Revised!
KHJ:
Inside Boss Radio
for
$79
(plus $10 S&H)
with FREE "Tina Delgado Is Alive!" button with each copy of this once-secret "Drake" Format textbook devised by Jacobs for KHJ.
(click here to send an
e-mail to Ron Jacobs and he'll send you info by reply e-mail)
ron@ronjacobsonline.com
KHJ RADIO
BOSS ANGELES, 1965
Commemorative 40th Anniversary
Streetscape
SOLD OUT!
Thanks to all of you for
remembering.
e-mail
Ron
ron@ronjacobsonline.com
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Previous
Articles
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.
(click here to continue reading)
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 ...
(click here to continue reading)
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.
(click here to continue
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
here to continue reading)
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.
(click here to continue reading)
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.
(click here to continue reading)
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.
(click here to continue reading)
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.
(click here to continue reading)
May
2005
(click here to
continue reading) |
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Ron Jacobs
and "Bob" Morgan go back to the first day of KMAK, (Fresno, CA) May 1962.
Shelley Morgan was Jacobs' secretary when Jacobs was PD at KHJ.
RJ offered to share the following with the ReelRadio Repository, and we
thank him. Ricky Irwin
From:
Ron Jacobs Sunday, May 24, 1998 in email to Uncle Ricky at ReelRadio.com
I had a long
conversation with Shelley Morgan a while ago, and given the circumstances,
she is just FINE. I know Shelley well enough to know if she were faking it.
Actually, it was the LAST time we spoke, when things were pretty inevitable,
that she cried. As did I when we hung up. Thereafter, as she always has, she
took care of business, right on up through Friday night.
RWM was at Smith
College to see Susanna graduate the prior Friday. (Straight A's in her last
quarter, he'd want you to know!) Thus, they fulfilled a promise to one
another: She would graduate and he would be there to see it. Yes, he flew
there and back, even though by then he couldn't dial the phone. And he's
pissed at me for mentioning that, but it explains why he finally withdrew
from us: Because of GUTS and DIGNITY.
After a day's
rest, the family traveled back to L.A. On Wednesday, RWM complained of chest
pains. Things got progressively worse. The people RWM cared about were there
when RWM signed off Friday night. Ironically, the news came first over KFWB
(the station we idolized and later picked off) and was delivered by Lyle
Kilgore, who RWM worked with at KHJ (and we both knew of in our pre-Boss
days. I'm sure reading that one tested Lyle's professionalism.)
In the past
several years, RWM and I spent as much time talking about (read "bragging
about") our daughters. Both kids motivated both of us in ways that
transcended radio, money and all the other bullshit. Each girl, in their own
way, kept both their dads alive.
RWM's wish was to be
cremated and have his ashes scattered at his favorite fishing site. Shelley
is not ready to do that yet, so he is with her in what she described as a
"beautiful" urn. And I'm sure it is. The woman has always had good taste.
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 station
exposed as a combination juke box/slot machine, running re-cycled KHJ stuff.
The one thing I can assure you is that RWM did not move on up worrying that
someone was gonna come on in and make people forget about him!
Shelley is having
a private service at her husband's favorite place, their front lawn. A few
hours before he logged off, RWM's future-son-in-law announced that he had
passed the bar. A nice Jewish boy, who, according to Shelley, got along
really well with Susanna's dad.
Thanks to Kevin
Gershan, Rick Irwin, Ron Rodrigues at R&R, the traditional media, the
Internet/RealAudio and of course, Shelley -- tomorrow will always bring a
good Morgan.
As for me, I'm
going on tomorrow, Memorial Day, to play "Cruisin' 1965," starring the best
jock I ever had the pleasure to work with, the world's greatest production
announcer, and the person who did more to make me look good than anyone else
in my 45 years in this silly business.
Ron Jacobs
Kaneohe, Hawaii
UPDATE
- May
19,
2004 - Susanna Morgan married attorney Darren
Enenstein in 1999. The couple lives in Rancho Park, an L.A. suburb, not far
from Shelley. Their first child's ETA is June 22 --
the
day before RWM's birthday. The doc says it's a boy,
for whom the
parents have chosen the name
Jacob Morgan Enenstein.
Whether he
arrives in the
Morgan hours or not,
the youngster
will grow up learning of the happiness spread (and the hell raised) in Boss
Angeles by Grandpa W. Morgan.
Excerpted
from "The Robert W. Morgan Boss-Ography,"
http://www.reelradio.com/morgan/home.htm,
which was written, assembled and produced by Kevin Gershan, former Producer
of
The Robert W. Morgan Show.
Vintage
airchecks of Robert W. Morgan on 93/KHJ can be heard at
http://www.reelradio.com/index.html.
e-mail
Ron
ron@ronjacobsonline.com
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