ROBERT W. MORGAN

I first heard of Willie Nelson in 1957, I think it was. We played a record on KHVH that first made me realize that maybe I wasn't bulletproof. a common idea for 19-year-old kids then, in pre-Bush Insane Iraq times. The song was Jesse Belvin's version of Nelson's "Funny How Time Slips Away." I don't drink, never had been in a saloon, or east of Hilo, but whenever I played the record I turned it up. And I was transformed into a world-weary mournful cowpoke or lonely trucker who heard life's essential truth in Willie Nelson's words.

"Funny" how his songs ring even more true a half-century later, when we and the world have added so much mileage, the frequent flyer soulful kind.

Five years later, in another radio booth, not in a Waikiki penthouse, but in a Fresno warehouse-turned-radio station, I met the man who became the great inspiration (and often frustration) of my professional life. We'd sit at night with fellow radio rookie Frank Terry and dream of being discovered and making it to Hollywood. That is if anyone would risk riding north on the hellish Grapevine, through Buck Owens' country (he owned a Hillbilly station in Bakersfield) and into Fresno, then as bush league as it got.

Morgan's talent and ambition propelled him up the classic radio route to the big leagues, arriving fresh from Monterrey, where he was in the Army and worked at KMBY.  Sunny Jim price demanded I listen to RWM's aircheck and he was instantly hired as a "KMAKer" And just as fast he was off to Sacramento, and then San Francisco and then Los Angeles, hired by RKO consultant Bill Drake to be the lead off batter for the new rock format coming to that slumbering pioneer broadcast legend, KHJ.

I had come directly from Halawa Jail to Melrose Avenue in a two-week span (indeed, another story for another time) and suddenly Morgan and I were in a California Dream come true. Funny how those good times slipped away. We went our separate ways, through places and people, wives and kids, gigs and glory, ups and down, but always a phone call away from instant messaging our in-synch psyches, ready to resume epic, Talmudic arguments just to keep in practice. Long distance Zen warfare, dissing random people and issues, always planning his trip to Hawaii, the one he never took.

I gotta go now I guess I'll see you around
Don't know when though, never know when I'll be back in town
But remember what I tell you in time you're gonna pay
And it's surprising how time slips away

Longer gaps grew between phone calls. On the mainland, people were worried, I could tell. Morgan battled on; his hero was Jimmy Brown of the Cleveland Browns, Hall of Famer in his league. They threw Morgan one last party. Secretly, I was relieved to be an ocean away. I do my crying in private. And then he died.

Both of us got away with boss, macho public veneers. We hadn't been in L.A. but a few months when one night, after the Clay-Liston fight, we went to Martoni's, Hollywood's hot rock biz spot back then. Two jocks from KRLA (also known as "The Target") slipped into our booth to shoot the breeze and welcome us to L.A. radio. Within thirty seconds they were facing the Jacobs-Morgan Raging Bull tag time, having been invited to take it out on the street.

Both Morgan and I have done many things. I'm the one left having to learn this technology. Sure, we were into perfection, preparation, concentration, moderation and the other precepts from the Boss Bible. But our greatest joy -- better than any drugs, sex or rock'n'roll -- was to kick the holy shit out of anyone who tried to beat us at our game.

My first ex-wife, who rode the roller coaster from Honolulu to Hong Kong to the Hoosegow to Hollywood thinks I'm a sentimental moosh. But she don't own a computer to be offended and I must share some other folks' memories of brother Bob. Just click on the ROBERT W. MORGAN link at the right. 

And if you find that Jesse Belvin record, give it a spin.