KHJ: INSIDE BOSS RADIO ~ Part 19

Humble Harve compares the other cat's whiskers

Humble Harve: Johnny Williams once said that when you go in the conference room for the jock meeting you check your ego at the door. Well, it better be that way because the whole idea was that if one spoke comes off the wheel, the wheel’s eventually going to fall apart and everything crashes. That was the whole idea that was generated. But if anybody else would have been there other than Jacobs, I don’t think we would have been one tenth as big as we were. We would have had a nice format but it would have gone the way that other formats go. It wouldn’t have lasted more than, I don’t know, a year. ’Cause it wouldn’t have been executed properly.

Don Berrigan: I remember with particular interest the talk that Tiny Tim’s handler gave us, prior to Tiny Tim’s entrance into a jock meeting, as we were building up to a big promotion centered around him. I have echoed to others over the years that Tiny Tim was not an act, but what you saw and heard was the real Tiny Tim. In working with him during the promotion, I was moved and refreshed by the sense I had of his total lack of guile and games. I have a vivid image of the expression of disbelief on the face of The Real Don Steele when Tiny Tim whipped his ukulele out of a shopping bag and began his “thank you” serenade. I found it interesting because I had the sense that, despite Don Steele’s vaunted super-double hipness, this was a new one to him.

Gary Mack: Every week at the jock meetings Jacobs was like George Allen exhorting the Rams in the locker room. There was some picking of nits but always a lot of positives. Jacobs did a lot of fine-tuning in these sessions. More adrenaline pumping than any radio meeting I’ve been to since. Then Jacobs would unveil the latest promotion. There was a lot of ooh-ing and aah-ing when he’d roll out the latest promos he had written and Robert W. Morgan had recorded. What amazes me, listening to them now, is the quality of those spots. They’re still better today than anything you hear done on the new digital production consoles.

And all of it done on quarter-inch mono tape! I’ll bet we went through a ton of splicing tape and razor blades. And what is so unbelievable is that KHJ’s studio and production facilities were really rudimentary. But the meetings — they were good!

Shelley Gordon: There’s a perception of Ron coming down on the jocks all the time, probably based on the memos and some emotional jock meetings, but he complimented and encouraged them also. Those compliments didn’t come easily. They had to be earned. When they did come they carried a lot of weight.

Everyone bitched and moaned about jock meetings but Ron scheduled them anyway. He told me that having all the Boss Jocks together at the same time in the same place was as important as any operational details that had to be explained and it gave them a chance to interact. Radio is different, he said, in the sense that these guys were on the same team, but not really working together or even listening to each other because of their hours. Johnny Williams coming off the air at 6 a.m., Harvey just getting started at 6 p.m.

The meetings were a chance to connect, though sometimes they got pretty heated, a lot of egos in the same room. But they were effective in that everyone knew exactly what was expected of them in terms of performance — not just the mechanics of the new contest or promotion. The jocks knew Ron listened at all hours and they dreaded the red phone ringing when they screwed something up. But it could just as well be him calling to say something was great if he really dug something you did.

Charlie Tuna in radio's analog AM days

Charlie Tuna: Boss Jock Humble Harve was the designated “cool cat” — with the black shades, incense, peace-sign, love beads and the “hip” persona to go with all those props. Meanwhile, Jacobs was truly democratic and did not discriminate. He would put down anyone. All our jock meetings were behind closed doors. It was like Jacobs wanted someone to take him on. He started as a Gatling gun-tempo morning man in sleepy Honolulu. None of us knew he was also moonlighting as a Roller Derby announcer in the summers. His only chance to be “on” was during our jock meetings. They made Friar’s Club roasts look like a séance. Morgan and Jacobs had been going at it since back in Fresno in 1962.

But the funniest was when Jacobs got on Harve’s case, usually for no other reason than to get to play Don Rickles with Harve’s wonderful, but neurotic, personality. Supposedly when Jacobs met Harve for the first time he called him something like, “The most drab looking nebbish who has ever attempted to make it in show business, even as a ticket taker.” Harve was ordered to wear solid black shades at all times. Indoors, outdoors, day, night, always. “Then,” Jacobs supposedly told the bewildered Harve, “you got a shot, like maybe people will think you’re Ray Charles or Roy Orbison.”

See, Morgan and Jacobs were one another’s greatest fans when it came to putting people down. So when Jacobs starting in on Harve he wouldn’t stop until Morgan was choking with laughter.

Jim Mitchell: Working at KHJ was like going back to Colgreene. At KGB in 1963 or at KCBQ in 1965-66, somebody would say, “Let’s have a contest” and we would kind of limp through it with formulaic routines and bored promos. With Jacobs, it was like everything rode on THIS promotion. There would be major brainstorming, hours in the production studio — usually with Jacobs, Morgan, and Mouzis — doing tracks over and over again, long after I thought it was perfect. I was doing news, but I couldn’t resist wandering in for those sessions. And the jocks kept up the enthusiasm as long as the event or promo ran. Over the years, we all had enough 3 a.m. calls to know that there was no hour when the boss might not be listening.

Steve Clark: Those hotline calls from Bill Drake and Ron Jacobs were always a threat. Bill would call late at night happy on "winky-poos" (booze), always in a good mood, never upset, usually asking for a song to be played “next.” Even if I just played it to impress some chick he was with, it was “You got it, Bill.” You always did what was necessary to keep Drake pleased, fuck the format that was the legendary Bill Drake. He was always nice, a real gentlemen. We got along, always joking around, and we had much in common — those California girls.

When Ron called on the hotline, you knew you fucked up, or some precise instructions were coming. No mistakes, no questions, just do it exactly as Ron told you. Nothing less than perfection was accepted from Ron Jacobs. Ron’s memos were verbal road maps with every detail covered, nothing overlooked. Sometimes you had to read them over and over to make sure you’re clear in your head what Ron wanted. He wasn’t tolerant of fuckups — not even a little tolerant. Boss Radio was perfect radio.

Charlie Tuna: I have Robert W. Morgan to thank for, among many other things, teaching me early on about working “outside the box.” Sure, KHJ had a format, but it really was just a guideline or a safety net to fall back on during one of those days when you were less than on top of your game. The rest of the time you could be as creative as you wanted to be. And no, there were no stopwatches clocking how long you talked. “If you have something to say, say it or do it,” was a simple enough rule. We all got the concept of what KHJ was supposed to be. We attempted to deliver seven different personalities with each of us using our own style of executing the format.

Humble Harve: And it wasn’t just format. It was constant promotion. The thing that I liked best of all was the brainpower put behind it by Jacobs because every day there was a new contest or promotion. There was a new shtick to promote — it was Jimi Hendrix at the Hollywood Bowl, tie-ins like the “Laugh In” TV show, the world premiere of the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” flick, the “Christmas Wish” giveaways — it was this, it was that.

Every day there was something else to hang your hat on so there was more than just you on the radio. The whole station backed you up with money, with contests, with this, with that, and this was unique and that was different. I’d never had that at any radio station. It was the first time that I recall a radio station that bent over backwards to promote everybody at the radio station in huge promotions, nonstop! When KHJ came on, KFWB didn’t know what hit ’em. And they couldn’t compete because they didn’t know how. It was a brand new way to do everything.

Ripped Ron Jacobs ruminates on Rams and radio

Robert W. Morgan: Jacobs would write all this great shit at night when he was ripped, and I’m half asleep. He’d call up with some off-the-wall deal, “You gotta dig this, man. Dig this, dig that.” And I’d think, ‘Wait a minute. Where did all this come from?’

It was one contest after another. A new one began before we had a chance to physically give the prizes away. KHJ started that. I don’t think any station ever did that before. Ours was an accident. I think we did a second one right away and Jacobs put up a liner, “Boss Radio, where the contests never stop,” or something like that. That really pissed him off after like the first 20, you know, having to segue entire contests.

2 B continued . . .

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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" RETURNS!

Boss Jock Charlie Tuna adapts to Boss Angeles traffic. This is one of the dozens of unpublished photos by Henry Diltz, lensman for 93/KHJ publicity pictures before he became one of the world's foremost photographers of rock stars for the past 40 years.

In response to the many requests for the book KHJ: INSIDE BOSS RADIO since it went out of print in 2002, we are reissuing the 445-page volume. For more info--and a one-hour collage of 93/KHJ promos--please go to: http://www.93khj.com/ Thanks to Don McCoy, Dave Sebastian Williams, Kevin Gershan, Carol Williams, Brian von Ahsen, Ed Kanoi and the others who have worked diligently to Bring Back The Book! Below is a portion of one page of quotes; the book is full of hundreds of these, based on dozens of interviews conducted exclusively for KHJ: INSIDE BOSS RADIO.

Ron Jacobs: I was hired at $15,000. We all were — are you kidding? $15,000, man? When I was fairly certain that I’d be around a while, I bought a new house at the top of Laurel Canyon, I was driving a new Cadillac. When I left KHJ I was making like 50 grand or something like that. But when I got there, money wasn’t the issue. Remember, two weeks before, I was in jail eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And that wasn’t peanut butter or jelly. It was peanut butter and jelly all mushed together, take it or leave it.

Casey Kasem: Ron Jacobs and I became friends when he had asked to have a meeting concerning the possibility of my moving from KRLA to KHJ. As a matter of fact I think there were two or three meetings. We had a mutual respect for one another’s talent and hit it off. The only reason I didn’t go to KHJ was because the money I was asking for was much more than the salaries of the KHJ air staff — at the time I was enjoying success and making big money with my daily TV show and weekly dances. Ron couldn’t risk doing anything that might disrupt the great morale at KHJ or upset the DJs who were responsible for making his station #1. A few short years later, I called Ron and asked him if he would be interested in producing a countdown show, the Top 40 Hits in America. His immediate reply was, “Sounds great! Let’s get together and do it!” And with our associates, we did. And I’ve been counting down the hits ever since.

Gary Mack: As the rest of the crew was hired: Robert W. Morgan, Roger Christian, The Real Don Steele, Dave Diamond, Sam Riddle and Johnny Williams. We set about the business of getting organized. Ron Jacobs was brought in as Program Director--the best I’ve ever met.

Charlie Tuna: The Real Don Steele was the rock star leader of the Boss Jocks. Very mysterious, said very little off the air, but when he did, people listened. Sam Riddle was the businessman, always had a million outside deals going on in addition to his KHJ-TV show. It all paid off down the road; one of Sam’s productions was “Star Search” with Ed McMahon. Johnny Williams was the perfect all-night man, soothing voice, relaxed presentation and always right there with the quips and perfect feel for the format. No one could sound like he was having a ball during the really slow and lonely times any more than Williams.

Sam Riddle: When the time came to get ready for the new Boss format, I’ll never forget practicing on KHJ-FM so no one would hear me. Ron Jacobs said, “OK, you’ve got seven seconds to say what you used to say on KFWB and KRLA in forty-five seconds.” We had an engineer running the board. Dexter Young was my engineer and he took care of me. I thought: that’s fantastic. I’ll have more time to be on the phone to book Bobby Sherman concerts.

Gary Mack: It was grueling. Jacobs and Drake stood in the control room with an engineer while the future Boss Jocks practiced this new format. Every word and every nuance was critiqued on the fly. “More up! More energy! End up! Faster!” I remember the distinct odor of flop sweat. But every day got better, and we made our mistakes off the air.

Claude Hall: Bill Drake assembled a good staff. One of the smartest things he did was hire Ron Jacobs because Jacobs was a very, very hard-working guy. He’s extremely bright. Drake may not be that bright, but he thinks. He just sits back and thinks a lot. His major role, I think, in RKO during his time as consultant, was a thinker--as a brain to figure things out. A lot of people think Drake invented the tight play list, that he invented this and invented that. He didn’t. But like a genius (and the role of a genius takes in many different facets) what he was able to do was synthesize. Einstein didn’t “invent” E=mc², he synthesized it. And this is what Drake did with Top 40 radio.

Ron Jacobs: When I got to KHJ I felt a rapport with Bill Mouzis. He was a pro who sensed what we would be doing in production, which was totally different from KHJ’s old-school sound. I asked Chief Engineer Ed Dela Pena if he could assign Mouzis to production. It was Mouzis who did all of the tedious razor splices. Mouzis sat there unconcerned when Morgan and I got into one of our screaming sessions about how he was ruining my copy — or how I was writing crap that a cave man couldn’t work with. Both of us running back to the “production library,” which was, at best, maybe 30 movie sound-track albums in a room where it was legal for us to touch turntables and argue some more. Morgan and I started our love/hate relationship in Fresno in 1962 and each of us knew that the other would be looking for any reason to provoke a confrontation. That was wonderful fun. It made us feel like we were “creative.” After a while, we were bringing in tons of money for RKO, more even than the mighty Channel 9. We could carry on, bellowing and slamming around and the suits just had to put up with it. (Laughs.)

Carol Morgan: I remember how important it was to Robert; he wanted Ron Jacobs there. He also got them to hire Don Steele. There weren’t too many people in radio that he really connected with. He loved people who were really bright and quick. Ron fulfilled something for him that he and I had always had between us up to that point.

Dexter Young: I worked mainly with Sam Riddle. I used to see Sam in the hallways. He was doing his TV show on Channel 9, KHJ-TV, but working for our competitor, KFWB, as a disc jockey. I used to ask Sam, “Since you have your TV show here, why don’t you have your radio show here too?” There had been a rumor that he was coming to KHJ and he finally did come with us. He and I became very good friends while working together. My wife and I were invited to his wedding.

The estimated shipping date is June 20, 2002.

Kindly order now to receive a first copy--and to receive your two complimentary CDs of killer KHJ promos.

David Maraniss on "The KHJ Book"

"Where to start with Ron Jacobs? I spent ten days with him in Hawaii in May 2009, and I still hear his voice in my head and will forever. You could say that he is one of a kind, sui generis, inimitable, but those are all clichés and RJ is way over on the far side of cliché. The first time my wife Linda and I got in his convertible, he called back to her to root around all the junk in the backseat and hand him his teeth. That gets a little closer.

"My favorite moment came when we drove up to a gate where it was clear that the guard was there to keep people from entering. The guard was an older woman, a native Hawaiian. Here come three white people in a convertible. No way she is going to let us in. Until. Ron Jacobs opens his mouth, the sound reverberates, she recognizes the magical voice of the legendary island deejay who called himself Whodaguy. A big smile works across her face. “Whodaguy? Whodaguy! I thought you were fucking haoles!” she screams with delight, laughing and waving us through. “Whodaguy!” For those of you who don’t know, haole is what native Hawaiians call white people, and the term is appropriately modified by fucking.

"In most ways I’m the wrong person to introduce a book about rock & roll and Boss Radio. I can’t do a Ben Fong-Torres on this one, like Ben Fong-Torres his ownself did. I love the music, most of it, but I was never into the rock culture. I never subscribed to Rolling Stone, never knew who all the drummers were. I was getting married on the day of Woodstock and had no idea it was going on. I never memorized the top 40, let alone the Boss 30. I didn’t’ even smoke dope. I listened to baseball games on the radio, mostly. Growing up in Madison, Wisconsin, when I did listen to the radio it was on WISM in Madison and WLS in Chicago. I’m sure they had some stories, but they didn’t have Boss. But there are things about Ron Jacobs that make me admire him greatly, which is why I’m hacking away here.

"First, there’s nothing phony about him. He comes right at you, toothless mouth and all. Second, music is not a business for him so much as a true passion. I sat in his makeshift sound studio on the far side of Oahu, the side he prefers, over the mountain, away from the tourists and the rich people, and listened as he played the music of native Hawaiian musicians like Walter Keale, and I felt Ron’s heart beating and saw his eyes moisten and felt the melancholy beauty that overwhelmed the room. And finally, I knew that RJ had a creative mind (it takes only ten minutes with him to figure that out) but I didn’t know, until he gave me some magazine articles that he had written, that he was in fact a terrific writer.

"So that gets us to this book, KHJ: Inside Boss Radio. Some of it is writing, some of it is drawing, some of it is radio jargon. There are interviews, photos, oral histories, daily memos, calendars – but the totality is the brilliance of Ron Jacobs. It is a rare documentary history that takes you inside his mind as he transforms KHJ into the preeminent rock and roll station in the universe. He comes at you nonstop, one idea after another, relentless, always thinking, churning out ideas, challenging the norm. From start to finish, the book threatens to engulf you but always amazes you, just like RJ."

David Maraniss, Washington, D.C., May 2010

With an eye for bringing the mysteries of history to light and a knack for reportage that won him a Pulitzer for his work for The Washington Post, David Maraniss pens compelling works of nonfiction that give readers insights into larger-than-life figures, from Bill Clinton to Vince Lombardi, while illuminating major events in American history. When Barack Obama was elected President in 2008, Maraniss began work on a "multigenerational biography…about the world that created Obama and then how he recreated himself." Tentatively titled "Out of This World: the Making of Obama," Maraniss says it "will be out in very late 2011 or more likely early spring 2012."

For details about the book KHJ: INSIDE BOSS RADIO plus one hour of never-posted original 93/KHJ promos, go to http://www.93khj.com/