It's not his real name. His real last name is short, but subject to some non flattering alterations on the air by callers with little minds. He was named after his Father, and I guess he was a "Chip" off the old block.
He started joining in on the " Personals of the Airwaves" show created on WREB in the 70's by a girl named Chris Plasse. Chris was also featured in the TV show I was on at the time, Odyssey, but I had never met her. Recently, I got a copy of an episode of that show featuring Chris doing astrological stuff. Funny how you know somebodies voice and be on the same television show with her, but never know what she looked like till 25 years later on a copy of an old show you have forgotten about. Also on that show was Alice Brock, from the restaurant fame. I have talked with her on the air a few times, as well as Officer Obie.
Although I never called her radio show, Chip did, and the first time I met him was at that little mall in Holyoke, and we struck up a friendship. When Chip got on the air at WREB, he was doing a daily show, when the Kielbasa Festival came up. Ah, The Kielbasa Festival. The town of Chicopee Massachusetts has a large Polish community, and in the 70's, somebody got the bright idea to have a festival honoring this wonderful little chunk 'o meat. Everything was kielbasa at this festival. Kielbasa pie, kielbasa sandwiches, kielbasa shakes. All Kielbasa, all the time. Hundreds of souls gathering yearly to worship and pay homage to this huge chunk of meat that the Chicopee Provision made every year. Each year it got bigger, and lived in a glass case full of ice for those hoards to marvel over and get their picture taken with it and Aunt Sophie at their side.
This was year number three for the old K-Fest. I was working for Hannon Security at the time. Hannons needed their best to oversee this three day celebration. Unfortunately their best had been arrested, so they sent me. I wore out a pair of shoes that weekend. Teddy Kennedy came to worship this meat. One of the Kennedy boys, the one who lost his leg to cancer, tripped on a rope going to see it, and I grabbed him. I were the hero. Sorry for the word " were" but this was the Kielbasa Festival. Richard Simmons showed up to marvel, and do his exercise routine he was just starting. Sweating to the Horseradish I guess he was doing.
Broadcasting "live" from the K-Fest was one Jonathan Evans on WREB. Joe Alfano gave him that name. He just found it in the phonebook, and a star was born. I would go on the air with Chip, and report no bombings, shootings, kidnappings or robberies had occurred since the last time I talked to him 15 minutes ago, so come to the K-Fest quick because Happy Louie was playing in an hour.
Chip and I had fun in those broadcasts, and he was looking for some ideas to promote the new bakery that was to be the new Langeliers Bakery in Holyoke. I went home that night, and wrote a battery of mindless ads for the place, along with a special, This Is Your Life Rene Baushman bit dedicated to the owner. A week later we recorded these things about halibut turnovers and square donuts and it was funny as it could be for the times.
Being in charge of security is not a task to be taken lightly when you talking about the Kielbasa Festival. You got your Kennedys, your Richard Simmons, and 300 thousand Polka Bands, with special guests like Bill Czupta, and Bob St Cyr, the guy in charge of the festival who rode around every day in an old firetruck.
The sausage itself weighed about 65 pounds the first year. By year three, it had grown to 85 pounds. The last day had come, the throngs had headed home to look for the Pepto Bismol, and the headlines in the paper the next day were glaring and ominous. "World's Largest Kielbasa Stolen!!!!" I guess I'll never get into the CIA now. This was the story of the decade. Forget politics or world affairs, hunger or crime. The worlds most worshipped hunk of meat had been pilfered from under the very noses of the entire city of Chicopee. I once got a lot of nasty calls from Chicopee residents when I asked one day, on the air ,how one would know when they got into Chicopee if there were no signs. Because you'd see maple syrup buckets on the telephone poles. Every area around any radio station has a city that is picked on for no reason really, and Chicopee was the one around here at that time.
The night the K-Fest closed, everybody, save 10 or 12 people, had departed and the question came up, " What do we do with this thing now?" Somebody said let's cut it up and we'll take it home. Sounded good to us, so we did just that. About an hour later, Bob St Cyr showed up, and there was me and some other guy there. He walked over to us and noticed the Mammer Jammer hot dog was gone. He went nuts. We told him we thought it was ok to share it. It wasn't.. He had to scramble to cover this up. So, viola, it was stolen.
The next day when I showed up at WREB with a chunk of this for Chip, I discovered he wasn't there, so I gave it to Tracy Cole. He referred to it as a nice gift from a listener, as he didn't want to be a principle in the great Kielbasa caper that left thousands speechless. So now the mystery is solved, and as the statue of limitations has run out, I think it is time the truth be known.
When I finally got my own show on WREB, Chip and I got to be the best of friends, and I would write a lot of scripts for our shows, in longhand. I would present these to him at various times, he'd scan them and we would record them, first take every time. After I left that station, we would pair up again at WMAS.
A lot of things are scripted on radio, but not on our watch at WMAS. I would dream things up, and Chip would roll with whatever I threw at him.. Listeners would always screw up his name. Jonathan Edwards was the most common, then it became the constant question to us when we did remotes ," Are you Murphy, or the guy that laughs?" Chip has a laugh that makes you laugh, and he laughed all the time. In 1980, I came up with The Top 10 List. Letterman is best known for it but I did it before anybody ever heard of it. So I brought it back during my stint at WMAS, and did it every morning with Chip. I knew it was good when he laughed, and he laughed a lot. One morning, I was reading a story about what one should do if you ever run into Bigfoot.
The words were, " If you should ever eye ball a Bigfoot" That came out ," If you should ever eye a big ball" He and I were on the floor for five minutes. Anytime I could make him laugh I would. We were a team, and it worked better than I could ever hope for.
We were sitting in my kitchen writing a skit for the air, the wives went shopping. I heard the car pull in, and said," Chip, take your clothes off!" Without hesitation we both got down to our undies, and the girls came in as we sat there calmly writing. They looked at us, walked by, and said nothing.
We both have strong ladies, and they grew to expect abnormal things from abnormal people. Chip and Me.
Chip and his bride run an herb shop in Chicopee now. http://www.theherbarium.com/ One day he came into the studio at WMAS. He said, " I have good news and bad news." He said, " I'm Leaving." I said, " So what's the bad news?" He laughed at that too. I knew at that moment that this amazing ride between two guys who had done so much together to make people laugh, was over. It was the beginning of the end, and I never did radio again in the same way. A few years later I was gone, but the spark that was there had left when Chip departed to work full time at his business.
Those days are now forever gone, and they won't come back. I still find a lot of laughter on the old tapes, but most important, I still have the friend that I shared time with one weekend when a huge chunk of meat was the catalyst for a lifelong friendship. I never could have done it without him. Thanks, Chaz. I love you, friend..
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Radio Types are an Odd Bunch
I have worked with a lot of people who had the same desire as me. To have a career in radio. There are virtually none left on the air. Thank you corporate America..
The ones I did cross paths with had their own goals, there own ideas and their own dreams. Most were great, some were, well, let's say peculiar.
When I worked at WMAS in Springfield, it started out as a Sunday only gig from noon till six. I worked alone all afternoon, and built up a following just doing odd things on the air and telling stories. I used to listen to the station on Sundays, and before me was Bonnie Barnes. I don't know where Bonnie came from, but I worked with her before on WLDM in Westfield, which later became WNNZ. I was doing the morning show, she was in sales. When WLDM went dark, and WNNZ came on one minute later, I was the first "live " voice on the air. Fifty thousand watts. I got mail from Canada. Not long after, Bonnie quit, and I got fired, along with most of the folks there one day and that was that.
So one Sunday ten years later I turn on WMAS, and when she said her name I called. Hi, how are ya, the usual. Two weeks later, I called her again to hear I song I guess, and she tells me she's leaving, and I should work there. I wasn't interested, so I said no thanks. Bonnie could talk a lot, and that she did, because the next morning, Steve Williams, the program director called me and said he wanted me to do Sundays. I finally agreed, and six months later the morning guy moved south and I was plugged into the morning show for the duration. This went on till New Years eve, 98 into 99, when I was fired. This was a capitalism decision by the owner.
During my years at WMAS I had a ball, mostly because of two people, Chip Evans and Steve Williams. Steve is a tall guy with an amazing voice, and a go for it attitude, and as PD, he has the decision to reject any idea I ever came up with. He never did. There was a day I wanted to do a morning show from the roof of the station. This was three days setting up on the air. The concept was that my contract had expired, ( I never had a contract in my life on radio ), and the new one was in the mail, but due to the terms of the contract, I had to do my morning show as per my contract, but I was not allowed on the air without a contract. Joe Rizza our GM got in on this and went on the air with Steve and me. I was yelling off mic how stupid this was, Joe was trying to calm me down, Steve told me to be cool, and I slammed the studio door on the way out of the studio. Steve was doing his daily show as this went on, and the phones lit up demanding I be on the air next morning, and it went on all day.
At 5:30 the next morning, Steve started my show, and a lot of people were listening to see what was going to happen. Phones started ringing almost right away, and about a minute into the sports Steve was doing, another voice came on the air out of somewhere. It was the engineer Chuck Hurlihey and me talking. We were on the roof, and tapping into the signal. I was on the air, from the roof of WMAS. That morning had dozens of people stopping, hundreds of horn toots and waves. I'm sure a lot of people driving down that busy road tuned in to see what was going on up there especially when a local cop pulled his cruiser in the lot and left his flashing lights on for half an hour or so. Joe was using a bull horn to communicate with me, and Chip and myself were getting eaten alive by black flies from the river. It was one wild fun filled morning that got a lot of press, and more listeners.
There were weird things that happened to me on radio. When I lived in Southwick, I had about a 25 minute drive to WREB in Holyoke every morning, and I used to listen to the news on the way in all of the time. One morning, there was a story about some guy, despondent I guess, who was on the 25th floor of a building somewhere in New York, threatening to jump. After four hours of negotiations, he jumped. So I am thinking about this story, and was wondering what would you say to someone who was on a ledge like that. How would you get him to change their mind?
I found it far more interesting to assume roles on the air, rather that just ask hypothetical questions, so I became a jumper one morning. I told the audience I was on the 15th floor of a building in Holyoke, this was my last show and I was going to jump unless someone talked me down. I was sounding as serious as possible, and the calls started coming in. There were no 15 story buildings in Holyoke then, and wouldn't you think management would wonder how I possibly could have set up a broadcast from this alleged ledge? A lot of people thought it was real. So much so, that half way through my last hour, the Holyoke Police, six of them came rushing into the station. I took a break and buzzed the receptionist, as you could see the door from the studio. " What's going on", I asked. Judy said, " They're here to save you." Somebody called the police station and begged them to stop the guy on the radio from killing himself, and they believed it was true. The story made the front page of the Springfield Republican the next morning with the slug line, " Police Save Talk Show Host From Jumping". Who would have thought one idea would double the audience in one day.
Years later at WMAS one winters morning, I noticed about 25 hubcaps all over our parking lot from cars going over the North end bridge and hitting a pot hole about the size of a swimming pool. I called the DPW and had them on the air. There was only one guy who could get the hole fixed, so I got his car phone and called him as he was driving to Boston. He was on the air too, and said he would make sure it got done. I then got a remote mic, went out and lined all of these hubcaps up in a snow bank, and tried to sell them on the radio. Some how the local TV station got wind of this, and by the end of the day, the story was on the nightly news and the pothole was filled. More free PR and more listeners.
In my early days at WMAS, there was a regular crew of voices doing their shows every day. I did the mornings, Steve did mid days, Wayne Carter afternoons, followed by Frank Knight, and finally Art Lord. Almost every AM station on the dial had their own version of Les Nessman, ( WKRP in Cincinatti ). We had Art Lord, and Lordy this guy was scary. He looked Gothic all of the time. Reminded us of a vampire. He would come in every night with duffel bags full of whatever. He looked like he was taking a trip somewhere. When I came in for the morning show, he had this stuff everywhere, and it took him 10 minutes to get everything back into the bags. He was always in a hurry for some reason, maybe because the sun was coming up. When he left the station, he went to work at a ladies senior citizens home. He died a few years after leaving the station, probably from sunlight.
Frank Knight is an institution. He has been on just about every station around here that there is. A story I heard about Frank shows how some program directors just shouldn't be doing what they are doing. It seems that years back, Frank went from one station in the area to the FM side of WMAS. Frank is a Polka nut, and generally knows his stuff when it comes to big band music. Not so with the music in the 70's. He once played a song, then said he was going to take a break, and when he came back, it will be time for a great song by Alice Cooper, and SHE'LL sing it for you right after this. Not long thereafter, Frank was plugged into the AM side and entertained for many years.
Wayne Carter was a curious guy that could talk ad infinitum about anything. He was a marine, knew a million radio people, and was once a best friend to the guy who voiced the intro for the Superman TV series. He had a couple of failed marriages, and would up somehow on WMAS. He had no car, and not many friends.
When Joe Rizza left the station, he was replaced by a guy who started the ruination of that station. He had convinced the owner to go all satellite, except for the morning show on the AM side. He then told me it was my responsibility to dismiss everybody else on the air, as I knew them and he didn't. I almost lost my job in the argument over this, but I finally conceded as they knew me, and this clown had no tact or feelings. Steve had already left, and I had to tell Frank and Wayne. Wayne was devastated. He was older, and he knew that with the state of AM radio, this was the end of the line for his career.
They were given a small severance package, and Wayne decided that he would do the other thing he loved to do. Drink.. Somebody broke into his apartment and took his TV. I got him another one. He called me at home weeks later, asking me to come right over to his place. When I got there, all of his meager things were on the tree belt and he was on the curb. He had nothing.
Wayne lived with Linda and me for a few weeks. He slept on the couch, left early and just walked all day long because he didn't want to be a pest. We would give him money, and the one other person in the area he knew, stored what little he had in a garage somewhere.
Wayne got into some sort of AA program out near Boston. He would call from time to time. I had heard nothing from him for a few months, till one night I got home and listened to the answering machine. I wasn't sure who it was, the voice weak and barely a whisper. The booze caught up to him.. I pondered calling him back.. I waited a day or so and called. He was gone. Buried in some Potters field somewhere out on the Cape, I imagine there is no marker there.
About six months later, I got a call from the guy who was storing his stuff. He wanted it out of his garage, and wanted to know how to get hold of Wayne.
I never knew much about the man except that he loved radio and had a great sense of humor, and stories. Man he could tell stories.
In better days, the old crew was pretty tight. I went in one morning as usual, started the show at 5:30, when I heard some voice in my earphones, and traffic noise. I stopped, wondering what this was when Steve, who isn't on the air till 10, pushed the door open and took my picture. Stunned? I guess you could say that. So what was this all about? He told me to go home, then I realized the voice reading the sports, or whatever, was my wife Linda. She had set this entire thing up with Steve. The remote unit, the engineer, and the bride were on my front porch, doing the morning show. We did the whole morning from my house. When it started raining, we moved into the living room. An entire morning on the air with cops stopping in, members of the Air Force, sponsors bringing food, and strangers sitting on the couch. At one point, I was playing Tetras on the TV with somebody, and this was going out over the air. Could that happen in today's radio? no............no.
There was a cow in the area that got away from its owner and I found out about this. I managed to set up "Cow Central" on the air, turning this search into something huge. I named the nameless cow Elsie, ( of course ) and had half the community out looking for her. I had a cow in a can sound effect we used constantly.We had hourly cow updates and Chip always had this story in every newscast. I was in the woods with a phone talking on the air when I fell into a pond. Now this is good radio. This made the paper too. Cow Central. I had this goofy voice I played at all times throughout the day just before the update saying, " Where's The Beef?"
It went on for three or four days. It was a ton of fun, and listeners really had a good time with it. Then they found her dead somewhere. I never talked about that aspect of this whole bit. I just let it fade away.
Sometimes a caller would ask me to say happy birthday to someone and I would. One day a friend called me, and reminded me it was his wife's birthday.
It would have been easy just to say Happy Birthday, but I quickly scribbled some dumb notes and turned the entire morning into Liz Stones birthday bash. Chip did his news outside, I had parade sound effects, and people in the station calling in talking about this special day and the preparations they were making for dinner. I got calls all morning from people wondering who in the world is Liz Stone. I even had her on the air saying where she would be to sign autographs . When I got a weird idea , I went with it, and it always worked.
The morning I convinced Chip to announce he hit the lottery was a fun day. He said a lot of mean things about everybody, then I told him I looked at his ticket and although he had the right numbers, it was an old ticket from 3 weeks ago, then he started to retract what he had said. It was a hoot hearing him squirm.. Johnny never could have done the Tonight show without Ed, and I never could do my show the same way when Chip left. He was the best.
The format was big band music. One morning I had Chip announce, right as he finished the news, that we were pretty excited about the new format change. "Now we kick off the new WMAS!! All rock and roll, all the time." At 5:35 in the morning, people who were used to hearing Sinatra or Glenn Miller were treated to a nice little Dire Straits tune, Money For Nothin'. It was the long version and I pegged the VU meters. I never knew how many people were awake at that time, and how really mad they could be. After all, it was April first, but that never dawned on them..
See, we radio types are an odd bunch, as most of us ,then ,wanted you to laugh as we tried, oh so hard ,to keep that "theater of the mind" still alive , and make you wonder, what's going to happen today with those goofs on the radio?
The ones I did cross paths with had their own goals, there own ideas and their own dreams. Most were great, some were, well, let's say peculiar.
When I worked at WMAS in Springfield, it started out as a Sunday only gig from noon till six. I worked alone all afternoon, and built up a following just doing odd things on the air and telling stories. I used to listen to the station on Sundays, and before me was Bonnie Barnes. I don't know where Bonnie came from, but I worked with her before on WLDM in Westfield, which later became WNNZ. I was doing the morning show, she was in sales. When WLDM went dark, and WNNZ came on one minute later, I was the first "live " voice on the air. Fifty thousand watts. I got mail from Canada. Not long after, Bonnie quit, and I got fired, along with most of the folks there one day and that was that.
So one Sunday ten years later I turn on WMAS, and when she said her name I called. Hi, how are ya, the usual. Two weeks later, I called her again to hear I song I guess, and she tells me she's leaving, and I should work there. I wasn't interested, so I said no thanks. Bonnie could talk a lot, and that she did, because the next morning, Steve Williams, the program director called me and said he wanted me to do Sundays. I finally agreed, and six months later the morning guy moved south and I was plugged into the morning show for the duration. This went on till New Years eve, 98 into 99, when I was fired. This was a capitalism decision by the owner.
During my years at WMAS I had a ball, mostly because of two people, Chip Evans and Steve Williams. Steve is a tall guy with an amazing voice, and a go for it attitude, and as PD, he has the decision to reject any idea I ever came up with. He never did. There was a day I wanted to do a morning show from the roof of the station. This was three days setting up on the air. The concept was that my contract had expired, ( I never had a contract in my life on radio ), and the new one was in the mail, but due to the terms of the contract, I had to do my morning show as per my contract, but I was not allowed on the air without a contract. Joe Rizza our GM got in on this and went on the air with Steve and me. I was yelling off mic how stupid this was, Joe was trying to calm me down, Steve told me to be cool, and I slammed the studio door on the way out of the studio. Steve was doing his daily show as this went on, and the phones lit up demanding I be on the air next morning, and it went on all day.
At 5:30 the next morning, Steve started my show, and a lot of people were listening to see what was going to happen. Phones started ringing almost right away, and about a minute into the sports Steve was doing, another voice came on the air out of somewhere. It was the engineer Chuck Hurlihey and me talking. We were on the roof, and tapping into the signal. I was on the air, from the roof of WMAS. That morning had dozens of people stopping, hundreds of horn toots and waves. I'm sure a lot of people driving down that busy road tuned in to see what was going on up there especially when a local cop pulled his cruiser in the lot and left his flashing lights on for half an hour or so. Joe was using a bull horn to communicate with me, and Chip and myself were getting eaten alive by black flies from the river. It was one wild fun filled morning that got a lot of press, and more listeners.
There were weird things that happened to me on radio. When I lived in Southwick, I had about a 25 minute drive to WREB in Holyoke every morning, and I used to listen to the news on the way in all of the time. One morning, there was a story about some guy, despondent I guess, who was on the 25th floor of a building somewhere in New York, threatening to jump. After four hours of negotiations, he jumped. So I am thinking about this story, and was wondering what would you say to someone who was on a ledge like that. How would you get him to change their mind?
I found it far more interesting to assume roles on the air, rather that just ask hypothetical questions, so I became a jumper one morning. I told the audience I was on the 15th floor of a building in Holyoke, this was my last show and I was going to jump unless someone talked me down. I was sounding as serious as possible, and the calls started coming in. There were no 15 story buildings in Holyoke then, and wouldn't you think management would wonder how I possibly could have set up a broadcast from this alleged ledge? A lot of people thought it was real. So much so, that half way through my last hour, the Holyoke Police, six of them came rushing into the station. I took a break and buzzed the receptionist, as you could see the door from the studio. " What's going on", I asked. Judy said, " They're here to save you." Somebody called the police station and begged them to stop the guy on the radio from killing himself, and they believed it was true. The story made the front page of the Springfield Republican the next morning with the slug line, " Police Save Talk Show Host From Jumping". Who would have thought one idea would double the audience in one day.
Years later at WMAS one winters morning, I noticed about 25 hubcaps all over our parking lot from cars going over the North end bridge and hitting a pot hole about the size of a swimming pool. I called the DPW and had them on the air. There was only one guy who could get the hole fixed, so I got his car phone and called him as he was driving to Boston. He was on the air too, and said he would make sure it got done. I then got a remote mic, went out and lined all of these hubcaps up in a snow bank, and tried to sell them on the radio. Some how the local TV station got wind of this, and by the end of the day, the story was on the nightly news and the pothole was filled. More free PR and more listeners.
In my early days at WMAS, there was a regular crew of voices doing their shows every day. I did the mornings, Steve did mid days, Wayne Carter afternoons, followed by Frank Knight, and finally Art Lord. Almost every AM station on the dial had their own version of Les Nessman, ( WKRP in Cincinatti ). We had Art Lord, and Lordy this guy was scary. He looked Gothic all of the time. Reminded us of a vampire. He would come in every night with duffel bags full of whatever. He looked like he was taking a trip somewhere. When I came in for the morning show, he had this stuff everywhere, and it took him 10 minutes to get everything back into the bags. He was always in a hurry for some reason, maybe because the sun was coming up. When he left the station, he went to work at a ladies senior citizens home. He died a few years after leaving the station, probably from sunlight.
Frank Knight is an institution. He has been on just about every station around here that there is. A story I heard about Frank shows how some program directors just shouldn't be doing what they are doing. It seems that years back, Frank went from one station in the area to the FM side of WMAS. Frank is a Polka nut, and generally knows his stuff when it comes to big band music. Not so with the music in the 70's. He once played a song, then said he was going to take a break, and when he came back, it will be time for a great song by Alice Cooper, and SHE'LL sing it for you right after this. Not long thereafter, Frank was plugged into the AM side and entertained for many years.
Wayne Carter was a curious guy that could talk ad infinitum about anything. He was a marine, knew a million radio people, and was once a best friend to the guy who voiced the intro for the Superman TV series. He had a couple of failed marriages, and would up somehow on WMAS. He had no car, and not many friends.
When Joe Rizza left the station, he was replaced by a guy who started the ruination of that station. He had convinced the owner to go all satellite, except for the morning show on the AM side. He then told me it was my responsibility to dismiss everybody else on the air, as I knew them and he didn't. I almost lost my job in the argument over this, but I finally conceded as they knew me, and this clown had no tact or feelings. Steve had already left, and I had to tell Frank and Wayne. Wayne was devastated. He was older, and he knew that with the state of AM radio, this was the end of the line for his career.
They were given a small severance package, and Wayne decided that he would do the other thing he loved to do. Drink.. Somebody broke into his apartment and took his TV. I got him another one. He called me at home weeks later, asking me to come right over to his place. When I got there, all of his meager things were on the tree belt and he was on the curb. He had nothing.
Wayne lived with Linda and me for a few weeks. He slept on the couch, left early and just walked all day long because he didn't want to be a pest. We would give him money, and the one other person in the area he knew, stored what little he had in a garage somewhere.
Wayne got into some sort of AA program out near Boston. He would call from time to time. I had heard nothing from him for a few months, till one night I got home and listened to the answering machine. I wasn't sure who it was, the voice weak and barely a whisper. The booze caught up to him.. I pondered calling him back.. I waited a day or so and called. He was gone. Buried in some Potters field somewhere out on the Cape, I imagine there is no marker there.
About six months later, I got a call from the guy who was storing his stuff. He wanted it out of his garage, and wanted to know how to get hold of Wayne.
I never knew much about the man except that he loved radio and had a great sense of humor, and stories. Man he could tell stories.
In better days, the old crew was pretty tight. I went in one morning as usual, started the show at 5:30, when I heard some voice in my earphones, and traffic noise. I stopped, wondering what this was when Steve, who isn't on the air till 10, pushed the door open and took my picture. Stunned? I guess you could say that. So what was this all about? He told me to go home, then I realized the voice reading the sports, or whatever, was my wife Linda. She had set this entire thing up with Steve. The remote unit, the engineer, and the bride were on my front porch, doing the morning show. We did the whole morning from my house. When it started raining, we moved into the living room. An entire morning on the air with cops stopping in, members of the Air Force, sponsors bringing food, and strangers sitting on the couch. At one point, I was playing Tetras on the TV with somebody, and this was going out over the air. Could that happen in today's radio? no............no.
There was a cow in the area that got away from its owner and I found out about this. I managed to set up "Cow Central" on the air, turning this search into something huge. I named the nameless cow Elsie, ( of course ) and had half the community out looking for her. I had a cow in a can sound effect we used constantly.We had hourly cow updates and Chip always had this story in every newscast. I was in the woods with a phone talking on the air when I fell into a pond. Now this is good radio. This made the paper too. Cow Central. I had this goofy voice I played at all times throughout the day just before the update saying, " Where's The Beef?"
It went on for three or four days. It was a ton of fun, and listeners really had a good time with it. Then they found her dead somewhere. I never talked about that aspect of this whole bit. I just let it fade away.
Sometimes a caller would ask me to say happy birthday to someone and I would. One day a friend called me, and reminded me it was his wife's birthday.
It would have been easy just to say Happy Birthday, but I quickly scribbled some dumb notes and turned the entire morning into Liz Stones birthday bash. Chip did his news outside, I had parade sound effects, and people in the station calling in talking about this special day and the preparations they were making for dinner. I got calls all morning from people wondering who in the world is Liz Stone. I even had her on the air saying where she would be to sign autographs . When I got a weird idea , I went with it, and it always worked.
The morning I convinced Chip to announce he hit the lottery was a fun day. He said a lot of mean things about everybody, then I told him I looked at his ticket and although he had the right numbers, it was an old ticket from 3 weeks ago, then he started to retract what he had said. It was a hoot hearing him squirm.. Johnny never could have done the Tonight show without Ed, and I never could do my show the same way when Chip left. He was the best.
The format was big band music. One morning I had Chip announce, right as he finished the news, that we were pretty excited about the new format change. "Now we kick off the new WMAS!! All rock and roll, all the time." At 5:35 in the morning, people who were used to hearing Sinatra or Glenn Miller were treated to a nice little Dire Straits tune, Money For Nothin'. It was the long version and I pegged the VU meters. I never knew how many people were awake at that time, and how really mad they could be. After all, it was April first, but that never dawned on them..
See, we radio types are an odd bunch, as most of us ,then ,wanted you to laugh as we tried, oh so hard ,to keep that "theater of the mind" still alive , and make you wonder, what's going to happen today with those goofs on the radio?
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Clap For The Wolfman
In 1969, I was sailing back to the Continental United States in the Fall. It was the worst year of my military life. A collision at sea between the HMS Melbourne and our own Frank E. Evans had taken 74 souls on the Evans, including 3 brothers from Nebraska, the worst family loss since the Sullivan brothers died on the Juneau in 1944.
I was standing out on a catwalk on my ship, at night with a radio I had bought the year before at an auction house in Long Beach. I was scanning the dial trying to pick up and broadcasts from the mainland, and I was barely even picking up static when all of a sudden a song was playing. I had no idea where it was coming from, so I listened...and waited. The announcer came on. " Hey Baby, you got the Wolfman right here on XERB radio wit cha" I knew I was almost home. Nobody had more fans then than the Wolfman.
Sure, till American Graffiti was released, most folks thought he was black, and virtually nobody on the East coast ever heard of him, but if you were in or around Los Angeles, you listened to the 500,000 watt XERB out of Mexico, and the man with that voice.
In 1985, I spent a week in Los Angeles with Howard Stern, and got to meet this guy. His name was Robert Smith, and he was dressed up like Waylon Jennings, complete with this huge cowboy hat. He wrapped his arms around my wife as I told him the story of me hearing him out at sea. He said, " Dats a nice story man, I'm glad you told me". A friend of mine videoed this encounter, and it has become a lasting memory in our home.
Recalling me meeting with him made me think about some of the people I have met or just spoke with on the phone. People I never would have encountered but for the fact I did a radio show. There were dozens and dozens of entertainers and just plane folks that graced the airwaves of Western Mass . Some were known around the world. Some were completely whacked out.
There were those that I interviewed and it turned out that I was the last interview they ever did. Dennis Day was one of them.
He was in Holyoke for the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade in 1987, and I met him in an old folks home one morning in Holyoke. As I never prepared anything for any interview I ever did, I just clicked the cassette recorder on and went to with him for about 15 minutes. Most of the conversation centered around the Jack Benny Show, and a touching story about Eddie Anderson not being allowed to stay in a New York Hotel because he was black. Benny was ballistic, and Eddie was allowed to stay when Benny was finished with the hotel staff.
Dennis marched in the parade that Sunday, but something happened to him before the parade ended. He was admitted to a New York Hospital, and died shortly thereafter. He was a kind man with an ever present twinkle in his eye.
In the late 90's, Mel Torme was coming to Springfield for a concert. I had him on the air the day before, and Ella Fitzgerald came up in the conversation.
I had met Ella 30 thousand feet up in the air somewhere over the country, spoke to her briefly, and kissed her hand. Torme said she was his neighbor and SHOULD go to see her, but at that time, she had lost her legs to illness, and he didn't want to see her that way. He never got the chance. He did the concert, got very ill, and died not long after.
The good news is, not everybody died right after they had contact with me. I interviewed some amazing people, many were people I really admired. Some of the best were: Noel Stookey, or Paul from Peter Paul and Mary. He has a farm in New Hampshire (?) and invited me there, but I never went. Andy Griffith, who is the same person we all know from TV. Frankie Laine, an icon I spoke with personally a few times at home. Johnny Tillotson, Tommy Roe, and Tommy James, all rockers from the 60's, all with no ego whatsoever. Tommy James told the story of how the name Mony Mony came to be. It was the initials on a building in New York, and stands for Mutual of New York. You can see what he saw at the time in the movie Midnight Cowboy. Then there was Jimmy Jones. The Handy Man. His other big hit was Good Timing. This one is so special because of his tales of growing up to be a black singer in those days. Movie writers couldn't come up with what these good people had to endure, and still do.
I had the Amazing Kreskin on the air one day. Somehow we got to talking about lasagna, and as my wife Linda is a cooking genius, she made a tray of it for him that we gave him back stage after the show. He was a great guy. There were a lot of others, and then there were those that were just regular folks, ( sort of ), that had a story to tell. One of those was Elizabeth Tajnian, the Nut Lady. I had read an article about her somewhere, and that she had even been on the Carson show. She had a museum in Connecticut dedicated to the "nut". Not me, not some goofy person, but specifically filberts, cashews, et. al. The spooky thing about her was that she was serious about it, and was convinced that nuts were ALIVE!!! THEY'RE ALIVE!! (insert Twilight Zone music here) She had penned the National Anthem to the nut and sang it on the air. People thought about this for days on the air.
I had an interesting conversation with a man who wanted to get into the record books as the first human flashbulb by strapping hundreds of flashbulbs, ( remember flashbulbs?), and setting them off all at once. Never found out how he made out..
Then there was the guy who got hold of some moon pictures, sent me copies and I had him on the air as he told me where to look on these photos to see things like houses, cranes and foundations that somebody was building there. I guess everybody needs a hobby.
There were times when I just couldn't get somebody to hang up, so I recorded a studio cart of static to use when it was needed. I recorded a needle scratching the paper label of a record and it sounded just like static. The first time I used it was the day Jerry Mathers, The Beaver called. Probably the worst interview I ever was involved with. This guy wouldn't talk, and the odd thing was at that time he was doing a radio talk show somewhere. I would ask him something, and all he would say was "yup" or "nope", and after five minutes of this, out came the static, that he heard down the line too, and I apologized and hung up. Now the guy calls back. Same deal with the conversation, and mysteriously, the static came back.
There were those I wanted to get on the air, but was never successful. Jimmy Stewart, but he wrote a letter to me thanking him for the request. Bill Cosby who lives about 20 miles from me. Never got an answer, but I know these folks are busy, and besides most of them are famous and no longer need radio to get out to the masses. At the top of my list, of all of the people I could speak with in the world, my biggest regret is not being able to do an interview with my idol. Sammy Davis Jr. I was driving a lumber truck one day in Connecticut when I head the news that Sammy and Jim Henson had both died. Another memory of where I was when.... There has never been a performer like him, and I had a million questions, now mostly forgotten, that I wanted to ask him.
When 1999 turned into 2000, I guess it was inevitable somebody would come up with the question, " Who was the greatest performer of the 20th century?" When I first heard that, I immediately thought, no question about it, Sammy was. So the masses voted. It was Elvis. ELVIS? All right, I liked his music, and sure, I wanted to look like him, but entertainer of the century?
Elvis could sing, that's a given. He was in 30 some odd forgettable movies, and he played piano and a little guitar. He was around about 20 years.
Lets look at Sammy. Oh yeah, he could sing, and he could dance like lightning. He was a brilliant actor on film and on stage. He played trumpet, and piano, and the drums like Ginger Baker. He did impressions and impersonations, and he was spectacular at it. He was a comedian. He was everything an entertainer wants to be, but can't be, and he had to do it all with a handicap. We had him for over 60 years. But Elvis was entertainer of the century. What's wrong with this picture?
Jim Brickman came into the studio one day when I was at WMAS. I saw him on the FM side of the station in the studio doing an interview, and got him to come over to the AM side where I was on the air. I was playing his music in the format at that time, but the FM side wasn't. He was a great guy, and in order to show his appreciation for the interview, he sent the FM folks a brick. Sort of a trademark for Jim, I guess. Just a brick with his name on it.. I never got a brick, Yes, it still hurts, but I will get over it someday. See, fewer and fewer people are listening to AM stations any more, but FM is big now, and just the reverse of what it was 40 years ago, so I guess a little audience doesn't deserve a brick any more. In the days of the Wolfman, on AM radio, he would have received an entire wall. You just couldn't not clap for the Wolfman. I'm so glad I got to meet him . He was one of those radio characters that fade slowly away day by day.
To all of those people who spent time with me on the airwaves, as Ed Nackey, owner of Ed Nackey Chevrolet in Holyoke used to say at the end of his commercials on WREB radio, " Thanks Folks."
I was standing out on a catwalk on my ship, at night with a radio I had bought the year before at an auction house in Long Beach. I was scanning the dial trying to pick up and broadcasts from the mainland, and I was barely even picking up static when all of a sudden a song was playing. I had no idea where it was coming from, so I listened...and waited. The announcer came on. " Hey Baby, you got the Wolfman right here on XERB radio wit cha" I knew I was almost home. Nobody had more fans then than the Wolfman.
Sure, till American Graffiti was released, most folks thought he was black, and virtually nobody on the East coast ever heard of him, but if you were in or around Los Angeles, you listened to the 500,000 watt XERB out of Mexico, and the man with that voice.
In 1985, I spent a week in Los Angeles with Howard Stern, and got to meet this guy. His name was Robert Smith, and he was dressed up like Waylon Jennings, complete with this huge cowboy hat. He wrapped his arms around my wife as I told him the story of me hearing him out at sea. He said, " Dats a nice story man, I'm glad you told me". A friend of mine videoed this encounter, and it has become a lasting memory in our home.
Recalling me meeting with him made me think about some of the people I have met or just spoke with on the phone. People I never would have encountered but for the fact I did a radio show. There were dozens and dozens of entertainers and just plane folks that graced the airwaves of Western Mass . Some were known around the world. Some were completely whacked out.
There were those that I interviewed and it turned out that I was the last interview they ever did. Dennis Day was one of them.
He was in Holyoke for the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade in 1987, and I met him in an old folks home one morning in Holyoke. As I never prepared anything for any interview I ever did, I just clicked the cassette recorder on and went to with him for about 15 minutes. Most of the conversation centered around the Jack Benny Show, and a touching story about Eddie Anderson not being allowed to stay in a New York Hotel because he was black. Benny was ballistic, and Eddie was allowed to stay when Benny was finished with the hotel staff.
Dennis marched in the parade that Sunday, but something happened to him before the parade ended. He was admitted to a New York Hospital, and died shortly thereafter. He was a kind man with an ever present twinkle in his eye.
In the late 90's, Mel Torme was coming to Springfield for a concert. I had him on the air the day before, and Ella Fitzgerald came up in the conversation.
I had met Ella 30 thousand feet up in the air somewhere over the country, spoke to her briefly, and kissed her hand. Torme said she was his neighbor and SHOULD go to see her, but at that time, she had lost her legs to illness, and he didn't want to see her that way. He never got the chance. He did the concert, got very ill, and died not long after.
The good news is, not everybody died right after they had contact with me. I interviewed some amazing people, many were people I really admired. Some of the best were: Noel Stookey, or Paul from Peter Paul and Mary. He has a farm in New Hampshire (?) and invited me there, but I never went. Andy Griffith, who is the same person we all know from TV. Frankie Laine, an icon I spoke with personally a few times at home. Johnny Tillotson, Tommy Roe, and Tommy James, all rockers from the 60's, all with no ego whatsoever. Tommy James told the story of how the name Mony Mony came to be. It was the initials on a building in New York, and stands for Mutual of New York. You can see what he saw at the time in the movie Midnight Cowboy. Then there was Jimmy Jones. The Handy Man. His other big hit was Good Timing. This one is so special because of his tales of growing up to be a black singer in those days. Movie writers couldn't come up with what these good people had to endure, and still do.
I had the Amazing Kreskin on the air one day. Somehow we got to talking about lasagna, and as my wife Linda is a cooking genius, she made a tray of it for him that we gave him back stage after the show. He was a great guy. There were a lot of others, and then there were those that were just regular folks, ( sort of ), that had a story to tell. One of those was Elizabeth Tajnian, the Nut Lady. I had read an article about her somewhere, and that she had even been on the Carson show. She had a museum in Connecticut dedicated to the "nut". Not me, not some goofy person, but specifically filberts, cashews, et. al. The spooky thing about her was that she was serious about it, and was convinced that nuts were ALIVE!!! THEY'RE ALIVE!! (insert Twilight Zone music here) She had penned the National Anthem to the nut and sang it on the air. People thought about this for days on the air.
I had an interesting conversation with a man who wanted to get into the record books as the first human flashbulb by strapping hundreds of flashbulbs, ( remember flashbulbs?), and setting them off all at once. Never found out how he made out..
Then there was the guy who got hold of some moon pictures, sent me copies and I had him on the air as he told me where to look on these photos to see things like houses, cranes and foundations that somebody was building there. I guess everybody needs a hobby.
There were times when I just couldn't get somebody to hang up, so I recorded a studio cart of static to use when it was needed. I recorded a needle scratching the paper label of a record and it sounded just like static. The first time I used it was the day Jerry Mathers, The Beaver called. Probably the worst interview I ever was involved with. This guy wouldn't talk, and the odd thing was at that time he was doing a radio talk show somewhere. I would ask him something, and all he would say was "yup" or "nope", and after five minutes of this, out came the static, that he heard down the line too, and I apologized and hung up. Now the guy calls back. Same deal with the conversation, and mysteriously, the static came back.
There were those I wanted to get on the air, but was never successful. Jimmy Stewart, but he wrote a letter to me thanking him for the request. Bill Cosby who lives about 20 miles from me. Never got an answer, but I know these folks are busy, and besides most of them are famous and no longer need radio to get out to the masses. At the top of my list, of all of the people I could speak with in the world, my biggest regret is not being able to do an interview with my idol. Sammy Davis Jr. I was driving a lumber truck one day in Connecticut when I head the news that Sammy and Jim Henson had both died. Another memory of where I was when.... There has never been a performer like him, and I had a million questions, now mostly forgotten, that I wanted to ask him.
When 1999 turned into 2000, I guess it was inevitable somebody would come up with the question, " Who was the greatest performer of the 20th century?" When I first heard that, I immediately thought, no question about it, Sammy was. So the masses voted. It was Elvis. ELVIS? All right, I liked his music, and sure, I wanted to look like him, but entertainer of the century?
Elvis could sing, that's a given. He was in 30 some odd forgettable movies, and he played piano and a little guitar. He was around about 20 years.
Lets look at Sammy. Oh yeah, he could sing, and he could dance like lightning. He was a brilliant actor on film and on stage. He played trumpet, and piano, and the drums like Ginger Baker. He did impressions and impersonations, and he was spectacular at it. He was a comedian. He was everything an entertainer wants to be, but can't be, and he had to do it all with a handicap. We had him for over 60 years. But Elvis was entertainer of the century. What's wrong with this picture?
Jim Brickman came into the studio one day when I was at WMAS. I saw him on the FM side of the station in the studio doing an interview, and got him to come over to the AM side where I was on the air. I was playing his music in the format at that time, but the FM side wasn't. He was a great guy, and in order to show his appreciation for the interview, he sent the FM folks a brick. Sort of a trademark for Jim, I guess. Just a brick with his name on it.. I never got a brick, Yes, it still hurts, but I will get over it someday. See, fewer and fewer people are listening to AM stations any more, but FM is big now, and just the reverse of what it was 40 years ago, so I guess a little audience doesn't deserve a brick any more. In the days of the Wolfman, on AM radio, he would have received an entire wall. You just couldn't not clap for the Wolfman. I'm so glad I got to meet him . He was one of those radio characters that fade slowly away day by day.
To all of those people who spent time with me on the airwaves, as Ed Nackey, owner of Ed Nackey Chevrolet in Holyoke used to say at the end of his commercials on WREB radio, " Thanks Folks."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
