It was a great experience working that board with Steele. I got to know his every move. You got to be careful because Steele’s waving his hands all over the place. You didn’t know where the hell the cues were coming from to hit the next element on the air. You got to know this after a while and it just worked out fine.
But the reason I left the show was what I told Bill Watson in the fall of 1967. Bill was Bill Drake’s right hand man. I said, “You know Bill, this production is really getting to be way too much.” I was doing production for a lot of the RKO chain, technically for Drake-Chenault. We were adding stations because of the success of what we had at KHJ already. First, KFRC in San Francisco. Then we got Boston, New York, WHBQ in Memphis. It was just getting to be too much. I couldn’t get the job done, couldn’t get the production done. I said, “Hey, I’ve gotta get off the Steele show, you gotta get me off of there.” Watson said, “OK, I’ll see what we can do.”
Within a week I was off the Steele show and they brought in a guy by the name of Jon Badeaux. He had worked on the air in San Bernardino or somewhere. He had an engineering background and he also did board work. So they assigned him to the Steele show and Jon did it the rest of the time.
Jon Badeaux: Steele was amazing. He had an incredible sense of timing. He could hear things in the music that I never noticed. He taught me how to pick out the rhythm guitar, the catchy piano riff. Before each shift we had lunch together at Nickodell’s. We rarely talked about doing anything special that day because the magical stuff just seemed to be there. He’d tell me at lunch, on many occasions, that he was off his mark. “Cover me, man!” I doubt that any listener or pro could actually tell that he was having an off day. He was strong enough to carry the worst moment.
Back then, most records were under three minutes and we’d stop for one spot after almost every song. Yet we had fun telling stories on the intercom or playing the air sax as if we were the Blues Brothers. Every time he played a Supremes song I jumped up and lip-synced Diana Ross and it nailed him every time. In a newspaper interview he said, “That guy in there thinks he’s Diana Ross.” The real entertainment offered by Boss Radio was, more often than not, the banter on the intercom and the interplay of the jock and board op. But Steele was also very structured. Things had to be done a certain way. He could talk for hours on the amount of space that should always exist between a logo and a song with a cold start. After the sermon he’d add, “But you don’t need to know that shit. You got it. Born with it, baby!”
Bill Drake: My thing is, there was a vast difference between a personality and a guy that talked a lot, things that people couldn’t really relate to. You can look at some of the greatest jocks forever as far as people remember them. They’ll tell you Morgan, Steele, Charlie Tuna. Maybe it’s the name, I don’t know. I can tell you one thing, when you think about it, that’s interesting. They ring. Robert W. Morgan rings. The Real Don Steele, even Charlie Tuna, Humble Harve or “Big Daddy” Tom Donahue. Those names sing. Wolfman Jack, like that. But, they still have to have the goods. And handling themselves in public appearances doesn’t hurt.
Art Astor: Steele was always very good because he was always trying to be affable to the sales guys and knew that we could sell stuff. One very memorable incident: I sold a big promotion to the Motorama Motor Show at the Pan Pacific Auditorium. I said “Hey Don, I’m going to get you a nice fat fee for this thing. You gotta come and introduce some rock group. It’s live entertainment and you’re the guy.” He asked, “What do I get?” I replied, “I think they’ll give you $500 bucks.” He said, “Oh, that’s pretty cool.” I told him, “Just come with me. I’ll pick you up and take you there and bring you back.”
So I took him to the Pan Pacific, to a little press area where there were hors d’oeuvres and cocktails. While Steele waited for his big intro, he was just slushing them down. Within about an hour, he’s gassed. I said, “Don, you gotta stop! You gotta introduce this damn act, man. I’m going to introduce you as The Real Don Steele.” He said, “Man, hey listen, I’m going to take care of business.” At 8 p.m., Steele just barely gets up there and he says (slurring) “Tina Delgado is alive, alive!” and falls off the friggin’ stage! Boom! On his face! He gets up and says, “Hey man, did I take care of business or WHAT?” The crowd loved it. They thought it was a gag. We drove off with both of us laughing our asses off.
Carol Morgan: Robert wasn’t real fond of making public appearances. There was always kind of an edge about doing any of those. I remember going to a number of them. Once we got there it wasn’t so bad. The Doors, the beach party for the Big Kahuna, that was wild. But Robert actually hated public appearances. It was like an ordeal for him to have to go to them. He would do them and he did them well and he would feel terrific afterwards — usually. But that wasn’t one of his favorite things, being out in the public.
Johnny Williams: In 1959 I was Dapper Dan, The All Night Man, at KIMN, Denver. There was a chain of restaurants called the Holiday Drive-Ins. I would go out there dressed in a tuxedo and one of those formal top-hats and I would carry a walking stick. They had a little booth set up for me, right in the drive-in restaurant. I would play Top 40 music all-night long, midnight to six from that restaurant. I hated it. I loved the radio part of it and I loved the music, but it was really tough going to school. I would work all-night there and then drag my ass over to Denver University and fall asleep in my first class in the morning. And that was really tough. I was never thrilled with working all-nights and I always hated the public appearances.
The Real Don Steele: I like a little magic. I like a little showbiz. The people listening to me on radio, they don’t see me. They just hear a ZOOOOW coming at them out of that radio. There must be a term for this — a “spoonerism” or something. Once, after I’d been a bit disoriented and I was jerking along and I knew I had about eight more measures, I said, on the air, “Wait, now wait! That is not a spoonerism.” And I described what a spoonerism is — when you take something, turn it around and do it backwards. I said that at approximately 3:01. At 5:35, some housewife with two children, who had been driving all the way since, called to say that I was a dirty man. And I didn’t intend to be dirty — because I could get much dirtier, you know. With much more finesse.
Shelley Gordon: Ron probably doesn’t remember, but I was the perfect “beard” for a station that was pushing the limits. I could in all honesty tell parents that “Jock In The Box” had no ulterior meaning; it was just a play on “Jack, etc. etc.” I do remember going in to ask him what Acapulco Gold was at some point. It took some instruction from the jocks, who were quite amused, until I caught on to a lot of the lingo.
Chuck Blore: After Boss Radio came on KHJ, I tuned in on The Real Don Steele for the first time one afternoon. First Morgan, now I was given another ticket to Wonderland. New guy, new approach and new respect. Steele wasn’t at all like Morgan. But he too, had it put together in a way I could never have imagined and made the whole thing work like magic.
Tom Murphy: Robert W. Morgan used to say that Don Steele could do more with a grunt than most of the rest of us could do in five minutes. I took offense at that because I could grunt, too. But Don did things so quickly. In two seconds he would slide in so much.
Ed Dela Pena: For a while there, Steele was kind of a pain in the fanny. He would come in and yell and scream his head away, God! In the main studio we used an old RCA BK-6 microphone. We put a special acoustic filter in it to eliminate the pops because Morgan used to love to eat the mike, work it right in here and there. And so by putting on that acoustic shield we forced Steele to stay three inches away from the mike! Well, we knew something would happen with Steele and his volume thing and were prepared for it.
Not at first, of course, because when he came in, with the old setup all we had were 21 amplifiers to drive the monitor speakers and the headphones were driven with like a five-watt amplifier. Big Don came in and said, “That’s not enough, I can’t hear myself!” So we started changing amplifiers. He didn’t become happy until we put in a 40-watt amplifier just to drive his earphones. You could put his earphones on the table and walk away and still hear the music blasting out of them.
The Real Don Steele, (Sign off, Friday, June 14, 1968; Over “Wiggle Wobble” by Les Cooper, instrumental): “End of the Mo for The Real Don Steele Show. Sam Riddle is next, gonna entertain us all night long, boy, on our quest for adventure on a Fractious Friday in that neon fun jungle in that beautiful magnificent megalopolis that we call home. Right babies. Worked hard all week long and we’re gonna get it on and keep it on. And I know you’re up to it because I’m gonna testify in front and certify behind that we’re gonna have fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun! All night long. And we’re not gonna get paranoid behind Icarus. We’re not gonna let a lousy asteroid spoil our fun, boy. And if we do slip into the sea, we’re gonna let ’em know that we were there on a fractious, got somethin’ you know, takin’ care of business — TCB.
You know what I say, Marvin Gaye, Frances Faye, Dave Garroway, Curtis LeMay, Jacques DeMolay, Faye Dunaway, Dan Duryea, Michael René, Ruth Olay, Alvino Rey, Dobie Gray, Turhan Bey, Johnny Ray, Doris Day and Terence is now Stamped.
(Voice: Tina Delgado is ALIVE ALIVE!) Byyyyye!”
2 B continued . . .
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