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 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 . . .

http://www.93khj.com/

KHJ: INSIDE BOSS RADIO ~ Part 4

Partial Ron Jacobs 93/KHJ Boss Radio archives, shipment to Ray Randolph. March 2006.

Introduction

Boss Radio: Day One

If you can believe it, no one can agree on the exact date Boss Radio began. KHJ historian Ray Randolph and I have been arguing about this for more than ten years now. Sometimes I think that it was May 5, 1965. But that is easily confused in my mind with the launch date of earlier stations with which I was involved. Other times something tells me it was May 3.

Why wasn’t Randolph on the Warren Commission or one of the Watergate investigating committees? Here is a tiny portion of his evidence:

I’m not really concerned about any May date. What RJ is looking for is the date that Steele first cracked the mike in response to KFWB. That date is April 27, 1965.

The May 5th date in the Cruisin’ album liner notes somehow became the de facto “start date” by the end of 1965. Jacobs produced the records. Perhaps he thought it sounded better than May 3rd. A few items where the May 5th date has been heard/spotted:

1) 1965 “Christmas Wish” audio promo. Robert W. Morgan states: “... as the holiday season
approaches, for the first time since Boss Radio began on May 5th, we’re stopping the
constant contests ...”

2) One of the “Boss Goldens” albums lists May 5th as the start date.

3) On Boss 30 Survey No. 95, a promo on the back for the “Birthday Firebird” contest states:
“Boss Radio is two years old on May 5, 1967.”

4) In a 1969 form letter from Warren Earl to those who wrote in with praise for the “History of

Rock ’n’ Roll,” it states: “Not since we began our ‘Boss Radio’ format on May 5, 1965 have

we received such an overwhelming ...”

This info is “reference only” for the hardcore. It also has no impact on the fact that the “Sneak Preview” began on April 27th, 1965.

Then Randolph lists three pages of evidence in support of his claim. For over a decade Randolph has proven me wrong. And I was the damn program director. So let’s go with April 27, already.

“The Boss Jocks Are Coming to KFWB!”

We know the place was 5515 Melrose Avenue, long before it became a trendy street. Back then it was grubby and nondescript. The drab, three-story building that housed KHJ radio and TV resembled a plumbing-supply house. At the entrance, across from a guard shack, sulked a lone banana plan

t. The structure was surrounded by the Paramount and Desilu film studios and a restaurant called Nickodell's, which had red Naugahyde booths and smelled like Lysol and Scotch.

KHJ-TV and office employees looked down their noses at us. We were just the latest in the KHJ Radio Format-of-The-Month Club. It was obvious there’d be little support from our fellow RKO broadcasters. We would rely on our own small Boss group, and our collective desire to do or die.

The day began with a promo jingle recording session at a small studio a few blocks away, down Melrose Avenue. By noon, hysteria swept through the radio section of the building. New KHJ deejay Roger Christian, formerly of KFWB, was the co-writer of the Beach Boys’ hit, “Little Deuce Coupe.” Roger and Brian Wilson let us use the track to overdub our new “Boss Jock” deejay lineup. So the jocks, none of whom could sing a note, were down the street in a sound booth talking in rhythm to the song’s beat.

Professional vocalists handled the chorus, “It’s the new KHJ, now you know what we got.” The jocks did endless takes of their simple rhymes. One of them, Robert W. Morgan, was browsing around his portable radio. He stopped at KFWB at 980 on the dial. Morgan thought he was hearing things he shouldn’t have been. Like KFWB using material we planned to debut the next week. Liners, such as “Boss Radio ... KFWB.”

In those pre-focus group days we called such phrases “liners,” short for one-liners. KFWB relentlessly blasted more slogans: “KFWB 20/20 News.” “The Boss Jocks are coming to KFWB!” Morgan literally ran down Melrose Avenue to the KHJ building, through the lobby and into my office, KFWB trilling from his tinny transistor. At first, I refused to believe what I heard. It was a waking nightmare or acid flashback. But it was happening. I even realized why but filed that away ’til later.

“OK, let's do it.”

I buzzed General Manager Ken DeVaney on the third floor. “You’re not going to believe this, but ’WB is on the air using all our new stuff.” Silence. DeVaney, a lawyer by training, never spoke impulsively. I always did: “Ken, it’s fucking happening. Morgan has it here on his radio.”

“Call Drake, I’ll be right down.”

I phoned Bill Drake on his ultra-hotline. “I’m coming right in,” said America’s future #1 radio programming consultant.

With “KFWB Boss Radio” in the background, I told Morgan and DeVaney why I thought it happened. I started at KHJ several weeks before and discovered two newsmen working there who I knew from Honolulu. One was Andy West. He was “Jumpin’ George” West on KPOI in Honolulu in 1959 until he was fired for threatening me with a gun.

I never worked with the other guy. But, when I was hired he thought he’d be fired on the spot. Actually, the News Department was the last thing on my mind, there being so much to do. Anyway, this n

ewsman ran to KFWB and offered to divulge KHJ’s game plan if they’d hire him.

They did and he did, and that’s why Drake, DeVaney and I were huddled in my cubicle of an office frowning, swearing and more pissed than any trio using a Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum men’s john at halftime of a typical Rams game.

We discussed our limited options. Drake proclaimed, “We’ll start today with the new format. Today.”

“We can call it a ‘Sneak Preview’ of the new format,” I added.

“Can we do it and when?” DeVaney asked.

This photo of The Real Don Steele, taken on February 10, 1969, is one of dozens of publicity shots taken by Henry Diltz, then a starving, apprentice photographer. Diltz and Jacobs met at Punahou School in the 1960s, when Diltz was focused on music as a future member of the Modern Folk Quartet. Today, Diltz is considered one of the major rock photographers. Many more unreleased photos, such as the above, will be seen in the revised edition of KHJ: Inside Boss Radio.

“Three o’clock,” I said, faking the confidence of Eisenhower on D-Day. “Boss Radio 93/KHJ debuts with The Real Don Steele Show at 3 p.m.” It was about 11:15 in the morning.

We had 3 hours and 45 minutes to do a week’s work. Responsibilities were assigned: I’d stay on the first floor, where the studios were. Drake stationed himself close by the traffic people, convincing them that they could have a Boss program log ready in time. DeVaney returned to the executive offices and played free safety. We sent out for two dozen Nickodell’s hamburgers with French fries.

By then the jocks were back from their session. The Real Don Steele was in the production room rehearsing. That was part of our countdown drill, two weeks of practice before going live. Steele had just done one of his patented manic intros to the Supremes’ “Stop in The Name of Love” when I walked in.

“Don, uh, you know KFWB’s on with all our stuff.”

“Yeah, Morgan told me.”

“Well, ah, we — Drake, DeVaney and me — we decided we gotta go a little earlier, or they’ll cop our whole trip. And you’re the guy to kick off the real Boss Radio.”

“When?” asked Steele, casually.

“Oh, ah, you know, your regular shift. In about three hours.”

He said, “OK, let’s do it,” and cranked up his monitor until Diana Ross nearly blew out the studio windows. This would be the last day Donald S. Revert would be an unknown disc jockey born several blocks away from that very spot.