The faded photo above is from 52 years ago. It is of the KPOI Radio control room, from which Rock & Roll first blasted to all the Hawaiian Islands on May 18, 1959. I was the original Program Director, Production Manager, 6-9 am and 3-6 jock--we were called "The Poi Boys." When Honolulu’s first Top 40 station debuted, the Territory was still months away from Statehood.
The station, Oahu's third licensee, signed on as KHON, July 4, 1946. It was located at “The Gateway to Hawaii,” on 1701 Ala Wai, across a narrow street from the "fragrant" Ala Wai Canal.
Compared with 21st Century Waikiki, this was a sleepy neighborhood a half-century ago. Its word famous beach gloriously hosted the tourists who stayed in the ten or so hotels on Kalakaua Avenue, the main drag. Locals from “town” surfed, swam and tanned there. Those living in “far away” areas such as Makapuu, Waimanalo, Kailua, along the North Shore from Kahuku to Haleiwa and so on, went to beaches in close proximity to their homes.
Located on the Beach at Waikiki, the Outrigger Canoe Club lured members from about the island with its primo, private beach, restaurant and café, spacious locker rooms, showers, sauna and other stuff not available at the two major hotels located on the beach: The Moana (1891) and Royal Hawaiian (1928).
This was long before Waikiki became a bizarre conglomeration of visitor targets like Tijuana, Disneyland, Tokyo’s Ginza, teeming Hong Kong island, Times Square, Piccadilly Circus, La Vegas and the other post-World War II Schlockposts all competing for the Yankee Dollar.
But, aha, the Waikiki that saw the 1950s segue into the 60s was still vibrant in its sleepy Hawaiian way. It smelled of the perfume of Polynesia, not the noxious, foul fumes of heaving tour buses and delivery trucks that now clog its One Way streets.) Kuhio Beach offered up the sun-baked aroma of coconut oil, Mai Tai mix, beer, cigarettes and floral lei for a dime apiece. Their blossoms filled the air with, “The Fragrance of a million flowers,” which Johnny Noble serenaded in “The Song of Old Hawaii (1937).
By 1959 our town was catching up with the Really Big Island: jet airplanes, the first high-rise hotels (no time-share condos yet), souped up 1955-57 Chevy's, Long Playing albums, Hi-Fi, and all kine other things jerked us closer in synch with the Mainland. Still to come were live network TV programming (1966), FM radio (1961), Hawaii 5-0 (1968), our first elected Governor and members of Congress (1960), the arrival of Barack Obama, Sr. (1959), freeways (1970s), MacDonald’s (1968) …you get the picture?
In 1959 our 5000-watt KPOI transmitter (at 1380 KC on the AM dial) historically introduced the citizenry to the likes of the Everly Brothers, Chubby Checker, Roy Orbison, Connie Francis, Sam Cooke, Bobby Darin, Fats Domino, Ricky Nelson—and THE KING, Elvis Presley. Actually, he skyrocketed in Hawaii after performing two concerts at Honolulu Stadium in November 1957.
My oldest radio friend (KGU, 1955) and original Poi Boy Moffatt remains active as the Pacific Rim’s top concert promoter, record label owner/producer and—he still hosts a live Saturday oldies program. [Note, top photo: the “Moffatt” note posted on the ancient reel-to-reel tape deck.] Old buddy Art Laboe could be the only older DJ still spinning the hits, and he started a decade before Moffatt and me.
As many have speculated, if only walls could talk; those odd canec walls in the cubicle shown above. And I don’t refer to the broadcasting activities that took place within. I mean the (pre-STS) drugs, sex and rock’n’roll that went down it that control room, most often in the Still of the Night.
I figure that before I took off for Southern California in 1962, to set up KMEN-San Bernardino and KMAK-Fresno, I spent close to 1300 hours from 1959-1963 in the booth pictured above. That equals having played and listened to an estimated 26,000 sides. By the time I was 25 I felt like I was hooked by IV to a juke box. The studio area was smaller than the cell in Halawa Jail, where I spent 30 days, in 1964. Yep, I was incarcerated for, get this, possession of three milligrams of marihuana [sic]. But the slammer, redolent with Lysol, Clorox and stale cigaretted smoke was not the stink hole of KPOI's communal studio "restroom."
The "Big Studio" could be seen through the window located behind the RCA console, above. In the 1940s Hawaiian performers from Gabby Pahinui to Genoa Keawe recorded in that large space. In 1959, Moffatt and I founded Teen Records (how cool, man.) Our first session involved five guys from Farrington High School in Kalihi: Rudy & The Royal Drifters (below). Two sides, featuring the first Rock/Pidgon records, were released as our first 45 single. I wrote both tunes, the immortal "Da Kine" and "'S Why Hard." They sold well -- perhaps concidentally with KPOI pounding out the record in max rotatation.
Now, anyone who spent any time in a radio studio, particularly in those Jurrasic Fifities, knows the clutch of clautaphobia and isolation, the air-conditioned coffee-and-cigarette aroma circulating through the room. And wow, the transmitter’s huge vacuman tubes, sparking and crackling, behind thick glass peep holes along the thing’s 40-foot width.
That shit was more terrifying than anything in Science Fiction. And movies where the villain is electrocuted.
Jocks then knew the exact length of the longest 45 r.pm. records—which averaged 2:10 minutes or so, back in that monophonic day—and, of much greater import: precisely how long it took to to make it from the deejay chair to the closest toilet seat. “Bathrooms” in most studio areas were used exclusively by the all-male air staff were more disgusting than the trenches of World War I. We considered it a fair situation, however, since the stench assured that no wives or wahine would come near the fetid lua.
But rather than dredge up memories of dozens of studios, from Macao to Miami to Munich to Modesto, I would rather focus here on the point of this blog: Advances In Technology: Wireless Transmission of Electric Impulses into which Sound Is Converted to Radio.
When I first received from Moffatt the above JPG (c. 2003) by email (c. 1971) via the Internet (c. 1980) to my iMac (c. 2010) I was blown far away. First, the content—that studio with whom I had a love/hate ambivilance—and secondly, how downright crude it all seems now. Then again, in 1959, push-button phones, fluorescent lighting, air conditioning—evertying incuding the “modern” swivel chair—they were all new amazements of the Space Age that Sputnicked to a start in 1957.
Now I must deal with this alphabet soup needed get this from me to you: USB, HTML, JPG, OS 10.6.6, SMTP, MGHz, MB, SDRAM, PCI, WWW, LAN, ISP, URL, etc., all of which make me SOL (Scream Out Loud!)
As for the old cinder block building, it ceased being a radio station in the 1980s. It was a gay gym for a time and then was taken over by the Hawaii Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees Union, Local 5, as their blue-trimmed administrative headquarters. As such entities are wont to do, the union went through external and internal battles. Recent newspaper reports state that the labor group is in deep financial pilikia, with a multiillion Waikiki hotel in danger of defaulting. Today 1701 Ala Wai is posted with FOR LEASE signs.
Man, with all its karma, the place would make a helluva rock club, just a few blocks from the two-mile strip that comprises wonderful Waikiki. Meanwhile in the dreams of those of us who toiled within the place, we will never forget the monster mono Altec Lansing speaker cabinet, the iconic RCA 77DX microphones, the five QRK turntables, stacks of 15-inch electrical transcriptions full of commercials, the lone VU meter and the Stancil-Hoffman reel-to-reel tape deck -- when it worked.
