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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)

Remembering Stan Wilson

Stan Wilson, 1922 - 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. What a thriller. 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.  The record launched Freberg’s run of hits, which comprised satire of pop culture that evolved into serious social commentary. But I never got to see Stan perform. 

Also in ‘54 a third Stan entered my consciousness.  Hawaii’s top deejay, “J. Akuhead Pupule” (Hal Lewis), played “Maria” and other folks songs by a singer named Stan Wilson.  Finally¾I could actually see this Stan do his thing.  The first moment I heard Stan Wilson sing and play at The Clouds, atop the old Hotel Del Mar at the end of Waikiki, I knew that this Stan was definitely “The Man.” 

A Stan Wilson’s song had the impact of a Stan Musial smash hit out of Sportsman’s Park.  Stan Wilson’s song interpretations made them his own, just as Stan Freberg’s “Sh-Boom” surpassed The Crewcuts’ hit in popularity.  (That group, by the way, “borrowed” the tune from The Chords, who recorded the “R&B” version.) 

From the moment I witnessed his stylish intensity I was Stan Wilson fan, him following him from The Clouds to The Rathskellar, across from the Royal Hawaiian hotel.  How exciting for kid who had never been anywhere, or met anyone who was somebody; I got to meet and know Stan Wilson.  I was unabashed groupie.  First interviewed him for a radio station with less power than your microwave.  Stan Wilson, a gentleman and a gentle man, treated me as if I were Ed Sullivan.  He was as cool as his music.

 

Ron Jacobs, KHVH-Honolulu, 1957

 Nowadays it’s popular to talk about being “Ahead of the curve.”  In relation to my personal timeline Stan Wilson . . .

 

• Opened my ears to the music of Harry Belafonte.  By 1956 I’d been a deejay for two years.  “Hmm,” I thought, “This Harry Belafonte ‘Day-O’ song sounds like something Stan Wilson would do.  I began to notice traces of Stan’s sound in everything from Sam Cooke’s soulful vocals such as “You Send Me” to the homogenized “folk” sound of The Brothers Four ('The Green Leaves of Summer."

 

• A pair of guys two years ahead of me by at Punahou School, Dave Guard and Bob Schoen (later to become “Shane”) was also listening to Stan Wilson.  Bobby sang tunes from the Wilson songbook at our drive-inn hangout, “world famous” Kau Kau Korner, hoping someone would buy him a cup of coffee.  It was Stan Wilson’s repertoire that turned on the future Kingston Trio to folk music.  Otherwise they might have been singing local “cha-lang-a-lang luau songs.  Or “hapahaole” numbers like “My Little Grass Shack.”

 

• In 1958 I became Program Director of KPOA, the town’s fourth station.  Just a few years earlier Guard and Shane were singing in the traditional junior class Variety Show, a highlight of the annual Punahou Carnival.  With the addition of Nick Reynolds and reconfigured as the Kingston Trio, the boys had a number one record, “Tom Dooley.” Back then Bill Gavin was the musical director of a San Francisco ad agency.  He programmed “Lucky Lager Dance Time,” a record show aired in the western states and Hawaii.  What a rush when the Trio’s hit was scheduled along with songs by Elvis, Connie Francis, The Everly Brothers, Perry Como, etc. Wow, from Manoa Valley to the top of the BILLBOARD charts.

 

• My goal was to make it from the Oahu suburb of Aina Haina to Hollywood, California.  No way.  Instead I traveled between the glamorous towns of San Bernardino and Fresno.  While living in the latter, in “The Agribusiness Capital of the Word,” my partner Frank Terry and I began on Thursdays, planning our escape to culture, civilization and chicks.  Occasionally we headed south, to see Lennie Bruce turn himself inside out onstage at The Unicorn on Sunset.  But most times it was north, to The City.  The nexus of San Francisco’s pre-hippie scene was North Beach.  At ground zero was The Hungry I.  And if we were lucky, Stan Wilson would be playing there.

 

• When I made it to the Mainland in the early Sixties I realized how pervasive Stan Wilson’s influence was on the entire folk music scene.  He was the subject of conversation I had with a small, withdrawn dude seated next to me at the counter of a coffee shop in Monterey.  It was May 1963.  Bob Dylan hadn’t exploded on the scene just yet. That was my only chance to rap with him, a fellow Stan Wilson devotee.  Soon “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album came out.  A musical legend was born, as they say.  And the guy would never again be able to go unnoticed in a restaurant just about anywhere in the world.

 

• Knowing of the Wilson legend also allowed me to relate to the “folk-rock” performers who followed in Dylan’s footsteps.  By 1965 I was programming a Los Angeles station that hosted concerts at the Hollywood Bowl during the dawning of the “Age of Aquarius.”  As with my chance Dylan encounter, the mention of Stan Wilson opened a door of mutual interest with the likes of Simon & Garfunkel, The Byrds, The Buffalo Springfield, etc. Barry McGuire (“Eve of Destruction”) accepted me as a kindred spirit when he learned that I’d hung out with Stan Wilson.

 

• The Mamas & The Papas’ first major L. A. concert appearance was in 1965 at “The KHJ Appreciation Concert” at the Hollywood Bowl.  From the start fellow Virgo, Cass Elliott, and I became neighbors and friends.  If Mama Cass was in town when the L. A. Rams played the Baltimore Colts she watched the game with our rowdy all-male group.  Cass knew of the exploits of both Johnny Unitas and Stan Wilson.  Once, during a surreal, stoned drive from the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan to a mutual friend’s place in Woodstock, Cass sang a virtual Stan Wilson songbook for me, her audience of one.

 

• In 1968 Watermark, our production company staged the first major outdoor musical event on the East Coast.  It was The Miami Pop Festival.  (The MPF directly inspired Woodstock.  Michael Lang, originator of that legendary event, lived in Fort Lauderdale and observed the excitement at Gulfstream Park. Lang hired our Operations Director Mel Lawrence and Lighting Director Chip Monck then headed for New York to raise money.) 

 

A Hallandale, Florida, city official explains local regulations to Tom Rounds (center) and RJ.  Miami Pop took place in 1968 on roughly the same site of the Hanging Chad Scandals, which followed the 2000 presidential election.

 

• Our goal for the MPF was to provide a representative sample of the sounds beginning to fill the FM airwaves.  The Grateful Dead, Fleetwood Mac, Iron Butterfly, Steppenwolf represented rock.  Marvin Gaye, Chuck Berry, Junior Walker & His All Stars handled rhythm and blues.  Folk music artists appearing included Joni Mitchell, Buffy St. Marie, Ian & Sylvia and Richie Havens.  I was able to get into Havens’ music much more than just from listening to his few radio tunes.  I realized that Havens, who was 13-years-old when Stan Wilson arrived in Hawaii, must have spent time listening to the music of that seminal singer.  Check out Stan Wilson’s “Oken Karangae,” especially the driving guitar intro: It exemplifies the meaning of the word “Influences” as it is applied to musicians. (Sometimes I think that it is a polite euphemism for “rip-off.”)

 

Stan Wilson on the road, 2002.

 

And so it went over the years.  At the most unpredictable times and places I found myself sharing memories of Stan Wilson. 

Tom Moffatt, my radio buddy for the past 50 years, told me of Stan’s passing on June 8.  I was predictably sad, felt aggrieved for his family and sense of loss for all of us fans of The Man and his music.

The dark cloud of depression lifted when I dug up an old funky LP and listened to Stan’s “Rolling Stone.”  I thought back to the days when both Stan Wilson and Honolulu were unique, undiscovered and special.  Stan Wilson’s lyrics became an affectionate aloha:

 

“Some might think my life's a loss.

             A rollin' stone never gets lost.

             So, I'll just keep playin' it straight 'til I roll right through that gate.

 I'm just a rollin' stone.”

 

Roll on, brother.
 

Ron Jacobs
Kaneohe, Hawaii
June 2005

(Mahalo to Jerry Kergen for the Stan Wilson photos. To learn much more about The Man at Jerry’s excellent web site: http://users2.ev1.net/~smyth/linernotes/personel/WilsonStan.htm)