in all my years in radio that this had
happened! Some stations, of course, you don't have that
many phone lines. Doesn't matter; I have a hunch that if
I'd had 50 phone lines, they would all have lit up.
God! It's a pity an ARB researcher wasn't around to see
this!
I couldn't resist. I punched the computer to trigger a
segue into the next record when the Sherbert record ended and
picked up the phone and pushed one of the phone lines at random.
It was a 13-year-old girl wanting me to play another record by
Sherbert.
Three other phone lines had more or less the same message.
A put up. Someone in the record industry had set up a
boiler room to push Sherbert.
Sherbert had recorded for Green Empire Records, a small
independent label distributed by one of the major companies.
In the old days, a small label would usually be distributed by
an indie distribution firm. The indie distributor had more or
less faded away. The music industry of today was largely a game
of the giants--Warner's, CBS/Sony, EMI, the Dutch, the Germans.
But independent promotion had sprang up like weeds--and often
very weedy in a proverbial sense--a few years ago. Some
said they were "bag men" for the majors, involved in
the dopeola action that the majors wanted to openly avoid.
Someone was hyping Sherbert. The reason? Sales of
records by Elvis Presley exploded after his death; RCA Records
couldn't press the albums fast enough to keep up with the
demand.
Maybe someone thought the same wonderful thing might happen with
Sherbert product.
I tried one more of the phone calls. All of the buttons
were lit up, but I had no desire to spend my entire afternoon
talking to teenagers who were obviously being paid to phone
radio stations and hype Sherbert.
This time, it was not a 13-year-old girl.
"K-Oldies. Buddy Coffee. What can I do for
you?"
"What did you really see?"
The voice sounded a little young. Probably male. Something
unusual in the tone of the voice. I tried to determine
what it was. Couldn't. Maybe they were talking
through a handkerchief.
"Who is this?" I asked.
There was no answer.
"You want to hear a record?"
The person hung up.
I noted down the information from the four phone calls just so
Dude would have it for consideration come Monday. Then I
decided I'd better get approval to do the crazy idea that had
crossed my mind.
Dude was at home. I told him about the phone going crazy.
"Jesus!" he said.
"That's precisely what everyone said at the Busted
Bird."
"Seems macabre. We're not into a ratings sweep at the
moment. I don't know, Buddy."
We finally compromised and decided to make at least my show a
tribute to the late Sherbert. One out of every three
records would be a Sherbert tune.
"And Buddy?"
"Yeah?"
"Lean heavy on the dialogue now and then."
"You sure?"
This was uncharacteristic of Dude. Normally, he didn't
want a disc jockey to say much on the air. Just back announce
the artist and cut and get the hell out of there without
stepping on the lyrics.
"What the hell, Buddy. I've never had the phones go
nuts like that. Even if they're mostly fake, at least it's
action. Play it for what it's worth."
"Okay."
I told him about the fourth call I'd received.
"That's weird," Dude said. "You think that
phone call means anything?"
"Jesus," I said. "How should I know?"
Now I was catching it.
It took a few minutes after I hung up the phone, but I changed
the sequence of the music list on the computer. While one
record was playing, I ran down to the record library and pulled
out about 15 Sherbert songs on carts and brought them back and
slugged them into the rack so they could be found by the
computer.
Some of the phone buttons had gone out; those people had got
tired of being on hold and had hung up. A few were
still hanging on or some new people had called.
I punched up one of the phone calls.
"You don't answer your phone very often," said Tricia.
I recognized the voice even though she didn't introduce herself;
I'm a voice man and you get where you can tell even when the
person you're talking to is feeling depressed. "And I
think your show is quite interesting. That was a very
interesting comment, for example, about the death of Sherbert."
"Thank you. Call again sometime," I said.
I hung up.
The next call was from another 13-year-old. Maybe 14 at
top. She had her spiel down pat. Someone had written
two or three versions.
"Say, lady, you're pretty good at this sort of thing.
How much they paying you? I can do better."
There was a long pause. Finally, she said $5 an hour.
"Drop by the radio station sometime during office
hours," I said. "I'll drop a few singles on
you."
"Make them albums," she said.
"Smart kid. But it's a deal," I said and hung
up. I noted all of these things down, including the call
from Tricia what.
When the current record ended, I went live on mike and made
another statement.
"K-Oldies, your radio station for the best in music from
yesterday, pays tribute to Sherbert."
I closed the mike at the same time I triggered the record.
It was a tune called "Love Won't Work."
I'd heard the record so many times that I was sick of it.
The old rule of thumb is that just about the time a disc jockey
is fed up with a record, the listening public is just beginning
to like it.
Not this one. The lyrics didn't make a hell of a lot of
sense. The meter was off. I'd swear that one of the
guitars in the band was out of tune.
But I didn't pay a lot of attention to it. I was writing
my next spiel. Some guys are great at ad-lib. Others
are not. Don Imus on WFAN in New York City is good at ad-lib,
but writes a lot of his stuff anyway. One of the best
talkmasters in the business is Joey
Reynolds, yet he writes a lot of his material. Charlie Tuna, Los
Angeles, same thing.
I got it down more or less okay on a piece of scrap paper,
opened the mike and as the record ended, said:
"What a lousy record. One that, quite obviously,
doesn't deserve to be played on the radio. Unless I get a
lot of protests, I'm not going to play a stinker like that
again.
"However, just because a guy made a bad record or two is no
reason to wipe him off the face of the earth.
"What's the real reason Sherbert was killed? Anyone
know?"
I triggered the next cart, a million-seller by Mountain.
No coincident that his wife had shot and killed Felix Pappalardi,
founder and leader of the group. So, I was leaning a
little too heavy toward the blood. Well, let's see what
was out there in radio land!
Although K-Oldies is modern to the extreme, we still use a
reel-to-reel for taping audience stuff. I plugged it into
the console to make it live.
The buttons popped yellow on the telephone. All of them.
I let the reel-to-reel run as I plowed through the phone calls.
"Hello, this is Buddy Coffee of K-Oldies."
I went rapidly through seven phone calls before the end of the
record. One of the calls was from my date last night, a
cute little rock'n'roll thing named Roaring Starr, according to
her record producer and publicity agent, and Jo Munson in the
real world. She had done a gig last night for a charity.
I had been supposed to pick her up about midnight. She was
mad. It was the first time she'd ever been stood up and pretty
little things with turned up noses and soft blonde hair aren't
used to terrible calamities like that. A few killings at
the Busted Bird? Sorry, but you've got to come up with a
better excuse than a mere murder or two.
The record was just about to reach the end of the vocals.
"I'll call you," I said.
"Don't hang up on me, Buddy!"
"I'm doing a radio show!" I said. And I hung up.
I switched the mike live.
"Lots of phone calls. Had one guy who thought the
murder of Sherbert was good riddance. The eradication--you
don't mind if I use a big word on you now and then, do you?--of
any human being is not good riddance. Creep!"
So I lied a little. Maybe a whole lot. I wanted to
stir up some more action.
I killed the mike and let the next song take over.
Jesus, but the phones were going crazy.
The red button lit up and I answered it first.
It was Dude Daniels.
"Buddy. It's important."
"Shoot," I said. "But hurry, will you.
The phones are going crazy down here."
"There's a contract out on you."
"A contract?"
"They've hired a hit man, Buddy."
"Who would put a contract on me? What for, for god's
sake!"
"I don't know, Buddy. I'll be down to the station in
a few minutes. Jesus!"
I hung up and sat there all of the way through the next record.
Stunned. It really was catching! Jesus!
(To be continued)
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
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Commentary
by
Claude Hall
June
2, 2003
Two
of the toughest interviews I ever had to do during my days with
Billboard magazine were with Jack Clement, the record producer,
and Rick Sklar, then program director of WABC in New York City.
Paul Ackerman, the late music editor of Billboard, and I had
lunch with Jack once in a Nashville restaurant, I think it was
called Mario's, and he was nervous and didn't trust a couple of
guys "from New York" and said yes and no and yes again
and I went back and wrote some fiction about him for one of the
myriad specials
that Billboard published in those days, this one called
"The World of Country Music" and was rather pleased
when he didn't complain. I had a lot of good stuff in
those country music specials over the years, including an
interview with Leon Payne, the
grandfather of a disc jockey named Jimmy Rabbitt,
jimmy@jimmyrabbitt.com.
Payne wrote "I'm a Rolling
Stone," which some believed was the source of a certain
rock group's name and I've never heard different. Jimmy's
real last name is Payne. He
picked up the Rabbitt handle at KLIF in Dallas and ticked off
Gordon McLendon something fierce. But that's another
story.
Mario's was supposedly the best restaurant in Nashville and Paul
and I also interviewed Audrey Williams there, one of the two
widows of the late Hank Williams, who refused to let me shoot
her picture because she had on her black wig and she was a
blonde
(or was that the other way around?). Just FYI, there
was--and probably still isn't--any decent restaurant
in Nashville; it is the only town in America where you're well
advised to take a sack lunch. In the 60s I once ate in a
soulfood restaurant in a basement in the downtown area that was
sensational, but after it burnt down, that was it. One
night at some major
function in Nashville in the Municipal Auditorium, Paul Ackerman
said something to me about the food we were served that evening
and a lady on his other side said, "Mr. Ackerman, you don't
like our food in Nashville" and poor Paul, one of the
world's nicest
guys and a gentleman of the first water, almost crawled under
the table in embarrassment!
As for Rick Sklar, I interviewed him several times
for stories for the radio section of Billboard and it was like
digging for rocks in a tub of mud. He was terribly afraid
of saying something that might get him in trouble with the
corporate brass. In all of the
years that I knew him, and I liked him pretty well and respected
him even more than that, I don't think he ever said more than
two or three paragraphs that were really worth quoting in a news
story. I would ask him out of courtesy and he would
respond with something
out of courtesy. That was it. I've always wondered
if Rick had a major story in him. And, quite frankly, I
just don't know. He was a very hard worker and he knew a
lot about radio, but whether he had any sensational programming
philosophies in him or not is a question I cannot answer.
One of the problems that Rick had, as I recall, was when
corporate wanted WABC to broadcast the speech of the president
of the United States, which was also being broadcast on
television. Rick blundered through tons of red tape and
letters and memos in order to get permission to cut the speech
back to something like 12 minutes. And then, of course,
came the editing and
the hard work of trying to find something important for those 12
minutes. So I was aware of his problems. Most presidents of the
United States have little
important to say, or they start lying, right after "My
fellow Americans." Some are actually boring because
of genetics or something. Jimmy Carter was the most boring
president America ever had, without question.
Red tape had a lot to do with the handicap of programming WABC.
Rick never said as much, but I think he was glad when he no
longer had to program "The Breakfast Club" and could
really compete for
ratings in the market. He was going against WMCA at
the time, the other major Top 40 station in the market at the
time, which was usually programmed well and had
some excellent disc jockies. For example, Gary Stevens
along with his Wooly Booger (wild tracks) or whatever did the
evening show on WMCA in those days.
WABC, in reality, was a block-programmed station
though it played Top 40 music when and if it could.
WABC had the watts and the signal, but until "The Breakfast
Club" fell by the wayside, Rick had his hands tied behind
him when it came to competing.
The most-popular interview that I ever did while with
Billboard was the interview with Charlie Tuna. I had
started this series more or less by accident. Bill
Stewart, then working as national program director, phoned and
in the conversation I was either persuaded or persuaded him to
let me do an interview. He said
he would fly out to Los Angeles, where the Billboard
headquarters was located at the time. Whe n he showed up,
he had with him Paxton Mills because he wanted Paxton to hear
some of the disc jockies in the market.
Paxton sat in on history, because that's what the
interview turned out to be. We did the interview in the
top-floor restaurant that existed then in the 9000 Sunset
Boulevard building. I had along my cassette deck and later
decided to do the story conversational style. That
interview led to a series in the magazine and then to the book
"This Business of Radio
Programming" which Don O'Day, danoday@danoday.com,
has reprinted and is presently selling. And before Bill
Stewart's death, Barbara and I stopped in Dallas and spent the
night with him and his wife Marlene and I saw the interview,
framed in silver, and page by page on the walls of Bill's study.
So, that was
history to some extent and very valuable history
regarding radio. But the interview with Charlie Tuna,
charlie@charlietuna.com,
was something else. I received perhaps more than 200
letters and I couldn't even guess at the number of phone calls.
For more than two years, I would hear a disc jockey comment that
he still had the interview and now and then took it out of his
hip pocket to read again. Just FYI, in
those days I always had anywhere from five to eight
phone calls backed up at the switchboard just waiting.
I usually had to do my writing catch-as-catch-can or at
home in the evening. So how many people actually phoned
regarding that interview, I do not know. But I was very
impressed with the impact.
I enjoyed doing the interviews with Ron Jacobs and Bill Drake
because they sort of played against each other. I'm
interviewing Bill in his house in Los Angeles and he comes out
with the statement that nobody likes him and just then a
beautiful blonde walks in so I guess somebody liked him after
all.
I once interviewed Gene Autry and another time Jimmy Wakely and
if you've ever lived in Texas and grew up going to Saturday
afternoon movies, you'll realize what those interviews
represented to me; I was talking with the gods.
The saddest interview that I ever did was with George
Carlin, a former disc jockey in Louisiana and Texas. He was then
with a small comedy record label and so help me I can't remember
its name, but they had an office on Sunset almost across the
street from
Billboard and I walked over there and climbed the stairs to the
office and did the interview and, frankly, I felt like crying
because of the storyline and the things he told me. What's
really funny, though, is that the people who read that interview
said it was the funniest thing they'd ever read. I heard
that statement for months and months.
* * *
From: Jack Gale, jackgale@adelphia.net:
"Just read your stuff on RADIODAILYNEWS.COM. Loved
the 'Promotion People' stuff. What great memories.
Yes, they were a special breed. Some black promo men you
must've remembered were Joe Medlin, A guy from Chess, big fat
fellow named Chester, can't remember his full name. Let's not
forget people like Margo Knesz of Atlantic, Bud Dollinger,
Freddie Edwards, Augie Blume, Stan Monteiro and Bud Dain.
A local Charlotte guy with Liberty, Mike Cloer, gave me a gold
Cadillac. It was about fifteen years old, no motor.
He spray painted
it gold. You printed a picture of it in Billboard. The article
said it cost him $40. Then Harold Komisar of Decca saw the
article and wrote me that if he knew I was on the take he would
have sent me $45. When I got out of Bassman, the only promo guy
who ever called was Ted Feighan of White Whale Records. When I
told him I was leaving radio, and could no longer play his
records, he said, 'I know that. I'm calling to thank you for all
the play you gave me through the years'. He was the only one.
Thanks again for the memories. No one writes like you, or knew
the people you did, or was as well liked as you."
Ah, yes! Joe Medlin. Let's not forget Joe. Nor
Augie or Stan, come to think of it. Didn't know the others
well. Just their names. But I'll bet we're
overlooking many, many people. I was hoping that
George Wilson would drop me a note. The first time I
met George in person was when he phoned me from Al &
Dick's, a watering hole in Manhattan, and I went over
there and he was drinking at the bar with two black
promotion people. He wanted me to write an article about
him so he could win the Gavin award for programming and I did,
but I don't know if he won the award or not.
From: Dr. Chuck Owsley in Kentucky,
chuckobg@webtv.net:
"I happened upon the excellent
article you wrote in Radio Daily News about the creativity of
the stars of early radio. Back in the late 40s I was
attending a college here in Kentucky and every night that he was
on, we enjoyed Bob Poole with his 'Poole's Paradise' show from
New Orleans. What a great relaxed show it was from his opening
theme to his closing song. I tried to find 'anyone' else who had
even heard of the show and to no avail. I even wrote several
e-mails to WWL, but not even a reply. I also spent a
few years a little later in my life working from midnight 'til
8AM...by myself. My radio and a cup of coffee and some cigars
kept me awake. You became very close with all of the
stronger stations and with their regular DJs."
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
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