"Where to start with Ron Jacobs? I spent ten days with him in Hawaii in May 2009, and I still hear his voice in my head and will forever. You could say that he is one of a kind, sui generis, inimitable, but those are all clichés and RJ is way over on the far side of cliché. The first time my wife Linda and I got in his convertible, he called back to her to root around all the junk in the backseat and hand him his teeth. That gets a little closer.
"My favorite moment came when we drove up to a gate where it was clear that the guard was there to keep people from entering. The guard was an older woman, a native Hawaiian. Here come three white people in a convertible. No way she is going to let us in. Until. Ron Jacobs opens his mouth, the sound reverberates, she recognizes the magical voice of the legendary island deejay who called himself Whodaguy. A big smile works across her face. “Whodaguy? Whodaguy! I thought you were fucking haoles!” she screams with delight, laughing and waving us through. “Whodaguy!” For those of you who don’t know, haole is what native Hawaiians call white people, and the term is appropriately modified by fucking.
"In most ways I’m the wrong person to introduce a book about rock & roll and Boss Radio. I can’t do a Ben Fong-Torres on this one, like Ben Fong-Torres his ownself did. I love the music, most of it, but I was never into the rock culture. I never subscribed to Rolling Stone, never knew who all the drummers were. I was getting married on the day of Woodstock and had no idea it was going on. I never memorized the top 40, let alone the Boss 30. I didn’t’ even smoke dope. I listened to baseball games on the radio, mostly. Growing up in Madison, Wisconsin, when I did listen to the radio it was on WISM in Madison and WLS in Chicago. I’m sure they had some stories, but they didn’t have Boss. But there are things about Ron Jacobs that make me admire him greatly, which is why I’m hacking away here.
"First, there’s nothing phony about him. He comes right at you, toothless mouth and all. Second, music is not a business for him so much as a true passion. I sat in his makeshift sound studio on the far side of Oahu, the side he prefers, over the mountain, away from the tourists and the rich people, and listened as he played the music of native Hawaiian musicians like Walter Keale, and I felt Ron’s heart beating and saw his eyes moisten and felt the melancholy beauty that overwhelmed the room. And finally, I knew that RJ had a creative mind (it takes only ten minutes with him to figure that out) but I didn’t know, until he gave me some magazine articles that he had written, that he was in fact a terrific writer.
"So that gets us to this book, KHJ: Inside Boss Radio. Some of it is writing, some of it is drawing, some of it is radio jargon. There are interviews, photos, oral histories, daily memos, calendars – but the totality is the brilliance of Ron Jacobs. It is a rare documentary history that takes you inside his mind as he transforms KHJ into the preeminent rock and roll station in the universe. He comes at you nonstop, one idea after another, relentless, always thinking, churning out ideas, challenging the norm. From start to finish, the book threatens to engulf you but always amazes you, just like RJ."
David Maraniss, Washington, D.C., May 2010
With an eye for bringing the mysteries of history to light and a knack for reportage that won him a Pulitzer for his work for The Washington Post, David Maraniss pens compelling works of nonfiction that give readers insights into larger-than-life figures, from Bill Clinton to Vince Lombardi, while illuminating major events in American history. When Barack Obama was elected President in 2008, Maraniss began work on a "multigenerational biography…about the world that created Obama and then how he recreated himself." Tentatively titled "Out of This World: the Making of Obama," Maraniss says it "will be out in very late 2011 or more likely early spring 2012."
For details about the book KHJ: INSIDE BOSS RADIO plus one hour of never-posted original 93/KHJ promos, go to http://www.93khj.com/
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