ALOHA AHMET

The Biggest Kahuna

Everyone's been buzzing about the new biography of Ahmet Ertegun, released earlier this month: The Last Sultan: The Life and Times of Ahmet Ertegun by Robert Greenfield. Amazing Amazon lets you search to see if you are in a book! DNS (Digital Narcissism Syndrome.) Let's face it: who does not do that thing first off with the arrival of a book and new ink smell?

There are two paragraphs about how our KHJ "exclusives" had radio people from all over the country screaming at him and Atlantic. He always acknowledged that KHJ launched Sonny & Cher just after they were Caesar & Cleo. Ahmet mentions Bill Drake once "because he was fun to drink with" or some such.

When Charlie Greene and Brian Stone took me with them to NYC at the peak of the S&C craze; FIVE hits on Billboard charts. We spent a week a week at The Plaza and who knows how much those guys spent in Manhattan’s jewelry district alone. Not to mention wine-women-and-song.

Or how Nesuhi Ertegun and I were the only haole (Caucasians) at the debut introduction of American Top 40, which Tom Rounds and I crashed as unregistered guerrilla ops. We had snuck into a convention in Majorca in the summer of 1970 and did our pitch (using Wollensak tape recorder in the basement of a little Catholic church with a handful of young girl students in their uniforms our audience. The name Casey Kasem might have been only thing that they could comprehend. To them it probably sounded like a food dish.

Ahmet was most intense genius record guy I ever knew. And he always credited KHJ and his hours drinking with Drake at Martoni's for much of Atlantic Records mid-60’s rise to the top.

This excerpt is from my book KHJ: Inside Boss Radio (2002.)

Sonny & Cher and The Real Don Steele. KHJ 1965.

Ron Jacobs: In the beginning, we had no superstar group to endorse the station by association. When I arrived from Honolulu in 1965 a friend from there, Judy Moll, told me that her bosses Charlie Greene and Brian Stone were down to selling their office equipment to keep going. So, Caesar & Cleo became Sonny & Cher. We did little promotions and they would do whatever we asked them to do. Sonny was confident that if he just came up with something good, KHJ would give his record his shot.

Sonny Bono: Actually, the song came to me quickly, as did most of my songs. Sitting at the kitchen table, I began scribbling lyrics on the back of a sheet of cardboard from some laundry just back from the cleaners. When it was half done, and I completed the song in about an hour, I sprung it on Cher, who grabbed the cardboard from the piano and grinned, “I’m going to save this forever.”

Sometimes you write a song and don’t think much of it. Then, surprise, it explodes. But other times, you know absolutely that the song is solid gold, waiting to happen. That’s the enthusiasm Cher and I had about, “I Got You Babe.” We couldn’t race to the studio fast enough. At the sessions, the electricity flowed at even higher voltage. Everybody from Charlie and Brian to our pianist, Leon Russell, was blown away. When everyone, from the artists to the writers to the musicians on down to the studio receptionist can’t stop singing and dancing when hearing a song being created, it’s amazing! But Ahmet Ertegun, head of the record company, disagreed on which song to release as the single. He really loved, “It’s Gonna Rain.” I liked, “I Got You Babe.” I tried to persuade him otherwise, but he wouldn’t change his opinion. After arguing unsuccessfully with Ahmet, I decided to go out on a limb and prove I was right. Atco was already promoting “Rain” when I cut acetate of “Babe.”

Charlie Greene: I remember the first time I heard “I Got You Babe” coming out of KHJ. Shit, man, it sounded so fucking good. It sounded incredible and that was it, the ballgame was over. The next day it virtually was a hit. The KHJ switchboard lit up and we weren’t doing it! We had everybody ready to start calling in when they heard it, you know, everybody call. But we couldn’t get through to the switchboard, man. KHJ was getting absolutely swamped with requests. Sonny and Cher became the Beatles of Boss Radio, so to speak. They would come down to the station whenever KHJ wanted them to. Any time. We would do all kinds of shtick ’cause Jacobs was coming up with new ideas that somehow included Sonny and Cher. They were impressed with everything about the station. Loved The Real Don Steele. I mean, they were happening and Boss Radio was happening. It all broke loose with KHJ, I’m telling you. There’s no question about it. As far as I’m concerned, KHJ helped make, or made, Sonny and Cher.

Ron Jacobs: And so Sonny and Cher — of course it was really Charlie — were standing by with a bunch of people ready to call KHJ the first time we played the record. The lines lit up so much legit that their callers couldn’t even get through! So Charlie and Brian and Sonny were going nuts and all of a sudden, ba-boom!

And KHJ went all out to establish the Sonny & Cher-Boss Radio connection. We commissioned Sandy Barron, the hip graphics designer, to do a special KHJ Sonny & Cher-KHJ logo and we ran those on bus benches all around town, you know, the kind that advertise funeral homes. Sure, “I Got You Babe” was a dynamite commercial hit. But the big push nationally came after KHJ got on the record. And that happened only because Sonny Bono and Charlie Greene would not take “no” for an answer. And, I like to think, because Drake and Jacobs could hear a hit.

Dexter Young: I remember when Sonny and Cher came to the studio to do on-air interviews. Jacobs had brought them directly from LAX where they had just returned from a European tour. Jacobs asked Sonny to get rid of a briefcase he was carrying and he said no, that it contained the cash, their percentage from the European tour.

Ron Jacobs: In the beginning, we had no superstar group to endorse the station by association. Judy Moll told me that her bosses Charlie Greene and Brian Stone were down to selling their office equipment to keep going. So, Caesar & Cleo became Sonny & Cher. We did little promotions and they would do whatever we asked them to do. Sonny was confident that if he just came up with something good, KHJ would give his record his shot.

Sonny Bono: Actually, the song came to me quickly, as did most of my songs. Sitting at the kitchen table, I began scribbling lyrics on the back of a sheet of cardboard from some laundry just back from the cleaners. When it was half done, and I completed the song in about an hour, I sprung it on Cher, who grabbed the cardboard from the piano and grinned, “I’m going to save this forever.”

Sometimes you write a song and don’t think much of it. Then, surprise, it explodes. But other times, you know absolutely that the song is solid gold, waiting to happen. That’s the enthusiasm Cher and I had about, “I Got You Babe.” We couldn’t race to the studio fast enough. At the sessions, the electricity flowed at even higher voltage. Everybody from Charlie and Brian to our pianist, Leon Russell, was blown away. When everyone, from the artists to the writers to the musicians on down to the studio receptionist can’t stop singing and dancing when hearing a song being created, it’s amazing! But Ahmet Ertegun, head of the record company, disagreed on which song to release as the single. He really loved, “It’s Gonna Rain.” I liked, “I Got You Babe.” I tried to persuade him otherwise, but he wouldn’t change his opinion. After arguing unsuccessfully with Ahmet, I decided to go out on a limb and prove I was right. Atco was already promoting “Rain” when I cut acetate of “Babe.”

Charlie Greene: I remember the first time I heard “I Got You Babe” coming out of KHJ. Shit, man, it sounded so fucking good. It sounded incredible and that was it, the ballgame was over. The next day it virtually was a hit. The KHJ switchboard lit up and we weren’t doing it! We had everybody ready to start calling in when they heard it, you know, everybody call. But we couldn’t get through to the switchboard, man. KHJ was getting absolutely swamped with requests. Sonny and Cher became the Beatles of Boss Radio, so to speak. They would come down to the station whenever KHJ wanted them to. Any time. We would do all kinds of shtick ’cause Jacobs was coming up with new ideas that somehow included Sonny and Cher. They were impressed with everything about the station. Loved The Real Don Steele. I mean, they were happening and Boss Radio was happening. It all broke loose with KHJ, I’m telling you. There’s no question about it. As far as I’m concerned, KHJ helped make, or made, Sonny and Cher.

Ron Jacobs: And so Sonny and Cher — of course it was really Charlie — were standing by with a bunch of people ready to call KHJ the first time we played the record. The lines lit up so much legit that their callers couldn’t even get through! So Charlie and Brian and Sonny were going nuts and all of a sudden, ba-boom!

And KHJ went all out to establish the Sonny & Cher-Boss Radio connection. We commissioned Sandy Barron, the hip graphics designer, to do a special KHJ Sonny & Cher-KHJ logo and we ran those on bus benches all around town, you know, the kind that advertise funeral homes. Sure, “I Got You Babe” was a dynamite commercial hit. But the big push nationally came after KHJ got on the record. And that happened only because Sonny Bono and Charlie Greene would not take “no” for an answer. And, I like to think, because Drake and Jacobs could hear a hit.

Dexter Young: I remember when Sonny and Cher came to the studio to do on-air interviews. Jacobs had brought them directly from LAX where they had just returned from a European tour. Jacobs asked Sonny to get rid of a briefcase he was carrying and he said no, that it contained the cash, their percentage from the European tour.

KHJ: INSIDE BOSS RADIO ~ Part 13

KHJ 20/20 News

Bill Drake: The 20/20 news sweep wasn’t at KGB, it was totally devised for KHJ. The 20/20 news placement came about as I was flying from Fresno to L.A. to finalize the deal. I remember I had the flu, it was a night flight and I had a meeting the next morning. I was wigging out at all those damn lights as I was flying in, and I was thinking, ‘Jesus, there’s a lot of people out there, all listening to KFWB and KRLA. What can we do to make them want to listen to us.’ You know we had to do a lot of shit. But I was thinking about KFWB’s news being at :25 and :55, KRLA at :15 and :45. Not a whole lot you can do there. So I was figuring out the mechanics and the 20/20 thing hit me — news at 20 minutes past and 20 minutes before the hour.

We didn’t know if it would work or not but it gave us a longer sweep. It was before KRLA’s news at :45 and we went through the top of the hour. We could draw from anybody at the top of the hour at that point because everybody but KRLA was doing either news on the hour or at five minutes till. If people tuned us out and went to KFWB they would only be there for like five minutes. If anybody was looking for music around the top of the hour we were there. Oh yeah, we had to hide news. The previous people had made so many public service commitments. We had huge religious blocks and talk blocks and we couldn’t get rid of them. We buried them on Sunday mornings, early. The FCC was a whole different ball game back then.

Lyle Kilgore

Art Kevin: I was excited about the forthcoming change. Change was not a fearful event for me. All the new people appeared a bit “nutty” but then again, one could feel the power of it all. It was easy to want to be a part of all the excitement. I’d heard news would be de-emphasized, but in point of fact, that never came to pass. Ron Jacobs made things happen for news, for which I am eternally grateful. Working with all the new folks was a joy. The energy level was intense. The “20/20 News” format did not scare me. But I wondered what it might mean to more traditional listeners wedded to the half-hour or top-of-the-hour format. I was pleased to be trying something new and different.

The jock staff was fun to work with. They fully aappreciated what we were trying to do and never made us feel unimportant. In fact, I well remember how Robert W. or Steele or Gary Mack would question me about news stories that I had just aired. These were pros in the best sense of the word.

Roger Aldi

Roger Aldi: I was in my early twenties working the bottom of the KHJ job-ladder in the 20-man news department. One day in early 1965, a tall gentleman walked in and declared, “We are now a rock ’n’ roll radio station. News means nothing to me except the FCC makes me include it, so we’re gonna make it the best news presentation we can.” I asked someone who that was and they said, “He’s the new program consultant, Bill Drake.”

J. Paul Huddleston

Art Kevin: I’ll never forget what Roger Aldi and Andy West looked like when they returned to KHJ after covering the first night of the Watts Riots. I assigned them to ride together for safety’s sake. They had radioed in that their mobile unit had been attacked with rocks and the front windshield was gone. When they walked into the newsroom we all could see they still had shards of glass all over their hair. Some of the glass was in their ears and some tiny slivers shone from their foreheads. We spent several hours carefully removing the debris.

One day in Watts a group of teens were threatening to riot in front of their school. I dispatched Phil Barton to make his way to an LAPD command post a safe distance away from the school. Phil made a wrong turn and found himself in front of the school and in the midst of a mob that was moving toward his mobile unit. I asked him to keep his two-way radio microphone on for safety’s sake. He did. As the mob approached we heard Phil roll his window down and try and reason with the group. Next thing we know he was choking, they’d grabbed his tie! We called LAPD and they had to drive in to the building melee to save our man.

NEWSWEEK, August 30, 1965

I recall the night when police tried to quell a student anti-war protest that flooded the UC campus in Santa Barbara. I drove in with my mobile unit and found myself being advanced on by a student mob. They surrounded my car and started rocking it. As they were doing their thing I managed to convince one of the group leaders that we, KHJ, were the good guys. And that if they would stop rocking me around I’d tape their comments for all L.A. to hear and distribute and at all our other stations throughout the U. S. Thank goodness it made sense to the leader of the group. He called off his crew and proceeded to tape their grievances.

Jim Mitchell

Jim Mitchell: We always tried to talk to our audience, choosing stories that would interest KHJ listeners. In those days, hard news worked for young audiences. We had the Vietnam War growing and it could have life-and-death impact for young adults. Challenges to authority were everywhere with frequent trouble on college campuses and in central city neighborhoods. We covered the first Monterey Pop Festival live from the scene. It wasn’t always possible to build a whole newscast, even a short KHJ 20/20 newscast, with that stuff, but we seldom had a problem filling. We always tried for fresh actualities, sound bites from newsmakers and reporter-on-the-scene explainers. This was straight out of the Jacobs Honolulu Playbook. Over there, five or six local wire stories a day carried the “KPOI asked” slug, meaning we gave the wire service the story after we broke it. We regularly whipped stations with twice as many people on their staff. The idea was to keep it relevant and keep it moving. Jacobs’ theory was let’s do it as well as it can be done. He had bigger things to worry about, but he listened to us and pushed for improvement.

Art Kevin: In August 1965 I remember very specifically when Jacobs went to bat to try and get me — the news department — a better playback time for a two-hour news special about the Watts Riots. We finally went with it at 4 a.m. Later, after I’d submitted the two-hour show to a prestigious news competition, I got the tape back with a note from one of the group’s officers saying we were the ones to beat, but their judges couldn’t get past the playback time which indicated to them that we had no real news commitment.

Marv Howard

Except for the Watts riots I never felt put down by other L.A. news media. They claimed we were “too raucous.” In point of fact KHJ News was too busy doing award-winning work. The Chancellor of the University of California praised us. Politicians ran trial balloons by us. I reported live when Bobby Kennedy died and when he was buried near his late brother. I was there when someone tried to murder James Meredith during the march through Mississippi. KHJ 20/20 News listeners also heard the first radio interviews of Warren Commission critics such as Mark Lane, Harold Weisberg and Mort Sahl. KHJ’s financial success also allowed coverage of major political party conventions. We were the only L.A. radio station to have a reporter at the Chicago Democratic National convention of 1968. Yours truly was tear gassed along with Dick Gregory.

The news department had the best of everything. The newest and most advanced mobile news units and the best and most expensive field gear available. After the 1965 Watts riot we were the first L.A. radio station to issue our news department jumpsuits marked with a “PRESS” logo for field safety. We also obtained California Highway Patrol hardhats to ward off bricks, bottles and tear gas canisters and to protect personnel in tight situations.

The KHJ news department won numerous national, regional and local area awards for news excellence and was often mentioned on the UPI and AP wire services. We also had station stories picked up by such publications as the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the Columbia Journalism Review.

Jim Mitchell: The big thing with Jacobs is loyalty. I’ll bet he doesn’t even realize that he hired me four times, three of them after I had left jobs with him. Other people have stories like this. I left KPOI because I wanted to get back to the mainland. I had a job lined up at KMBY, where I planned to golf my way around theMonterey Peninsula and attend junior college, but Jacobs called and talked me into going to Fresno State and working at KMAK. I left KMAK to play disc jockey in San Diego. Three months later he offered me San Bernardino at the time when KMEN might have been the best — although not the best-known — station in the country. Then I left there for the beauty of San Diego again, only to have him bring me into the breathtaking success story of KHJ. Not many bosses would take back somebody who bailed out on them so often.

Come to think of it ... he did it again! About twenty years after leaving KHJ, I was vacationing in Honolulu, and he asked me to cut show promos and station IDs for his show on KGU. Sure, he screamed at us. Maybe he sometimes pushed us beyond our endurance. But nobody ever doubted that he’d do anything for people who gave him their best.

Art Kevin: Obviously it was KHJ’s 20/20 newaformat, personalities and promotion that made it all happen. Our challenge in the news department was to be as exciting as what preceded and followed us, to compliment the station’s overall goals. I think we achieved that most of the time.

KHJ News Director Art Kevin and L. A. Police Chief Thomas Reddin

The transition from the “old” to the “new” was smooth because the men involved were professionals. They were loyal and they knew they could trust what I told them. In turn, I knew that Jacobs and I were dealing from the same deck of cards.

I believed Jacobs implicitly. He was always in the news department’s corner and never gave me reason to doubt that he sincerely liked what we were doing in the newsroom. We spoke quite a bit in those days. Sometimes I changed his mind on a given subject, other times not. But the respect we had for each other was mutual.

2 B continued . . .

http://www.93khj.com/

KHJ: INSIDE BOSS RADIO ~ Part 12

The Birth of “Boss”

Bill Drake: Clancy Imislund, the KHJ Promotion Director was there before Jacobs was hired. I thought that Jacobs came up with “Boss.” But Clancy had some ads made up using the phrase, “Boss Radio.” Jacobs didn’t like it. Neither did I. I finally said okay because KYA was “The Boss of The Bay” when I was in San Francisco. However, I didn’t come up with it at KYA. They were “Boss of The Bay” before I got there.

Ron Jacobs: Clancy Imislund realized that something was going to happen because Steve Allen and Michael Jackson, the talk-show Michael Jackson, were being dumped. There was a definite vibe of change from what I heard later. Imislund started to put things together that would be ready for whomever was going to be arriving to do rock ’n’ roll. When I went up to meet him for the first time, he had these layouts of newspaper ads, very tasty ones, and the featured phrase was “Boss Radio 93 KHJ.” One of them showed the empty Hollywood Bowl with just a pair of kids sitting up near the back row sharing a transistor radio.

Ken DeVaney (Email dated February 18, 2002): For what it’s worth, it was I who initiated the name “Boss Radio,” the slogan that is now indelibly etched in the history of radio itself. In May 1990 the 25^th anniversary of Boss Radio generated a staff reunion. The event marked a sense of renewed nostalgia and history of the early, frantic days of the new KHJ format that debuted a quarter century before. At the time, Clancy Imislund was “officially” credited with coming up with the Boss Radio slogan. Well, for all of his considerable gifts, he did not coin that term — because he had no basis upon which to do it.

With my wife’s disability we had a great number of teenage mother’s helpers in and out of our home in the San Fernando Valley at the same time we were pulling together KHJ. I noticed that these girls, in the slang of the day, constantly used the term “boss” when referring to someone or something that was superior in all respects.

Before “Boss Radio” made its debut I was at one of our brainstorming sessions on Melrose awaiting the official signing of Drake-Chenault, and shortly thereafter, the hiring of Jacobs. I told the group of my experiences in a house full of teenagers day and night. The next thing I knew Clancy was developing ads based on a “boss” theme. Now, you may believe that or not, but that is the way of it.

Bob Shannon: Initially, Jacobs wanted to change KHJ’s call letters. Too much baggage, he thought, and he wasn’t even a little impressed that they originally stood for “Kindness, Happiness and Joy.” His stations had names you could get your arms around. K-POI (rhymes with ‘hey boy’), K-MEN (the deejays “K-mentioned” things), K-MAK (“K-making the hits in Fresno”). Easy to say, easy to remember. You get the drift. Jacobs was animated, going a million miles an hour trying to convince Bill Drake and Gene Chenault, who were trying to keep up. “We’ve gotta get rid of these call letters,” said Jacobs. Silence. Drake and Chenault glanced at each other. Then, very quietly, Drake said, “Ron, you can do almost anything you want. But trust me, you’ll never get RKO to change them. Never.”

Ron Jacobs: Well, we couldn’t play with the call letters in L.A. On the one hand, KHJ had huge recognition because three call-letter stations were around since 1922, the beginning of commercial radio in the United States. But KHJ had all this — not so much negativity but ambivalence — lack of constant identity. They just changed formats too many times. I couldn’t come up with something. And there was a lot of heat on to get copy locked in for ads in the L.A. Times.

Our first ad was all the original jocks standing behind an elephant. Colonel Parker always said, “You can always count on elephants or midgets to draw a crowd.” Another thing we had to do was to get with Johnny Mann and make jingles. I had to give John something, some words. I was desperate. Imislund, because of his hard work and our deadline, was the person who pushed the “Boss Radio” slogan. I couldn’t top it even though I thought it was passé. And I really didn’t want it. The worst thing to have with the kids, and that’s certainly how we defined the audience in those days, is something that’s already burned out, you know. But we always played around with call letters like at KMAK in Fresno, the disc jockeys were called the “K-makers.” I wanted something that we could apply to the deejays collectively. KFWB had a good one when they were cooking.

Chuck Blore: KFWB’s original jocks had a collective name that was born when we wrote a jingle calling them “The Seven Swinging Gentlemen.” That never really stuck, but a couple of years into it I did some traffic-safety bits, where a little girl (Don MacKinnon’s daughter) questioned the jocks about traffic safety and, of course, they always gave the right answers. So she proclaimed, “By the power invested in me, I declare you to be — one of them KFWB Good Guys.” That one stuck!

Ron Jacobs: The term “Boss Jocks” came up in the first meeting about call letters with Drake and Chenault. I said, “Well, if we do go with Boss we can call the guys Boss Jocks — or B.J.s.” And Chenault freaked. He got all embarrassed and asked, “Won’t people think we mean blow jobs?”

Robert W. Morgan (Email to Ron Jacobs, August 17, 1997): As I’m typing this there’s a Jack in the Box spot on TV using the phrase, “Man, that’s boss!” We’ll never live it down.

Ron Jacobs: The phrase, “Boss Angeles,” originated several weeks after we were on the air. I was standing in the booth and Dave Diamond was on one night when he said, “The time is such and such in Los Angeles.” Wow! The light bulb went on and I thought to myself, schmuck, you know this isn’t Los Angeles, this is Boss Angeles. And that’s how that happened. As it turned out, it worked out pretty good.

Ken DeVaney: As to my contribution to KHJ, I like to think that because there was very little interference from RKO in New York, I was in a position to loosen the purse strings and spend money like crazy to operate our promotion like a Barnum & Bailey Circus. Like Jacobs, who actually knew the man, I was a great admirer of Colonel Tom Parker.

I suggested and authorized the budget to tow KHJ banners over Southern California beaches and turn loose sky writers promoting the arrival of Boss Radio. The resident promotion manager, Clancy Imislund came up with the plan to buy up every “seven-sheet” billboard in the Los Angeles Megalopolis for Boss Radio’s debut month.

This floored Jacobs, not just because the size of the ad budgets but because billboards were illegal in his home state of Hawaii. When the broadsides appeared in early May of 1965, the two of us spent two days “riding the route,” verifying the presence of every billboard. The message jumped out because of its simple design, “93/KHJ, Boss Radio” in electric Day-Glow colors against a black background. But they were everywhere.

2 B continued . . .

DETAILS: http://www.93khj.com/

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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