I tried to sort out priorities. The main thing: Get Steele rolling, that would buy three hours. Then I realized I had forgotten something — music, shit, that was it — music! We hadn’t gotten around to stocking up on the current hits. I met Drake in the second floor conference room. We knew we’d be playing a “Boss 30.” But which 30 songs? We hadn’t started any music research. “We’ll play what KRLA’s playing,” said Drake. The Pasadena station was still the #1 rocker, if only by default. Back down the stairs to the music library on the ground floor and Betty Breneman, our Music Director.
“Can you run over to Wallichs Music City and pick up a KRLA song list and two copies of all the records on it?”
“Sure,” she answered, quizzically.
“We’re going to start with a 30-title current rotation based on what KRLA’s doing, that’s the way Bill wants to go.”
“Uh, huh,” she nodded slowly. “And when is this going to happen?”
“Not until three. Three o’clock. Today.” We’d only met a few days earlier but I knew then that she appreciated my sense of irony.
“Oh, shit, what about oldies?” I immediately apologized to this pregnant lady for swearing. She gave me a look that said, “I’ve been in the music business in Hollywood before you ever snorted smog, like I’ve never heard that before.”
“No problem,” said Mrs. Breneman, reminding me we had been playing lots of old stuff on our interim programming, the bland “Cavalcade of Hits.” The pregnant lady marched off to Drake’s chauffeur-driven Cadillac and headed for Music City at Sunset and Vine.
Bill Mouzis’ Secret Vault
The “93/KHJ Boss Golden” jingle popped into my brain. Jesus, we need jingles.
It was high noon. The Melrose building had been laid out to accommodate giant studios for network shows with large orchestras. The cement walls were nearly one foot thick; to get to Bill Mouzis, a few feet away, I had to trot about 75 yards through a maze of studios and offices.
Bill Mouzis, thick hair, glossy as black Greek olives, was on the AM engineering staff; one of over 20 men on the technical crew, all members of the IBEW union. It was instant rapport with Mouzis and me the first time we met. He wasn’t skeptical or cynical. And he was tired of doing breakfast remotes from Steve Allen’s house, “riding the board” for Michael Jackson or Geoff Edwards, dubbing news carts, etc. It was obvious to me that Mouzis could cook. In production, he would become the master chef.
At our original Johnny Mann jingle sessions the week before, Mouzis was right there with Drake and me, keeping an ear on things. He was assigned to production full time. The engineering on virtually every Boss Radio promo was done by Bill Mouzis. I wrote ’em, Morgan read ’em and Mouzis mixed ’em.
The KHJ “Production Room” was a tiny announce booth with the board and other equipment in an adjacent hallway. It always blew my mind that, from outside, the place resembled a large municipal building, but inside the quarters were tighter than on a submarine. The entire, original “History of Rock and Roll” was produced in this same hallway.
Upstairs, Ken DeVaney burned up phone lines with lawyers in New York and Beverly Hills, discussing restraining orders and lawsuits against KFWB. Bill Drake was designing logs with the precise stop sets and commercial limits we had planned in long sessions at Nickodell’s. For the record, we allowed for a maximum of 13 minutes, 40 seconds of commercial time per hour, maximum. No break would exceed 70 seconds. There were specific stop times, e.g. :03, :07, :11, :15, etc. Remember, in 1965 the average record length was 2 minutes, 20 seconds.
Morgan would voice the new station IDs. We marched down to Mouzis’ hallway. After batting copy ideas around, I scribbled, “(Tymp roll, fades to Morgan:) Ladies and gentlemen, you’re listening to the much more music station...” At that point the Johnny Mann singers, in one of the more memorable jingle melodies ever written, sang “KHJ — Los Angeles.” Anyone who has ever heard that jingle more than once can still sing it to this day.
Approaching 1 p.m., things were coming together. Mimeographed playlists would soon be ready. Songs played were to be checked off with a lo-tech grease pencil. Betty Breneman had all the oldies on hand, she just had to “borrow” the current chart numbers from KRLA. Mouzis only had ten or so IDs to dub to cart.
News Director Art Kevin was switching format sheets to the KHJ “20/20” News configuration. This was the handle for the then revolutionary news slots at 20 minutes before and after the hour.
Not everyone was as calm as Mouzis and Kevin. Clancy Imislund, KHJ Promotion Director, was pulling out his wispy hair. Our campaign, to blanket Los Angeles streets with “93/KHJ Boss Radio” billboards was scheduled to start May 10th. The same with bus bench ads. Clancy thrashed about, cursing KFWB, trying to get things moved up.
At approximately 2 p.m. an ambulance arrived and carried out a lady on a stretcher. She came from the traffic department. To this day I don’t know who she was or what happened to her. With an hour to go, things were getting quite exciting.
“Ladies and gentlemen, presenting The Real Don Steele.”
“The Cavalcade of Hits,” the transitional feature we ran to bridge between the old programming and the new KHJ, was now in its last hour.
What an hour in L.A. radio history. At that moment, KFWB was “Boss Radio” and KHJ was readying to use KRLA’s playlist. Drake said one way or another there’d be a program log by 3 p.m. I wondered when the next stretcher case would be hauled down from upstairs.
As a radio programmer, when the curtain goes up, things are out of your hands, and there’s nothing to do but pace and listen. Should I cruise around in my Caddy convertible, go home and stare at the radio, lurk in the office, what?
2:59 p.m.
I had to see this. Steele sat in the drab announce booth, chain smoking, his monitor turned up above normal human range. The announce booth contained a funky mike, VU meter, earphone-jack plug and one switch. Period. I’d had a Plexiglas bulletin-board-type thing made, and the jocks faced that. 5x7 inch cards were plastered all over that. The news announce booth was off to the right, about the size of a modest aquarium, and the engineer was 90 degrees to port.
I stood behind crew-cut Ken Orchard, the board operator on duty. Orchard recalls, “There was a natural high you could feel throughout the building. Everyone was charged up.” The final “Cavalcade of Hits” song was fading.
3:00 p.m.
“BOOM ... Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the Real Don Steele Show ... with a Sneak Preview of the all new Boss Radio, on ... KHJ, Los Angeles.” The Motown sound crashes in over the fading tympani. Steele jumps on in, “It’s 3 o’clock in Los Angeles!”
2 B continued . . .
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar