ALOHA AHMET

The Biggest Kahuna

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

KHJ: INSIDE BOSS RADIO ~ Part 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 . . .

http://www.93khj.com/

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 . . .

http://www.93khj.com/

KHJ: INSIDE BOSS RADIO ~ Part 16

Ed Dela Pena (KHJ Chief Engineer): The State of California has a law that you cannot be in a sound ambiance that exceeds so many decibels for so much time. Of course, Don didn’t want to pay attention to that, so he was forced to sign a waiver because the state maintained that those volume levels would deteriorate his hearing. And it did, sort of, because when Don would come out of his show at night for about ten minutes, he couldn’t hear. (Laughs.) He wasn’t totally deaf, but you know, you had to speak a little bit louder than normal. After we cured his headphone problem, it was a bit better. He was actually a pretty good guy. We shared a couple of Scotches here and there, right afterwards. ’Cause he’d come out at six o’clock which was time to go to Nickodell’s, the watering hole next door, and he would come in and sit at the table and order up four Scotches and put them right in front of him. (Laughs.)

Ken Levine: I asked Bill Mouzis if he knew the origin of ‘Tina Delgado is alive.’ He reacted like I was asking for the secret formula of Coca-Cola, which if he did know, he would have to kill me if he told me. What cracked me up was his saying something like, “Actually, I don’t think too many people asked Steele, out of respect, you know?” The actual story I heard — and it may be bullshit — was that there was a tiny mention in a newspaper personal column that someone was trying to find a Tina Delgado. A few days later someone else wrote that Tina Delgado is dead. And a few days after that someone else wrote in that Tina Delgado is alive. At least that’s one of the legends.

Ron Jacobs: A key at KHJ was each guy having his own shtick that would sort of make him a personality image-wise, if not by performance. So Morgan’s the only guy that could put the phone on the air. Riddle would talk about the nighttime scene up on Sunset Strip and plug his TV dance show. Roger would talk about records. And so on. With Steele I asked him, “What is your thing, man?”

He said, “Well, there’s TINA DELGADO, you know.”

“What’s TINA DELGADO?”

“Well, there’s this liner.”

“All right, there’s a liner — but what’s your thing?”

He said, “Well, it’s this liner.”

I said, “I know but it’s a liner, man. But what do you do on the radio? Morgan told me that …"

He said, “You don’t get it, man, this thing really works. You just do it over and over again. It’s a liner. You do it over and over.”

“You do it over again?”

“No,” Steele says, “a woman screams it.”

“A woman screams this. Over and over. What does she scream?”

“TINA DELGADO is alive, alive.”

“OK. What kind of woman?”

“Shrieking.”

Bill Mouzis: One of the things people always ask us is, “Who the hell is Tina Delgado?” And I don’t know. That’s one I really don’t know. He just brought it in. Steele brought it in with him. I don’t know where he got it, I don’t know who that was. And I didn’t even want to ask him. I figured if he wasn’t about to volunteer I wasn’t going to ask. Remember Jimmy Durante? Remember what he said at the end of his TV show? “Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.” Like, you’d go up to him and say, “Pardon me, Mr. Durante, but who is Mrs. Calabash?” Yeah, right.

Ron Jacobs: Now KHJ was a very unionized full-on Hollywood operation in 1965. The engineers were members of I.B.E.W. — the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Anyone who spoke on the air had to be a member of A.F.T.R.A., the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. So I called them, trying to be cool, and said, “I need some women to come down and shriek.” The entire copy was “Tina Delgado is alive, alive.”

There were 25 actresses sitting in the KHJ lobby rehearsing. And Mouzis thought he’d seen everything, right? World War II, network radio, a show that Steve Allen and his wife did in bed, anything. He came into the production room. “Uh, Ronnn, there’s, ah, a bunch of women out there chanting ‘Morgado’ something. Uh, Ronnnn,” — that’s how he’d pronounce my name when he could see something really fucking weird coming — “what’s the deal, man?”

I said, “We bring ’em in one at a time, we say, ‘Sit down ma’am, please give us a level and scream this.’”

I mean, how do you direct a woman to scream that? Five words. I respect Johnny Mann because he knows that the shorter things are, the harder they are to do. I don’t know why exactly, but I saw John do more than 20 takes of our first jingle, “93/KHJ.”

And I’m in this room and I’ve been in Hollywood for like four minutes and these professional actresses who have done Hamlet on stage or Stella Dallas on network radio or national commercials for Oldsmobile, they sit down in the booth and all they have to do is belt out, “Tina Delgado is alive, alive!” And I don’t even know what it’s supposed to sound like, you know, except that it worked in San Francisco.

And Morgan had already gone home. Steele hadn’t come in yet and besides, anything would work as far as he’s concerned. But I was trying to think, “What, is it supposed to be fast? Is it supposed to sound like someone they just found in a flipped car after a train wreck?”

“Del-gah-doooooooooo!”

“IS alive!”

“Del-GAHHHHHH-do!”

“IS ALIIIIIIIIIVE!”

“DELLLLLL-gato!”

“Tanya Del —

(Click) “Sorry, it’s TINA.”

“Oops, can I do it again?”

(Click) “OK, rolling.”

“Teeeeena Delgado —

Each audition took about a minute. The actresses, operating on the incorrect assumption that we had any idea of what we were doing, asked, “Will there be a call back?” I’d seen my share of Hollywood movies about Hollywood. “We’ll call you. Leave the name of your agent.”

And just as quickly as it hit like a tropical typhoon, Hurricane Tina was gone. Mouzis and I were happy that the thing was all over. But it wasn’t. We had two dozen women on tape shrieking.

Mouzis, a wise and patient man, locked the recorders and nodded in the direction of Nickodell’s. The coffee arrived and I asked him, “Billy, you’ve been doing this since radio was invented. What the fuck did we just do?”

“Hey, man, don’t ask me, you’re the program director.” That breaks the tension. We howl like hyenas. No one notices. This is Hollywood, babe.

Later, Steele came in to do his show. I dragged him into the production room where Mouzis was sitting with a 10-inch reel of tape racked up on a big Ampex recorder.

I said, “Listen to this.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Just listen up and tell me which one of these works for you.”

And The Real Don Steele listened. These were the Delgado finalists who had been selected from the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists to audition for this and one was going to receive a residual payment every thirteen weeks for years. And he listened to the first one and said, “That’s got it,” and walked out the door. He picked the first one. Then I remember that Steele was born in Hollywood and he expected this to happen some day. Hollywood, man, no biggie.

The Real Don Steele: Why do they like “Tina Delgado is ALIVE, ALIVE!” You tell me. I used that in Portland, Oregon and soon it was all over town like “Kilroy was here.” Dumb thing. I don’t have any idea why. I know it was a hit. I could feel it was a hit. I don’t know if “Roberto Delgado is alive, alive” would have been as heavy, I just don’t know. Even if I think I am caught up in some kind of insanity it doesn’t depress me, because I kind of enjoy it, you know?

Sitting there suddenly saying, “It ain’t bad if you fry it,” looking through the glass and there is an engineer in his early forties — Valley community, Little League baseball coach, Mr. Legitimate — cueing in noises that’ll go wowee rather than chooo. And I think to myself: What is this? A world situation this, and we’re in here giggling like did dad doo! I don’t feel ashamed of that. What a wonderful thing to have fun working. Not many people get that break.

Humble Harve: Coming on after Steele you felt like you were already on a rocket and you had to pick it up. Anybody who followed The Real Don Steele — if they didn’t jump on that rocket, man, they were six feet under. I can’t imagine doing anything low key after him. I mean, how could you? It’s just like it’s following an explosion. I had to stand off in the control room and egg him on. Jacobs told me what to do. “Get in there and rile him up,” for his final set, you know, the Delgado thing. Yeah, I was in there egging him on. I mean not in the same room. I would never go in the room with him, no, no, that wouldn’t work. But to stand outside with the engineer, looking in, that was the whole thing.

And come on, Steele didn’t need me. But it added to Jacobs’ whole Boss Jock team idea. It also made me feel better. Shit man, it’s like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig on the Yankees. You follow with another home run. There’s no let up, like passing the baton. Yeah. I think that was the greatest one-two punch that ever happened on the radio. There was no let-up, there was no breathing room, man. It was boom, boom. Here comes a left, here comes a right, boom, bang!

Ed Dela Pena: Eventually, we turned the mike around, andput it right in front of the jock’s face and hung it with some chains. I had had an Altec 604E in there and they’d pound the announcer’s desk. The volume would just go to the point where sometimes the engineer would have to cue up a record a little bit ahead of the playtime. Steele played the speaker so loud in there that the vibrations coming through the glass would make the turntable-needle skip. So they had to watch out for that and make sure it hadn’t skipped on them because of the acoustic problems with that big window we had in there. It really vibrated.

Milo Perichitch: I always had a weakness for The Real Don Steele because I felt he was really basically an honest person. And I liked Morgan too. Oh, yeah, Gary Mack. He was cool, he was a good guy. Humble Harve was fun. I didn’t know these guys that well; I was pretty busy with the TV show, “Boss City.” Really what I knew of the jocks off the air was whatever went down at our table at Nickodell’s. In 1966 it felt like KHJ was on top of the heap and it also sort of demanded responsible behavior and getting the tasks done. It was definitely a good feeling being with the #1 radio station.

Cyrus Faryar (KHJ's "Sitar The Pirate")

Cyrus Faryar: Radio guys at that time were always fascinating. Most of the jocks — there is probably a term, a medical term, for the personality of a Top 40 disc jockey — their radio persona was very vibrant. Out of the booth they could either be very modest and sort of conservative in their demeanor or off-the-charts crazy. But they found a common ground in radio as the name of the game and success was to have a distinct, immediately recognizable radio voice, personality and manner, so that people knew immediately who they were listening to. Whether it was The Real Don Steele or Robert W. Morgan or whoever. The first time I walked around the station in my full Sitar the Pirate outfit, Morgan’s demeanor was to be totally charged and quite urbane and he probably was just, you know, cool with the whole thing. Steele probably rolled his eyes.

Mitch Fisher: The Monkees concert at the Hollywood Bowl was their first major appearance in L.A., right? KHJ was presenting it. There were going to be 18,000 screaming 13-year-old girls there, right? So we decided that the disk jockeys should all wear different costumes from Western Costume. Really like bizarre outlandish stuff, fit right in with the Monkees, you know? I have one of Jacobs’ infamous memos. “Instead of coming on hip,” which is in quotes, “or anything formal, since the audience will be younger and because the Monkees are zany, you will be wearing grand costumes from Western Costume.” Then it says to check with Mitch Fisher. “These costumes are assignments and will only be changed if they don’t fit or with Mitch’s permission if you have a better idea.”

The jocks were supposed to dress like this:

Robert W. Morgan: Giant, muscle bound rooster from “The Danny Kaye TV Show.”

Johnny Williams: Caveman.

Bobby Tripp: Pancho Villa.

Real Don Steele: Lord High Executioner, as worn by Groucho Marx in the motion picture “The Mikado.” (Laughs.)

Humble Harve: Merlin The Magician.

Sam Riddle: Beau Brummel.

Gary Mack: Astronaut.

Robert W. Morgan and Monkee Davy Jones

Something happened between the memo and the show. Morgan and Steele switched costumes. Steele wanted to be the oversized rooster and Morgan wanted to be something else. So Morgan got a different costume and Steele became the giant rooster. He picked the rooster outfit.

The night of the concert when it came time before the show for everybody to get into their costumes, Steele put on the oversized stuffed rooster outfit, looked at himself in the mirror and said, “This is fucking ridiculous, I can’t go out there like this!”

To which I replied, “Don, you have to go out there like this. This is the way it’s all set up. This guy’s going to be Merlin, this guy’s going to be that, you gotta be — damnit, this is your costume! You picked it out.”

“No, I’m not doing it. I ain’t going on, sorry, man, that’s it. I ain’t doing it. I’m going on in my suit.” So he took off all the rooster costume stuff and he put on his blue serge suit with his tie and everything, right? While he’s doing this of course as soon as he said he’s not going on like that, I went out to find Jacobs and told him that Steele refused to go on wearing the rooster suit. And Jacobs said to me, “That’s your department. I got nothing to do with it, it’s up to you, deal with it.”

So I went back to the dressing room and I said, “Steele …” who was now in a blue serge suit with a tie and everything, right? And I said, “Steele, you’re not going on in that suit. You’re going on in the rooster suit or you’re not going on at all!”

Steele said, “Then I’m going to leave.”

I said, “Fine, we can do very well without you. Goodbye.”

So he stormed out the door. Probably went crying to find Jacobs. And Jacobs probably told Steele, “Hey, Mitch is running all of that.” So Steele came slinking back in, put on the rooster suit and went on. When you think about it, it was really ridiculous, a real scene. Steele or Morgan or both of them were always pulling shit. Those guys would’ve rolled over anyone but Jacobs.

2 B continued . . .

http://www.93khj.com/