The Rock ’n’ Roll Boys
Ed Dela Pena: Before Bill Drake and the boys came in we had ‘talk’ radio, the announcer Michael Jackson, and all sorts of other things mixed with Lakers ga
mes. When the Lakers moved out here to Boss Angeles we had a broadcas
t exclusive to air Lakers game
s on
KHJ and KHJ-TV play --Bi
ill Mouzis: I was trying to think if we had
any other well-known jocks beside Martindale. I’m sure we did, but none with The Winker's Hollywood renown, respectability and rockin' reputation. But, that didn’t last very long, because the payola scandal hit. RKO General
panicked, they pulled out of it. I think we went to “The All News Station.” Just prior to Boss Radio coming on the scene they were right in the midst of planning for “The Entertainme
nt Station.” That was going to be the next format. They had already talked to Gypsy Rose Lee, she was getting ready to sign a
contract. They were lining up other talent. I was the engineer for The Steve Allen Show out of his house right here in the San Fernando Valley.
Betty Breneman: I had worked at KHJ as music librarian since 1959 when ouroldie feature was called “Great in ’58” — how creative! Many formats had come and gone.
In April 1965 the PD, Don Otis, called me into his office, few feet from the sidewalk, right off the lobby. Otis said that he would be leaving in a month or so. The small room later became Ron Jacobs office, except that Otis kept it much neater, by the way. There was never anything on his desk besides the obligatory phone, intercom and desk calendar. Oh yes, there was always a pen to the right of the middle of the desk slanted at the precise angle ready to be picked up.
There were none of the stacks of papers, calendars, charts, colored marking pens, records, photos, L.A. Rams stuff, kilos of "Gold
Presentation Records," etc., etc., etc., that were to become part of the landscape of that office when Ron took over as PD. And believe me, things changed and happened much faster.
Dave Diamond: When I got to KHJ it should have been a signal to them that times were changing and the rock ’n’ roll boys were going to take over. I think Steve Allen resented us. I always respected him and thought he was a
great talent but times move and things change. There were some other big stars on the station. All I knew is we were going rock and Drake had the support of RKO and had not yet hired all the staff. The former on-air staff and all the network shit were dropped. Gary Mack, Steele and Morgan had been hired. Sam Riddle was on board, Roger Christian, then, Johnny Williams. Frank Terry came on last as I recall.
Betty Breneman: Don Otis called me in to introduce me to, “This young man, Bill Drake, who will be helping out with some new programming around here. You’ll be working with him on the music.” Shortly after that, of course, the whirlwind started. Construction people showed up in my library to divide it in two to accommodate an of
fice for Bill Drake. Bill then introduced me to Bernie Torres, who he referred to as “my assistant.” Bernie called himself “Bill’s right-hand man.” I was encouraged by Bill to get acquainted with Bernie because we’d be working together. Sometime during our initial conversation, Bernie told me that when he tells me something it’s the same as Bill telling me. And I thought these guys were pretty bossy coming in to my music library, taking my space and telling me what to do.
Bernie gave me a list of office supplies he’d need and asked me to get them. I had worked at KHJ for six years – and that wasn’t the best way to endear himself to this stubborn, possessive Italian lady! I informed him of the company’s procedure to acquire those supplies and said he could do it himself. It’s a wonder I lasted through those first couple of weeks. Mind you, I really was not privy to the mystery unfolding there. After a rocky start, though, we did work together smoothly.
Bill Drake: I knew that Betty Breneman should be on the team right away. She had been at KHJ for six years. She had been through the horrors of hell like with Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows on the air. They had Michael Jackson, the talk-show guy. Betty knew everyone in the L.A. music scene and was well respected. She knew the town and knew the station and she impressed me as being very knowledgeable and willing and open-minded. And in talking to her, she was very receptive. You’d talk to Betty and she’d say, “I can do that.” She was also a nice lady. And while she was going through some of that early crazy stuff, she was two months pregnant.
Gary Mack: At the time, Steve Allen and his wife Jayne hosted the morning show from a studio in their home. Robert Q. Lewis did the afternoon-drive show. They were phased out, and the “no-name announcers” were phased in. During our air shifts, we play
ed a lot of Tony Bennett and Rosemary Clooney, and tried to sound like mellow staff announcers. But as soon as our air shift ended, we
headed to a production room where the real work was taking place — the new Boss Radio format was
in rehearsal.
Bill Drake: In 1964 I hired Gary Mack out of Texas for KYNO in Fresno. He was a very good guy but it didn’t really work out. Whatever it was, there was no animosity. I realized that he knew a lot about what I did and he was down in L.A. doing something at KRLA. He seemed to have gotten more logic to his thinking.
Gary Mack: By 1965, I was working at KRLA in Pasadena when Bill Drake called, and he wanted to get together. The prior year, I had briefly been Bill’s Program Director at KYNO in F
resno. We met at Martoni’s and while sitting at the bar, Bill told me that he and Gene Chenault were going to be consulting RKO General’s KHJ and he wondered whether or not I’d be interested in working there. He had me when he first said “hello.” I didn’t know it at the time, but I had just become the first Boss Jock. I was a Boss Jock and I wasn’t even sure what it was. I spent two years on the air at KHJ. At one point or another — Ron Jacobs can corroborate this — I had a 28.6 share. Numbers that we have never seen since. That station was truly, truly powerful.
Casey Kasem: While I rarely listened to KHJ and their t
errific staff of disc jockeys, I knew that they were going to be #1. You see, at one of our KRLA staff meetings, fellow deejay Bob Eubanks, who owned the Cinnamon Cinder Teen Night Clubs, told us that he was hearing from the kids that they were tuning in to KHJ — and he warned us that the next ratings book would reflect that. Sure enough when the ratings were published, KHJ was Number One.
Mitch Fisher: In April 1965, I got a call from Ron Jacobs, who had just been sprung from the Honolulu hoosegow. He was in Halawa Jail for 30 days for
some trumped-up setup involving his being rousted at the airport on his return from Hong Kong for possession of three milligrams of marijuana. After a year in Hong Kong and a month in the slammer, Jacobs, his first wife, and a Kowloon alley cat left his hometown within 24 hours of his release and returned to the West Coast. They camped in a cheap motel near the L.A. International Airport. Jacobs was feeling deflated after his recent experiences. I had read in the trades that Jacobs’ Fresno competitor and nemesis, Bill Drake, was getting ready to program KHJ.
I browbeat Jacobs to call Drake. I insisted that the two of th
em would make a great team. Jacobs was stubborn and afraid of rejection. His self-esteem was in the gutter. He finally gave in and called Drake, convinced that his call would be refused. The opposite happened. A quick meeting was set up with Drake and his partner, Gene Chenault. Robert W. Morgan picked up Jacobs and drove through a rare Los Angeles rainstorm and dropped him at a restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard. And the rest is Rock and Roll Radio History.
Bill Drake: Gary Mack was the one who explained to Ron Jacobs what we were planning the first night Jacobs came aboard. We were all together for the first time and I remember I was pacing back and forth and Gary’s talking and Jacobs and I were thinking that if anybody had told us a year before that he and I would be pacing back and forth up there — well, that was a weird thing.
Robert W. Morgan: I sat outside in my Volkswagen for three hours with the car parked in an emergency area because I didn’t have enough gas to drive around the block. Jacobs walked into the restaurant as my friend and came out as my boss.
Ron Jacobs: When this whole hiring ordeal was through, I called Morgan at two in the morning or something. We’re both, “Right on, man!” because now we f
igured, you know, Morgan and I had fantasized about this very specific thing back in Fresno. I couldn’t have picked anyone better to tackle L.A. radio with and I think he felt the same way about me.
So Morgan and I did a middle of the night prowl of the building at 5515 Melrose. We conned our way past the guard, which was no small task bec
ause we were young guys in a beat-up Volkswagen. And we just wandered around this huge place. The station where we worked together in Fresno was like twice the size of a garage. We were blown away by this place that seemed like the fucking Pentagon. We’d never even heard the idea of an engineer spinning records in another room. But this was the Big Time in every sense. We were like kids in a candy shop. It was just the best.
The next time I had to go in there and be cool about it, not all ga-ga and giddy like when I had been sneaking around with Morgan. I pulled up to the gate in my new Cad
illac convertible. The uniformed guard welcomed me. “Good morning sir, go right ahead.” And I’m in. Within a couple of days they had my name painted on the parking space — and the spaces back there were both prestigious and precious. Most employees had to park a block or more away from the building. I didn’t know where I was going so I wandered into a TV studio and remembered not to walk in front of a camera. I sort of worked my way backwards into the offices. From that point on Drake rarely came in the building. If Drake decided to come down from the mountain and we had to talk in person, it would be next door
at Nickodell’s.
Bill Drake: I think one of the things I really loved about Jacobs was that he was always more inventive and brighter than I was with ideas. I would take the simplistic approach and say, “Wait a minute, the listener ain’t going to get it.” And the good thing was that I could take these sometimes bizarre ideas and break them down to where the guy working at the service station or McDonald’s or whatever could dig it. I remember I used to say, “This is not a radio man’s radio.”
Ron Jacobs: (To Drake) The best thing you and I had going was that I’m too far out and you wanted to take it back out to the place where we met in the middle.
Bill Drake: (To Jacobs) That’s why it worked.
Ron Jacobs: Like, the music that you were listening to at ho
me was different from the music that I was listening to at home. You really liked Tom Jones, the Supremes, Motown. I’m up in Laurel Canyon listening to Miles Davis, right? But that had nothing to do with work.
Bill Drake: Well, I realized we couldn’t make a living on KHJ with Miles Davis. (Laughs.)
Frank Terry: That’s one thing that no one ever writes abou
t Jacobs. He was a tremendous jazz aficionado. Ron had an ear for jazz. And I thought I knew something about jazz, that’s what I kinda grew up on, but he turned me on to a lot of really cool jazz albums. During the years that we knew each other and worked together, here we would be — it was kind of funny — we would be working at these radio stations playing this teenybopper bubblegum stuff and going home and listening to Charlie Parker and Miles Davis and Oscar Peterson.
Jim Mitchell: It was mighty peculiar to walk into 5515 Melrose and see Jacobs in a suit, button-down shirt, and tie. This was a guy I never saw in long pants or shoes at KP
OI, a guy who appeared in Newsweek magazine wearing a muumuu. But, everything else was exactly as I remembered from the other stations: Astonishing intensity, relentless in trying to make every second perfect, almost giddy delight at doing something really, really well, intimidating rage when we screwed up. The rage never lasted, though. We started the next day fresh. Some people never got that part, so they thought he was a dangerous maniac.
Ron Jacobs: When we came together at KHJ, we, meaning the group that was going to later be known as the Boss Radio crew, were not treated warmly. There were so
many different formats in and out of there. It was like everybody was asking, “How long are these guys going to last?” The big power in the building was KHJ-TV, Channel 9. They were the strongest independent station in L.A. and they had the “Million Dollar Movie.” People were taking bets on how long we’d last. Plus the fact that we were young compared with the people who worked there and some of the guys had long hair.
Dave Diamond: It all started for me with my being hired by Drake in 1965. The first day I spent with Drake was my introduction to his philosophy and personality. That’s the day I got hired for $15,000, which was AFTRA union scale, same as everyone else. I was making $30,000 in Denver doing an afternoon TV show and a night radio show. But who in their right mind wouldn’t make that trade? I showed up in February, stayed at a motel on Vine Street, just down from the Hollywood Ranch Market, later moving to a pad on Tamarind, a few blocks from KHJ, up around Gower and Sunset.
Sam Riddle: I’d been in Los Angeles since 1960. I was at KRLA for four years and KFWB for two years. In the last six months, ’WB change
d the jingle to “KFWB Dial 98” because they knew they were losing it; Bill Drake was coming to town. I was so happy when Bill Drake called me and asked if I would like to come over to KHJ. I had a television show at the time on Channel 9, KHJ-TV, for two years called “Ninth Street West.” And I said yeah, it would be easier to walk down the hall to the radio station than to go back over to Aldo’s Restaurant across from KFWB.
I remember, before we ever went on the air, we were AM and FM. I mean that’s years ago and to tell you how times have changed — like when Drake gave the logos — he would say “Ladies and Gentlemen, you’re listening to AM (emphas
is) and FM (de-emphasis).”
Robert W. Morgan: Hey. I voiced the original IDs, not Drake. As I recall, they ran beyond the sneak preview and into the real Boss thing. When he did get around to cutting them Drake copied my inflection, “AM and FM” which I hated at the time — both mine AND his.
Johnny Williams: A convoluted thing got me the PD p
osition at KCBQ in San Diego in 1965 which, as it turned out, was just bullshit! I’m in San Diego and things are going very poorly at this radio station. Then suddenly I’m meeting Bill Drake. He was at KGB. He was planning KHJ at the time. I really loved the way KGB sounded. I’d never heard anything like it. I was really impressed with their a
cappella jingle — it just knocked me out. I got in touch with Drake and we wound up meeting and going out to dinner there in San Diego.
Bill Drake: You know, I really don’t remember if Johnny was at KRLA full time or not. Maybe Gary Mack told me he was there. I really can’t
remember, but we sure lucked out on him because he was the perfect guy for all-night and did that six hours a night for how many years?
Ron Jacobs: Johnny
Williams was the very best all-night j0ck of the many that I work with. We has just met for the first time just a few days earliear but we were on Page One
from the first s dialog, took place at a funked out, old "Plate Lunch Joint:, none of them authenic Meanwhile while I’m on weekends at KRLA thinking I’ve died and gone to heaven. I’m on the air in L.A. doing a Saturday night shift and, I think, there was a Sunday night shift too. I only did that one weekend, possibly two, when Drake called and said, “We’re setting up a radio station across town and I want to talk to you.”
So I
went to talk to him. I was just blown away! First of all he was offering $15,000 a year. I had never heard of that kind of money. That was so much money I couldn’t believe it.
Ron Jacobs: I was hired at $15,000, which was for a year. An
d perks? How cool to have a hot Mobile Phone, all maxed out in high total gloss black, with Old School black Caddy Coupe DeVille Turtle Waxed to the max.
We all in the KHJ Program Department (72 men and about a dozen wahine reported to me, the 26-year-old PD -- but I only knew about 0.063% of all I was supposed to know. The KHJ's 1955 Official NBC Operation & Policy Standard Manual was bigger then the tiny Moloka'i phone book.
Casey Kasem: Ron Jacobs and I became friends when he had asked to have a meeting concerning the possibility of my moving from KRLA to KHJ. As a matter of fact I think there were two or three meetings. We had a mutual respect for one another’s talent and hit it off. The only reason I didn’t go to KHJ was because the money I was asking for was much more than the salaries of the KHJ air staff — at the time I was enjoying success and making big money with my daily TV show and weekly dances. Ron couldn’t risk doing anything that might disrupt the great morale at KHJ or upset the DJs who were responsible for making his station #1. A few short years later, I called Ron and asked him if he would be interested in producing a countdown show, the Top 40 Hits in America. His immediate reply was, “Sounds great! Let’s get together and do it!” And with our associates, we did. And I’ve been counting down the hits ever since.
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