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Remembering Stan
Wilson
(May 2005)
I was born and raised in Honolulu. Turned
out that I had three heroes named Stan. First was the St. Louis
Cardinals’ future Hall Of Famer Stan Musial. In the 1950s baseball games
broadcast on radio here were “recreated.” In third grade I heard the
1946 World Series live, via crackling shortwave. The
Cards beat the Boston Red Sox in the seventh game. But I never got to
see Stan play.
In high school I was a radio reporter for teenage shows on KGMB and KIKI.
“John & Marsha” by Stan Freberg was the funniest, and most
licentious, hit record of 1954.
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British Boss Jock
Tommy Vance
(1941 - 2005)
(May 2005)
Tommy
Vance did a fine job of adapting to both an unfamiliar environment and a
new profession. Vance revealed when and why he decided to be a Top 40
deejay in the chapter he contributed to my book
KHJ: Inside Boss Radio.
It was the early-1960s.
Vance first heard American rock 'n roll radio while washing dishes
aboard a UK-registered “rust bucket,” a freighter docked in New York
City ...
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The Great Elvis Hoax
(Published in HONOLULU Magazine, 1989)
Las Vegas, March 1989.
Tom Diskin sat down beside me and reminisced about Elvis Presley's
first sensational visit to Hawaii in 1957 ."Do you know how we came
to play Honolulu in the first place?" he asked I had never thought
about why. It was such a transcendent big deal that it just
happened, on the earth-shaking scale of the volcano erupting on the
Big Island.
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reading)
Aloha, Marv Howard
June 30, 2004
To: Bill Mouzis
From: Ron Jacobs
Dear Bill,
Well, another Boss brother, Marv Howard, has gone on up beyond the
highest frequencies. He's definitely, as they say, "In a better
place." I met Marv in San Bernardino, in the early KMEN days. Bill
Watson was the first California air personality-programmer to sign
up with our unknown Hawaii group. In 1962 we acquired KITO, our
first mainland station. (click
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All
Night On The Ala Wai
March 22, 2005
During one
summer on a kids’ expedition I toured the grand studios of Hawaii’s
oldest station, KGU. The walls of this NBC affiliate were covered
with lauhala matting. The dried, woven grass was attractive
in a Polynesian way and served an acoustic purpose. KGMB's
modern facilities, appropriately shipshape for a CBS outlet, and the
small but tidy KIKI broadcast booths were familiar to me from my
experience doing teenage shows. But I wasn't ready for how
bedraggled KHON had become by 1955.
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Ron
Jacobs remembers the late Robert W. Morgan
May 24, 2002
Near the end, RWM was frustrated by not being
able to communicate via computer or with his voice. He got his
biggest kicks listening to that "Mega" station, which is apparently
roughing up KRTH-FM. And good luck to THEM, now without Morgan and
Steele, their former is
station exposed as a combination juke box/slot machine, running
re-cycled KHJ stuff.
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The Poi Boys had a
symbiotic relationship
February 8, 2004
Every few years, I'd ask
Dave Donnelly if he knew how many words he'd written for his
Star-Bulletin column since starting it in 1968. Well, over the years
the two of us would either delve into, or argue about, virtually any
kind of statistic. But Donnelly never wanted to pursue the answer to
that one. I figured it must be some sort of superstition about
numbers and streaks like ballplayers have, and always dropped the
subject.
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MEMO
To: Randy Michaels
From:
Ron Jacobs
July 22, 2002
I’m not one to kick a person when he’s down,
but since you proved to me during our exchange of phone calls in May
2001, you are definitely not a person —and on behalf of
everyone in radio without the ability or vocabulary to do so—here’s
a Proclamation just for you, turkey.
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May
2005
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