KHJ: INSIDE BOSS RADIO ~ Part 8

A WORD FROM THE OLD SCHOOL

Note to RADIO DAILY NEWS readers. Publisher Larry Shannon is excerpting the text of KHJ: INSIDE BOSS RADIO twice weekly via link to my blog. These excerpts represent only the book's narrative chapters, verbatim.

NO ILLUSTRATED, DOCUMENT OR EXHBIT PAGES ARE INCLUDED IN THIS ONLINE SERIALIZATION. THANKS TO THOSE WHO HAVE ORDERED THE BOOK AND THE FREE CDs. PRINTING IN MID-JULY -- IT’S BIG, IT’S BOSS AND LOADED WITH BASICS

No one who has purchased this book for $93.00 has ever complained! Hundreds of inner pages are the guts of the book. They are not included here or anywhere online -- Goal is to teach first, and entertain to keep it cooking.

KHJ: INSIDE BOSS RADIO IS THE BIBLE OF OLD SCHOOL TOP FORTY RADIO!

“F-C-F-G-F-C. Sounds Like It Doesn’t It”

Ed Dela Pena: In 1948 the Don Lee network started building a new facility at 1313 Vine Street (above.) So I was sent up there to supervise the new setup at the studio there. We moved KHJ into that facility in 1949.

Ken Orchard: When KHJ moved over to Vine Street from the old Melrose location, the building went vacant for a while. Capitol Records decided to rent it before they built their round Capitol Towers up on Vine Street in Hollywood. Everybody sees that landmark — the stack of 45 records — but Capitol actually operated out of 5515 Melrose for a while. A lot of the best Nat “King” Cole and Frank Sinatra records were recorded in the KHJ studios in the area that became the Boss Radio newsroom. If those walls could talk they’d be humming.

About six or seven years later, the O’Neil Group, who owned the Vine Street studios — four brothers from General Tire — got to fighting among themselves and the empire split. One guy got this, one guy got the tire company, another guy got something else. And Thomas O’Neil was left with the radio properties on the West Coast plus the interest they had in RKO’s film studios. At the parting of the roads, they sold the 1313 Vine Street building.

Bill Drake: Willet Brown was the Executive Vice President of RKO General and one of the biggest stockholders in General Tire, if not the biggest. He set up the deal for Tom O’Neil to buy RKO from Howard Hughes. I remember Tom O’Neil telling me stories about his meetings with Howard Hughes. O’Neil paid something like $31 million at the time for all of RKO. He parceled off the RKO Radio Pictures studios that became Desilu, but he kept all the movies for his TV stations, which is what he wanted in the first place. He had no network affiliation. He had WOR-TV in New York, KHJ-TV in L.A. and they were independents. He sold off all the other real estate and wound up making what, by today’s value, was peanuts, but at the time was good money.

Ken Orchard: They didn’t know what else to do with KHJ radio, so back to Melrose we went, along with TV, Channel 9. So it was sort of like taking ten pounds of crap and trying to put it into a five-pound bag. Believe me, we were crowded. Then a couple of years after being back at Melrose, the Boss Radio crew came in.

Bill Drake: KHJ had been losing three-quarters of a million dollars a year for something like seven years. KFRC in San Francisco was losing a half-million a year. But they would have been happy just to break even. So Willet told O’Neil about the success KGB in San Diego had with me as the consultant. Gene Chenault and I were invited to breakfast at the Hotel Bel Air with Willet and O’Neil. He was younger than I am now, but he seemed like an old guy at the time. I was 26. He seemed very nice and obviously smart. I asked Willet, “What do you think I should do? I don’t understand the situation.” Willet said, “What do you want to do?” I said, “Well, I want to make a million dollars.” And he said “I’ll give you a million dollars if you sign over everything you ever do to me.” (Laughs.) I guess that’s the reason he said to me, “How much do you believe in yourself?” And I said, “Well, pretty much.” I don’t know if he and O’Neil talked about this before, or not. I have no idea.

My deal with RKO initially was for AFTRA union scale, $15,000 a year — same thing as the disc-jockey union scale was at the time, but it seemed fair to me — plus expenses and whatever, plus 50% of all the profits over a million dollars a year. I was flattered. It took only a matter of seconds to go for it. That was my deal. You aren’t going to find a whole lot of Willet Browns in your life.

Ken DeVaney: In early 1965, Gene Chenault visited the Crowell-Collier offices in L.A., ostensibly for a social visit. He knew I was working there and we had coffee. I thought it was just an idle chat but during the conversation I applauded his efforts at KYNO and told him, quite sincerely, I was relieved that KFWB didn’t have to deal with that level of programming competition in Los Angeles. We said our goodbyes and I thought no more about it.

A few months later Gene contacted me again and floated an offer to become General Manager of KHJ. The money was better, to be sure, but more than that was the opportunity to move to the head of the management line and have a chance to contribute some ideas I had for audience building. Not to mention getting out of KFWB’s stifling atmosphere.

Bill Mouzis: I don’t know what they called the KHJ format in early 1965. I think it was “The Personality Station.” Then it was going to be “The Entertainment Station.” That concept was dropped immediately when a guy by the name of Hathaway Watson flew into town. He was the president of RKO General. He called a hurried meeting, all the department heads together, in the conference room at KHJ on Melrose. When they were all there he said, “I have one simple announcement to make, then I’m going to leave. We are not going with the ‘Entertainment’ format. That will be canceled. In a very short time we are going rock ’n’ roll. There are no questions, that’s all I have to say.” Out the door he went. He got on a plane and flew back to New York. It was just that sudden. Everybody was in shock.

Bill Drake: Willet had warned me about the corporate bullshit. He also didn’t like Hathaway Watson who was one of those guys who didn’t know anything about radio. Even later, while we were downstairs trying to get things going at KHJ, he was upstairs still trying to sabotage the thing.

When Hathaway Watson came into town, what O’Neil did, at Willet’s suggestion, was pull KHJ out of the RKO Broadcast Division. We didn’t have to answer to New York. That’s the reason we didn’t have any bullshit. Hathaway Watson hated that and tried to kill the whole thing. Upstairs he told the TV people that he was washing his hands of KHJ Radio.

Ed Dela Pena: After Willet Brown decided to bring Bill Drake to KHJ, Drake was around for several weeks just looking about. It was supposed to be confidential but you can’t miss Big Bill. The word leaked out that we were in the process of changing over. Compared to KHJ’s first attempt with Top 40, this had more reality to it because we knew that Drake-Chenault had been successful down south. Everybody hoped they’d do the same thing up here. At the time, KRLA and ’WB were sort of the kingpins of the rock world. So the RKO idea was, “Let’s do whatever we can to make these new guys successful.” But the mood was “here we go again.” And until the new crew came on the premises there really was no inkling of what they were going to do as far as the physical setup of the station. We knew it was a rock format. That was about all we knew until they moved in.

Clancy Imislund: The staff at KHJ, before Boss Radio, wasn’t very inspired, but they weren’t bad people. Then we heard that all of a sudden they’re going to change the format, they’re going to go to a different format, to rock ’n’ roll. Things started changing little by little. Heads were rolling all around and new people were coming in. It was a difficult time; it was like a company downsizing now. You look around to see who’s going to step on the land mine tomorrow.

The people coming in seemed reprehensible to me. I was a clean-cut sober guy who was trying to get straight after being kind of wild and these were kind of wild guys. I mean, they were nice — they weren’t really reprehensible — they were just kind of a young, lively bunch. And I remember their stock in trade was loudness and gregariousness and a lot of drinking and smoking, which is fine, you know, but it was something I couldn’t do anymore.

Johnny Mann: I heard rumors that KHJ was going to change formats — again. Don Otis called me to do a jingle package. Whatever he was called, he was the head guy. As far as he knew, this was news to me. I hadn’t done anything for them before. He said, “I want some jingles,” and I said OK. He said, “When can you record them?” I answered, “Well, right now the Musicians Union is on strike so we can’t use any musicians.” He said, “Oh my God, what are we going to do?”

So I asked, “Wait a minute, how long do these things have to be?” He said, “Well, I want to do ‘93 KHJ,’ I want to do ‘KHJ, Los Angeles,’ I want to do ‘93 more music’.” Listening to whatever it was that he wanted, I said, “Why don’t you do ’em a cappella?” He said, “What’s a cappella?” I said, “If you’re sure this is what they want, you’re wasting money having an orchestra that takes up 40% of your track when you can do them a cappella where voices take 100% of the track for emphasis and for everything else that’s good.” He said, “Let’s go.”

Bill Mouzis: Drake was so smart in doing it that way. I’m so glad that he didn’t go the old Chuck Blore way, you know, “KFWB, Color Radio, Channel Ninety-Eight.” Remember Color Radio? Oh man, those long jingles. They were fine for the times. Those were advanced for the times. But now here was the next big advancement. More music, less interruption, short identification, things like that. The whole thing fit. It all worked.

Johnny Mann: The words — or the letters, whatever it is — that “93 KHJ,” you’ve got to do something that starts and ends and says the words properly with the right emphasis in the right place. You just compose it. You just do it — (Sings melody) 93 KHJ, Los Angeles — I wrote it to get the harmonics of what they gave me. “93 KHJ” — Now what’s a good key to put it in for Sue to sing top and be something we can live with? Sue Allen was the lead girl singer. Her sound was very identifiable and the people who came back year after year after year loved her sound. I wrote out vocal arrangements. It had to be brief and I wanted to do it in F so I had a nice bass note on the low F at the end of it. And I just wrote (Hums the theme) F-C-F-G-F-C. Sounds like it doesn’t it?

Dexter Young: My first memories of what was to turn into Boss Radio are when we had the interim format. I worked with Gary Mack. One evening Gary invited me to join him and Bill Drake and Bill Watson next door at Nickodell’s. I was full of questions since I was getting in on the ground floor so to speak. Gary introduced me as an engineer who did not pan Top 40 radio. So my first question to Bill Drake was, “How do we know the timing of the music sets will work out?” I came out of network radio — Mutual Don Lee Broadcasting System — where timing was everything. System cues had to go at :29, :30, or 59:30 depending on the length of the show. Bill told me that it did work out OK even in Top 40 format radio. Later in the conversation a person named Ron Jacobs was mentioned as coming over from Hawaii to be our new Program Director.

2 B continued . . .

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KHJ: INSIDE BOSS RADIO ~ Part 7

Allen Daviau, c. 1969. He would go on to earn five Oscar nominations.

Allen Daviau: There is no question that what was going on in the KMAK-KYNO, Jacobs-Drake radio wars was far more fascinating and entertaining than anything in my years listening to L.A. radio. From my first visits to my parents in 1962 I was aware that these Fresno stations were playing hardball. The ’Thons, the contests, the very basic, serious focus of every disc jockey let you know that this was war. As I got to know some of the combatants from the KMAK side, I knew that I wanted to be involved in some way. I was not interested in a radio career but perhaps I could be of use in the publicity or promotion aspect. I could offer still or motion-picture photography and stage lighting.

Ron Jacobs: Frank Terry and I were bachelors and roommates. As soon as we got to the weekends we’d rush down to L.A. or go to San Francisco. Each for different reasons. In Los Angeles there was, uh, female companionship provided by friendly record promoters. Having laid to rest such matters we’d drive the next weekend to San Francisco. In the fall of 1962 we saw some 49ers games in Kezar Stadium where the seagulls would shit on your head in the fourth quarter. And we would make the pre-hippie Beatnik scene. Like the City Lights Bookstore and Sausalito, before there was Haight Ashbury, and music at the Purple Onion. That was cool because several Honolulu schoolmates who became the Kingston Trio had made it there. KYA was picking up steam by then. I remember this one jingle, man (sings) “San Francisco, everyone every day, listens to KYA.” Only thing I didn’t like about San Francisco was the frigging weather, for me, barefoot jungle boy, I would always freeze my okole.

So Terry and I spent our Fresno weekends escaping from the place. South to get loaded and see Lenny Bruce at the Unicorn and look at the Watts Towers — anything just to get out of Fresno. It was still great to listen to KFWB, but by then each of us tacitly thought we could give them a run for their money. Like the mystique had worn off.

Frank Terry: I’m on the air one day at KMAK in Fresno while they’re removing railroad tracks and digging up the street. They told us “We’re going to cut your water off for the day.” So I start bitching about it on the air: “Can you believe this? We have no water here at the KMAK. I don’t know what we’re going to do if we have to …” I was just talking about how hard it is to exist without a day’s water. You can’t go to the bathroom, what are you going to do? Jacobs and Morgan are out in the hallway listening. Then they come in the studio. “Hey, got an idea! Why don’t you have the listeners bring you water? Let’s see what happens.” I go on the air and start asking for water. Well, this other guy came on after me and it mushroomed.

Jacobs put together this thing called the “First Annual KMAK McKinley Avenue Festival of the Water” — or “Water Festival.” We had an inflatable pool out there and Jacobs got the Beach Boys to play live on our roof. We had a National Guard tank circling the tower, a Miss McKinley Avenue Beauty Contest with chicks out there in bathing suits, a woman doing ice sculpture and people throwing balloons full of paint at the back wall of the building. Jacobs was mumbling “Jackson Pollack” and we had no idea what he was talking about — but we had a water festival! It became an acronym: The “KMAK AKMAFAF — Annual KMAK McKinley Avenue Festival of Arts and Flowers.” Stuff like that would happen. And KYNO was sitting there playing “The Peppermint Twist,” giving away $10 to the lucky caller.

Bill Drake: Let’s face it, Ron Jacobs is a hell of a radio man. I love Ron; he’s a great programmer. But I played a lot of psychological games with him in Fresno. It was a dog-eat-dog situation. His guys would follow me down the street in the middle of the night with two-way car radios playing private eye — tailing me — trying to catch me doing something illegal. It was unbelievable. I’ve told everybody I ever met, I’m convinced either one of those two radio stations in Fresno at the time could have come into L.A. and kicked ass.

Ron Jacobs: What we did in Fresno was frenzied. After meeting Elvis Presley’s manager Colonel Parker in 1957 in Honolulu and watching him operate, I used to think of our promotions as “Circus Radio.” The crazy stuff we’d first done at KPOI in Honolulu was more in the Chuck Blore, KFWB style.

Tom Rounds: At KPOI, the “Circus Radio” concept continued to evolve. Unpredictability and chaos ran rampant over a tight play list and constant jock-to-jock interaction and cross-promotion. We competed like mountain goats. Driven by Jacobs, who fancied himself “The Lombardi of Waikiki,” we were a fiercely loyal team. When we weren’t behind the board doing combo we were in the production studio, often 18 hours a day, six days a week. Jacobs went way beyond simple cross-promotion. We each assumed roles in his “Theater of the Midway.” As the audience got larger, they started to know the “Poi Boys” as larger than life characters.

Frank Terry: Fresno is where a lot of the creative stuff really started happening. Talk about a nucleus of people — there was Ron Jacobs, of course, kind of the quarterback of the whole thing, Robert W. Morgan who, as we know, went on to become one of the greatest radio personalities ever. A guy named Tom Maule who was very talented. He eventually worked at KHJ. Jim Mitchell was there. He became KHJ News Director Jim Lawrence. We talked a lot about what we’d do if we had an opportunity to work in Los Angeles. We didn’t know it at the time, but people who happened through Fresno and heard our radio station would stop and say, “Wait a minute!” The record promotion people from L.A. used to come there. Once a month, somebody would come through and drop in and they would all say, “Wow! I can’t believe this is Fresno. You guys are doing some radio here!” It was that “Circus Radio” stuff Jacobs first did in Honolulu, something wild-ass going on all the time.

Allen Daviau: Getting to know Frank Terry and Sunny Jim was a great preparation for getting to meet Jacobs. That happened in a crowded KMAK hallway and consumed about eight seconds. But I was now the official photographer to the K-MAKErs. A few weeks later I was at the Fresno County fair shooting stills of the KMAK Newscruiser, containing a not very “Sunny” Jim Price, hanging from some type of crane above the fairgrounds. This was the KMAK Hang-A-Thon and Sunny Jim was broadcasting from the cruiser every day and supposedly never leaving it. I realized that these people were not only crazy, they would do anything to win.

Ron Jacobs: Can you remember the first time you and I ever actually saw each other? ’Cause I can.

Bill Drake: The first time I remember was at the Fresno County Fair.

Ron Jacobs: Right, right . . .

Bill Drake: I remember this weird looking dude and somebody said, “That’s Jacobs over there.” (Laughs.) And you were going like, “Hmm.”

Ron Jacobs: Right. right, right. And do you remember what we had going on and you had going on?

Bill Drake: We had the Money Monster giving away like one and five dollar bills, the ancestor of the Big Kahuna.

Ron Jacobs: You had the Money Monster over there. We had Sunny Jim Price hanging from a crane and his wife Gail screaming at me every 30 minutes: “Do you have life insurance? Show me the life insurance policy! Does Jim have diapers?” And someone said to me, “That’s Drake over there.” I thought, ‘tall son of a bitch.’

Bill Drake: Yeah. (Laughs.)

Ken DeVaney: On a visit to Fresno, out of idle curiosity I monitored KYNO. By that time it had switched to a rock ’n’ roll format not unlike that of KFWB, but much sharper, cleaner, and an altogether superior sound to anything Los Angeles had to offer. I was impressed.

Jim Mitchell: I actually got a job that Morgan had applied for. Nobody will believe this. Robert W. Morgan sent a Fresno air check to KGB in San Diego, way before Drake was there. The KGB-PD was a guy from St. Louis named Dick Drury. I did a news tease on Morgan’s KMAK show. Drury heard the news tease on Morgan’s tape and called me. I told him that I wanted to be a jock, not a newsman. He said to send a jock tape, which I did, from a Sunday morning gig on KMAK, and he offered me a job at KGB. I did three months there, but it was so boring and that station so pathetic that I was already planning a switch to life insurance sales. Then Donn Tyler left KMEN — where he’d gone with Jacobs to be one of the original K-MEN — to return to Honolulu. Jacobs called to offer me the 9-noon jock show and be production manager. San Bernardino with Watson and that crew? I grabbed it, and started having fun again. Morgan never stopped kidding me about beating him out of a job. This still makes me laugh: I was blah and he was maybe the best jock ever.

Tom Rounds, 1969

Tom Rounds: I learned the basics in New York at 1010 WINS from people like Rick Sklar, Tom O’Brien and Mel Leeds. I was 20 when I started working summers there. When I moved to Hawaii in 1959 I encountered Jacobs for the first time. I had no idea that we’d work together on this new station with as-yet-secret call letters. I discovered a young guy who was not trying to emulate Martin Block and the Make-Believe Ballroom on WNEW. He was doing his own thing, learning from his great anti-hero, J. Akuhead Pupule, and Top 40’s original consultant, Mike Joseph. Jacobs was a veteran jock, promoter, music guy and master of street theater all rolled up in one cute, roly-poly red-haired drag racer at the age of 19.

When KHON became KPOI 1380, hitting #1 in the Hooper ratings in what seemed like five minutes, I was a very serious newsperson who jocked on weekends. Within six months Jacobs had psyched me into launching my career as afternoon-drive jock. He staged a promotion that had me risking my sanity, if not my life. It was called the Wake-A-Thon. For 8 1/2 days I staggered and mumbled to thousands of Hawaii’s residents at the Wigwam Department store. Jacobs actually spun it all into front-page coverage every day in both morning and afternoon papers reaching most of the population of Oahu, Maui, Kauai and the seal population on French Frigate Shoals. I was a hero, big enough to cover for my dubious talents as a jock.

Ron Jacobs: When I first got to California in 1962 all I knew about promotion was the wild stuff we did in Honolulu at KPOI. The studios were at the entrance to Waikiki, just across the street from the Ala Wai Canal. Back then, when your station hit #1, the artists made it a point to visit you first. Some acts like Paul Revere & The Raiders, Bobby Rydell and Connie Stevens came straight from the old Honolulu airport in a flimsy helicopter. It flew parallel to the canal opposite the station, made a hard right and landed on the roof. Pretty wild: A chopper sitting on top of KPOI. Hundreds of hysterical girls waited for hours in the parking lot if a “teenage idol” was due to land. Going “remote” meant running a long mike cable out to the sidewalk. A bizarre star arrival was when Fabian flew in for a visit. When the chopper swooped sharply starboard, Fabian’s manager, Bob Marcucci, hung out over the side and rained vomit down on some of our unfortunate listeners. Those deals could get ca-ray-zeeee.

Tom Rounds: During the KPOI years in Honolulu, we’d take as many field trips to L.A. as we could. We went just to listen to Chuck Blore’s “Color Radio” format on KFWB. We’d walk up and down Hollywood Boulevard and accept free drinks from George Jay, one of the few record promoters who knew KPOI existed. Impressed as we were, we all agreed that, “Hey, maybe this town could be taken.” After Jacobs moved to California, I flew over as often as I could to visit him and his troops in such lovely garden spots as San Bernardino and Fresno. Definitely not as nice as Hawaii! But these were the proving grounds for Jacobs’ unsystematic system. Rather than rest on tried and true tactics, like other PDs who had already worked up to the biggest markets, he never stopped pushing the envelope.

2 B continued . . .

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KHJ: INSIDE BOSS RADIO ~ Part 6

Confucius Say: Gypsies, Tramps & The City of Angels

Bill Drake (above) and I came from such geographic and psychic extremes that one must resort for insight to the longest chronological record in history. The Chinese Lunar New Year Calendar dates from 2600 BC, when the Emperor Huang Ti introduced the first cycle of the zodiac. The Chinese believe the animal ruling the year in which a person is born has a profound influence on personality, saying: “This is the animal that hides your heart.” The Chinese New Year begins in late January or early February. So although both of us were born in 1937, Bill Drake arrived at the close of the Chinese Year of the Rat and Ron Jacobs was born in the Year of the Ox.

Therefore, about Bill Drake, Year of the Rat: “Rat people are born under the sign of charm and aggressiveness. They are expressive and can be talkative sometimes. They like to go to parties and spend quite sometime chatting with their friends. Rats are self-contained and keep problems to themselves. And even though they can sometimes be talkative, they never confide in anyone. The Rat is quick-witted. Most rats get more accomplished in 24 hours than the rest of us do in as many days. They are confident and usually have good instincts. Stubborn as they are, they prefer to live by their own rules. It won’t be an easy task to work with Rat people, why? Simple, because they are also 100% perfectionists.

Sometimes narrow-minded in outlook, Rat people are nevertheless honest. They can always make a success of their lives as long as they manage to master their perpetual discontent and their insistence on living for the present moment. They are very organized and talented; perhaps that is why the Rat makes a good businessman or politician. Unfortunately, as soon as the Rat earns money, he spends it.”

As for Ron Jacobs, Year of the Ox: The good news. “A born leader, inspires confidence from all around. Conservative, methodical, and good with their hands. The Ox would be successful as a skilled surgeon or a general. Some Oxen: Walt Disney, Clark Gable, Rosa Parks.” Not so cool characteristics of Ox people: “Guard against being chauvinistic and always demanding your own way. The Ox would be successful as a hairdresser. Some Oxen: Napoleon Bonaparte and Richard Nixon.” Ah yes, Richard Nixon, the ultimate oxy-moron. And the Oxen who pose a major dilemma: He was called, “A painter with masterly control and power of observation, a mind perfectly capable of integrating the elements of its chosen activity.” How to categorize a visionary and artist when it comes to radio, a medium that stirred to life about the time of his death? Oh yeah? Who would want a program director that mutilated his own ear, Vincent Van Gogh?

Boss Radio was born in the spring of 1965, Year of the Snake. Ending our metaphor of KHJ as a giant fortune cookie, if the KHJ format were a person, it would be, “Charming and popular. Snakes are spotlight magnets, and they will not be ignored.” And on the Chinese Zodiac Animal Compatibility Chart (1 = least compatible, 100 = most compatible), guess who ranks #1 and #2? Ox at 85 (“This union can be a good one.”) and Rat at 67 (“Better be friends than lovers.”)

What does all this prove? That Bill Drake and Ron Jacobs should have open ed a chain of Chinese restaurants? That they were not lovers? What follows is the twisted path that highlighted disc jockeys as Gypsies, programmers as Tramps and most radio station owners as Thieves. And what more appropriate place than Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.? Where else would two radio junkies born over 5,000 miles and seven months apart join forces to take over America’s second largest market?

Historically, the starting point would be “The Battle of Fresno” in 1962. The town's #1 station, pulling 60% shares in the C.E. Hooper ratings, was Gene Chenault’s KYNO. It was the only Top 40 station in the market.

The Roots of Boss Radio

Ken DeVaney: It was 1953 in the era of Hydrogen Bombs and cold-war saber rattling. I was a full-time student at Fresno State College and a part-time radio announcer at KYNO, Fresno. The manager and part-owner was Gene Chenault. I was in my third year of a four-year ordeal at Fresno State and a cadet in the Air Force ROTC program, a sure deferment from the Korean War. My duties were pretty much the norm for that time and place — making station-break announcements when the Mutual Don Lee Network gave local stations the opportunity to scoop up a few advertising dollars — playing “middle of the road music” — reading news reports ripped from the noisily stammering Associated Press printer down the hall.

I graduated a year later, having returned to KMJ from whence I had come because the salary was better. In 1957 I began three years at the University of California, Hastings College of Law, working part time as a rock ’n’ roll DJ at KOBY in San Francisco (the first rock station in the Bay Area) and later at KEWB, the Crowell-Collier flagship station in Oakland. I was aching to get my law career on the road.

Ron Jacobs: I arrived in California to work in radio in 1962. Coming from Honolulu, my thing was that I had few outside influences, which was really great. Anything that I did at home in Honolulu wasn’t stolen from the next city. I don’t mean to say “everything” because to our General Manager at KPOI, his idea of a newspaper layout was to take an ad from BROADCASTING magazine, tear it out, rip off the call letters, put our KPOI call letters in and send it to the paper. We did the “KPOI Pay Phone Jackpot” in Honolulu, a slightly modified version of something done in Canada. OK, we didn’t create everything new but some things we did because we were crazy and we didn’t know what to copy. I remember coming to L.A. in 1958 to listen to KFWB. I was so stoked by the total entertainment of it that if they had contests I don’t remember them.

Frank Terry: I was about eight years old when I first got interested in radio. My father was a sales manager at a radio station in San Bernardino, California. KFXM. He was kind of Tennessee Ernie Ford’s manager. Tennessee Ernie Ford worked at KFXM playing hillbilly songs. My dad used to take me down to the radio station when Tennessee Ernie did his show, a Saturday Night Jamboree kind of thing, and he and I became friends. Later in Los Angeles his career just took off.

Ron Jacobs: I started doing teenage radio shows as a kid. Television didn’t come to Hawaii until three years after we became a state in 1959. By then I had been a PD for a year and had worked with and learned directly from Mike Joseph and Bill Gavin. Pretty incredible how that came to be, but Polynesian karma is heavy. By 1962 I was programming VP of a two-station group that bought KMAK in Fresno. I mean how does that sound, “A two station group?” Hey, the max limit in those days was seven.

Frank Terry: I was working at a radio station in Riverside, California when I found out that this Jacobs guy had actually come in to our station with some of his boys, sat down with our station manager and convinced him that it would be to our advantage to change format and stop doing Top 40 because Jacobs’ people were coming in to San Berdoo and we better get out while we could because these new guys were going to kick our ass. And that’s what they did!

Back around March of ’62 I got an appointment to see Jacobs. We went to breakfast. A couple days later he called me to come to KMEN out on Baseline in the middle of a cow pasture. When I got there he said, “There’s nothing here, the whole staff is set. We’re ready to go here,” but he continued, “I’d like you to hang out for a while, kind of be an advisor, help us with some of the local stuff we don’t know about.” Then he said, “You and me’ll go up to Fresno and we’ll set up the radio station up there.” (Laughing)

Ken DeVaney: In 1962, after a brief stint in a rather unsuccessful law practice in Sacramento, Joe Drilling, a broadcaster I had known for years in Fresno, called me. He was the newly-named president of Crowell-Collier Broadcasting and he offered me the job as his administrative assistant with offices at KFWB in Los Angeles. Since the salary was well above my subsistence earnings in the law office, I accepted.

Ron Jacobs: After kicking off KMEN in San Bernardino in March of 1962, I left it in the hands of PD Bill Watson. Terry’n me took off in his Corvair. You know, Ralph Nader’s “unsafe at any speed” car. We had a U-Haul trailer bouncing around back of us. All our earthly possessions were in that damn toy wagon. I knew that if Terry cranked the steering wheel too hard that a quarter-ton of vinyl records would shift violently and flip over the whole fucking setup. But we lived to tell the story.

We arrived in Fresno, “Agribusiness Capital of the World,” center of the San Joaquin Valley. Good cheap wine and stuffed grape leaves. The goal was to remake a station as

we had 90 days earlier in San Bernardino. By sunset the day I arrived “Sunny Jim” Price was hired as the new PD. His enthusiasm — the first time we shook hands he pumped mine like he was out to break the Rotarians’ Squeeze Record — and experience convinced me to hire Jim on the spot. He was another format pioneer who worked at KOBY, San Francisco. An ex-marine, Jim then did a major career favor for me. “There’s a guy who just got out of the army,” he blurted out, “name of Bob Morgan. He’s on KMBY in Monterey. You gotta hear this guy! Now, man.”

Robert W. Morgan: In 1962 KYNO had the market to itself. They had a 60 share. The only ratings back then were Hooper. But KYNO was sloppy. They had this old guy in the morning. A good guy, but he was older and there was nothing for the kids to listen to. “Sunny Jim” Price was one of the jocks at KMJ, a big old-line station in Fresno. I idolized him. In those days I idolized all deejays whether they were good or bad. When I was in Monterey, I was able to connect with him just to let him know I existed. Sunny Jim came through. He called me soon after I got out of the army. He was moving to KMAK to be the new PD and said there are some gigs coming. And I said, “It sounds pretty good. I need a job.” He called back and said, “We want you to do mornings.” That was all it took. I signed up. I was elated, of course.

They had some 26-year-old boy genius, Ron Jacobs, in charge of group programming. Before I got there, Sunny Jim called me again, “I’ve got bad news, Morgan. This Jacobs guy wants to do mornings. We’re going to give you noon to three.” I was crushed.

Ron Jacobs: Sure, I remember the day we met. Morgan and I peered suspiciously at one another through the double glass windows between studios in the small brick blockhouse on McKinley Avenue that passed itself off as a radio station. This was not just a casual first impression. For both of us it could easily have been a look in a psychic mirror. We began with both of us circling verbally, a few soft jabs. Sumo check shoves, very Zen. But our monosyllabic grunts and nods signaled the start of as intense a relationship I have ever had with anyone, in or out of radio.

Carol Morgan: You know, once he got out of the army, Robert was just thrilled to be doing what he really loved to do. When he went to work in Fresno, it was the first time he had gotten a radio job that was totally divorced from the army. That was when he considered that he really got into radio. And he just loved working with Ron Jacobs.

Frank Terry: KMAK went on the air in May of 1962 and got to rolling. Jacobs was doing mornings, I was doing 9 a.m. to noon, Morgan did noon to 3 p.m. It wasn’t long after we were on the air that everybody — Jacobs was the first — realized that there was an incredible talent in our midst and it was Robert W. Morgan. Jacobs was doing his executive thing. He was like the national PD for the whole Colgreene Group. He had to go out of town a lot and they’d put a part-time guy in there for the morning show. Jacobs realized that the logical thing was to put Morgan on in the morning and let him go, turn him loose.

Bill Drake: In mid-1963 someone named Gene Chenault from KYNO in Fresno had been trying to call me at KYA in San Francisco. He did this for a long time, but I never returned his calls. The only reason that I finally did was because Knox LaRue, who owned KSTN in Stockton, California, was a friend of Chenault’s.

Ron Jacobs: Drake is a reclusive person. He didn’t require new people. Drake wouldn’t return Chenault’s phone calls because they were from someone he didn’t know or know about. Drake has always been that way. It took a third party to vouch for Chenault. Later on, I had to light bombs underneath Drake to meet with Bill Watson and Tom Rounds, both of whom were in on the beginnings of RKO’s great run.

Bill Drake: When you look at it logically as far as people and things — the important decisions — it’s not just one station. It’s not just L.A. or other towns in California. Or even Honolulu. I mean, Jacobs discovered Morgan then got out of his way and let him take his best shot. I heard Morgan. Morgan put me onto Jacobs. Jacobs put me onto Tom Rounds. There was Frank Terry, there was Bill Watson and so on.

Ron Jacobs: Immediately Morgan and I fell in Love/Hate. We sat around Fresno dreaming of the Big Time. Three years later we had our shot. When we were in a total groove — say cutting tracks with Bill Mouzis at the board in what was ridiculously called “the KHJ production room” — we were always on the same page, literally. By then, as I wrote copy, I knew his rhythms and heard his incomparable voice in my head. Morgan emphasized the right words at the right time, performing them as intended, usually on the first take.

Bill Drake: A friend of mine, Jane Swain, former General Manager at WAKE, Atlanta, was working with Knox LaRue. She convinced me to meet Chenault. He, LaRue, and I met at Jane’s house. Chenault was from Oklahoma, an actor who got into radio right after World War II. KYNO in Fresno was his first radio-station-ownership deal. He also was involved with KRAK in Sacramento. I had never heard his Fresno station. He said he had the market to himself, and then some people came in and bought KMAK and started doing wild things. And they really kicked his ass.

Robert W. Morgan: Fresno was the big time. So, we go on the air. Sunny Jim worked afternoon drive, I worked noon to three. We started out with a one share. There were two AM, Top 40 stations: KYNO at 1300 and us, KMAK, at 1340. When we went up to a 35 share, KYNO went down. We beat them the first half-week. We were a lot better and the word had just gotten out about KMAK. All the stations in our group were doing wild promotions. But that was a long ass battle, boy. Meanwhile Jacobs had a seven to my 37, so they put me on in the morning and he took himself off the air. Jacobs has a tremendous ego, but he’s also very practical.

Frank Terry: Jacobs was the first to admit that Morgan was a better jock than he was, and Jacobs was no slouch, you know. He had Morgan switch from Bob Morgan, which is how he started, to Robert W. Morgan. And Jacobs got the “Good Morgan” thing going. Never again say, “morning,” it was always, “Morgan.” And he told all of us that. (Imitating Jacobs voice) “You don’t ever say, morning, it’s Morgan, God damn it. Shape up!”

Bill Drake: When our meeting ended, Chenault said, “Will you come down to Fresno, do your thing, listen to KYNO and talk to me?” I went down to Stockton again to talk to Jane Swain and she said, “I think this guy is OK.” So I met Chenault again. I had listened to his station and I looked at him and I said, “Gene, you’re in fucking trouble!” (Laughs.) He knew that I knew — and I knew that he knew — or I wouldn’t have been there. What else could I say, “You’re cool”? He knew he was in deep shit. I told him, “You got real problems here.” I didn’t tell him a whole lot of details about anything; just that he was in trouble and this radio station, KMAK, was killing him. Obviously the difference in the radio stations was vast.

2 B continued . . .

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