PEOPLE THAT MADE RADIO GREAT

I'll admit that I'm a day late on this, but August 20 is National Radio Day. Since I'm in the radio industry, I felt I should acknowledge that day. I've been planing this post for awhile. I like to talk about what makes radio great. Sadly, it has gotten me into trouble in the radio industry and at my job.

I used to get into discussions on statewide radio industry message board. Once there was a discussion on some of the greatest radio personalities and radio stations ever. I posted my thoughts on the subject. A person, who hosted a show on the radio station I worked for (he paid to be on the air), got upset because I didn't mention him or the radio station. He complained to my boss about my opinions and how he was slighted. The good news is this person is no longer in radio. The bad news is you don't want to know what this person is doing now.

This is a list of some of my favorite things about radio. This will be chronological to keep down arguments. I'm also keeping this national rather than local. I would love to do a post about local radio's influences on my career, but it wouldn't be of interest to very many people outside of Missouri. I'm sure the person mentioned above will be upset that his favorites are not going to be mentioned.

JACK BENNY - Benny was probably radio's first major personality and his show was a pop culture phenomenon. The catchphrases were everywhere, especially in the Warner Brothers cartoons. Benny created a persona for his radio show that was different from his real life self. Benny was a humble, very generous man, who was also a very competent violinist, but on radio, Benny played a conceded, tightwad, who was a horrible violin player. His show also created a strange fictional world that could have only exist on radio. He kept his money in an underground vault with multiple chains, steal doors, loud alarms, lions, gorillas, dragons and, most famously, a guard who had been on duty forever. He didn't know what a car, radio or movie was. Also Jack had his sarcastic African-American valet Rochester drive him around in worn out Maxwell car. The sound of the car was provided by Mel Blanc (he recycled the same voice for the 70s cartoon character Speed Buggy).

FRAN STRIKER - He was writer working at WXYZ in Detroit. He created The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet.

In a 1970s poll, more people could recite the opening to The Lone Ranger than they could the Pledge of Allegiance.

ARCH OBOLER - Producer and creative mind behind the horror show Lights Out. Oboler used some graphic sound effects for people being electrocuted, monsters crushing their victims to death and chicken heart that grew to engulf a whole city.

ORSON WELLES - He made his first mark on radio as the voice of The Shadow and his playboy alter-ego, Lamont Cranston. He later created The Mercury Radio Theater of the Air, which produced a great version of Dracula. He produced and performed in a version of Heart of Darkness that Francis Ford Coppala says influenced Apocalypse Now. That would be enough, but his crowning achievement was his version of War of the Worlds, that mimicked radio news reports, blurred the line between drama and reality so well that it caused panic along the East Coast.

TODD STORZ - He watched a waitress use her tips to play the most popular hits on a juke box and thought "What if radio played only the top hits over and over?" He then created the Top 40 format at the exact birth of rock and roll in the mid 50s.

WOLFMAN JACK - Like Benny before him, Wolfman Jack created a persona. One of the longest lasting of the 50s era DJs with a werewolf howl, a raspy voice and hipster lingo. Really a quite guy named Bob Smith, who like to freak out radio station clients and young fans, by slipping into the Wolfman voice suddenly. George Lucas used this along with the real Wolfman Jack in American Graffiti. He then hosted the TV show The Midnight Special on NBC in the 70s.

GARY OWENS - A smooth talking, wise cracking DJ, who became famous outside radio and the announcer on TVs Laugh-In and the voice of cartoon superheroes Space Ghost and Blue Falcon.

BILL DRAKE - He took what Todd Storz created in the 50s and modernized it in the 60s. Consulting other radio stations on how to do it. He update the jingles from 40s sounding pop to a dynamic rock instrumental with vocals by the Johnny Mann Singers. He had radio stations remove the sales department from any decisions about programing, including getting rid of long form live ads. An tightened up the presentation to an art form. "AND THE HITS JUST KEEP A COMIN!"

THE REAL DON STEELE - Drake's big star at KHJ in Los Angeles. The epitome of loud, fast-talking radio DJs. Later appeared in the films Death Race 2000, Eating Raole, and Rock & Roll High School.

BIG DADDY TOM DONAHUE - The opposite of The Real Don Steele and Wolfman Jack, but belongs along side Storz and Drake. Began as a jazz DJ in San Fransisco, a general manager forced Drake to fire him because he couldn't talk fast enough. Donahue looked at the growing counter culture scene of San Fransisco Haight-Ashbury and created underground radio. Slower, quieter DJs playing long LP cuts. In the 70s, it morphed into AOR radio and influenced college/alternative radio of the 80s. His DJs included Sly Stone, Ben Fong -Torres and Howard Hessman from WKRP and Head of the Class.

BYRON MACGREGOR - Worked as a news director for the Drake consulted CKLW in Windsor, Ontario, a rimshot of Detroit, in the early 70s. Windsor had very little news, Detroit was coming unglued with so many murders that the morgue ran out of room. MacGregor's booming voice and envelope pushing "if-it-bleeds-it-leads" news writing became legendary. No truth to the rumor MacGregor lead a newscast with "A 5 year old boy was strained like spaghetti through the grill of a Buick today," but he did record a patriotic, spoken word record called "The Americans," that became popular again after 9-11-2001.

CASEY KASEM - Once referred to as "the man who taught America how to count backwards." The L.A DJ and cartoon voice over actor, created the syndicated radio show, The American Top 40 Countdown, where he played the hits, gave positive, uplifting stories about the artist, Billboard chart trivia, sappy, tearjerker dedications, and turned rock and roll into a kind of cross between sports coverage and a soap opera. He always closed with "Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars."

DR. DEMENTO - A musicologist and music historian, who introduced audiences to some of the strangest novelty and comedy records ever made on his syndicated radio show of the 70s and 80s. He also is credited with playing homemade tapes by a listener named Weird Al Yankovic.   

And those are the people who not only made radio great, but inspired my career in radio.  

RANDOM EASTER BUNNIES AND EASTER STUFF

R.I.P JUDY CARNE

The audio, on this YouTube video, is from a 45 rpm novelty single Judy Carne recorded at the height of her popularity on Laugh-In, while the video is from a promotional film she a Laugh-In co-star Arte Johnson made for Sears Kenmore called Freeze-In.

R.I.P GARY OWENS

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE QUICK CUT MONTAGE EDITS ON TV?

The problem with doing a retro blog is finding out that something you think is a thing of the past is still very much with us in another form or making a comeback among young hipsters.

Not long back, I began thinking about quick cut or jump cut montage editing. It was everywhere in from the mid-60s to the early 80s. Commercials, children's shows, sitcoms, action shows, news documentaries, even the opening to local news cast would feature, at some point, a jumble of images thrown at you at high speed. Many of these quick cut montages featured juxtaposed images, i.e: field of flowers, puppies in a basket, a chubby baby, beautiful girl in a bikini, Superman, Mickey Mouse, American flag, a car wreck, atomic test, skull and a cemetery.

I'm guessing the first major use of this in TV was the opening credits of Mission: Impossible. Here is a link to a compilation on YouTube of the opening credits of season three. Another show that used this editing method was the opening credits to The Monkees second season (This is the version that appeared in reruns). The Monkees show used this effect frequently during the musical segments.

I'm not sure the whole story behind how The Smothers Brothers found Chuck Braverman, but Braverman created two films show using quick cut montage editing that they presented on their variety show. The first one was "American Time Capsule (American History in Under 3 Minutes)."




There was a positive response so it was shown again and Braverman created a review of 1968, set to the drum solo from "In a Gadda Da Vida." Braverman went on to use the same editing style for the opening to the movie Soylent Green.

Another film maker name Dan McLaughlin made a film featuring classical art pieces set to Beethoven's 5th Symphony. The Smothers Brothers ask McLaughlin into allowing them to replace the Beethoven with a musical composition by a writer on the show, Mason Williams. The instrumental was "Classical Gas."

   


Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In used quick jump cut edits so much that the editor of the show, Arthur Schnieder, won an Emmy in 1968. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any stand alone clips of how it was used on the show, but you can find full episodes of Laugh-In on YouTube.


Sesame Street used quick jump cut edits as well, which is no surprise when you find out that Jim Henson made several experimental films before Sesame Street. Most of these featured scores by Big-Band-leader-turned-electronic-music-pioneer Raymond Scott. One was "Limbo," which features a face, made of string, talking about organizing his thoughts and he takes us on a tour of his mind. Henson was the voice of the character and later used the string face on Sesame Street. He later used the concept in a commercial for Bufferin.

   


Henson and Scott also made a promotional film for IBM called "Paperwork Explosion," which features fast paced jump cut edits layered over actors dialog.



And finally, when it comes great montage edits, one has to look at the work of Jack Cole, who was resposible for many of the great opening credits of shows produced by Universal Television in the late 60s and early 70s. I've already mentioned on this blog my love for the opening to the show The Name of the Game. That was one of Jack Cole's masterpieces.  However, his crowning achievement is the opening to The Six Million Dollar Man, which Cole says contains five layers of images, including EKG machines, computers, clocks, radar screens and footage of a NASA test pilot's crash.



Another great opening sequence that features this type of editing is Hawaii 5-O. I had to mention this because it sort of proves what I said in the first paragraph. The current version of Hawaii 5-O mixes some of the same images from the original series in what is know as hip-hop montage, which instead of juxtaposition of different images, uses slightly different versions of the same image to produces an altered version of time. This was used extensively in the film Requiem for a Dream.

In doing research on YouTube for this post, I found that I had forgotten what might be the last hurrah of this style of editing on TV: CSI. Here is a compilation of the various opening credits through out the years.

So why is this type of editing not as prevalent on TV now as it was in the 60s and 70s. After all, we have the technology to do this on a lap top or smart phone. You can find examples of student projects doing this on YouTube, why not on TV.

More than likely part of this has to do with the disappearance of opening credit sequences on TV shows. This type of editing is also considered a product of its time and out of date. Too flashy and too exciting for our post-911 "Chicken Fired" nation.    

Some claim that this type of editing causes seizures and strokes in some people. I personally feel this is some of that tinfoil-hat mentality. As a person who knows the joys of video and film editing, all I can say is I do care if it does cause seizures and strokes in some people, I just want to edit together something that looks cool.

There is always a chance that this could come back to the point we would be sick of it, but thin again I doubt we got sick of it the first time. 

 

CHARLIE CHAPLIN AS A CARTOON CAT

Today (April 16, 2014) would have been Charlie Chaplin's 125th birthday. My first exposure to Chaplin (or pseudo-exposure) was through a mid-70s Saturday morning cartoon called Baggy Pants and the Nitwits. "Baggy Pants" was a cat that dressed and moved like Chaplin. He was chased by a pig that looked like frequently Chaplin foil Eric Campbell.

This is the only example of the show I could find on YouTube. It is from television in Mexico, but this cartoon is silent like Chaplin's movies so it doesn't matter.

BTW: The other cartoon "The Nitwits" centered around the retired superhero team of Tyrone and Gladys. Yes, the same Tyrone and Gladys from Laugh-In. Arte Johnson and Ruth Buzzi even did the voices. However, they never mentioned Tyrone's last name: Horney.

'Partridge Family' star Dave Madden dead at 82

'Partridge Family' star Dave Madden dead at 82 -- report

Madden was also on the TV show Laugh-In for one season. If you saw the show in the heavily edited reruns in the 80s, you probably wondered why Madden would deliver a punchline and then throw confetti in the air. This never made much sense, until I saw the shows unedited on DVD. He gives an expalnation in the first episode he is in that he throws confetti in the air every time he "has a dirty thought."

Speaking of "dirty thoughts," check out Retrospace's movie review podcast, "The Horshack Redemption #8: Eat My Dust." Gilligan and his fellow movie reviewer, the Professor, discuss Dave Madden's appearance in the Roger Corman/Ron Howard car chase epic Eat My Dust.     

The President's Analyst - Trailer

This is one of my favorite comedy movies of the 60s. Staring James Coburn, Severen Darden, and Godrey Cambridge. Also featuring Laugh-In's Arte Johnson, "Eve of Destruction" singer Barry McGuire, Virginia from Spider Baby, Grandpa Walton, Mr. Feeney from Boy Meets World and Schnieder from One Day At a Time.

Richard Dawson dies at 79

'Family Feud' TV host Richard Dawson dies at 79

Check out his great Retrospace post about Richard Dawson.

BTW: I'm not allow negative comment about Richard Dawson, because I'm evil. Mwu-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! 

FACSIMILES AND COPY CATS

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Copying something or someone who is s successful doesn't always mean success. Some of the biggest failures in pop culture have been copies or facsimiles of a more successful comic book, movie, TV show or personality. While not a scientific approach, I have decided to list my Top 10 list of pop culture copy cats and facsimiles that stand out as flops. I thought of this idea after reading about the possible cancellation of the Mad Men-inspired TV series Pan Am and the already cancelled Mad Men-inspired Playboy Club.

I should point out that I weeded out some famous copy cats and facsimiles because they manage to hang out briefly and survive on their own merit. So I left Webster, Apple's Way, Matt Houston, Northern Exposure and Hee Haw off the list (Northern Exposure outlasted Twin Peaks and Hee Haw, technically, outlasted Laugh-In thanks to first run syndication). Some of these resulted in lawsuits. I want to note, that I wanted to point these out as a historical look at how powerful an effect the originals had on pop culture. This is not like some many other websites which use the word "fail" as a noun in big capital letters.

These are in chronological order (sort of).

1. Billy West - Charlie Chaplin clone: I mention Billy west, but to be fair he was not the only Charlie Chaplin imitator to make movies. West is the only one who I could find on You Tube (Notice the Eric Campbell-like protagonist in this is played by a young Oliver Hardy). Another imitator named Charlie Aplin got sued by Chaplin himself. There is a whole blog dedicated to Chaplin imitations past and present.

2. Milton and Rita Mouse - Mickey and Minnie Mouse cartoons: Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse was such a phenomenon in the early days of sound cartoons that every other animation studio had a Mickey like character. Van Beuren Studios were sued by Disney because they actually used mice. Warner Brothers had Foxy, who was a fox and Universal had Oswald the Rabbit that looked and sounded like Mickey Mouse, but Van Beuren was stupid enough to make cartoons featuring Milton Mouse and his girlfriend, Rita. Another thing about these Milton and Rita cartoons is they are pre-Hayes Code, so they contain sexual humor. Here are is one called Office Boy.

3. Wonder Man - Superman's first imitator: Everyone knows about Superman and his court room battle with Captain Marvel. Captain Marvel eventually conceded in the early 1950's, due more to a falling sales. By the early 1970's, Captain Marvel returned as a DC Comics stable mate of Superman. Fox Publications Wonder Man on the other was a one hit wonder. DC sued Fox and they only produced one Wonder Man story. You can see it on this blog. A lawsuit really wasn't needed for this character. I don't think he had much going for him.

4. Turn On - The computerized version of Laugh-In: I decided to put Turn On under Wonder Man because like Superman, Laugh-In produced a successful copy and a copy that has went down in history as one of the biggest failures in history. CBS took the concept and production style of Laugh-In, changed the hip satire and psychedelia for hillbilly humor and country music and called it Hee Haw. CBS cancelled it after about two years, but it came back in first run syndication and ultimately ran longer than Laugh-In. On the other hand, ABC tried to copy Laugh-In with Turn On, which was supposed to be hosted by a computer. It only lasted one episode. It was cancelled because some complained of subliminal sexual humor. The odd part is one of the people behind it was George Schlatter, who created Laugh-In. Wonder if he didn't sabotage it a little. I couldn't find footage of it on You Tube but here is a bit of a documentary mentioning it and Schlatter telling about one irate TV station GM's reaction.


5. Strange Paradise - Canadian produced Dark Shadows: This knock-off of Dark Shadows was syndicated by Krantz Media, who produced the Marvel Super Heroes, Spider-Man, and Rocket Robin Hood cartoons. This show took place in the Caribbean and involved a rich guy posessed by an evil ancestor. Unlike Dark Shadows, there are no real monsters, just ghost who look like everyday people. Not exciting. Several episodes are on You Tube.

6. Jobriath - America's David Bowie: Jobriath became the most over-hyped rock star ever. He was signed to Elektra records and promoted as America's David Bowie. Here is his debut on The Midnight Special.

7. Streethawk - A motorcycle version of Knight Rider: Teen idol singer Rex Smith plays an injured cop, who has a computerized super-smart bike. This came along after Knight Rider and really seems to have been rushed into production. Here is a sample from You Tube.

8. Charlie and Company - The Cosby Show clone: This actually might have worked if the network hadn't moved it around on the schedule. It featured Flip Wilson, a Pip-less Gladys Knight and soon-to-be Urkel, Jaleel White. Many people figured out right a way that this was a knockoff and pointed out that the actor who played the oldest son, Kristopher St. John, had played Denise's smart-assed boyfriend in an episode of The Cosby Show. Here is the opening sequence from You Tube.

9. The Insider - Miami Vice with reporters: Once upon a time it was considered cool to be in the media, especially a reporter. This show copied the look, music and clothes of Miami Vice, but made the characters newspaper reporters rather than cops. Even used the Genesis song "I've Got a Job To Do" as its theme song. It didn't take off.

10. Mac & Me - Sort of an E.T. copy and very long McDonalds commercial: There was actually a good intention behind this, because a portion of the ticket sales went to Ronald McDonald House. The problem is it is an blatant E.T. ripoff only with lame special effects (kind of a stop-motion alien). Mac also prefers McDonalds food to Reese's Pieces. Here is the trailer introduced by Ronald McDonald himself.    

Laugh-In star Alan Sues dies at 85

’Laugh-In’ player Alan Sues dies at 85

Forgive the strange link above, it is from MSNBC. It is an obit for comedy actor Alan Sues, from the 60s and 70s TV show Laugh-In. Here is Alan Sues as Peter Pan in a 1972 Peter Pan Peanut Butter commercial.