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.

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KHJ: INSIDE BOSS RADIO ~ Part 17

The Real Don Steele, The Playmaker

Ron Jacobs (Radio and Records, March 3, 2001): The Real Don Steele was the master of what he did. No one in the history of Top 40 radio ever sounded like or will ever sound like Steele. He boogied on the airwaves while his enthusiastic, energetic style pulled you right into the radio like an electromagnet.

Whenever he wanted to turn it on Steele could kick ass in tempo with any artist whose record he played. James Brown comes to mind as being on the same dynamic wave length.

Like any transcendent talent, Steele’s art seemed effortless — far from it. He probably expended more calories per hour than anyone in radio. Listen once to The Real and you would never forget him. The experience was like taking mescaline for the first time.

Steele’s air persona required an intense discipline to sound “wild and crazy” while he always remained within the boundaries of a complex music format. At work he resembled a Grand Prix driver — Velocity, Focus, Awareness, Heat and Smoke, passing anything that got in his way.

To be the Program Director from the moment Steele kicked off Boss Radio was an indescribable rush. To me it was like being the Flight Controller for the first NASA rocket launch.

The Real Don Steele and Robert W. Morgan comprised the most talented radio tag team to ever entertain an audience. They performed with consistency, each in his unique style while never letting you forget that they played on the same championship team.

I can’t envision KHJ accomplishing much of anything without both these guys pumping their blood, tears and sweat into what they did three hours every day. They would make anyone doing my gig look good. Without them I would be just another guy who passed unnoticed through the Los Angeles radio jungle. And that is not being modest. I don’t do modest. It is the fucking truth.

Robert W. Morgan (Email to Ron Jacobs, August 1, 1997.) Born 7-23-37, Mansfield, Ohio. Moved to Galion, age 2. Always a radio LISTENING junkie, it just never occurred to me to be ON it. In Jr. high my mother offered me ANYTHING if I got straight A’s. Said I’d do if for my own radio in my room. (Just had the big console in living room.) Did it and got a square, metal Arvin. Beautiful. Mother: Radio off by 10 p.m. Figured out how to extend speaker to under pillow. Never got busted.

College of Wooster, Wooster, Ohio. Joined Jazz club. Local FM station gave club two hours a week PSA time where club President played jazz. One fateful weekend every club member was out of town. Asked to do show. With fear and loathing I agreed. First time I walked into a radio station was to go on air. WWST and WWST-FM, “Serving Agricultural Area.” Double-double W’s tough for a rookie. Try it now. Halfway thru the show I was “bitten by the bug.” Loved everything about the station including that wonderful “tube smell.” Manager was listening and offered me weekend gigfor $1 an hour. All day, Sunday. Ran Thesaurus music library shows in FM studio while doing live breaks in Cleveland Browns games in AM studio. Many close calls. The Browns didn't care about Thesaurus timing.

Main jock/station influence: Robert Q. Lewis, Arthur Godfrey and all jocks on KYW, Cleveland. They took all-night TELEGRAM requests. Big Wilson, Wes Hopkins, Joe Finan. Later met Finan as a Boss Jock and HE was thrilled to meet ME.

Robert W. Morgan hosts his TV show "Groovy"

Ron Jacobs (From Email to Bill Mouzis, July 9, 2000): While thinking about our time together, with just you and me and Bob, his voice, your board, my words — three guys of one single mind when we were doing it — was as much a display of teamwork as any collective process I’ve ever been involved in. Ever. Only the three of us know the high we felt when we hit one out of the park.

To stay with the baseball metaphor, we weren’t doing it with juiced balls, short fences and mediocre pitching. And we were playing in the bigs. Starting in 1965 we were underdogs in a cerebral game. We stomped the competition so quickly we reached a point where we were out to surpass stiffer opposition: Ourselves.

Alone in our little sanctum, immune to the whirl around us, deep within a media fortress, we were insulated from the world outside out on Melrose Avenue. Think of the democracy of it. Zorba the Sleek Greek, a WASP with a thatch of hair the shade of Midwestern wheat fields and a hybrid Hawaiian-Jew with rapidly receding red hair. Alone in our hallway, we worshiped in a temple of sound, unexplainable to anyone. Crafted in a factory, it was our treasure alone to share.

Nothing in my professional experience has ever topped those days, that hallway, our variegated trio, minds creatively combined. Words to others will never convey our sense of achievement. Our dedication was not measured in terms of hours put in, but the tingle produced by a final take. The results of our workmanship in our windowless workshop “speak for themselves” whenever acetate tape passes a magnetic head, or howsoever the sounds are preserved . The smiles and excitement our audio squad brought to some people at the time is something that can never be revised or removed.

The fact that what we assembled during a daily “shift” is still being discussed in cyberspace more than a third of a century later — rightfully or wrongly, with or without all the facts — qualifies the work as “legendary” in the most literal sense. I know who did what, Bill. Who cares what anyone else knows, thinks or perpetuates? Did any other announcer-engineer-producer crew get to take that radio ride most weekdays at around eleven in the morning? I think not. Or, how about, “Not a clue”?

Bobby Tripp: "Life Is A Wheel, Baby"

Bill Mouzis: Of course, we remember Robert W. Morgan and The Real Don Steele — and Bobby Tripp. I want to say something, why I include Bobby Tripp. In the ’60s, I was managing a Little League team right out here in Tarzana, out here in Franklin Field, and my son Jerry was a pitcher on the team. It was a little softball league and he was very good. Tripp would always want to know where they were playing the next game, when Jerry was pitching. Tripp always came to the game. He was not only a great radio talent, he was just a wonderful person.

Charlie Tuna: Bobby Tripp, who followed me on the air from noon to three, gave me what probably was the best piece of advice I ever received. Tripp’s motto was, “The wheel turns, baby!” Meaning that you can be on top of the ratings or at the height of your career but nothing lasts forever. However, if you hang onto the wheel, eventually you’ll come around, even hitting bottom — but stay on that wheel and you'll be back on top again and again. I’ve never forgotten that, which is why I’m still in the toughest radio market in the world and still on morning drive playing the hits.

Geraldine Ostrow: It wasn’t long after Bobby got to L.A. that his wife called us and told me he had this problem. So I would call him very often and talk to him and I’d get reports that way. And he was a little bit modest. We used to actually get to his wife and say, “Joyce, send us information, send us little clippings.” So I have some clippings … he was in a publication. I think it was a broadcasting publication and there were little snippets about him.

Ron Jacobs: My conversations with Bobby Tripp were right up there with anything I ever read philosophically or heard in any of the Twelve Step meetings. His thing all boiled down to “Life is a wheel, baby.” And the secondary one, when he would be in the silliest situations he would just shrug and say, “Show business is my life.”

We had to change his air name because of Johnny Mitchell and all the things that led to that. I thought that we had named him when he got to L.A. But the jock that Bobby hated the most in San Francisco was a guy from New York who allegedly was one of the big bust-outs of the payola scheme, Peter Tripp. So Bobby Tripp with his irony said “Fuck it, I’ll be Bobby Tripp!” And “Tripp” was also cool with the psychedelics and all that shit going on then. So Bobby Tripp was OK. I don’t know that it was the best name but it didn’t matter because under any name he would be good.

And he never, ever played to the fact that he knew that he was dying. I mean he never missed a jock meeting. He’s the only guy of that whole crew that I can think of that ever came to my house socially, just to hang out. A Mensch.

Geraldine Ostrow: Mike … I mean Bobby … really was a mensch in every sense of the word. He had such a feeling for everybody. I called him one day — and I would almost be afraid to call my brother because I knew he had been in remission — and he always let the people believe that maybe he didn’t feel well because it was the air conditioning at the station. He never wanted to complain. But one day my sister had gone out to visit with him and said, “Ger, you better keep calling him, he’s not well, he isn’t right.”

Ron Jacobs: Jocks have missed shifts because of a hangnail or some made up intricate bullshit to cover up a hangover. I mean Tripp was in there with people whose egos, by then, were rampant and Tripp had produced hit records, promoted major concerts, owned a stable of race horses, seen and spent more money than these guys had ever known, hung out with top people and never laid out anything about those things, at least not to me.

Geraldine Ostrow: He never told anyone his son was diagnosed with leukemia. He said, “You know, we went out in the driveway and he just lay there so debilitated, like on his little face and tummy. And he was just a darling, brilliant little boy.” I would try to keep up his morale. And he continued, “Jesus Christ, here I am sick and then I have a sick kid,” and I said, “Mike look, you’re going to be OK.”

The night that I spoke with him, his wife had just wanted a little relief and went to the movies with someone. I spoke to him for four hours on the phone. “God, Ger, you’re good for me. Look, my temperature went down!” It was like 104 when I called him and he said, “Ger, it went down.”

Ron Jacobs: When Tripp was hospitalized, Frank Terry jumped in. I don’t know how long. But of course you know that the deal was to Terry, “It’s the Bobby Tripp Show, absolutely, positively,” and I just maintained my youthful optimism because, what year was this that Tripp died? ’68, OK.

See, I hadn’t lost the first really close friend in my peer group so I had this vision of we’re all immortal and he’s not really going to die and they’ll fix him; it’s UCLA. I didn’t care how long it was, Terry would do the show. I really believed that Tripp was going to make it, which he didn’t — and the last thing he ever said to me was, “Life is a wheel, baby.”

Tripp was the best, man.

2 B continued . . .

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KHJ: INSIDE BOSS RADIO ~ Part 15

Bill Mouzis spins the hits for The Real Don Steele

Bill Mouzis: I became the regular Steele board-operator until near the end of the second year. I’d come in in the mornings and do the production, take a short lunch break, go down and do the Steele thing, 3 to 6. And, of course, every time we got off the air we went over to Nickodell’s. (Laughs.)

It was a great experience working that board with Steele. I got to know his every move. You got to be careful because Steele’s waving his hands all over the place. You didn’t know where the hell the cues were coming from to hit the next element on the air. You got to know this after a while and it just worked out fine.

But the reason I left the show was what I told Bill Watson in the fall of 1967. Bill was Bill Drake’s right hand man. I said, “You know Bill, this production is really getting to be way too much.” I was doing production for a lot of the RKO chain, technically for Drake-Chenault. We were adding stations because of the success of what we had at KHJ already. First, KFRC in San Francisco. Then we got Boston, New York, WHBQ in Memphis. It was just getting to be too much. I couldn’t get the job done, couldn’t get the production done. I said, “Hey, I’ve gotta get off the Steele show, you gotta get me off of there.” Watson said, “OK, I’ll see what we can do.”

Within a week I was off the Steele show and they brought in a guy by the name of Jon Badeaux. He had worked on the air in San Bernardino or somewhere. He had an engineering background and he also did board work. So they assigned him to the Steele show and Jon did it the rest of the time.

Always on cue: The Real Don Steele

Jon Badeaux: Steele was amazing. He had an incredible sense of timing. He could hear things in the music that I never noticed. He taught me how to pick out the rhythm guitar, the catchy piano riff. Before each shift we had lunch together at Nickodell’s. We rarely talked about doing anything special that day because the magical stuff just seemed to be there. He’d tell me at lunch, on many occasions, that he was off his mark. “Cover me, man!” I doubt that any listener or pro could actually tell that he was having an off day. He was strong enough to carry the worst moment.

Back then, most records were under three minutes and we’d stop for one spot after almost every song. Yet we had fun telling stories on the intercom or playing the air sax as if we were the Blues Brothers. Every time he played a Supremes song I jumped up and lip-synced Diana Ross and it nailed him every time. In a newspaper interview he said, “That guy in there thinks he’s Diana Ross.” The real entertainment offered by Boss Radio was, more often than not, the banter on the intercom and the interplay of the jock and board op. But Steele was also very structured. Things had to be done a certain way. He could talk for hours on the amount of space that should always exist between a logo and a song with a cold start. After the sermon he’d add, “But you don’t need to know that shit. You got it. Born with it, baby!”

Bill Drake: My thing is, there was a vast difference between a personality and a guy that talked a lot, things that people couldn’t really relate to. You can look at some of the greatest jocks forever as far as people remember them. They’ll tell you Morgan, Steele, Charlie Tuna. Maybe it’s the name, I don’t know. I can tell you one thing, when you think about it, that’s interesting. They ring. Robert W. Morgan rings. The Real Don Steele, even Charlie Tuna, Humble Harve or “Big Daddy” Tom Donahue. Those names sing. Wolfman Jack, like that. But, they still have to have the goods. And handling themselves in public appearances doesn’t hurt.

Art Astor: Steele was always very good because he was always trying to be affable to the sales guys and knew that we could sell stuff. One very memorable incident: I sold a big promotion to the Motorama Motor Show at the Pan Pacific Auditorium. I said “Hey Don, I’m going to get you a nice fat fee for this thing. You gotta come and introduce some rock group. It’s live entertainment and you’re the guy.” He asked, “What do I get?” I replied, “I think they’ll give you $500 bucks.” He said, “Oh, that’s pretty cool.” I told him, “Just come with me. I’ll pick you up and take you there and bring you back.”

So I took him to the Pan Pacific, to a little press area where there were hors d’oeuvres and cocktails. While Steele waited for his big intro, he was just slushing them down. Within about an hour, he’s gassed. I said, “Don, you gotta stop! You gotta introduce this damn act, man. I’m going to introduce you as The Real Don Steele.” He said, “Man, hey listen, I’m going to take care of business.” At 8 p.m., Steele just barely gets up there and he says (slurring) “Tina Delgado is alive, alive!” and falls off the friggin’ stage! Boom! On his face! He gets up and says, “Hey man, did I take care of business or WHAT?” The crowd loved it. They thought it was a gag. We drove off with both of us laughing our asses off.

Carol Morgan: Robert wasn’t real fond of making public appearances. There was always kind of an edge about doing any of those. I remember going to a number of them. Once we got there it wasn’t so bad. The Doors, the beach party for the Big Kahuna, that was wild. But Robert actually hated public appearances. It was like an ordeal for him to have to go to them. He would do them and he did them well and he would feel terrific afterwards — usually. But that wasn’t one of his favorite things, being out in the public.

Johnny Williams: In 1959 I was Dapper Dan, The All Night Man, at KIMN, Denver. There was a chain of restaurants called the Holiday Drive-Ins. I would go out there dressed in a tuxedo and one of those formal top-hats and I would carry a walking stick. They had a little booth set up for me, right in the drive-in restaurant. I would play Top 40 music all-night long, midnight to six from that restaurant. I hated it. I loved the radio part of it and I loved the music, but it was really tough going to school. I would work all-night there and then drag my ass over to Denver University and fall asleep in my first class in the morning. And that was really tough. I was never thrilled with working all-nights and I always hated the public appearances.

The Real Don Steele: I like a little magic. I like a little showbiz. The people listening to me on radio, they don’t see me. They just hear a ZOOOOW coming at them out of that radio. There must be a term for this — a “spoonerism” or something. Once, after I’d been a bit disoriented and I was jerking along and I knew I had about eight more measures, I said, on the air, “Wait, now wait! That is not a spoonerism.” And I described what a spoonerism is — when you take something, turn it around and do it backwards. I said that at approximately 3:01. At 5:35, some housewife with two children, who had been driving all the way since, called to say that I was a dirty man. And I didn’t intend to be dirty — because I could get much dirtier, you know. With much more finesse.

Shelley Gordon: Ron probably doesn’t remember, but I was the perfect “beard” for a station that was pushing the limits. I could in all honesty tell parents that “Jock In The Box” had no ulterior meaning; it was just a play on “Jack, etc. etc.” I do remember going in to ask him what Acapulco Gold was at some point. It took some instruction from the jocks, who were quite amused, until I caught on to a lot of the lingo.

Chuck Blore: After Boss Radio came on KHJ, I tuned in on The Real Don Steele for the first time one afternoon. First Morgan, now I was given another ticket to Wonderland. New guy, new approach and new respect. Steele wasn’t at all like Morgan. But he too, had it put together in a way I could never have imagined and made the whole thing work like magic.

Tom Murphy: Robert W. Morgan used to say that Don Steele could do more with a grunt than most of the rest of us could do in five minutes. I took offense at that because I could grunt, too. But Don did things so quickly. In two seconds he would slide in so much.

Ed Dela Pena: For a while there, Steele was kind of a pain in the fanny. He would come in and yell and scream his head away, God! In the main studio we used an old RCA BK-6 microphone. We put a special acoustic filter in it to eliminate the pops because Morgan used to love to eat the mike, work it right in here and there. And so by putting on that acoustic shield we forced Steele to stay three inches away from the mike! Well, we knew something would happen with Steele and his volume thing and were prepared for it.

Not at first, of course, because when he came in, with the old setup all we had were 21 amplifiers to drive the monitor speakers and the headphones were driven with like a five-watt amplifier. Big Don came in and said, “That’s not enough, I can’t hear myself!” So we started changing amplifiers. He didn’t become happy until we put in a 40-watt amplifier just to drive his earphones. You could put his earphones on the table and walk away and still hear the music blasting out of them.

The Real Don Steele, (Sign off, Friday, June 14, 1968; Over “Wiggle Wobble” by Les Cooper, instrumental): “End of the Mo for The Real Don Steele Show. Sam Riddle is next, gonna entertain us all night long, boy, on our quest for adventure on a Fractious Friday in that neon fun jungle in that beautiful magnificent megalopolis that we call home. Right babies. Worked hard all week long and we’re gonna get it on and keep it on. And I know you’re up to it because I’m gonna testify in front and certify behind that we’re gonna have fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun! All night long. And we’re not gonna get paranoid behind Icarus. We’re not gonna let a lousy asteroid spoil our fun, boy. And if we do slip into the sea, we’re gonna let ’em know that we were there on a fractious, got somethin’ you know, takin’ care of business — TCB.

You know what I say, Marvin Gaye, Frances Faye, Dave Garroway, Curtis LeMay, Jacques DeMolay, Faye Dunaway, Dan Duryea, Michael René, Ruth Olay, Alvino Rey, Dobie Gray, Turhan Bey, Johnny Ray, Doris Day and Terence is now Stamped.

(Voice: Tina Delgado is ALIVE ALIVE!) Byyyyye!”

2 B continued . . .

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KHJ: INSIDE BOSS RADIO ~ Part 6

Confucius Say: Gypsies, Tramps & The City of Angels

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Roots of Boss Radio

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 B continued . . .

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