This is the case for me, Ron Jacobs, and my oldest friend in radio, Tom Moffatt, as being as cool as any rock’n’roll deejays in the annals of American broadcasting. You know, back when the top jock was the king of the kids living with excitement of Top 40 fast and furiously being born. I produced the original History of Rock & Roll for KHJ and the RKO stations consulted by Bill Drake and Chenault in 1969. It begins with John Lennon stating: It all started with Elvis.
Tom and I were kings of radio on the rock when EP sailed into Hawaii. Our station, KHVH (which stood for Kaiser Hawaiian Village Hotel) broadcast an Elvis music marathon continuously from our breathtaking penthouse studios atop Waikiki’s tallest building for the three days in November 1957. While Elvis and Colonel sailed into range they listened, we later discovered, to us all the way.
The shocking and awesome upshot of that—and our staging of the First Elvis Impersonator (a title also claimed by Punahou’s Bobby Shane of the Kingston Trio who was singing like EP right after he hit it big, but our fake King was deejay Donn Tyler, who was dressed and made up professionally to look like the boy from Tupelo in one of the most infamous stunts pulled in Fifties radio). Only over time has it gained notoriety, word spreading of the crazy thing across the global network of Elvis fans.
Why is he considered THE greatest? Because he left behind the most loyal fans of any artist and his wondrous vocal talent can be recognized by an appreciative ear at any time and in any place.
Anyway, we all became friends. One of the members of “The Memphis Mafia,” the entourage that accompanied Elvis to paradise Hawaiian style was George Klein, one of the top deejays in Memphis, at WHBQ. It was a hot radio market. Sam Phillips (not the man of the same name who brought Elvis fame on Sun Records, but the man, along with Wink Martindale and a few others made it the bigtime). Plus Elvis lived and recorded there. The local stations broke his early hits. But George Klein and Elvis Presley went further back, to their days at Humes High School where George was class president and Elvis was the most exotic kid in school, to say the least.
Colonel was blown away by our all-Elvis hit parade beamed to their radios on the S. S. Lurline from our beachside studios in blue Hawaii, to what became known as “Elvis’ second home.” So was Elvis himself when he joined us on the lanai and, puffing on his cigar, told Elvis what “Mr. Jacobs” and “Mr. Moffatt” had just pulled off: riding “him” around in my 1957 Ford Skyliner retractable hardtop, touring Oahu, a place that was second to none in the worship of his fans, their loyalty expressed Hawaiian style.
Colonel suggested that Tom and I each emcee the next day’s concerts at Honolulu Stadium. I was twenty and that was the biggest moment of my life. And it began a lifelong friendship with my mentor: Before launching anything, uh, out of the ordinary I always stop and ask myself, “What would Colonel do?” I mean more profound lessons than Tom Parker 101, like: “You can always draw a crowd with elephants or midgets.”
Tom and I were as emotionally close to Elvis and Colonel as any deejays. We had aloha on our side. At Colonel’s memorial service in Las Vegas we, along with George Klein, attended a small private gathering hosted by Mrs. Loanne Parker before the actual services, at which George, Tom and I were honorary pallbearers.
(And to silence those who know absolutely nothing but gossip, not the facts, about Elvis and Colonel and the enduring mutual respect between the two great men: know that among the select group invited to pay their respects to the Great Snowman were Priscilla Presley and the management team of Graceland and all the Elvis Presley enterprises.)
Tom Moffatt and I first worked together in 1955 at KGU Radio as staff announcers at the Territory’s NBC affiliate. My proudest moment was interviewing Natalie Wood for the network’s prestigious Monitor program. Four years later I was the program director and morning deejay and Moffatt was the nighttime king of radio and hosting every rock and roll concert that hit town. We started a record label and proceed Hawaii’s first rock records in 1959. We were the newest and most exotic state. Word slowly spread that KPOI radio was not only tops in the ratings, but was doing some wild shit never heard before on the air.
Tom took Hawaii and I took off for California. Since that time Moffat has become “The Showman of The Pacific” (not surprisingly the title of his autobiography, written with Jerry Hopkins). He has produced concerts featuring every star in the rock’n’roll universe—and beyond, everyone from Sinatra to the Bolshoi Ballet.
When I had established myself in Hollywood with Boss Radio, we leveraged that into a concert company, which evolved into the corporation, Watermark, that created, produced and distributed American Top 40 with Casey Kasem, the CRUISIN’ albums series (featuring the greatest jocks of all time, such as Robert W. Morgan, B. Mitchell Reed, Hunter Hancock, Dick Biondi, Dr. Don Rose, Russ “Weird Beard” Knight, Jack Carney, Arnie “Woo Woo” Ginsberg, Pat O’Day, Johnny Holiday and others, all of whom I was privileged to work with as the producer-director of the series.
Watermark also established Charlatan Productions, the first company to produce, on film, what later would be known as “music videos” on MTV, featuring artists ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Aretha Franklin and shot by Allen Daviau, who went on to film the first hits of one of the groupies who hung around our office catty-corner from Pink’s Hot Dogs, Steven Spielberg. Daviau was behind the lens for E.T., The Color Purple, and major motion pictures by other director’s that earned him five Oscar nominations and acclaim as one of the top all time director’s of cinematography.
Another noted director, Cameron Crowe, was a groupie of the most under-rated of all the stations with which I have been associated with over the years, in San Diego. “It was the city where I first met Ron Jacobs, the pop-culture visionary and genius behind my favorite local radio station, KGB,” wrote Cameron about 1972, when the station was named FM Station Of The Year by Billboard magazine.
Three years earlier Watermark produced the event that spawned Woodstock, The Miami Pop Festival. It inspired Michael Lang to try it in New York, where it was staffed by many who learned how to do it in Florida the week before Joe Namath’s Jets won the stunning Super Bowl III a few miles away from our show at Gulfstream Park. More than thirty acts performed in Miami, from the Grateful Dead to Marvin Gaye, Steppenwolf to Chuck Berry and like that for three days on two stages managed by legendary Chip Monck.
Okay, RJ, why the sudden ego burst about you and Moffatt as deejays? Much of the above propaganda involves you guys doing amazing things with all the biggest names. Other jocks can pop bigger resumes. But …
Only Tom and I can claim that we were the #1 deejays when two hometown boys from two schools two miles apart on Nehoa Street listened to us spinnin’ the hits along with virtually all the teens on the island. One kid was from the elite private institution, Punahou, where he graduated in 1979 when yours truly was the man with the music in the final cusp of AM superiority. The other attended the plebeian public Roosevelt High School, at the opposite end of the academic rainbow the arched from Manoa to Makiki. He was Peter Hernandez, 2002, who heard all the roots of rock on Uncle Tom’s Cabin (still on the air on Saturdays after all these years), where the hits Moffatt debuted are now the classic oldies of rock.
So watching these guys on TV today, while sorting through years of my stuff that reflects faded and forgotten memories, both of our former listeners appeared on the tube bigtime. Punahou’s Barry Obama speaking of matters that will change the course of history, and his fellow keiki o ka ‘aina (child of the land), now known as Bruno Mars, lit up the Grammys with his dazzling tour d’ force of movement and music.
But let’s not forget the females. A Radford High School girl who worked as a secretary at KGU to begin her career also first tasted rock on the radio when Tom Moffatt and I were the local hero Poi Boys bringing home the hits to Halawa Civilian Housing, where Bette Midler was born and raised.
Those were three of our homegrown listeners. There’s many a deejay who was heard by millions of more listeners than Tom and I. But who else can claim Barack, Bruno and Bette getting their youthful daily injections of America’s heartbeat, the musical pulse of the past half century listening to our shows?
What got me thinking about this was watching the Grammy Awards tonight—all the musical connections, legends, generations … the days when radio made hits and hits made radio, concert halls and studio walls. And thinking back to 1962 when some kids drove up to KMAK in Fresno to play for the publicity of it on the roof of our funky station on McKinley Avenue and here they appear tonight on the tube, after all those years: The Beach Boys.
I used to be impressed and measure radio fame by the size of ratings. Tonight I flashed on whose ears heard Tom and first turn them on to good ol’ rock and roll. Hey, we had Jack Lord and Tom Selleck playing us in their dressing rooms…like Elvis Presley did in his cabin forty-five years ago. And sometimes even the stuff between the records was also way cool.
Now I ponder who is reading, not hearing, what I have to say. In 1956 before Bill Haley rocked the world, I played Dean Martin’s “Memories Are Made Of This” what seemed a million times. Anyone who finds this interesting and drops an email on me. I’ll send the first few who do an unused ticket to Whitney Houston’s magnificent, sold out 1997 concert in Aloha Stadium.
Now I’m off to read “I-Wanna-Be-A-Deejay” Ken Levine’s traditional review of the Grammy Awards and check this year’s spiel for its cynicism ratio. After all you don’t write TV shows like M*A*S*H and Cheers and Frazier by being serious.
