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.  

GARY MARSHALL'S FORGOTTEN CLASSIC - EVIL ROY SLADE

Most news stories about the late Gary Marshall are mentioning his many successes in television, such as Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy and The Odd Couple, as well as movies such as Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride, Beaches and The Princess Diaries. However, one of his biggest failures has become a cult classic.

In 1967, Marshall and his long time collaborators, Jerry Belson and Jerry Paris, came up with an idea for a Western comedy called Sheriff Who?. The show would feature a different guest star hired to be the sheriff, with the job of bringing to justice a outlaw named "Evil" Roy Slade, played by John Astin. At the end of the show, Slade would kill the new sheriff. Needless to say, NBC refused it because of violence. They re-wrote and filmed four different pilots of Sheriff Who? and each one was voted down by NBC. After the had a hit on ABC with The Odd Couple, the trio gave up on the comedy Western.

Then, in 1972, the four pilots were edited into a two hour movie for television called Evil Roy Slade. It aired on the network several times during the 70s and then was syndicated to local TV stations in the 80s. It became a cult favorite. At one point, rocker Alice Cooper was photographed wearing a T-shirt reading "Evil Roy Slade for President." In his autobiography, Marshall said it was one of his favorite projects of all time.

The plot revolves around a railroad, telegraph and bank magnate (Mickey Rooney) trying to bring Evil Roy Slade to justice. During a bank robbery, Slade meets a beautiful, idealistic schoolmarm named Betsy (Pamela Austin, the Dodge Girl). They fall in love and Betsy decides to reform Roy. She eventually takes him to Boston, where he is treated by a psychiatrist (Dom DeLuise). When he is cured he goes to work in the shoe store of her uncle (Milton Berle). Eventually, the railroad magnate hires a retired singing lawman (Dick Shawn) to hunt down Slade and marry Betsy.

The dialog in this movie is great. The funniest lines stay with you long after you watch the film. At one point, Betsy tries to teach Roy math with the problem of having six apples and a neighbor takes three. When she asked what he would have, Roy replies "A dead neighbor and all six apple." The absurdity of the humor takes the edge off of the idea that this is a movie about a vicious killer. The portion where Roy works at the shoes store has to be the funniest part.

Also the well-known cast make this film a fun experience. Of all of the stars involved, John Astin is the one who makes this work. He is perfect as the deranged but likable Slade. Throw in the narration by Western sidekick and Green Acres star Pat Butram and you have a great comedy package. Also look for Gary Marshall's sister, Penny Marshall, as a bank teller.

The movie is available on DVD as well as on YouTube.








 







      

PHONE YOUR NEIGHBORS AND WAKE THE KIDS: HOW DAVID LETTERMAN INFLUENCED ME

It has been a curse through out my life that the things I like are the things that are frowned upon by Ozarkers. I prefer heavy metal, punk,  urban and psychedelic rock over country music. I'm more interested in horror movies and comic books than hunting or sports (except golf). I also like comedy, whereas Ozarkers have absolutely no sense of humor. One of my favorite comedians has always been David Letterman and, according to several opinion polls taken by our local media outlets, Ozarkers hate David Letterman. My thought has always been, "Tough luck, you dumb rednecks!"

My first recollection of seeing David Letterman on TV was when he substituted for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. I remember he came out and said, "I was watching the monitor backstage and there was a commercial on for Preparation H. At the end of the commercial, the announcer said "Use only as directed." Like you would spread it on crackers."

One of the reasons why I liked David Letterman was he didn't take things too seriously. On his NBC shows, he wore a jacket, dress shirt and tie like other TV show host, except he wore blue jeans and sneakers with it. If a bit went wrong or a prop didn't work he would say, "Screw it!" and move on to something else. Even funnier was when a prop didn't get a laugh, he would throw it in a corner and break it. Dave was always quick to let you in on the fact that, especially in the early days, the segments were probably not going to be great television. In introducing those segments he would say, "Phone the neighbors and wake the kids! It is time for Stupid Pet Tricks!" and then midway through, he would look into the camera and say, "We are having more fun now than humans should be allowed."

Dave did strange things like drop light bulbs and bags of jello off of a building or let the audience give nicknames to former presidents like "Old Beanie Weenies" and "Old Scratch N Sniff." The first show gave aging monster kids a thrill with Larry Bud Mellman/Calvert DeForrest giving a introductory warning like Edward Van Sloan at the beginning of Frankenstein on the first show and ending the first show with a guy reciting dialog from a Bela Lugosi movie called Bowery After Midnight. He interrupted a live Today Show broadcast by yelling out a widow with a bullhorn that he was a major NBC executive and he wasn't wearing pants.
  
Like Ernie Kovacs before him, David Letterman knew that the medium of television itself could be part of the joke. In the early days of his show, NBC ran reruns of the show on Monday night (just like they did with The Tonight Show). At the time, I was a media major at Missouri State University (then it was Southwest Missouri State University) and most of my media classmates would watch these reruns because you never knew what was going to happen. One week they would be dubbed into French or Spanish or re-dubbed in a phony voice over like a Giallo film or Japanese monster movie. Once the voices were sped up. During one show Dave kept popping in and making comments like, "Don't worry folks, Bob Hope (the guest) will eventually talk about someone who is still living."

He used transitional wipes as windshield wipers to "wipe away the snow." Flashback sequences were introduced, as on many shows, with a wavy screen effect and Dave saying, "It is coming back to me like a flashback sequence we filmed yesterday." Of course, we can never forget The Late Night Monkey Cam, which was a camera mounted on the back of a roller skating chimpanzee. One of the trademarks of his show was the breaking glass sound effect as he threw a pencil or an index card through the window.

I was hoping to get to do some of the same kind of things David Letterman did, but unfortunately, as I stated above, I live in the most humorless state in the union. However, Letterman's influence is in this blog with every post. Something that, as a nation, we should be thankful for.

That is why I'm closing this post with a cover of an LP by a Scottish guy, who looks like David Letterman. Dave would want it that way.

 




 

THE AGE OF TELEVISION ON LP

Let's take a break from the female comic strip character films for a quick post about an LP I found at a record collector's show in Springfield over the weekend. I cannot find any substantial background information on the origins of it's content. It is called The Age of Television. It features the voices of Hugh Downs, Milton Berle, Arlene Francis and Sylvester "Pat" Weaver.

My guess is this was a television special of the early 70s. The LP was released in 1972 on RCA. You are probably saying, "Why would a TV special be released on a record album?" The answer is that this was before VHS, DVD or You Tube. This was common before home video. There was a Tonight Show anniversary special released on LP (I believe I have that somewhere). There were LPs made containing one episode of Saturday Night  Live, the Smothers Brothers, Donny and Marie and Dean Martin shows. I can't find a date on when this show aired or what network, although I'm guessing NBC because of Pat Weaver and Hugh Downs involvement and it was released on RCA (NBC and RCA were part of the same company back then).

If this was a TV special, I would love to see it. This LP is filled with great audio clips from both TV and radio shows. The LP is produced in true stereo so you can hear different clips on different speakers. I want to listen to this with headphones some time. It does come with a booklet of photos, that are a kind of psychedelic collage.

This must not be a real rare LP. Several websites have unopened copies for about $20 (I gave $5 for mine). I wish I could find information on whether this is audio from a TV special or was produced solely for this record. It is a great relic from the 50s nostalgia craze of the 70s.    

NBC News Garrick Utley died

Garrick Utley dies, was 74 | Poynter.