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"Xtreme"
Chapter Nineteen of a novel
by Claude Hall
The baseball cap arrived that same evening before she
left the office. Music Express delivered it
personally; they refused to leave it with Tammy at the
switchboard. And it was delivered on an ornate silver
tray with flourish; the messenger even bowed to her,
"as requested by the client." She did not, however,
get to keep the tray.
Nails was impressed when she phoned. Only people that
"my client likes a lot receive Giants caps."
"I didn't know this particular client was a client,"
Susan said.
"You don't want to know all of my clients, honey
child. Not even I want to know all of my clients."
Nails told her to put the cap in a plastic bag "and
keep it in your closet until you need it."
"When will I need it?"
"You'll know."
It turned out later that someone else wanted a list of
those clients that Nails had. But the rest of the
afternoon unto the evening Susan spent writing on a
story about one of her childhood heroes.
She had met this particular hero only a couple of
times and those times had been recently, because, like
Howard Hughes, he was a recluse. However, she had
sung or hummed his songs forever. He was in many of
the Saturday afternoon movies that she saw while
growing up in the small towns that dot the plains of
Texas. He sang in every movie he ever made and Gene
Autry told her that her hero even sang "for" Ken
Maynard in that movie where Hollywood tried to turn
Maynard into another Gene Autry. Her hero was even in
a movie once with Bing Crosby...and sang in that
movie, too.
And his songs for a long time-although his personal
life varied from that of a movie star to a recluse,
from a beach bum and saloon brawler to that of a
phenomenal poet and singer-were on radio every time
you turned it on.
Unfortunately, these days when you mentioned the name
of Bob Nolan you noticed a puzzled expression. They
wondered if Bob Nolan might have been a guitar player
with the Doors or the Rolling Stones.
Instead, he was the greatest songwriter who ever
lived.
A thousand more hit songs than Jim Morrison or Bob
Dylan or Willie Nelson. "Cool Water" and "Tumbling
Tumbleweeds" were heard by more people around the
world than all of the songs Morrison or Neil Diamond
or the Kiss ever sang...and you could toss in Johnny
Mathis and Roy Acuff.
Unfortunately, most people didn't know who Roy Acuff
was either. They stared blankly at her. They had no
idea.
The first time she met Bob Nolan was at the home of
Stu Hamblen. The house had once been owned by Errol
Flynn, the actor. Movie actor David Niven wrote about
it in one of his books. Either "The Moon Is a
Balloon" or "Bring on the Empty Horses." It sat high
in the Hollywood Hills just off of Mulholland Drive in
Los Angeles and it was guarded by a bunch of hounds
that would never win millionth place in a dog show,
but fared fairly well when it came to hunting mountain
lions. She was invited up there by a friend named Ken
Griffis who was a furniture buyer for a chain store in
real life, but the greatest western music fan of them
all as a hobby. He wrote a book on the Sons of the
Pioneers; she helped him obtain some of the
discography.
Ken Griffis knew them all-Stu Hamblen, the writer of
"It Is No Secret" and other songs, Bob Nolan, Jimmy
Wakely, Rex Allen...he knew all about them. He could
likely tell you who had a cold the week before a given
recording session and probably even what they ate that
morning for breakfast.
Marty Robbins was at the party that evening. And one
of the greatest fiddle players she'd ever met-Harold
Hensley. And Lloyd Perryman, who was then leader of
the Sons of the Pioneers.
And standing around very quietly in the background was
Bob Nolan. Someone mentioned to her that this was his
first appearance in public in years.
He was dressed in a red and blue washed-dull plaid
shirt and slacks. She knew because she still had the
photo that Bill Ward, president of Gene Autry's chain
of radio stations, took. It was a color photo that
she framed and put on her wall. Three of the people
in the photo that night-Bob Nolan, Lloyd Perryman, and
Marty Robbins-had since died.
That was one of the greatest parties she'd ever
attended. Forget the fact that no one drank; she
didn't even hear a dirty word spoken the entire
evening.
They got loaded on music. Some of it was gospel, some
of it was folk (she didn't know until then that Stu
Hamblen wrote "Texas Plains"; she'd thought it was a
folk song). And Marty Robbins sang some of his own
songs.
It started when Marty Robbins picked up Stu Hamblen's
guitar and began strumming. And somehow Stu Hamblen
and Lloyd Perryman and Bob Nolan started singing
"...kick him in the side, let him step and show his
pride, out on those Texas plains...."
Then they decided to record the song; "for posterity,"
as Stu put it, "who'll probably throw it right out the
door." And Hensley went out and got his fiddle and
she went out to the car and got her stereo cassette
unit.
Thus, she ended up with the only "stereo" version of
Marty Robbins singing and playing "Cool Water" with
Harold Hensley on fiddle and a trio of Bob Nolan, Stu
Hamblen, and Lloyd Perryman singing harmony. In the
classical music world, this would be like having
Caruso backed by a trio of Mozart, Beethoven, and
Bach.
The cassette also contained several other songs
performed by this unique, once-in-a-lifetime group,
including Robbin's "Man Walks Among Us."
"Cool Water" was written by Bob Nolan when he was
still a college student at the University of Arizona.
It was first a poem printed in the college newspaper.
Later, Nolan dropped out of college and literally
"road the rods" as a vagrant. He ended up a beach
bum, as he told her in a taped interview just a few
months before his death.
He worked on the beach at Venice, now a suburb of Los
Angeles.
One day, he saw a classified advertisement in the
newspaper for a singer. He recalled how he'd gone
barefoot so long, his shoes hurt his feet. So, he
took them off and trained up to the Hollywood area.
His 1931 audition for a small trio headed by a man
named Leonard Slye was successful.
Slye, of course, wasn't long for the trio. When Gene
Autry went on strike for higher pay, a movie studio
changed Slye's name to Dusty Warren and that didn't
work, so they changed it again...this time to Roy
Rogers, and he became a western movie great.
The original trio was, however, Bob Nolan, Leonard
Slye, and Tim Spencer. And it wasn't long before they
changed their name to the Sons of the Pioneers and
eventually were appearing in movies with western star
Charles Starrett. Later, the group was a mainstay for
movies featuring Roy Rogers when he became a star.
Tim Spencer once told her that he and Bob Nolan would
learn that a movie was scheduled to start shooting on
a following Sunday. He and Nolan would get a fifth of
whiskey, he said, and sit down on a Thursday and write
eight or more songs for the movie. And the Sons of
the Pioneers would act in the movie and sing the
songs. They also sang in a John Wayne movie called
"Rio Grande."
At one time, according to Bob Nolan, the Pioneers knew
and could harmonize on 3,000 or more songs. They were,
of course, also performing live at concerts and state
fairs.
And recording for RCA Records.
Early in the career of the group-which later grew to
include more members and has included such people as
"Festus" of the TV "Gunsmoke" TV series fame-Nolan put
"Cool Water" to music and it became a mainstay for the
group. How many copies of the record were sold is
impossible to estimate and RCA Records is reluctant to
figure it up. It was sold as a 78 rpm disc, a 45 rpm
disc, and on several albums.
Only the legendary Mills Brothers had the kind of
longevity of the Pioneers.
Nolan left the group around 30 years ago and sort of
shunned appearances in public thereafter.
When she visited him at his place in the San Fernando
Valley, it was the first interview he'd allowed in
more than 25 years. A few weeks after her interview,
Marty Robbins dropped by and talked with Nolan and
they got to swapping songs and singing together. The
great tragedy is that no one was there to tape the
conversation-and the songs.
Nolan wrote countless songs, not to mention "Tumbling
Tumbleweeds" and other tunes. He reflected that he'd
once been able to pin down at least 1,400 songs that
he'd written which were on record or were featured in
a movie. But he believed he might have written many
more than that. Songs such as "God Put a Rainbow in
the Clouds" have enormous poetic images that far
surpass the songs being written today.
As for the volume, even the great songwriters such as
Johnny Mercer and Irving Berlin who wrote "White
Christmas" wrote less copyrighted songs...they ranged
somewhere around 700 or 800.
More amazingly, from about 1945 onward, Nolan wrote
only for his own amusement. He told her that he was
writing about two songs a week, but they were being
put on the shelf. Only his daughter saw them. He
wasn't sure anyone would want his kind of songs today.
Long before she finished the article, she felt first
the presence of Bill Ferguson and then a while later
looked up and he was standing in the doorway. He was
dressed in soft brown slacks and a brown shirt that
matched. He didn't say anything and, as far as she
knew, didn't even breathe until she'd finished writing
and shuffled the sheets of paper together. This rapt
focus on her work came from years of excluding the
world while she wrote. Newsroom training. Newspapers
were dying now and a great number of decent
journalists had moved into either public relations or
the trade magazine field because of this. But there
was nothing better than working in a crowded newsroom,
writing a news story that had to be done immediately
to meet a deadline, the police radio blaring in the
background, people talking, phones ringing, the city
editor shouting. Once, she'd worked on a news story
about District Attorney Jim Garrison on the New
Orleans Times-Picayune and George W. Healy Jr.
himself, the editor, stood at her desk to grab off
page by page of that cheap letter-sized newsprint they
used for writing paper before she could even finish
them, using a snub-nosed pencil as he edited it the
way he wanted. Now that was real journalism!
Blood-boiling journalism!
She was focused now on her story, not paying Bill much
attention. And he waited patiently as if he realized
that she was working on something important. It was
important to her. In effect, her swan song, for as
she was talking earlier with Bob Belser, she'd
realized that her days on the magazine were not only
numbered, but the countdown had begun.
The first words Bill said, although he was quiet for a
moment even after she paperclipped the sheets of paper
together and looked up, was:
"When we get married, you're going to have to stop
hanging out with the mafia, you know."
She cut off her IBM Correcting Selectric typewriter
and put a cover over it. It was already six o'clock!
What a day!
"You must have an army of spies watching my every
move," she said as she searched for her purse. At
some point, she'd accidentally kicked it under the
desk. She found it and placed her new baseball cap
inside and slung it over her shoulder as she stood up.
Her arm still hurt slightly. Not enough to bother
her, though.
"Just rumors," he said. "I also heard a rumor that
you were hungry."
"Not tonight," she said. "I'm afraid I'd be horrible
company."
"I'm always horrible company myself and especially for
myself," he said with that curious and charming grin
that he had. "But I know a quiet place where we can
get some great Italian and as horrible a companion as
I might be, one should never eat Italian alone.
Besides, I would like to discuss some rumors I've
heard with you."
"Rumors about me or rumors about someone else?"
"One of the rumors is about you. I don't believe it,
of course. But it's a rather fascinating rumor."
"In that case, you're on for dinner," she said.
He followed her in her MG, because she didn't want to
return to this office. Not tonight. Suddenly, it
seemed to her that the office was crowded with ghosts
that you couldn't quite see. You noticed them out of
the corners of your eyes, fleeting mists hiding in dim
shadows of the empty rooms. She was glad to get out
of the building and into her car.
They sped up Sunset Boulevard to Hollywood and dined
at the Italian Village, a favorite hangout of Frank
Sinatra. There was even a steak named for him on the
menu. But the place was not quiet. It was dim with
soft lights and you heard people talking and pots
banging and laughter and it was all confused, a jumble
from which no specific word could be recognized, no
specific voice could be identified.
"Charming place," she said, "and quite fitting under
the circumstances, I presume."
"I thought so myself," he said.
She ordered linguine with white clam sauce. He
immediately ordered the same and a glass of milk. She
thought that was a great idea and also asked for milk.
And they sat there, in silence, surrounded by myriad
noises. He appeared to be studying her again.
Before, she'd sometimes found it disconcerting. Not
tonight. Tonight she was too tired to care about
anything.
After the food arrived and the waiter had gone back to
wherever waiters go when there's none to be found, he
raised his glass of milk in a toast.
"Salud!" he said. "Is that the correct word?"
"How should I know? I was raised in Texas. I know a
few words in Mextex, sort of a bastardization of
English, and that's about it. Words like mucho pronto
and comprende. Not much else. We generally just say
here's mud in your eye."
"I drink tonight in your honor. That rumor I
mentioned? They say you're going to be arrested for
murder of a guy called the Mojo Man."
"When do they say this arrest is going to take place?
I hope I get a good night's sleep first."
"Tomorrow or the next day. They didn't say."
She laughed and shook her head. "What a day I've had.
It began with them and ends with they."
"The rumor says that you and Dabney Stone conspired to
murder the Mojo Man to keep him from talking about the
payola scheme you were operating."
"Well, that's okay, then, because they can't arrest me
until they arrest Dabney. He's the main culprit. I'm
merely an underling."
"Tell me about Dabney Stone."
"Not a chance," she said. "Talk to my lawyer."
"Do you have a lawyer?"
"To be honest with you, no. Maybe I'll have to get
one some one of these days. But right now, I'm hungry
enough to eat a plate of linguine with white clam
sauce. As soon as I have some Tobasco Sauce. How can
you eat linguine without Tobasco Sauce? Now that
would be a real crime."
"You think I'm kidding about the arrest?"
"I'm not eating until I get some Tobasco Sauce," she
said.
He groaned and got up and finally came back with a
bottle of Tobasco Sauce.
"Women!" he said.
"Right!" she said.
"Tell me about Bob Belser," he said. His tone was
almost like an order. She didn't like that tone. She
never liked anyone trying to give her an order.
"Nice guy. Drives a convertible sports Mercedes. You
saw his home this morning when we kidnapped that guy
and taped him to the gate. Detective Cardenas says
someone came out and cut the guy loose from the gate
and talked to him a moment and the last anybody seen
of the guy he was running like a scared rabbit down
Bellagio Drive. I don't know much else except that
Bob Belser gives out a Giants baseball cap to people
he likes. He gave me one."
"Can I see it?"
"No."
"It was Bob Belser who cut the guy lose from his gate
and talked to him."
"I know. Bob said we could have embarrassed him. I
apologized for such an outrageous act. Dumb of me."
"What else did you talk about?"
She thought for a moment.
"Well, we talked football. He likes the Giants. And
we talked about his house and office and maybe his car
being bugged by someone. He didn't know who. And he
gave me a warning."
"About what? About being arrested?"
"He warned me about someone."
"Who?"
"That's my business," she said.
He groaned. "Can't you see? Can't you understand
that you are my business?"
"I am definitely none of your business," she said as
she tried her linquine. It was good. There were
quite a lot of clams in the sauce. No wonder Frank
Sinatra ate here a lot when he was in town. Enough,
anyway, to get a steak named after him on the menu.
She smiled. No restaurant, it appeared, would ever
name a steak after her. Not even a plate of linguine.
Elton John had something named for him at a small
restaurant near Hollywood where they held his birthday
party and someone gave him a horse and the horse
crapped on the floor; she couldn't remember what the
restaurant was named. Some French restaurant, she
thought. And the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine had
a salad named for her at the Beverly Hills Hotel. She
couldn't remember the name of the woman either.
Strange! Guess her memory was fading. Fading fast.
Who was this guy in front of her that kept asking
questions? Oh, yes. Helen Gurley Brown. Not the guy
across the table. The salad. How could she forget
that? Helen was one of the greats of the magazine
world. And journalism, too, for that matter. And, of
course, it was Bill across the table from her. Also a
stranger.
"We will never get married," she told the stranger.
"The reason is that I know nothing about you. I know
you have a mother and you went to Harvard. Big deal.
What would I tell the kids?"
"You can tell them about the big dog we'll have."
"That I'll have to walk every morning? No thanks."
"I'll walk the dog now and then," he said.
"No thanks again," she said.
"And the good news is that I'm willing to wait for you
no matter how many years you spend in jail."
The milk went well with the linguine. She asked for
another glass and downed that, too.
"No jail for this kid," she said. "Because I know the
secret to life en toto."
"What's that?"
"Major problems usually deal with flies. Not tigers
or tidal waves or even, especially in California,
earthquakes. Just bothersome flies. And, while I may
have a major fly problem, as soon as I figure out
which fly, I shall solve the problem. Even now, I'm
shopping for fly paper. The real sticky kind."
"I hope I'm not one of the flies."
"No. I don't think so."
"You know what I think? I think you think you're
playing some kind of game," he said. He stared
frankly at her. "That's what I think."
"Ah, yes. A game. There have been rumors to that
effect. Rumors, that's part of the secret. But
another problem arises. Tiddlywinks or Monopoly or
chess or merely checkers?"
(continued next week)
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
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July 12, 2004
Commentary
by
Claude Hall
Bill Randle is dead. July 9, 2004. I've
written so much about the man over the years that now, suddenly,
I find myself lacking in the words that he honestly deserves.
They say he was 80 years old. Hogwash! He was 117, give or
take two centuries.
My past is fading away on me. I shall miss him very much. And
the future without some of the people that I used to know lacks
a certain luster. There were many. I hold their memories dear.
I had emails from several people, including Ron Jacobs, Burt
Sherwood, Neil Young. I told Burt, who sent me the WRMR notice:
"Bill was one of the first disc jockeys I ever
interviewed...back in the days when he looked like a Greek god
and was. He had a deal with a hotel in Manhattan to use their
rooftop swimming pool. He would fly in from Cleveland, swim,
eat a sandwich poolside, shower, go to work at WCBS. Fly back
to Cleveland to do his WERE show. You talk about impressing the
hell out of raw a kid from Texas! Whew!"
The real story about Bill Randle can never be told, of course.
He once told me that his goal for years was to be the world's
most deadly weapon. And he might have been. Quien sabe?"
Bill told me that he could destroy a car with a coat hanger.
Where and why he'd learned the trick, I do not know. But I do
know that he taught generals at the War College. I saw a
photograph. And while BSing one day, he mentioned fighting
during World War II in Yugoslavia. He once hid in a cellar
while Nazi storm troopers searched for him in the streets.
Fortunately, he said, the cellar was well-stocked with wine.
Few people knew he was even in Yugoslavia. Some friends.
I started to write about these friends. Then decided that I'd
better not. There are a lot of things Bill mentioned to me that
are better forgotten today. Nothing bad. He was unique, and
quite different, but I don't know anything bad about the man.
He was doing a radio show in those days in Detroit. This was
long before his Cleveland days. He would ask a girl to sit in
for him, go down through Mexico and end up in Yugoslavia or
wherever, soldier, leave after a few days or weeks, go home to
Detroit, and be back on the air before too many people even knew
he was "sick."
His early Detroit days were fascinating! His full name was
William M. Randle Jr., which he still used long after his father
was dead to honor the man. His dad had been a union organizer.
Often beaten up. They lived in the wrong part of town. Bill
once told me: "I didn't know I was white until I was 14." He
loved jazz, wore a bandanna on his head, and hungout in places
considered much too raunchy. Just as the black owner of a place
was being led away under arrest, he tossed Bill the keys and
told him to manage the place "until I get back." He was gone a
couple of years. According to the WRMR notice, Bill hired a
bouncer for the club called Detroit Red who would later be
better known as Malcolm X. I did not know this. Of course, it
was impossible to learn everything about Bill Randle. Fill two
books! Guarantee you! I probably only know about one book
full.
One night in Cincinnati, with Jim LaBarbara (WLW radio
personality) as chauffeur, Bill and I drove around, shooting the
bull, and ended up at a five-star restaurant. The maitre d'
knew Bill well. Bill said he had produced about 150 records in
Cincinnati. These included the Crewcuts which he named, told
them to cut their hair, produced their records. Bill said his
name wasn't on the records he produced because disc jockies had
a tendency to not play records by other disc jockies. A former
member of the Crewcuts, Rudy Mageri, once music director of KFI,
corroborated this information a few years later.
Jim and I decided once that if half of everything we knew about
Bill Randle consisted of outrageous lies, he was still the
closest person to Superman that we knew.
I had been literally kicked out of the music/radio industries.
Bill persuaded me to return to college to earn a master's degree
so that I could teach at the university level. I think that the
only reason he took the teaching job at Phillips University was
because he wanted to study for a law degree at Oklahoma City
University, 90 miles away.
A great deal of the time, it was stuff he said in passing that
fascinated me. I took a communications course under Bill at
Phillips University. There was one student not too long from
Vietnam. Bill warned me that the student was "tripwire" and to
be careful around him. How Bill knew something like this, I do
not know. He mentioned to my wife Barbara that animal therapy
worked well in these cases, especially to have the guy sit in an
easy chair with a cat on his stomach.
I saw the film clip of him introducing Elvis Presley on a summer
TV replacement show. I've seen videos of Bill handling a
rattlesnake at the Okeene "derby." I remember the night he came
to my house and asked for an APC tablet; he said he'd fallen off
a mountain and hurt his hip. The next day, he phoned the
Pentagon and was permitted to visit a doctor at Vance Air Force
Base in Enid.
In passing once, he mentioned that Alan Freed had a motorcycle
wreck and he'd given blood. So, the figurehead that Alan became
had something, perhaps, to do with Randle. If that isn't
outright irony, I don't know what is!
He was a buddy of John Huston, Lena Horne and her husband, etc.,
etc.
Somewhere in this house is the proverbial tape with the
proverbial19 minutes that Randle insisted I erase (I didn't
because I thought, first, it wasn't dangerous anymore and,
second, it was too important to history. He once sent me a
newspaper clipping about some people shot down in a local bar
and said, "See!" and I still didn't erase the tape. But he was
never worried about himself; the issue concerned several friends
from his younger days.
The man was phenomenal! Sometimes, a bit nutty, yes. I was
privy to see many sides of the man. A brain (a Ph.D. from
Case-Western Reserve; he told me his dissertation was 7 million
words long, four master's degrees including two from Columbia, a
law degree from the School of Law at Oklahoma City University
where he was tops in the class), a soldier of fortune, a college
professor (he also served as chancellor to a community college
for a couple of years), writer (I have an Amish cookbook
published by the New York Times that Bill autographed for me; he
evidently lived with the Amish for a while), a race car driver,
lawyer (I wrote a letter at his request that helped him gain
admittance to the bar in Ohio), pilot, a gun runner (the Six Day
War), record producer with several million-sellers, a music
publisher (he changed "The Yellow Rose of Texas" and took
copyright on it), a you-name-it. And, of course, he was a disc
jockey. When WERE hired him the second time, incidentally, they
gave him part ownership. I wrote John Gorman in Cleveland,
gmanusa@comcast.net,
who was kind enough to gather some copies of the Randle obit for
me. "Here's what I have so far. The local media are providing
a respectable amount of coverage on Bill today. Though he was
well-known and respected in the market, he was a private
person. If anything else comes along, I'll pass it on. It's
ironic that his death occurred on the same day that WRMR was in
its last full weekday of its pop standards format. Salem takes
over via an LMA on Monday and will change it to their
conservative talk format. Bill will be missed by all who knew
him. Great guy. Great conversationalist. Very opinioned."
http://www.cleveland.com/search/index.ssf?/base/entertainment/1089451859119
011.xml?eaall http://www.cleveland.com/search/index.ssf?/base/entertainment
/1089451847119010.xml?exoth
http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_fullstory.asp?id=20624
http://www.wrmr1420.com/home.php
From a Bill Randle fan, Sandi Kirchner,
DuckiBuni@aol.com: "In
case you've not yet heard, Bill Randle died yesterday morning
(July 9th). Truly a sad day for all of us who hold dear to our
hearts memories of what used to be."
OPINION - Monday, July the Fourth weekend,
a smattering of days when Americans nationwide, in my childhood
memories, ate roast'n'ears and drank iced tea, a Texican thing,
while sitting around a table, the entire family, rejoicing.
Instead we dropped two one-thousand-pound bombs and a couple of
smaller bombs on a home in Iraq to slaughter, quite helplessly,
a mother and her two children and others of a family, leaving a
hole in the blasted earth where now naught will grow but
hatred. Forever.
Not a very proud achievement for a July the Fourth.
I have a friend who is moving wife and children to Mexico and
becoming, all, Mexican citizens. He is a very bright man, a
very good man. America is losing a very valuable essence. And
it is not just a human being that we are losing, it is also an
essence of pride. Whereas we once ran to the rescue of
humanity, whether a mere individual or a nation, we now charge
to the murder of the same. Without just cause, with mere
triumphed up reason, without any idea of accomplishment other
than the shedding of blood, the death of the helpless.
Worse, we lie about it or hide the real truth of what's going
on. Buchenwald promotes the concept that Saddam Hussein is
evil. More evil than Buchenwald?It was a lie about the weapons
of mass destruction and the mass graves. About even the need to
go to war. It is obviously a lie about Hussein, a man perhaps
only trying to protect his country. I have the distinct feeling
that we're going to hang a man who does not deserve hanging.
For setting the oil fields of Kuwait on fire, prison. He has
actually committed no other crime.
Now, the smear campaign gets underway in earnest. Buchenwald
has nothing positive going for him and his administration. So,
advertising and the "spin doctors" (more like "spin
Frankensteins") on TV will be smearing Kerry and Edwards. Lies
upon lies. One of the lies is that Cheney could become
president. God help us!
The day after Kerry named Edwards as his running mate, Tom
Ridge, Buchenwald's fear agent, announced another terror
threat. Great timing, huh? In this one, he says terrorists are
planning something between now and November. I told my wife
Barbara that she'd better not go out because Ridge had said
terrorists were going to attack between now and November. She
evidently didn't hear me. Maybe the Ridge guy needs a different
spiel. Anyway, how could a terrorist possibly do more damage to
America than Buchenwald?
Just saw the complete interview of Michael Moore by Charlie
Rose, PBSYou.org. Great job. Very professional. Rose should
be primetime on one of the networks. Might save a network, all
of which seem to be pulling a buffalo stunt. He's very
accomplished. Natural. I dropped him an email. But I know how
such things are. He'll probably never see it. You can't
contact Don Imus or Larry King these days. There's a wall.
Pity. One of the many reasons I admired George Wilson is that
he always stayed grounded in humanity, in reality, in humility.
I'm not sure that Larry King is grounded these days. Imus?
Maybe.
Earlier, I'd seen one of the Fox TV "news" announcers claim that
"Farenheit 9/11" was a pack of lies. Don't think so, Fox. He
also mentioned that he had to pay $10 to see the movie. That
was probably the major complaint; he's used to getting
everything free.
Now, July 9, 2004, CNN runs a crawl with the information that
Buchenwald's National Guard records have been accidentally
destroyed. The word "accidentally" should be in quotes, of
course. But when it comes to Buchenwald, a whole bunch of
things should be in quotes. Buchenwald claims the world is a
safer place without Saddam Hussein. Not while Buchenwald is
still in power, in my opinion.
I told my wife Barbara that Buchenwald's National Guard records
had been accidentally destroyed and she just laughed.
Buchenwald, for that is his real name, claims jobs are growing.
If just to build more bombs, I'd rather the jobs not grow.
However, he's lying about the jobs. His economic blunders have
put more than a million people out of work. He claims his
prescription plan will help Americans...yes, help to milk the
aged of their last pennies. Lies upon lies. So far as I can
discern, Buchenwald has never done one thing for the common
good. Not one thing.
The homeless increase. The hungry increase. The sick die.
America, itself, has become diseased. The word "conservative,"
which I will place in quotes, has become a very foul word; these
days it means lier and baby killer. Everything that's wrong
with America.
OTHER MATTERS -- Ted Tatman (John Quincy),
ted@tedtatman.com: "Just
wanted to let you know my audio interview with George Wilson is
now available. It can be downloaded from
www.WTMAMemories.com.
Not only does George talk about his days at WTMA in Charleston,
he discusses his programming strategy, Bill Drake, and what he's
been up to since he left WTMA in the early 1960s. Thanks so
much."
I hope all of you tune in to this interview.
George Wilson has had a phenomenal radio career. Great
history. Great wisdom!
John Alexander Hall,
johnalexhall@hotmail.com: "Here is another email from Bill
Pearson to the Wood group. I will continue to keep you
advised. Most of the mail from the group has been supportive of
Bill. One writer asked only as to the status of the Wood
artwork. It takes all kinds, huh."
As mentioned last week, Bill Pearson's home
burnt down. This note from Bill...Bill Pearson,
witzend13@hotmail.com:
"Hate to be a bore, but answering questions through the Wood
group is helpful. To those of you asking me to call you, I have
no phone numbers or addresses for anybody. I'm gradually
gathering email addresses from the Wood list. The Red Cross
came through with a toothbrush, a razor and blades, a few
clothes and a pair of shoes (I left the house in my slippers).
I'll be sleeping on a friend's couch for for a few weeks, so I
haven't reached the absolute bottom yet...but came pretty damn
close! Everybody has ups and downs in life, but it will be some
time before I'm back up to speed. I can be reached for now at
928-632-5786. My host, Tod Miles, is online a lot, and never
answers his phone when he's not, but if I'm here, I'll answer.
Please don't leave a message. Try again later. And to those of
you wondering about the fate of the Wood files, that deserves a
separate report all by itself. To Darryl Hall,
darryl551@lycos.com: "Musicwise,
I'm listening to KGB 101.5, a classic rock station, while I
read."
Ah, Ron Jacobs would be proud of you, Darryl. Probably the
programming isn't the same as that created by Ron, but that
station wasn't even on the map until Ron took it over. Lord,
but I suppose that was a long time ago.
Stephen Meyer,
stephennmeyer@earthlink.net, forwarded a link to an article
titled "The Price of Payola" that appeared in the New Yorker.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/content/?040712on_onlineonly01
Ron Jacobs,
whodaguy@lava.net, was kind enough to include me in the loup
of a note he sent out. "I have finally begun to edit my oral
history transcripts for publication. Exclusively on the site
Larry Shannon set up. Will start with a huge interview with
Drake that we did in 1999. Spent about five hours over two days
(no small feat, staying on point with Drake for that long...in a
bar, no less). My only condition was that we cover everything
from when and where (everyone has THAT wrong) he was born...to
the Rest of the Story about ALL kinds of radio stuff that people
still seem interested in. It's much more fun, I think, to edit
and play photo editor than to WRITE. As for Drake, about only
2% of what we got down made it into my KHJ book. I think many
will be very surprised by what he had to say."
PROMOTION PLUS -- The city of San Francisco,
according to G. Clifford Prout Jr., was a "major moral disaster
area."
He was shocked by the nudity. Not of the hippies.
The animals in the Children's Petting Zoo at Golden Gate Park.
"Prout" and two other members of the the Society for Indecency
to Naked Animals tried-unsuccessfully, it should be noted-to put
a pair of white panties on a deer named Bambi, much to the
delights of several children, who screamed with joy. One little
boy fell off a fence he laughed so hard.
The story made the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle.
SINA was the brainchild of one of the greatest publicity
geniuses who ever lived-Alan Abel. He wasn't a press agent, as
they were called then; he created publicity stunts for sheer
fun.
"On a slow news day," he once said, "I like to jump in and
create some havoc."
The article in the Chronicle resulted in an entire page of
letters to the editor.
Abel formed the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals in 1962.
The organization had an official letterhead, a newsletter, a
board of directors, a theme song, a membership car, and turned
out free patterns for clothing for animals. These included
bikinis for stallions and half slips for cows, along with
knickers for bulldogs. At one point, Abel claimed the
organization had a membership of almost 40,000 and operating
funds of $400,000. "Prout" was president. Abel said he was the
paid vice president of the organization.
"Prout," it turned out later, was actually Buck Henry, a comedy
writer who was subsequently hired to write for the "Gary Moore
Show."
He also appeared as "Prout" on behalf of clothing animals on
"The Tonight Show," "The Today Show," and others.
"I realized that Buck or I could walk into any television studio
with a drawing of a horse wearing Bermuda shorts under our arm
and go right on the air and practically stop the show," said
Abel.
The organization continued until the fall of 1963 when a large
group of "members" picketed the White House to protest the naked
horses being ridden by Jacqueline Kennedy, the first lady.
While Henry enjoyed a rather successful career as a comedy
writer (i.e., "Get Smart," etc.), Abel ended up with a book
contract with Simon and Schuster.
One of his others "stunts" was the World Sex Olympics, which
Abel promoted; couples would compete based on style and
endurance.
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
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