July 7, 2014
Claude’s Commentary
By Claude Hall
Larry White, now in Charlotte, NC: “I remember that Four Seasons show in Buffalo years ago very well. After the show, you and Barbara, Joey and his guest
(his wife at the time, as I recall) and Jay Meyers (WBUF's PD) and his wife joined
us at our home for a while before you returned to Brockport. It was a
great visit since I was always a big Joey Reynolds fan from the time I first
got into the business. And like everyone else from the era never missed your weekly
Vox Jox column in Billboard. Claude,
when I attended a few of the Billboard radio programming conferences in NYC, I
never would have guessed that, years later, I would have you and Joey as guests
in our home. It was quite an honor. Best to
you and Barbara.”
Don Whittemore defended the quality of the movie. “Saw ‘Jersey Boys’ Sunday. Joey
Reynolds's four-hour Four Seasons non-stop was a vital bit in the movie, but
alas no name credit and the DJ didn't look at all like Joey. Great Movie, too. So nice I'll see it twice.”
Burt Sherwood: “Claude: As we age
brevity is a word that someone else uses when writing a note. The death knell (if you will) of WMCA
was sounded by Hal Neal the then GM of WABC. He finally got rid of the ‘Breakfast
Club’. Steve Labunski, our manager at
WMCA, was always afraid this would happen … what ensued was Herb Oscar jumping
over to WABC to fill the ‘void’ of the Breakfast Club and leaving WMCA with his
great ratings, and no HOA. Why wouldn't
WABC sound good? They had Herb and Scott from WMCA. HOA and Scott and I were very close ... Herb
got us to move up to Connecticut to be with his family and Scott's as well ... we
all lived within 15 minutes of each other ... our wives and kids all were very
friendly. HOA and I still talk all the time...Scott as you know passed away. HOA , Scott Muni and I along with our
families would get together almost every weekend for a bar b que..cook out etc.
... we were very close ... when we were at WMCA we three were on the air longer
(air time wise) than most of the rest of the station ... I would see them both
daily as I was on the end and the beginning of their shifts. I was doing overnights and was sponsored by
Texaco ... and that story is another one left alone..suffice to say I was the
‘last’ one to leave WMCA and Texaco went off the overnights. I was
scheduled to join the guys ... but the WABC overnight man Big Joe had a no cut
contract ... and I still had a lot of time left my WMCA contract as well.
“To shorten this ... I
was let go at WMCA, and could not get a job in NYC ... I struggled for a year
or so and finally got two NYC lawyers (Bob Price, he became Deputy Mayor
of NYC and Ted Kupferman, he became a congressman) and then Congressman
John Lindsay's money to begin my journey in management. That is a shortcut to a very trying time and a
story that will do no one any good. I did 11 pm Sunday news on WOR as
well as the Million Dollar Movie on WOR-TV (for a while), went to Daytona Beach
and Harrisburg then to Albany where I honed my management skills ... suffice to
say it was the turning point of my life ... and many people were very kind to
me as I began the long journey wearing the ‘suit’. The first station I ran was in
Brattleboro, Vermont. We paid $80,000 for WTSA. As I tell my son,
you gain no knowledge of management from a good operator...it is too good to be
picked apart ... so you learn from the guys you worked for that were not so
good ... no names ... management is a trickey business ... John Barger wrote
kindly of me and Buddy Carr ... AND we all had to learn!
“Once again...Ruth Meyer
was a friend and we connected again years later when I was GM at WMAQ radio and
she and Chuck Renwick were programming NBC Radio Network ... she was a great
gal and a pal ... she loved France and got there as often as she could, and
Chuck and I once in a while chat about those days , she ended up with terminal
cancer and living in Kansas City (her home), and we talked and talked via the
phone she could tell history beautifully and was a fine writer ... so much goes
by in time ... I thought about a book ... but so has everyone else. She
had a very good private life and talked to me about it all the time ... she
made a lot of friends (including my wife Anne) and was deeply religious!
Enough Claude ... most of this stuff predated your arrival at Billboard and our
getting to know each other, and I think I am boring you. Give Barbara a
hug ... from me still standing.”
Ah, yes. Hal Neal. When he became head of ABC
Radio, I received
a news release about their Brother John syndicated program. I wrote the
typical news story and printed it
in Billboard. He sent a PR firm to
“demand” a larger story. A feature. I listened to the program. Didn’t
think much about it. I said “nope.” Neal called me. Again, “nope.”
The PR firm approached again and the guy said
he knew Hal Cook, my publisher. I said,
“Good. I know him, too.” Neal got revenge a couple of years
later. I was asked to do some consulting
for the NAB and Neal threw the proverbial monkey’s wrench into the deal.
John Rosica: “In fact it was Sam Holman who established
WABC’s sound and format. Rick Sklar was just the keeper of the Holman
format.”
I think that would be shortchanging Rick, John. True, the format was set by Sam Holman and I
more than likely failed to give Sam his just due (I believe I apologized at one
point; I sure hope I did). But Rick
constantly made improvements. I believe
that the real success of the station was because of Rick. Regardless, as Burt Sherwood indicates, WABC
did not fully overcome WMCA until “Breakfast Club” was removed from the air and
credit for that probably goes to Rick.
He lamented the program to me a few times. Not that it was bad. Just that it didn’t fit a Top 40 station.
Larry Woodside, in a follow-up to the Ken Roberts obit: “Sadly, yes, last month in NYC. There was an obituary
in the LA Times yesterday (guess they were a little late getting the word), and
then there's this: Ken Roberts, the Other "Jersey
Boy," Remembered at the Friars Club.”
Freddy
Snakeskin, JACK-FM/KROQ, Los Angeles:
“The LA Times is
doing a story on the late Ken Roberts. They already did a lengthy interview
with me, but after reading Joey Reynolds' comments in your blog, I was thinking
he might be a good source for them to talk to as well. I don't know how far
along the reporter, Elaine Woo, is with her story, but since you are in contact
with him, would you mind passing this message along? Elaine can be reached at Elaine.woo@latimes.com.”
But Elaine
Woo responded: “Thanks, Freddy, but I already filed the story. Sounds like there's a book here!”
Jay
Lawrence in regards to
Chuck Blore’s statement about today’s radio lacking entertainment: “I
read the comments about L David Moorhead. He talked about the
entertainment station a
lot. Wanted me to work for him. David
hired me or had me hired on 3 different stations. We met at KTKT
Tucson. He brought me to KFI, next helped move me to
WNEW, then to an Arthur Godfrey type show in WNDE, Indianapolis. He
hoped to
get it on all stations in Gulf Broadcast Group. Let's write a book
about David, there are
million stories in the L. David (Guy Williams) City.”
You were
always huge with David Moorhead, Jay.
Talked about you often. And, yes,
he intended to hire you for the new station he was planning to put on the air
in Las Vegas, the first of a chain. He
also intended to hire Mikel Hunter and a couple of others whom I can’t remember
after all this time.
Al Herskovitz,
Bradenton, FL: “Wow! Talk about going
way back in time. I worked with Dan Ingram when his name was Ray Taylor
and mine was Al Harper. He and i worked weekend nights at WICC in
Bridgeport, CT. He did the music and I did the news. He even had to
co-host a Sunday night classical music show. We were so broke then
that we had to pool our change in order to buy one sub sandwich to split for
dinner.”
Bob
Skurzewski: “I found Casey Kasem to be a
neat guy to talk to. He was secretive about things, thus he did not get many
pages in our book. He did explain all the thoughts on what would
eventually be ‘American Top 40’. Eddie
Chase was mentioned by him as a person who amazed him with a count down of
top records when Casey was a teen. He did not have to credit anybody. But he
did! I also tried to get him to write
the preface for our book. He politely said no.
As to the news, our book title was never in the body of the article. I
did sign off to the gal in charge of these types of views, that we did author
the book and gave her info on it. She inserted in the body. That blew me away
because the Bflo. News has done little to help local authors get some press. I understand that the Kasem battles continue
with Jean trying to wrestle away the kids trust funds Casey set up for
them. For now lets call that a nasty rumor. Stay well.”
I liked Casey.
Don’t know anyone that didn’t like him.
Don
Berns: “I was always proud to call Bob Lewis (Bob-A-Lou) a friend, since we had
both graduated from WBRU at Brown and hit it off well enough that we remained
friends through the rest of his life. Bob
arranged for me to sit in with Dan Ingram for a few breaks one day -- one of
the thrills of my young life, since for me Dan was one of the all-time greats
as well. But the WABC story that Bob
told me that sticks with me today is about the engineer who was having drinks
with a fellow 1st ticket holder from WMCA who tried to pry the settings from
him for WABC's reverb, which WMCA had tried to copy for years but had never
gotten right. After a few drinks, this
WMCA guy thought his buddy was lubricated enough to spill the beans, and sure
enough got what he thought was the settings from him. What he didn't know was
how loyal the WABC engineer was to his company, and the next day when the WMCA
engineer tweaked his station's sound, the jocks all sounded like they were
talking from the back of a cave.”
I complained that
the temperature in Las Vegas was currently around 110 during the day and Woody
Roberts responded: “Hot? Get back
to where you once belonged; only 95 this week. To help forget LV temp
here's some good 'ol Texas radio coming outta cool Dripping Springs -- home of Hamilton's Pool -- to mix with your daily streams and Youtube tunes.
http://streamdb2web.securenetsystems.net/v5/KDRP
Also:
http://www.kdrplive.org/
Oh,
sure. Funny thing is that someone sent
me some hot cocoa from Starbucks; don’t know who.
Roger Carroll, Los
Angeles: “Claude, I enjoy your Commentary ... re: Joey Reynolds he has to be kidding
about the movie. Some time I will tell you my experience with him.”
Roger, don’t wait. I would indeed
love to print something scandalous about Joey.
The first thing I ever wrote about him was for a special magazine
Billboard published called SoundMaker. Circa
1967. I thought he would sue. But the first time I met him, he thanked
me. So, you tell me your scandalous
story and I’ll tell you two or three of mine!
Maybe four. Or, heck, let’s do a
book! Did you read “I Love Radio” at
Amazon.com/Kindle Books? Some Joey stuff
in there.
Lee Baby Simms, who has never (ask Woody Roberts) done anything
scandalous in his life other than raise tomatos, sent me an old newspaper item
about Billy Joe Shaver being arrested for aggravated assault regarding an
incident outside Papa Joe’s Texas Saloon in Lorena, TX, on March 31, 2007. I remarked that it sounded like a typical
Texas bar tale. Just FYI, Billy Joe was
acquitted in a Waco court on April 9, 2010.
Self-defense. Dale Watson wrote a
song about the incident – “Where Do You Want It?” recorded by Whitey Morgan and
the 78s. It’s on the group’s second
album on Bloodshot Records.
Ah, them Texas bars!
Jim Slone: “My remarks will be a little too old for your readers
but probably not for you ... lol I went to
the museum at San Juan Capistrano last week ... on one of the plaques outside
was a picture of the sheet music to ‘When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano’
featuring Tony Martin. There were a lot of different versions of that song but
the most popular was by the ink Spots in 1940 … have always loved that song ...
I was able to find Tony Martin's recording and it is good, too ... The swallows
weren't there last week, but there were hoards of people ... and the gift shop
was filled with regular folks buying mementos.”
Beautiful place! Barbara and I and
kids have been there. More than once or
twice, I think. I even have some photos
I took. This, of course, was more than
30-40 years ago.
Bobby
Ocean: “Regarding that statement, ‘all
Art is a funny business’, you're right, Claude. It was Kurt Vonnegut who once said, ‘to work
at any art, whether done well or badly, is to grow the soul. So, do it’."
Bobby, in my opinion, you’re a tremendous artist! Takes a gift.
Back in the day of magazines, you’d probably have been famous. Well, that is even more famous than you are
now. Because, to me, you’re famous. And great!
A great radio treasure!
No comments:
Post a Comment