Tomorrow's Oldies

OK, here's the deal. I was sitting in Fuddrucker's last week munching on a burger, surrounded by music memorabilia and listening to oldies. Yeah, I know it's not diet food, but my 15 year old son makes a nasty face when I suggest we have a salad and I can't stand seeing him suffer like that. Afterward, during a couple hours at the gym, I started thinking about all the different shops and restaurants that still play 1950's and 1960's music in the background. One of the radio stations in my area changed format last week from simulcasting polka music to Good Time Great Oldies from the 50's, 60's, and 70's. Just then something hit me like a ton of bricks. It was one of those OMG moments. To help you get the same feeling I had, we need to start with some simple mathematics. (Don't worry, there will not be a quiz later.)

Most of the radio stations and shops that play 60's oldies these days play at least one Beatles song. The Beatles took off in America in January 1964. In almost no time at all, they had ALL FIVE of the top five songs on the national charts!

As I write this, we're a month away from January 2010. 2010 minus 1964 is 46 years, right? Now, take 1964 and subtract 46 years. That takes us back to 1918. You baby-boomers can correct me if I'm wrong, but to the best of my recollection, we did NOT sit around at hamburger joints in 1964 listening to a bunch of songs from 1918! We did NOT have radio stations playing The Best Of The 1900's, 1910's, and 1920's. What the heck is going on here?

I'm starting to wonder if the rock and roll era somehow caused music to begin expanding sideways instead of growing forward. Has popular music fragmented into so many different pieces that there are no more new styles left to create?

I can picture a young Jimi Hendrix sitting in a coffee shop in Greenwich Village watching his idol Bob Dylan shout out his classic folk version of All Along The Watchtower while accompanying himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica. Later that night, Jimi will go to work playing killer electric guitar as part of a backing band for an R&B group. Jimi loves Dylan's music, and he loves wild electric guitar, so he "marries" the two and gives birth to the Jimi Hendrix Experience, along with all the imitators who come afterward. Meanwhile, a young Jimmy Page leaves a pop-rock-oriented British Invasion band, does some studio guitar work, and then "marries" early American blues and R&B with hard rock to create Led Zeppelin.

These are examples of how the evolution of popular music created entirely new styles. In much the same way that DNA splits and recombines to create new and unique human beings, popular music styles split apart and then combine with other styles to create a totally new sound. But what kind of combinations are being made today? What new forms of popular music are being created these days?

Last week, someone wanted to know if there were any recent hits that were not done in standard 4/4 time. I can't name one. Can you? For that matter, can you think of any current hit that really does something truly different? Are there any new songs that really push the envelope, plow new ground, or do something truly radical and exciting? (And I don't consider singing through Auto-Tune to be an "advancement" in the music industry!)

At a time when the record industry is pushing for new fees from radio stations who play their music, one has to wonder exactly what they're doing to EARN those fees. What new products are they cultivating?

We continue to discover great music from fifty years ago that was somehow overlooked the first time around. Certain musical styles that were first born fifty years ago still command the power to fuel huge cult followings. Rhythm and Blues tunes from fifty years ago still sound mighty sweet today. But what music is being CREATED today that will have the same kind of impact in 2056 -- some 46 years from today?

You may have noticed that I've started to play some Christmas songs on MusicMaster Oldies. This has become an annual tradition, but unlike some of the radio stations today, I don't suddenly switch to a wall-to-wall Christmas music format somewhere between Halloween and Thanksgiving! Instead, you'll hear Christmas music they way I heard it on the radio when I was growing up. I think this music is much more special when it's blended into the normal mix. Back in the 1950's and 1960's, the Christmas season really got into full swing just a week or so before Santa came sliding down the chimney. None of the stations switched to 100% Christmas music, either, except maybe for a few hours on Christmas morning. It is possible to get too much of a good thing, you know!

By the way, yet another Pirate Radio Station has appeared in the news, this time it's in Canada. Click HERE to read more about it.

A quick note to all the musicians and artists out there: MusicMaster Oldies is under contract to play music with ASCAP, SESAC, and BMI. We pay our royalties for each performance. However, if we should happen to post anything on this blog that you own rights to and want us to remove, please contact me directly. You can e-mail me at joe@mmwin.com. Please don't contact Blogger or Google because they might shut down my blog instead of just asking me to remove an offending item. There's no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water!

It irritates me when artists are cheated out of compensation for their work. However, it's not always kids downloading songs that cost them the most. There are horror stories in abundance throughout the 1950's and 1960's, and right into the present, talking about how record companies and unscrupulous record promotors and managers took advantage of a naive client who's only concern was playing rock and roll music. Click HERE to read an interesting story about underpaid royalties.

Finally, I want to thank every one who commented on my last blog post. You make this a LOT more fun with your interaction and feedback. Without your input, writing this blog would be like a tree falling in the woods with nobody around to hear it...

Some corrections were made to my Original Versions post after getting new data from a few well-informed followers. In addition to the corrections I've already made, I've got some more new information to pass along now.

Roy Hall was actually the first person to release There's A Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On on Decca 29697 in 1955 (despite the fact that Wikipedia claims it came out in 1954). Roy Hall, who's real name was James Faye Hall, was born in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, on May 7, 1922. He died on March 2, 1984. His version was covered so quickly by blues singer Big Maybelle that it created confusion for years as to which was the original recording. It was more common back then for a Country & Western singer to cover an R&B record than the other way around, which helped create some of the controversy.

Roy Hall claimed to have written the song, even though his name is never actually credited on the label. You will find different variations of composer credits on this song, but the song was written by Dave "Curlee" Williams, a singer-songwriter who was born in Kentucky as the son of Native American (Crow tribe) and African-American parents, with help from Hall, who was a white piano player, songwriter, and band leader. Roy used the alias Sunny David, which is why you'll often see the composers of this song listed as "D Williams & S David." Roy also claimed that he once employed a young piano player by the name of Jerry Lee Lewis back in the early 1950's, so now you know the "rest of the story."

Here's Roy Hall's Original Version of There's A Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On:

Memphis Slim wasn't even close to being the first to record Stagger Lee. The song was recorded many years earlier, in 1928, by Mississippi John Hurt as Stack O'Lee Blues on Okeh 8654. Here's that version of this classic rock and roll song:

But that was NOT the Original Version of this song. It may have been the first one recorded with lyrics, but an instrumental version was released a full five years earlier by Fred Waring And The Pennsylvanians on Victor 19189. This was a traditional song that pre-dated recorded music by many years. Here's that 1923 recording of Stack-O' Lee Blues by Fred Waring:

Now you can see why collecting these Original Versions can be a lot of fun. Music historians are still trying to piece together all the available data, and new discoveries of even older versions are being made all the time. To make this process even more complex, a lot of incorrect information is out there on the Internet. Moral of the story is, don't believe everything you read in Wikipedia!

I also learned that Hound Dog was also recorded by several other people in 1953, although none of these came out earlier than Willie Mae Thornton's Original Version. You can also find the song done by Billy Star on Imperial 8186, Tommy Duncan on Intro 6071, Betsy Gay on Intro 6070, Eddie Hazelwood on Intro 6059, Jack Turner on RCA 20-5267, and Cleve Jackson on Herald 6000. Of course, you'll hear ALL of these and more on MusicMaster Oldies!

Let me close this topic, for now, with one more Original Version for your enjoyment. You've all heard Led Zeppelin, of course. After Hurricane Katrina wiped out New Orleans, I thought their version of When The Levee Breaks would make a fitting and prophetic memorial song. But I discovered an even better choice: the Original Version of that song! The first recording dates back to 1929 when it was released on Columbia 14439 by Kansas Joe And Memphis Minnie. The song was "re-worked" by Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, which might explain why they left the original composers off the album credits. Here now, as my tribute to the many folks who lost their lives in the rain, wind and flooding in New Orleans, please enjoy the Original Version of When The Levee Breaks:

Where Did That Song Come From?

Most of the songs you'll hear on MusicMaster Oldies were recorded between 1954 and 1974. But, we also play quite a few songs that are considerably older, some going back to the very early 1900's.

We like to occasionally mix in a number one hit from the late 1930's and 1940's because those songs were frequently heard on the radio in the 1950's and even the 1960's, often mixed in with the current hits. I was born in 1953, and as a kid, I heard those songs all the time, mainly coming out of my mom's radio or record player!

You'll also hear a lot of songs that are early incarnations of rock and roll, including some really classic old rhythm and blues, hillbilly, and even some big band swing tunes. It's really amazing to hear some of these songs, especially those performed by artists who were truly ahead of their time.

Another category of really old songs we play have recently become a hot item among certain record collectors. These are the "original" versions of songs that were later redone to become big hits. Most of the time, these original songs were not big sellers at all. Somehow they were discovered many years later by a recording artist or producer and recycled. In fact, a lot of 1960's rock bands, like the Rolling Stones, the Animals, and the Beatles, loved to listen to really old American rhythm and blues tunes even before they got together and started making records of their own.

Let's sample some of the more interesting Original Versions you'll hear on MusicMaster Oldies.

We'll start with the big British Invasion hit by Herman's Hermits called I'm Henry The VIII, I Am. You might have wondered how they came up with such a strange thing to sing about when you first heard that song. Well, that song was actually an old English pub song which was written in 1910 by Fred Murray and R. P. Weston. It was first recorded in 1911 by a guy named William Crump who was born in Shoreditch England in 1865. He started singing at the age of 15 under the stage name Will Conray. At age age 23, he became known as Harry Champion. Harry had a lot of songs in his repertoire and he liked to sing many of them at breakneck speed. He died in 1942 while living in Tottenham, where he spent most of his adult life and, reportedly, drove a taxi when he wasn't singing! Herman's Hermits probably never heard Harry's recording, and may have instead copied a 1961 recording of the song done by Joe Brown. But here's Harry Champion doing the Original Version of Henery The 8th on England's Columbia 1621 from 1911, which he also recorded on the Beka and Homophone labels in that same year:



When you first heard Jimmy Soul (James McCleese) singing If You Wanna Be Happy in 1963, you probably didn't know was a recycled song. It started out as a calypso song written by an interesting guy who was born Hubert Charles in Trinidad in 1908. He later changed his name to Rafael De Leon and started calling himself The Roaring Lion. He moved to New York City in the 1930's to record calypso records. The Duke Of Iron on this recording is actually a guy named Cecil Anderson who is backed up by Gerald Clark's Orchestra. Here's Marry An Ugly Woman on Banner/Perfect 735 from 1934!



You always though the Beach Boys first recorded Sloop John B, right? Actually, that's another recycled song. This is a very old traditional song that was published in Harper's Magazine in 1916 in an article called Coral Islands And Mangrove Trees by Richard Le Gallienne. Carl Sandburg included it in The American Songbag, his 1927 collection of folk songs, claiming it was almost a national anthem around Nassau. It's been recorded many times over the years under various names such as Wreck Of The John B by the Weavers in 1950, Sloop John B by the Kingston Trio in 1958 (which is likely the version the Beach Boys heard and copied), I Want To Go Home by Johnny Cash in 1959, and many others. The first recorded version, however, was made by Alan Lomax in his 1935 collection called Deep River Of Song. Here is that Original Version by the Cleveland Simmons Group from Bahamas which they called Histe Up The John B's Sails:



The guys who kicked blues-rock into high gear in the 1960's were heavily influenced by a guy named Robert Johnson. You've heard Crossroads by Cream with Eric Clapton on vocals and electric guitar. Later, Eric Clapton actually named his rehab center in Antigua after this song after fighting depression and drug addiction in the 1970's. Now listen to the Original Version, Cross Road Blues by Robert Johnson on Vocalion 03519 from 1936. Oh, by the way, if you should happen to find a copy of this in good condition, you could expect to sell it for well over $5000.



Speaking of Robert Johnson, you'll find that some of his original blues lyrics were "borrowed" by both Cream (two lines in Crossroads) and Led Zeppelin (The Lemon Song). Robert Johnson himself may have borrowed the lyrics used by Robert Plant from another 1937 song called She Squeezed My Lemon by Roosevelt Sykes. Here's Traveling Riverside Blues by Robert Johnson recorded for Vocalion records in 1937 but not released until 1961:



The melody behind Love Me Tender by Elvis Presley actually comes from an American Civil War song about a maiden called Aura Lee written by W W Fosdick and George R. Poulton. Elvis actually recycled this melody again when he sang Violet (Flower Of NYU) in the movie The Trouble With Girls. The melody is also used for a song called Army Blue which is associated with the U.S. Military Academy. That version was used as a running theme during the 1954 movie The Long Gray Line. Aura Lee was sung by Frances Farmer in the 1936 movie Come And Get It. This first recorded version of this song appeared on Decca records in 1937 by the Shelton Brothers.



The Tokens big hit The Lion Sleeps Tonight is another recycled tune. This song was introduced in the USA by Pete Seeger's group, the Weavers, after Alan Lomax provided him with a recording. An article about this song appeared in Rolling Stone magazine in May 2000 which sparked a lawsuit against the American copyright holder, Abilene Music, which ended six years later with heirs of the original artist being awarded a royalty settlement. To hear the Original Version of this one we actually have to go back to South Africa in 1939 to find Solomon Linda's Original Singing Birds singing Mbube on Singer 829.



Eric Burdon And The Animals were certainly not the first to record See See Rider. Ma Rainey was born Gertrude Malissa Pridgett. She died on December 22, 1939 at age 53. Here's the Original Version of See See Rider Blues by Ma Rainey on Paramount 12252 from 1924 with a young Louis Armstrong on cornet and Fletcher Henderson on piano.



But Eric Burdon most likely copied a later version from 1957 by Chuck Willis on Atlantic 1130.



Chuck, in turn, probably copied this 1942 version by 'Wee' Bea Booze on Decca 8633:



See how much fun this can be? Let's have a bit more!

Beyond The Sea by Bobby Darin started out as La Mer by French singer Charles Trenet. Born in France in 1913, Charles moved to New York City after World War II where he lived in an apartment near the Empire State Building. He became friends with Charlie Chaplin and Louis Armstrong. In 1946, he recorded this Original Version, La Mer on Columbia 8108:



Sixteen Tons by Tennessee Ernie Ford was a remake of a song by legendary Country singer Merle Travis. Here's Merle singing 16 Tons on Capitol records from 1946:



Did you think George Thorogood And The Destroyers were the first to sing Move It On Over? No way. That was written and first recorded by the legendary Hank Williams on MGM 10033 in 1947:



Speaking of Hank Williams, many people believe he was the first to record Lost Highway. Actually, a slightly earlier version of that song was recorded by Leon Payne on Bullet 670 in 1948



Stagger Lee has been recorded by a whole bunch of people, over 200 in fact, including Lloyd Price, Beck, Pat Boone, James Brown, Cab Calloway, Nick Cave, The Clash, Neil Diamond, Dr. John, Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Bill Haley, Tim Hardin, Wilbert Harrison, Hot Tuna, The Isley Brothers, Tom Jones, Sleepy LaBeef, Jerry Lee Lewis, Huey Lewis, Trini Lopez, Pacific Gas And Electric, Terry Melcher, Johnny Otis, Charlie Pride, The Righteous Brothers, Bobby Rydell, Neil Sedaka, Southside Johnny And The Asbury Jukes, Taj Mahal, Ike And Tina Turner, The Ventures, and so on! Here's the Original Recording made by Alan Lomax in New York City in 1947, this is Memphis Slim singing Stagolee and playing piano, along with John Lee 'Sonny Boy' Williamson on harmonica and Big Bill Broonzy on upright bass:



Elvis Presley became famous for copying an early rhythm and blues record with a country flavor, with the resulting blend being a brand new sound that some consider one of the first examples of true rock and roll music. Well, here's that Original Version that The King heard, Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup singing That's All Right on Victor 2205 from 1949. (CORRECTION: It's come to my attention that Arthur Crudup's original 78 RPM recording on Victor 2205 was actually issued in 1947. This song was reissued by RCA when they introduced the 45 RPM format. In fact, That's All Right was the very first R&B record ever issued on a 45 RPM single. It was on RCA 50-0000 with a very hard-to-read light gray label and reddish-orange vinyl (RCA called it 'cerise'). They started out with the intention to color-code 45's based on the type of music. For example, Country & Western music was on green vinyl. RCA dropped this idea very soon afterward and started pressing everything on black vinyl.)



Some songs were changed so radically when they were recycled that it's hard to tell if the later version was intentionally copied by the later artist. It's pretty easy to argue that you just happened to come up with a song that was quite similar to someone else's work. Sometimes this kind of thing ends up getting settled in court. Keep that in mind as you listen to Sunflower by Frank Sinatra on Columbia 38391 from 1949. See if you think the similarity of Hello Dolly by Louis Armstrong was an intentional copy, subconscious influence, or just a total coincidence!



If you like to play Guitar Hero you've probably slapped the buttons in step with Train Kept A-Rollin'. Here's the Original Version of that song by Tiny Bradshaw from 1951 on King 4497;



Elvis Presley's huge 1956 hit was first sung by The King to a basset hound on Steve Allen's television show. The next day, he went into the studio with the Jordanaires, Scotty Moore, D J Fontana, and Bill Black to record the record. It was not the first time that song had been recorded. Written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, it was first recorded by Willie May 'Big Mama' Thornton and was dubbed the best R&B record of 1953. Here's the Original Version of Hound Dog by Big Mama Thronton on Peacock 1612 from 1952:



Elvis, however, was more likely influenced by a somewhat different version of this song done by Freddie Bell And The Bell Boys. The original recording was a bit raunchy for white radio, so Bernie Lowe suggested Bell make some changes. Out went "snooping around my door", "wag your tail", and "weep and moan", and the human references were downgraded by Freddie to that of a canine and a rabbit. The song wasn't about a gigolo anymore. It became more of a novelty in the Bill Haley style with riffing sax and group call-back response. Freddie Bell's version got a ton of radio airplay on the East Coast and became a nice regional hit and lasting crowd pleaser. While it failed to produce a big payday for Bell, it did feature prominently and successfully in his act at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. It was in Las Vegas that Bell's re-write of Hound Dog would take its place as Bell's greatest contribution to rock and roll history. Colonel Tom Parker booked Elvis into the New Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas in 1956, which proved to be one of the few mistakes the Colonel made that year. But, that booking gave Elvis and his band the opportunity to catch Freddie Bell's act. The 'Atomic Powered Singer', as Elvis was billed in Las Vegas at that time, was impressed with Freddie's version of Hound Dog and got to know the band. (They remained friends and later Freddie would give Elvis karate exhibitions backstage.) Elvis asked about Hound Dog and Freddie Bell told him to go ahead and record it. Elvis thought it was a natural and showcased the song in his stage act as his closing number and featured his famous bump and grind version on his second Milton Berle TV appearance on June 5, 1956 to much adverse publicity. So while Freddie Bell had sought to sanitize the song, Elvis' performance of it caused quite a bit of controversy. Here's Freddie Bell And The Bell Boys doing Hound Dog from 1955 on Teen 101:



Who would have thought that Johnny Cash was recycling a song when he recorded his big hit, Folsom Prison Blues? The Original Version was actually a song called Crescent City Blues sung by Beverly Mahr backed up by Gordon Jenkins Orchestra on Decca records from 1952:



Sometimes you can just add some lyrics to an existing instrumental song and turn it into a big hit. Such was the case with Rock Around The Clock by Bill Haley And His Comets! Yes, the familiar theme song from Happy Days and one of the first rock and roll records ever made started life as an instrumental by Jimmy DeKnight on Peak 105 in 1953. (CORRECTION: I have since learned that this is NOT an original version. This song was actually issued in 1959, which means it's simply an instrumental cover of the hit. I should have triple-checked the facts on this one! The full artist credit on this record was Jimmy DeKnight And His Kings Of Rhythm. It was reissued on Apt 25034 in 1959 for national distribution.)



But Bill Haley wasn't even the first to add lyrics to this song! That honor goes to Sonny Dae And His Knights on Arcade 123 in 1954!



Here's another song that may or may not qualify as an Original Version. You be the judge. You've heard Chuck Berry do Sweet Little Sixteen and the very similar Surfin' USA by the Beach Boys. In fact, there was a big lawsuit over that song where Chuck Berry claimed the Beach Boys had stolen his melody. Chuck Berry won that lawsuit, but Chuck himself may have "borrowed" that melody from a song called Route 90 by Clarence Garlow on Flair 1021 from 1954!



A lot of the early rock and roll songs started out as rhythm and blues records. Everyone knows Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On. Here's the Original Version by Big Maybelle on Okeh 7060 from 1955.



I could go on and on and on with these Original Versions but I've really got to start doing shorter blog posts! You can learn a lot more about Original Versions of hit songs at http://www.originalsproject.us. You can also hear well over a thousand more of these Original Versions on MusicMaster Oldies!

Avast Ye! Pirate Radio, Dead Ahead!

An Actual Pirate Coin from 1794

I'm really looking forward to the new Pirate Radio movie! Let me tell you why...

I fell in love with radio before I even started school. My mother used to put her little green General Electric transistor radio in my bed when I had trouble sleeping. She'd usually tune it to the beautiful music station but that never seemed to sooth me. So, she tried different stations all the time. My earliest memories include falling asleep to songs like I Love Paris and Oh My Papa. I got to know Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra very well, but I also got to hear some really cool Rhythm and Blues spun by the legendary Alan Freed. I even remember trying to talk like the radio announcers! As I started to grow older, I spent even more time listening to the radio -- night and day. I'd tune around the dial trying to find as many different stations as I could, and I especially liked to find ones that came in from far away on the "skip" at night. I came to LOVE radio; and I knew that someday I would be working at a radio station.

Rock and Roll music got into my bloodstream at a very early age, too. My Grandmother owned a little diner where the local teens hung out every afternoon, playing their favorite songs on the juke box. I spent a lot of time there, either helping Grandma by stacking pop bottles or sweeping the floor, or just hanging out enjoying some of her delicious homemade Chili.

Grandma's Diner (left to right, Me, Grandma, and my sister 'Babe')

I first discovered the FM band through my Grandmother's DuMont "Dog House" television set. It had a continuous tuner to let you hear aircraft bands and FM between channels six and seven. Very few people even knew that FM existed back then, but I found it fascinating. I remember tuning in some early experimental "stereo" broadcasts where the left channel was broadcast on AM and the right channel was heard on an FM station. Hearing stereo sound for the first time really blew my mind!

A DuMont R-103 Chatham Television Set

My dad thought my love for radio was a very interesting hobby, so one day he took me to a furniture store in downtown Cleveland and bought me a much bigger radio for my birthday. It was a black and silver RCA transistor table model that could tune in the AM and FM bands. That radio was really sensitive, but it had some problems at first. It had an odd crackling noise that would slowly build into a steady and loud buzzing sound. If I tapped on the volume control a few times, I could make it stop. My dad took it back to the store several times asking them to fix it, but they never did. My dad was a radar technician during World War II, so he decided to take a shot at fixing it himself. He let me watch as he took that radio apart. He showed me that the volume control connections had "cold" solder joints. I watched as he heated up his soldering iron to melt a little more solder on each connection. I remember how cool it was to watch the smoke curl up and smell the burning resin. I knew right then and there that fixing electronic stuff would somehow have a place in my future. Oh, and the radio worked perfectly after that!

A WIXY 1260 Survey from 1966

I was a huge fan of the Top 40 stations in Cleveland, especially WIXY 1260, but I spent my nights checking out similar stations from Detroit/Windsor, New York City, Chicago, and many other places. I also wanted to learn more about electronics, so my dad took me to the public library where we checked out the Amateur Radio Relay League Handbook. I read that thing from cover to cover, struggling to understand as much of it as I could. I learned that there were Amateur Radio Operators who ran their own transmitters and talked with each other using both Morse Code and voice. This seemed very interesting to me. I even found a book at the library that listed every radio station in the USA. I was the only person who ever checked that book out, and it was almost constantly checked out to me! I even talked my dad into buying me a copy of my own for my birthday. My mom thought it was a pretty weird present for a little kid!

The Amateur Radio crowd exchanged something they called QSL Cards with each other after making contact with someone new. Commercial radio stations, back then, would also send these QSL cards out to distant listeners. Tuning in far away radio stations was actually a hobby that was older than commercial broadcasting. Distant radio listening was called DX-ing, and those who listened were called DX-er's. These folks tried to collect as many of these QSL cards as they could, mainly from International short wave radio stations. Some, however, focused on commercial stations on the AM broadcast band. To get one, all you had to do was hear a far away station, wait for them to identify themselves (which was required at the top of each hour), note the date and time, write down enough details about the broadcast to prove you'd actually heard it, then mail your reception report to the station. These reports usually got routed to the Chief Engineer, who would then take the time to confirm your report and send you back an official QSL card. My very first one came from WRVA in Richmond, Virginia, and I was really excited to find that in the mail! I became obsessed with these things, eventually filling a whole wall in my bedroom with QSL cards and letters from AM radio stations all over the USA and Canada.

My Uncle George was a fairly odd guy. He never married, never had a steady job, and lived his entire life in an upstairs bedroom at my Grandmother's house. He liked to collect things like old radios and talking machines, coins, car parts, and more. He gave me some of those little blue coin books and helped me fill them with duplicates from his collection. Every night, he'd carefully search through all the coins in the cash register at my Grandma's diner and he taught me how to spot the better ones. Back then it was still easy to find really old coins in your change because coin collecting was still an uncommon hobby. Uncle George was also a part time disc jockey on a Country and Western station in nearby Akron. He'd bring home the rock and roll records and stuff them into a closet; and he'd give extra copies to me. He's really the guy who started my obsession with vinyl records, and he was the first person I ever knew who actually worked in a radio station!

One night in late 1963, while tuning around on the radio, I happened upon something very strange. There was a radio station that sounded very far away, but it didn't identify itself in the usual manner at the top of each hour. They were playing rock and roll music, didn't play any commercials, and called themselves KDJ at 540 on the dial. The disc jockeys sounded young and unprofessional. I had tuned in my very first "pirate" radio station! Eventually, I found more illegal stations, usually just past the top of the AM radio dial (back then) at around 1610 KHz. Back then, there were radio navigation beacons called LORAN broadcasting up there, and these stations would interfere with each other. If the pirate station was really weak, you'd hear this interference as a regular "beep" over the top of the audio. The kids who ran these stations were older than me, but hearing them play records and talk on the radio gave me a burning desire to get on the air myself. Somehow I knew I'd find a way build my own radio station!

There was a neighborhood candy store and soda shop where where kids liked to hang out after school. I'd stop in there on my way home from school to grab a Hershey's bar and a bottle of Pepsi, and maybe play a couple games of pinball. One day, when I was eleven years old, I spotted a magazine cover in the rack that read "Build Your Own AM Radio Station!" You can't imagine how excited I was to see this! Instead of buying my usual junk food, I spent every penny I had to buy that issue of Popular Electronics magazine. I rushed home and tore through it looking for the magic plans that would get me on the air. I had visions of being on the air that very night, broadcasting to all my friends!

Popular Electronics Magazine (but not the one I found that day)

My parents didn't have a lot of money, but I did get a small allowance from them to buy lunch at school and I earned a little more from my early morning newspaper route, and from doing odd jobs for the neighbors. But some of the parts I needed would cost more than I could afford. I asked my dad if he'd lend me some money and showed him what I wanted to build. He told me that I could probably get most of the parts on that list by taking apart broken radios and televisions that people would leave out on the curb for the junk man. He also suggested that I ask my Uncle George, because he liked to tinker around with old radios and had several burned out ones laying around that he'd given up trying to fix. Over the next few trash days, I dragged my little red wagon all around the neighborhood collecting all the old radio and television sets I could find. I took them home, stripped out the parts, and started building a collection of resistors, capacitors, transformers, tubes and sockets, potentiometers (volume controls), and other assorted parts. I didn't know what they all did at the time, but I did take the time to read about them in the Amateur Radio handbook!

I managed to scrounge up everything I needed, except for one special tuning coil and an odd little capacitor. When I showed my dad what I needed, he drove me over to Radio Shack and bought the two remaining parts for me. I couldn't wait to get home and start putting this thing together!

I got everything hooked up according to the schematic in the magazine. I followed every instruction to the letter. I carefully soldered every connection, using my dad's trusty Weller soldering gun! When I was finished, I plugged it into the wall, grabbed my radio, and started frantically searching the dial for my station -- but it was nowhere to be found.

Can you imagine my disappointment? I double-checked every connection. My dad took a look at it and suggested that maybe one of the parts I had used was bad. It only had one vacuum tube, a 12AX7 triode. First, we removed this tube and tested it at the drugstore. Back then every drugstore had a tube tester and replacement tubes to help people fix their own television sets when they broke down. Most television problems in the early years were caused by weak or burned out vacuum tubes. Unfortunately, my tube tested fine, and my heart sank even further.

We went back home and my dad explained that we might be able to take one of the old junk radios I'd scrounged up and rewire it to make it transmit a signal using the beat frequency oscillator. I was so depressed though, I wasn't really paying much attention to his idea. He tried for an entire evening to rewire an old radio chassis, but he never got it working as a transmitter. I went back over to my little contraption, built mostly from spare parts, and started looking at every connection again. That's when I noticed that a couple of connections on the tube socket had somehow been bridged together by an excess strand of solder, shorting them out. I cut that solder connection and tried it again. This time, to my amazement and delight, I heard a signal on my AM radio -- loud and clear!

Now I needed to figure out how to get music to play through my little transmitter. The magazine article showed how you could connect it to the speaker output of your record player, so that's what I did. Soon I was listening to my own records playing on the radio. You just can't imagine how excited I was to hear that. I was eleven years old, and I had just built my own radio station. Now all I needed was a microphone!

The record player had an auxiliary input on the back, but I had no microphone. I decided to take apart an old telephone and use the mouthpiece from that. But it didn't work. No sound came out when I switched to the auxiliary input. My dad explained that the carbon microphone in a telephone needs a constant direct current flowing through it in order to work. The phone company provides that through the telephone line. It's 100 volts DC and it's switched on through the microphone when you pick up the handset. It's amazing that I didn't kill myself, but I managed to hook up 90 volts worth of batteries and run them through the microphone to get it working. I ran that through a transformer so it was isolated from the record player input. Otherwise, according to my dad, I'd probably blow up the record player! When I switched over to auxiliary now and spoke into the microphone, I heard myself talking on the radio! My first instinct was to do a station identification. Since I had no actual call letters, I just tossed a "W" on the front of the first three letters of my record player's band label, "Decca." The first words I ever spoke on the radio were: "This is radio station WDEC in Cleveland Ohio!"

Once I had the radio station set up, I'd rush home from school every night, fire up the transmitter, put on an album, and then ride my bike all over the neighborhood testing to see how far I could hear it. I spent a lot of time experimenting with the antenna wire to see if I could extend my coverage area. But no matter what I did, I couldn't hear it more than a couple blocks away. But I was finally on the air and I couldn't be happier.

My obsession with radio grew even bigger. Soon I found myself shoplifting 45 RPM records from the local department store to feed my habit. That ended abruptly, however, when my brother and I got caught and sent to the police station where we waited for our parents to pick us up!

Young Joe Knapp - Federal Criminal

One evening, while I was listening to one of the other pirate stations, I heard them give out a phone number asking listeners to call and make requests! I called that number and reached a kid who's voice I'd heard on the station. The phone line was really strange. Every few seconds you'd hear a loud "click-click" that would interrupt the connection. I learned from the pirate broadcaster that these were "test lines" used by Ohio Bell workers to communicate with each other while working in the field. Basically, you could call any three-digit exchange followed by 9883 and get a 440 cycle tone, which was interrupted on a regular basis by those clicks. While you were listening to that tone, if anyone called the same exchange followed by 9884, the tone would go away, and you would be connected to each other. The kids who discovered these special phone circuits called them "Clique Lines" and used them to meet new friends from all over the city. You could say it was a 1960's version of Facebook! One great feature of these Clique Lines, at least for a pirate radio broadcaster, was that you could use them for a request line and nobody would know your real phone number. Very cool.

This is a very rare recording indeed! Listen now to an ACTUAL bootleg radio station that was broadcasting in Cleveland circa 1968. You can hear a lot of interesting stuff on this recording. First of all, you'll hear a station ID for the legitimate WAKR-AM in Akron which was operating on 1590 AM. Even though they claim to be broadcasting on 1610 AM, this bootleg station was actually jamming WAKR at the time! Then, you'll hear the announcer identify the station as WXEL Radio, and he asks listeners to call in using one of the Clique Lines. Then, you'll hear a listener interacting with the guy on the air. But, best of all, you will actually hear this station get SHUT DOWN by the FCC! You'll hear the announcer set the phone down and run off to answer the door! At the very end, you'll hear a little bit of an old WAKR jingle playing in the background. I left in all the static and noise so you could enjoy this as if you were listening to it back then. The beat tones and beeps you hear are actually interference from the LORAN navigational beacons.

I became a regular listener to a particular pirate station which called itself WMCC, or "Wim-Cee" which was a take-off on the popular WIXY "Wix-ee" radio in town. One night WMCC ran a contest called Name That Tune. They played a few seconds from a record, then held a microphone up to an electric fan while letting the spinning blades hit against a pencil to make a clicking sound like a Big 6 wheel. They'd put a caller on the air and ask them to identify the song before the clicking sound stopped. I managed to get through, identified the mystery song in time, and won the contest! I was told that someone would come to my house to deliver the record. Back in those days, we weren't all that concerned about security, so I freely gave them my home address. Then I waited to get my prize. After a few weeks, I still hadn't heard from anyone. I wasn't upset, but I did call the station to ask about the prize. They were very nice about it and apologized. They told me that someone would drive right over to my house to deliver it. When a car arrived about a half hour later, I went outside and met up with a teenager named Bob who handed me a really badly warped Beatles 45! He told me the record I'd won had been sitting in his car all this time and had been warped by the sun. He had no other prize to give me. I asked him where the station was located, but he wouldn't tell me. All he would say was that it was located somewhere in Parma Heights and run by a kid named Jim. I thanked Bob, gave him my phone number, and asked him to tell Jim to call me.

Jim did call a few days later. I told him how amazed I was that I could hear his station all the way from Parma Heights. I lived at 91st and Harvard Avenue on the east side of Cleveland, which was about seven miles away from his house. He told me he used a 90-watt World War II US Navy surplus transmitter called an ARC-5. He used a 40 foot vertical mast as an antenna with a glass insulator keeping it off the ground. I was completely fascinated by everything he told me. I described my station to him and he said that I was probably running less than one watt of power. He offered to come over to my house to help me get a station set up just like his. Of course I agreed! That weekend, his dad drove him over to my house. We were both around 13 years old and neither of us could drive yet!

We took a bus ride to the Army Surplus store where he helped me find a suitable ARC-5 transmitter of my own. We also picked up a power supply and modulation transformer for it. The whole mess cost me about $5. We got back to my place and started putting it all together. We ran out of time, but he sketched out some notes so I could continue without him. I managed to get everything set up the way he described. When I plugged it in, naturally it didn't work!

Jim came back to my house the next weekend and took a look at it. He told me my work was pretty sloppy and showed me how to take my time and do a better job. He rewound a coil, re-soldered some connections, and got it working. It wasn't much stronger than my little one-watt station at first. Jim told me that my antenna was at fault. I had used a big length of really thin wire that I had unwound from an old television flyback transformer. That went through a hole in my basement wall, up the side of the house, across the drive to a tree, and then from tree to tree across my back yard. The signal never made it past the hole in the basement wall. I didn't insulate the wire, so it was simply grounded out. Jim suggested I get some TV antenna mast and make an antenna like his. We went and got some tubing from somewhere and I moved the transmitter up to my bedroom and ran the antenna wire through an open window to a 40 foot mast just outside. That made all the difference in the world! Jim then showed me how to "tune" the antenna using a tapped coil and a florescent light bulb. Basically, you just held the bulb up near the antenna mast and changed the tap to different positions on the coil until the bulb lit up as bright as it would go. Yes, the bulb lit up IN MY HAND without being connected to any power source. How cool is that?

This is what my parent's house looks like today near East 91st and Harvard Avenue in Cleveland. My bedroom window was just above the front door, and my 40 foot antenna mast sat on that porch roof.

Jim also showed me how I could touch the antenna mast with my moistened finger and get a little arc of electricity to jump over and burn little marks in my skin. Hey, for a couple of 13 year old boys, this was serious FUN! Before Jim left, he told me I needed to drive the plate modulation transformer with a lot more power than my record player could produce. I needed a 60 watt audio amplifier to get the job done and, until I got one, all I'd have was a very strong dead carrier. I got on my bike and drove all over the neighborhood listening to a nice clear signal everywhere I went. I went a mile in every possible direction and it was still strong and clear. Now I needed to find that amplifier!

I had my dad drive me to the local audiophile shop where they sold used hi-fi equipment pretty cheap. I found a Dynaco amplifier that would do the job and bought it for around $10. When I got home and hooked it up, it worked perfectly. I was now on-the-air again, but this time sportin' 90+ watts of power!

My station became WAMF-AM at 1610 on the dial. I had my friends come over and take turns doing radio shows every night. Jim could hear my station from his house, just as I could hear his from mine! We got to be much better friends, and we both continued to upgrade our pirate radio stations in a constant but friendly battle to out-do each other. At some point we began working together on a much more powerful pirate station, this time running 1500 watts on AM, and even simulcasting with 3000 watts on FM -- in stereo! Now you could hear our little "bootleg" radio station all over Cleveland, just like one of the commercial stations. Of course, the FCC could hear it too, which kept us both on edge -- for good reason: By this time, each of us had already been caught and shut down by the Federal Communications Commission!

On the evening of December 6, 1969, while I was still running my 90-watt station, FCC engineers from Detroit came into Cleveland looking to shut down the nearly 100 pirate stations that were operating at the time. They tracked down our stations and shut us all down. In my case, the engineer came walking right into my house without a warrant, right past my dad who was sitting on the couch watching television, and started searching for the transmitter. I can still hear my brother Steve yelling up the stairs, "Hey Joe, there's a man here to see you about your radio station!" Before I knew what was going on the Feds were upstairs and standing in my bedroom! The FCC engineer took over the microphone and made an announcement that went something like this: "This radio station has been operating without the necessary authorization from the Federal Communications Commission and is herby being closed down." At that point he ordered me to kill the power, which I did. Then he proceeded to ask me a whole bunch of questions.

This is the actual warning notice the FCC sent to my dad!

It was pretty clear he didn't believe that I'd built the station on my own. He was obviously trying to find out who sold it to me. I kept telling him that I built it myself. When he started asking really technical questions, I answered every one of them with answers like, "It's a Class C output stage with 600 volts on the plates of two 813 pentodes." I was 16 at the time, and this FCC engineer was clearly impressed. One of the last things he said to me before he left was, "You know kid, if you'd brush up on the laws, you could do this kind of thing for real." That's exactly what I wanted to do! But, it took a bit longer to get the pirate radio blood out of my system.

Here's the letter that the FCC sent to my dad after sending the first notice of violation.

Jim and I remained friends for many years. Eventually, we both found jobs in the radio industry and, at one point, we were each the Chief Engineer of competing Cleveland radio stations. Our friendly competition now extended to audio processing, with each of us trying to make our stations sound louder and cleaner than the other! Jim was satisfied to stay on the engineering side of radio, but I learned electronics so I could get on the air. I wanted to be a disc jockey at a "real" radio station!

This is the letter I got from the FCC after passing my license test. They refused to grant my license until I wrote a letter to admit and detail my 'crime' and explain what I'd done to take apart my transmitter. They also requested three character reference letters. Since I was a minor at the time, this is addressed to my dad.

As the FCC engineer predicted, I managed to pass the test to get a First Class Radiotelephone Operators License while still in high school. You had to be 18 years old to qualify, and I took the test on my 18th birthday. I passed it on the first try. The questions seemed really easy! I found out later that people went to school for two years to learn enough to pass that test, and many of those who tried failed on the first attempt. The FCC hadn't ignored the fact that I'd been caught running a pirate radio station. In order to get my license, I had to send them a letter to acknowledge that my station had been shut down and dismantled. I also had to provide three letters of reference from non-family members who would vouch for my character. I followed all their instructions to the letter, and they granted me a probationary license. It was good for just one year and, if I could get through that first year without breaking the law, I'd get a regular license and the usual five-year renewal.

My First Class Radiotelephone Operator License

When my license certificate showed up in the mail, I immediately quit my dreadful after-school job as a hamburger-flipper at the neighborhood Red Barn fast food joint and started searching for a job in radio! Of course, I couldn't find one. Nobody was going to hire an 18-year old radio engineer, license or not.

After graduation, I applied for a job at Ohio Bell Telephone. I was one of at least 100 other applicants so as I rode home on the bus I didn't think I had much chance of working there. To my surprise, they called me back and offered me a job. Since I had a First Class "ticket" I was automatically qualified to be hired as a "foreman" in the mobile telephone and network television division. I was excited at first, but I quickly learned to hate that job. Everyone working there seemed to be passing time waiting for the weekend, or for their retirement. Jobs that actually took a half hour were always dragged out to an entire work day. When I started doing car phone installations "too quickly" the other guys got really upset. They took me aside and tried to explain how "things work around here!" I wanted out.

I heard about a new radio station that had been granted a construction permit from the FCC. It would be at 1000 on the dial and licensed to suburban Parma, Ohio. I drove out to the address listed on their application only to find an empty muddy field. Standing next to a surplus Army Jeep in the middle of that field was an older guy who told me his name was Bill Hull. At that time, Bill was the only person working for the station. He was the Chief Engineer, and it was his job to turn this muddy field into a radio station. My heart beat like a hammer as I began begging him to let me help! I offered to work for him for free. I just wanted to have the experience. He talked with me for a while, learned about my background, and agreed to hire me. He couldn't pay me anything close to what I had been making at the phone company, but I didn't care about that. I immediately quit my job, took the huge cut in pay, and started spending every daylight hour at the radio station. We put up a four-tower directional antenna array, then built a cement block building to house the studios, transmitter, and office. It was a daytime-only station running 1000 watts of power (later I ran a bootleg station with more power than that!).

Once we got the station on the air, the owners hired a General Manager. He hired some really interesting local talent, including a guy named Jim Doney who had been doing a TV program called Adventure Road in Cleveland. He also hired Lynn Sheldon who had also been on television doing a children's show that I liked when I was a kid! He also hired a guy named Ted Alexander who had a massive vinyl record collection in his basement. The station's programming was pretty interesting. Jim Doney played older music in the mornings, mixed with a lot of talk about Cleveland. Ted Alexander then came on with more current hit music. But the station needed someone to follow Ted and take the controls until sunset forced us off the air. I made an audition tape for the General Manager and applied for that slot -- and he gave me the job almost immediately! When WSUM-AM 1000 first hit the airwaves, the last voice heard on that first day was mine! I was using the name Joey James, which is my first and middle names, and I was playing an eclectic mix of modern music, mostly album cuts. My first song on my first show was Changes by David Bowie!

Here's a newspaper clipping talking about my show on the new station. They didn't get my air name wrong. I was going to be Joey Adams, but I changed it to Joey James at the last minute.

I left WSUM Radio to become Chief Engineer of WBKC AM 1560 in Chardon, Ohio. At this daytime station, I also managed to get myself on the air -- doing the 2:00pm to sign-off air shift playing soft hits.

Despite being on the air for real, I couldn't get the bootleg radio bug out of my system. Jim and I knew that running a pirate station would endanger our FCC licenses, and our radio careers. It could, in fact, cost us a $10,000 fine and maybe even land us both in jail! Still, we had an itch that just had to be scratched.

To avoid being detected by the FCC, we decided to do special one-day-only broadcasts on just a few random dates throughout the year. We were very careful, of course. We even had people outside with walkie-talkies watching for the FCC trucks so they could alert us before they had a chance to track us down. By this time, we were both real radio engineers, so we knew how to build a professional radio station! When we went on the air for these clandestine broadcasts, we'd be running a 3000 watt FM rig in stereo! We had a mixing console and cart machines, just like a real radio station. We had multi-band audio processing, microphone processing, reverb, and all the other cool toys! We even had a local radio talent "drop in" for a guest show -- using fake names of course!

Concerns about getting caught eventually caused us to do fewer illegal broadcasts. We also managed to get the "broadcastin' bug" out of our systems by doing shows on the local college stations -- where we also worked as contract engineers. We even did some secret late night shows on the radio stations where we worked -- turning the AM transmitter back on after midnight during a time period where the FCC allowed daytime-only stations to operate for brief "test" broadcasts. Our test broadcasts featured wild rock and roll and crazy screaming disc jockeys! We had to cut this out at one station when we started getting letters from listeners in Europe!

How ironic is this? As Chief Engineer at WBKC, I started getting QSL reports from people who tuned in the "test broadcasts" where my friend Jim and I did clandestine shows late at night!

Here's something very interesting I found while going through some very old tape recordings in my basement. This is a recording that Jim made of ME doing a station identification on my very first pirate station back in 1966. I was 13 years old at the time! He recorded this from his house, seven miles away from my illegal transmitter. The quality isn't great, but you should be able to make out a very young teenage version of Joe Knapp saying, "This is WAMF radio, 1610, in Cleveland, Ohio." I follow that announcement with Hungry by Paul Revere And The Raiders, which was a current hit at the time!

I guess it's just not possible for me to do a short blog post!

Here's a list of some of the pirate radio stations that were operating in Cleveland in the mid-1960's:

1963 - KDJ 540 AM in Parma (shut down by the FCC in January 1964.)

1964 - WDJ 540 AM in Parma (probably the same kids!)

1964 - WCBN 1610 AM (a kid who called himself Alfie.)

1965 - KOS 1560 AM (with The Mad Pad and Captain Sly!)

1967 - WTOO 1500 AM (shut down by the FCC in Summer 1967.)

1966 - W??? 1040 AM (a kid named Lenny who was shut down fairly quickly by the FCC.)

1966 - WMCC 910 AM (one of my friend Jim's many stations!)

1967-1968 - WMCC 1580-1610 AM (more of Jim's stations! He used the name Jim Walters.)

1967 - WALF 1580 AM (this was Alfie again!)

1968 - WMCC 1610 AM (my friend Jim, when I finally got in touch with him by phone.)

1968 - WAMF (aka WSEX) 1610 AM (this was my station!)

1968 - WAKY 1580 AM (Wacky radio, my friend Jim. Shut down by the FCC November 1968.)

1968 - ???? 1580 AM (a 1500 watt AM bootleg station operated by my friend Mike!)

1968 - WNTR 1610 AM (a kid named Tony from Shaker Heights doing 'Winter-Radio'.)

1968 - WAB 1610 AM (from somewhere around Scranton and Holmden in Cleveland.)

1968 - WAKY 1580 AM (back on the air in Parma Heights at 'Fred's' house.)

1968 - WBRD 1580 AM (it's Fred Fodd back on the air with 1000 watts for one night only!)

1968 - WXEL / WAVY / WXYI / WNBK 1610 AM (that Don kid after getting caught!)

1968 - WCDJ / WEID 1610 (black kids in Maple Heights playing soul music. Great station!

1969 - WEST 1610 AM (a kid named Rich from Maple Heights running 90 watts.)

1969 - WKDV / WKOV 1600 AM (a kid named Lyle from Garfield Heights.)

1969 - WILD 1610 AM (hey, it's ME again!)

1969 - WBST 1610 AM (somewhere on the west side of Cleveland.)

1969 - WZAP 980 AM (1000 watt X-mas broadcast from Cleveland with Mike, Jim, and me!)

1969 - WCFS / WNTR 1610 (a friend of Tony, this was Al from 177th in Garfield Heights.)

1970 - WANG 1615 AM (an under-modulated 75 watt station run by Bob from Berea.)

1970 - WKDJ 1610 AM (a kid named Bruce running a 90 watt station.)

1970 - WINO 1580 AM (a kid named Al from Cleveland using WKDJ's transmitter.)

1970 - WILD 1580 & 1610 AM (a kid named Dave who was caught in just one month.)

1970 - WTDR 1610 (a kid from Bedford running an under-modulated 75 watts.)

1971 - WMHR 970 / 980 AM (a guy named Don from Maple Heights with 75 watts.)

1971 - WEMC 1580 AM (weird, records at the wrong speed. 143rd & Crawford in Cleveland.)

1971 - WROO 104.9 FM (Mike, Jim and me again, 250 watts on FM and 1500 watts on 910 AM.)

1972-1973 - WINR (Christmas day broadcasts by a kid named Bruce. The FCC guys are home!)

Others I remember include:

WPCC/WPCK 1500 AM on Cleveland's west side.

WARG 1610 AM run by a guy I ended up working with on my first 'real' station!

WAM 910 AM nice strong signal, but I don't have a clue who it was.

WAXC 610 AM from Euclid playing religious music!

WQSN 1610 AM also unknown.

KLW-TV Channel 6 - that's right, bootleg television from Parma Heights!

And some unidentified bootleg broadcasts on 6000 KHz as Radio Free Cleveland.

And finally, here's an article from Communications Handbook 1967 that talks about Radio Caroline, DX-ing and QSL cards! Check out the picture of an actual QSL card that came from Radio Caroline! Click on the image to blow it up a bit.

Many years ago I started writing a book about pirate radio stations in the USA. Here's a little excerpt from my notes. I was talking here about the 'future' of pirate radio:

"Who knows? In this day and age of technology and education at an early age, there may be more youngsters who will take the easy short cut to the glamorous field of broadcasting. They may even now be dreaming of, or building, their first illicit transmitter, impatient to hear their own voice on the radio. And, if you're lucky, you might be tuning around on the radio one day and just happen to land upon a tinny-sounding station with no commercial interruptions, but a whole bunch of 'Testing one, two, three...' announcements!"

There ARE pirate radio stations on the air all over the USA. Another one in San Francisco calling themselves Pirate Cat Radio was just closed down recently, although they continue operations on the Internet. Internet radio provides a great outlet for those who want to 'broadcast' without breaking the law. You don't need a license or a frequency! It's certainly the way I've gone and I highly recommend it if, like me, you're 'addicted' to radio. (Of course, I do have a 10-watt FM stereo transmitter sitting in my office that I never turn on. It's just there in case I need an 'emergency broadcasting fix' someday!)

Here's an Associated Press article from Summer 1974 talking about pirate radio stations in Detroit. The FCC office director, Edward Atems, mentions the activity in the Cleveland area. Ed Atems is the same guy who signed my FCC license!

I only use first names in this post to protect the innocent. If any of my old pirate radio friends are reading this -- and you know who you are -- please post a comment or shoot me an email to say hello. If you were a pirate broadcaster back in the day, I'd love to hear from you too. Tell me about the station you ran. I'm putting together notes and audio tapes with the hope that one day I can turn it all into a book. Who knows? I just might have tape recordings of your station that you didn't know existed, and vice-versa!

I dedicate this post to my dad, who passed away recently at the age of 83. This photo shows my Grandfather, my mom, my dad, and my Grandma. Rest easy folks -- you done good.

Fare Thee Well Soupy

As Steve Miller once sang, “Time keeps on ticking, into the future.” And, as it does, it’s constantly pulling some good people out of life’s game. A lot of interesting people have shuffled off this mortal coil recently, including some very talented ones who you'll hear regularly on MusicMaster Oldies.


Soupy Sales was born Milton Supman on January 8, 1926 in Franklinton, North Carolina. He grew up in Huntington, West Virginia, where his older brothers had nicknames like “Hambone” and “Chicken Bone.” Milton became known as “Soup Bone,” which was later shortened to “Soupy.”

He joined the Navy after graduating from high school in 1944. While sailing in the South Pacific, he started tell jokes and creating crazy characters to amuse the USS Randall’s crew over the ship’s public address system. He used some sounds from a record called “The Hound Of The Baskervilles” to create his famous White Fang character, a big dog who played practical jokes on his shipmates.

After the Navy, he went back home to Huntington and attended Marshall College where he earned a Master’s Degree in Journalism. During college, he’d perform in nightclubs doing comedy, singing and dancing.

He started doing radio shows on WHTN in Huntinton using the name Soupy Hines. But that name was too close for comfort to the Ketchup and soup company, so he decided to change it to Soupy Sales. In 1949 he went to Cincinnati to take a job as a morning jock on the radio, which led to some television shows on WKRC-TV called Soupy’s Soda Shop, a teen dance show, and Club Nothing! late at night. When he lost those jobs, Soupy moved on to my home town, Cleveland, Ohio. He worked on radio and television there, doing a show called Soupy’s On! It was on that show where he got his first “pie in the face.” Later he claimed he’d been hit by more than 25,000 pies during his career! Soupy liked to say he left Cleveland for “health reasons.” As he put it, “They got sick of me!”

He moved to Detroit, Michigan in 1953 where he started doing his thing on WXYZ-TV. By 1959, his popularity got him syndicated nationally on the ABC television network.

In 1960, he moved his home base to Los Angeles and continued his show. Within a year, it was dropped from the national network, but kept going as a local feature. The show went back on the network for a few months as a fill-in for Steve Allen’s late night variety show in 1962. While in Los Angeles, Soupy had Clyde Adler operating all the puppet characters he’d created for the show.

Here's one my favorite Soupy Sales songs, Doggone Doggie, which came out in 1962 on Reprise 20108:

When the Beatles were exploding in America, Soupy moved operations to New York City and WNEW-TV. There he did 260 episodes which aired locally through September 1966. These were also syndicated by Screen Gems to local stations around the country. Soupy had hit the top at this point, with guests like Frank Sinatra and The Supremes appearing on his show, among many others.

Soupy loved to perform comedy musical numbers on his show, and he also tapped into his huge jazz record collection. You can still her his theme song, Mumbles by Oscar Peterson with Clark Terry, on MusicMaster Oldies from time to time, along with a regular favorite, Comin’ Home Baby by Herbie Mann, which Soupy used as the theme for his Gunninger the Mentalist character.

Soupy even starred in a 1966 movie called Birds Do It with co-star Tab Hunter. Soupy really didn’t like the film. It was about a NASA janitor who accidently gained the ability to fly and became the “most attractive man on Earth.” It’s not available for sale and it’s rarely seen on television.


Soupy was also a regular panelist on game shows like What’s My Line, To Tell The Truth, Match Game, Hollywood Squares, and others.

After New York, Soupy went back to Los Angeles to do The New Soupy Sales Show in 1978. That lasted one season with 65 episodes syndicated nationwide. Clyde Adler even returned to run Soupy’s many puppet characters. Frank Nastasi was Soupy’s straight man and puppeteer in New York. He had worked with Soupy in his earlier days in Detroit as a sales rep for WXYZ.

Soupy created so many characters it’s hard to keep track of them all! There’s White Fang, the biggest and meanest dog in the USA; Black Tooth, the biggest and sweetest dog in the USA, Pookie the Lion, Hippy the Hippo, Peaches, Philo Kvetch, The Mask, Onions Oregano, Hobart and Reba, and Willie the Worm.

We can’t let Soupy leave the stage without remembering his New Year’s Day show in 1965. Working on the holiday wasn’t a lot of fun. Soupy ended his live show with an infamous instruction to his little viewers. “Tip-toe into your parent’s bedroom and get those funny green pieces of paper with pictures of US Presidents from their pants and pocketbooks. Put them in an envelope and mail them to me, and I’ll mail you a postcard from Puerto Rico!” When he actually started getting money in the mail, management stopped laughing. He was suspended for a couple of weeks. He donated the money to charity. It’s been a classic “live television” story ever since!



Soupy Sales performed a novelty dance record called The Mouse on the Ed Sullivan Show in September 1965. He’d appeared on that show several times, and once even sharing that stage with The Beatles. He also signed with Motown Records where he did a song called Muck-Arty-Park, a parody of MacArthur Park by Richard Harris from 1968. Of course, you’ll hear all these songs on MusicMaster Oldies!

Here's Soupy's one and only Billboard chart hit, The Mouse, which came out in 1965 on ABC-Paramount 10646:

Howard Stern and Soupy Sales both graced the airwaves of WNBC-AM in New York City during the 1980’s. Soupy’s mid-day show immediately followed Imus In The Morning, and Don Imus was not a Soupy Sales fan! He’d frequently make fun of him on the air. Howard also made some nasty comments about Soupy, which he later regretted publically during an interview on Sirius Satellite Radio. Soupy was actually fired during a commercial break after he encouraged his listeners to complain to the station because his contract had not been renewed and his sidekick Ray D’Ariano was moving into his time slot. The program director took his place to finish out the show just playing music. Soupy left the building and never came back!

Soupy leaves behind his second wife, Trudy Carson, and his two sons from his first marriage to Barbara Fox, Hunt and Tony Sales. Both sons are accomplished musicians having worked with David Bowie’s band, Tin Machine, in the 1990’s, and with Iggy Pop on his Lust For Life album.

When he left us on October 22nd, Soupy Sales was 83 years old.

We’ve lost a few other folks this month, like British singer, Clinton Ford (October 21st), Vic Mizzy, the guy who wrote the Addams Family theme song (October 17th), Johnny Jones, of Johnny Jones and the King Casuals (October 14), Bass player and frontman for Blue Cheer, Dickie Peterson (October 12), and guitarist for NRBQ, Steve Ferguson (October 7). Last but not least, the curtain closes for one last time on the legendary Al Martino (October 13th). I considered writing a lot more about these folks, but someone recently told me that I write the longest blog posts in the world. So I’m trying my best to keep this one short!

I also want to say a quick farewell to a few other notable folks who also died this month, such as wrestler and actor Lou Albano (October 14), Rene Sommer (October 5) who was co-inventor of the computer mouse, Jim Nettleton of WFIL radio (October 4), John “Mr. Magic” Rivas (October 2) of WBLS-FM in New York City, and Shelby Singleton (October 7) who ran Sun Records in the later years.

I leave you with the song Soupy Sales used as his theme in the early days of radio, Mumbles by the Oscar Peterson Trio on Mercury 72342 from 1964:

If you have any comments, requests, dedications, whatever, I welcome your input. You can email me by clicking HERE.

Radio Doesn't Know Who You Are Anymore

Do you ever listen to the radio? Back in the 1960's that would have been a ridiculous question. What else would you do?

Well, you could watch television. Back then you probably had four or five TV channels you could watch, like NBC, CBS, ABC, NET (National Educational Television which evolved into PBS), and that quirky independent station that played black-and-white reruns of the late 1950's TV shows like Highway Patrol, The Untouchables, or the original Dragnet before Harry Morgan. If you missed your favorite show, well, you were pretty much out of luck. You'd have to have your friends tell you what you missed when you saw them the next day.

If you wanted to see what's going on, you could read the morning or afternoon newspaper, or go buy a magazine or two, or wait up to watch the 11PM news on television (10PM Central) before going to bed. You could also watch the evening network news read to you by people like Walter Cronkite, or Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. You just knew these people were 'fair and balanced' (even when they weren't). If something really big happened, they'd "interrupt this program to bring you a special bulletin." You could be sure it was really important news if they did that!

If you wanted to see a movie, you could go to the local theater, drop 50 cents, and watch whatever they were showing that day (on their one screen). If you didn't like the movie, you'd eat your 25 cent popcorn and leave early.

If you liked rock and roll music, you could go to the dime store, buy a few records for about 50 cents each, and bring them home to enjoy on your $5 record player. You might even go to the local soda shop or drive-in and play some songs on the juke box, three for a quarter. This also gave you an opportunity to socialize with your friends. If you couldn't go out, you could always call them on the phone. But, if you had something to show them, you had to go visit them somewhere.

There were probably one or two radio stations in your town that played your favorite music. You'd either pick a favorite station and stick with them, or switch back and forth between the two constantly seeking your favorite songs. The radio was free, and the dee jays were very entertaining. They could sure put you in a great mood! Maybe you'd call in to the station to request a song, or dedicate a song to your steady date, and in the process get a sore finger from dialing the number a dozen times to get through the busy signals. If they put you on the air, your friends would all comment about it the next day. "Hey, I heard you on the radio last night!" You didn't get a chance to hear yourself because they broadcast the calls live, and they always made you turn your radio down to avoid feedback.

Things have changed, haven't they?

Cable TV brought a few hundred channels into your home. Now, thanks to switched-video technology, they'll soon be upping the ante to bring you a thousand channels or more. VCR's, DVR's, TiVo's, and Home Media Centers, let you record shows so you never miss them. You can archive an entire season of your favorite shows and maybe watch those during the summer break. Most of the channels show nothing but crap, so you tend to stick with a few favorite channels. Fewer and fewer television shows interest you, so you record a bunch of shows that you never find time to actually watch. You really don't even have to turn on the television anymore. You can create your own television programming with YouTube and Hulu and many other video on demand websites. A lot of what's on there is crap, too, like thinly-veiled propaganda designed to make you think a certain way.

Not only do we have several 24/7 news channels on both radio and television, we have different flavors to choose from. You've got your choice of political commentary, either far Left or far Right (Sorry, there's very little in the middle.) Practically every story is "Breaking News" today, so if something really important happens, it's easy to miss it. You can even create your own news channel by downloading podcasts and listening to them (or watching them) whenever you like. But most of it is thinly-veiled propaganda designed to make you think a certain way.

As for newspapers, well you just don't need them at all anymore, do you? A lot of people ended up canceling their subscriptions after asking, "Honey, why do we still get this newspaper every day?" A lot of newspapers have gone out of business. Of the ones that are left, whatever "news" they contain is either really old, or silly "human interest" puff pieces. Most of it is thinly-veiled propaganda designed to make you think a certain way. The bulk of the newspaper is, of course, advertising for products that don't interest you. It's not even the best choice for wrapping fish or lining your bird cage anymore. You get more "news" than you need from television and radio, not to mention the Internet, your phone, RSS feeds, blogs, and so on.

Go to the movies these days and you have more screens to choose from than you had TV stations back in the 1960's. Every movie is playing at every theater. Most of them are thinly-veiled propaganda designed to make you think a certain way. You really don't need the theater anymore. Many people have a better equipped theater in their home anyway, and you can stop and restart the movie if you have to take a pee break. Cable TV provides a whole bunch of movies you've probably already seen, or don't ever care to see. You could also drive out and rent a movie, or have them delivered to your home, or rent them on-line, or maybe even download them directly into your laptop or phone. You can watch them on your game console, or maybe skip them altogether and become part of the action in a video game.

You don't need to use the phone anymore. Many people don't even have a "home" phone anymore. Why pay for a phone you can't take along with you? Most people don't "talk" on the phone anymore, either. We can "Text" each other, write on each other's "Wall," or blast out our thoughts on Twitter, or any one of thousands of social networking Internet sites. We can share photos, videos and songs with friends and family all over the world without leaving our desk. If you tried to assemble all your Facebook "friends" in a soda shop today, you'd probably overload the building and create a fire hazard.

We don't need the radio anymore, either, at least not to hear our favorite songs. We can download any song we like and stuff it into our multi-gigabyte MP3 player or smartphone to play any where we like, any time we like, and in any order we like. We can browse hundreds of thousands of Internet streaming "radio stations" on the web. We could spend our entire lifetime watching concert videos on YouTube and other sites and we wouldn't live long enough to watch them all.

So many choices. These days it seems like you have an almost unlimited number of choices. Actually, you do. But the people who run radio stations are just starting to figure that out.

Radio stations are hurting right now. The audience keeps getting smaller. Where are they going? That's actually a no-brainer if you think about how the number of entertainment choices has exploded in recent years.

As the number of listeners drops, the advertisers are less willing to spend money on commercials. Those commercials pay the bills, and without income, radio stations suffocate. They can't afford to continue operations unless they cut costs. This begins a vicious cycle. As costs are reduced, usually by reducing costly but talented people, the less interesting the radio stations become for the audience -- ultimately causing their audience to drop even more.

It reminds me of something that's going on right now in Wisconsin. The government wanted more money for one reason or another (who knows what, it doesn't matter, they always want more money). So, they dramatically raised the tax on cigarettes. That makes perfect sense, right? Cigarettes kill, so why not increase the tax? Maybe it will make less people smoke, which is good for them. Those who continue smoking will supply the government with even more money through the increased tax revenue. A classic win-win, right? On paper, maybe. But the people are now driving into Illinois to buy cigarettes. The state of Wisconsin is getting LESS money from the cigarette tax because fewer people are buying cigarettes here. Here's a dumb question: Why not reduce the tax on cigarettes to the point where the good people of Illinois drive INTO Wisconsin to buy them? One might argue that this is a bad idea because it would encourage people to smoke, which is bad for their health. But, will someone who doesn't smoke already start smoking simply because it costs a little bit less to buy cigarettes? I doubt that very much.

OK, that's enough politics and economics for today. Back to our regularly scheduled program. What if radio invested MORE money in talent? Wouldn't that do the same thing my cigarette tax idea would do? Wouldn't it drive more listeners back to radio, thus increasing the audience size, thus making radio more attractive to advertisers?

The fact that radio has become less interesting is not the only problem, of course. There are still some radio stations out there that are damn interesting. In fact, I'd like to create a list of them. If you have any suggestions, please send me an email by clicking HERE, or add a comment to this post. Tell me the name and location of the station and, if you don't mind, a word or two about why you believe it's still interesting.

Many radio stations these days have no idea who is competing with them for a share of the audience. Back in the 1960's, it was mainly that other station in town that played similar music. That made it easy to measure how well you were doing. You'd just look at the ratings. But the ratings today are almost totally irrelevant. They're only measuring how many people hear a station. They don't measure what radio station operators really need to know.

The Three Most Important Things a Radio Station Operator Needs To Know:

1) How many of our listeners are influenced enough to actually buy the products they hear advertised on our station? (And, just as important, how effectively do the commercials we are running increase business revenues for our advertisers?)

2) How many potential listeners find our station interesting?

3) How many people who might find our station interesting spend their time doing something else, and what other things are they doing instead of listening to our station? (Like texting, Facebook, YouTube, Internet radio, video games, etc…).

The above things are listed in order of importance, by the way.

Commercials aren't a bad thing, and believe it or not, you don't really hate them. You DO hate commercials that insult your intelligence or try to sell you something that you don't want or need. You actually LIKE to hear commercials that bring you truthful information about products that interest you. That's information you can use and you may even find it more entertaining than music. Those commercials are important. But no matter how important they are, you probably don't want to hear a whole bunch of commercials strung together. That makes each one in the cluster seem a lot less important, doesn't it? Back in the old days, we knew who "sponsored" the shows. There were less commercials. Early TV shows just had one sponsor, and we knew exactly which company sponsored our favorite shows. Those commercials were much more likely to influence our listeners (or viewers) to buy our products. It makes sense, doesn't it?

Let me interrupt this program for a Special Bulletin. Attention radio program directors. You've invested a lot of thought into the "rotation" of your music. You're careful not to repeat songs too often. You know that the audience is turned off by the perception of repetition, right? Have you ever calculated the "turnover rate" of some of the commercials you play? I've listened to stations recently, in the largest and smallest markets, that are playing the same commercial every 15 minutes. Would you do that with a song? Does your audience react to that repetition the same way they react to songs that repeat too often? Food for thought, eh? Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

In the old days, the ratings companies asked people to recall which stations they listened to, and when they listened to them. This method had a couple of big faults, not the least of which was reliance on the listener's memory. People who were big fans of a particular station might over-report listening to that station just to help them out!

Today, we've traded one big fault for another. Now we have a "People Meter" that selected people carry around all day. It listens to whatever that person hears. Radio stations "encode" a unique identification signal into their audio which the People Meter picks up. It keeps track of all the radio stations heard by that person throughout the day, then reports all that back to the ratings company. The problem with this method is pretty obvious. It's telling you how many people HEARD your station, but not how much they LIKE your station.

Oh, and by the way, neither of these faulty ratings methods do anything to answer the three most important questions listed above.

Radio station operators would be wise to turn the puzzle upside down and look at it a different way. Instead of trying to get more people to hear our station, why not make our station more effective at selling products for our advertisers? That requires making our radio station more interesting for our listeners. That might mean we need to offer some of the things our competitors offer in order to lure some potential listeners away from those other outlets and back to our radio station. A radio station's competition isn't just the other radio stations in town anymore. Today, radio station competition includes things like Facebook, texting, video games, Internet radio, iTunes, television, blogs, movies, and on and on… How can we fit our radio station into this matrix of entertainment in such a way that it becomes interesting enough to today's potential listeners to make them choose to spend a little bigger slice of their precious time with our station?

In order for a radio station to compete with anything, including other radio stations, they need to offer something the competition does not, or cannot, offer. What can radio offer that you can't get somewhere else?

Radio is a one-to-many medium. It also has a limited market. A radio station's coverage is limited by the power of their transmitter. That's why every city has a different set of radio stations. Radio station operators today are not taking advantage of these things. How can you take advantage of limitations? Hey, great question!

If you're limited to a certain market, and all your listeners hear the same thing at the same time, you should probably be doing two things. First, you need to talk about things that are going on in your coverage area. Second, you need to be talking about things that a lot of people want to hear -- and that they are unlikely to hear anywhere else. What do a lot of people like to hear? Well, there's music, of course. But everyone can hear music in a lot of other places these days, so that can't be the only answer. Is it news? Well, we're bombarded with every flavor of news these days, so that can't be the only solution either. Why do so many people love to check Facebook? Could radio be more like Facebook? Sure it can! Why not? It can't be exactly like Facebook, of course. But that's ok. If you're just like Facebook, why exist? There already is a Facebook, and it's pretty darn good. Radio needs to be similar to Facebook, but not exactly the same.

Facebook is most interesting when friends share interesting thoughts with each other. Those thoughts have another name: Content. Content is a funny joke, a cool video, a great quote, a touching story, an interesting photo, a recommendation, a movie, song, or book review, stories about topics that you find interesting, and so on. Content is also what the talented radio personalities of the 1960's gave their audience, usually in great abundance. Content was also a listener dedicating a song to their steady date. Content was requesting a song and then hearing it play on the radio, knowing that you and your friends could actually influence what you all heard on the radio station, together, at the same time.

Radio may have purged itself of the one thing that it desperately needs to survive in today's seriously fractured entertainment marketplace. Before it's too late, radio may need to bite the bullet and invest in itself again. Bring back the talent, make our station more interesting for the listeners and more effective for the advertisers. It also needs to get married to the Internet to bring an updated version of "requests and dedications" to today's savvy Internet socialites.

It may also be necessary for everyone involved to be content to make do with less. A slightly larger piece of a small piece of a big pie may be all we can hope to get. But, if we can make our radio stations a lot more effective at the Most Important Thing, which is hooking buyers up to sellers, the advertisers will reward us. The listeners will thank us, too.

Here's a commercial from 1965 that repeats way too often on MusicMaster Oldies. It ties in a little bit with today's post, and it certainly qualifies as an Oldie But Goodie!

The Birth Of Rock And Roll In Wisconsin

Johnny Coy (aka Stan Cook) of WAPL Radio in Appleton circa 1956

Let's spin our magic radio dial back to 1956 and tune in WAPL in Appleton, Wisconsin. Stan Cook, who's real name was Johnny Coy, was on the air. His co-workers included Bob Bandy, Smiley Riley (who later moved to WLS in Chicago as Ron Riley), and Jack Gardner. One evening, Johnny Coy was watching a two piece polka band called The Rockin-Rhythm-Airs perform at a local theatre in nearby Neenah, Wisconsin. He felt the group was pretty talented, so he and fellow dee-jay Jack Gardner offered to become the group's managers. They accepted the offer. Johnny and Jack outfitted every member of the group with a white cap and changed the group's name to The White Caps, a name that may have been inspired by Gene Vincent's Blue Caps. Johnny started booking the White Caps into several local clubs, such as the Riverside Ballroom in Green Bay, the Cinderella Ballroom in Appleton, the Eagles Ballroom in Oshkosh, along with various other clubs and schools around Wisconsin. He even got them a gig at The Prom, which was all the way across the state and into Minnesota (Minneapolis).

This is the original lineup of Johnny Edwards With The White Caps. From left to right: Jerry Stengl, Johnny Edwards, Jack Gardner, Jerry (Gerald) Van Dynhoven, and Ricky Leigh (Ricky Lee Smolinski). Gerald became known later as Jerry Williams.

Founding member Gerald Van Dynhoven recalls, "We were playing before Rock 'n' Roll started. I was still in high school and we played at weddings, churches and school dances." The release of Rock Around The Clock by Bill Haley And The Comets changed everything. "We switched to rock, started looking for more musicians and changed our name to The Rockin-Rhythm-Airs," Williams said. "We knew this new sound was going to be something."

In January 1957, the group assembled at Northland Sound Studios at 531 Third Street in Wausau, Wisconsin. This was the home of Northland Records, a label run by Duke Wright. The White Caps recorded two songs in that session to be published on their first 45 RPM single. The songs were Rock 'N Roll Saddles and Why'd You Leave Me? Both had been written by Ricky Lee, the guitar player. This record has come to be known by collectors as the very first "rock and roll" record ever made in Wisconsin.

It's not clear exactly how many pressings were made of this record, but the number is not very large. The first 500 were made with a white label and listed the artist as simply The Whitecaps. Another 500 were pressed, again on the white label, but with the artist credits changed to Johnny Edwards With The White Caps. The white label started to scorch, so they changed to a maroon label and made around 2000 more copies using both variations of the artist name.

The record got quite a bit of airplay around Wisconsin, but it never caught on nationally. They did manage to get the record played on TV's American Bandstand in one of that show's famous song rating segments.

The White Caps disbanded around 1959. Some members went on to play successfully with other groups, while others left the music business and moved on to other ventures.

Pete Miller - Ricky Lee - Jerry Stengl

Jack Gardner - Johnny Coy

Pete Miller - Jerry Stengl

Johnny Edwards - Jack Gardner

Ricky Lee - Johnny Edwards - Jack Gardner

Ricky Lee - Johnny Edwards - Jack Gardner

Johnny Edwards

Ricky Lee (Smolinski)

Ricky Lee (with his White Cap on!)

Ricky Lee (also spelled Rick Leigh sometimes), born Richard Lee Smolinski, was a fantastic guitar player who, at the age of 15, was already showing his guitar teacher how to play! He was just 17 when he wrote these two songs for the White Caps and played lead guitar on the record. Rick continued playing as a member of various groups in the Appleton area for a while. He received a masters degree from Lawrence College, retired from the music scene, and is now working as a computer programmer in Green Bay. Rick's son is a also musician and, as his proud father says, "He is better than I ever was."

Pete Miller replaced Gerald Van Dynhoven on the drums and stayed with the White Caps for one year. He moved on to work with Jerry Williams And The Rockets for a while.

The Jitterbugs

Dave Pozolinski replaced Pete on the drums, and he's still living in the Appleton area. He had been playing drums with a polka combo called The Jitterbugs in Menasha, Wisconsin (above photo). That group also included Ricky Lee Smolinski on lead guitar. Bob Timmers, while still a junior in high school, had also been a member of The Jitterbugs.

Jerry Stengl played piano and accordion. We don't know where Jerry ended up after leaving the White Caps.

Jack Gardner, the dee jay who co-managed the group with Johnny Coy, ended up playing rhythm guitar for the band. He is currently living in Florida and may still be working in the radio business.

Johnny Edwards, who sang lead and played the saxophone, tragically passed away at a very young age due to a heart attack.

Duke Wright

Duke Wright, who was the leader of a polka band and owner of Northland Records, filled in on bass guitar during the recording session. He always joined the group whenever they played around the Wausau area. As the owner of Midwest Communications in Green Bay, Duke has been operating many successful radio stations in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska and Iowa. He started his radio career in 1958 as a teenage disk jockey at WRIG-AM, a station his family owned in Wausau, Wisconsin. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he returned to manage WRIG-AM. He put WRIG-FM on the air in 1964. This was the beginning of a radio broadcasting career that has spanned over 40 years. He served on the Board of Directors of the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association from 1981 to 1985, and was chairman of that group's Hall of Fame Committee in 1997-1998. He also served on the Board of Directors of the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Foundation. By the way, all of Duke's radio stations use MusicMaster to schedule their music! (Thanks, Duke!)

Johnny Coy, the group's manager, left the radio business and became head of security for the Presto Corporation in Appleton, Wisconsin. He was a very humble man who got a twinkle in his eye whenever he recalled his contribution to Rock and Roll in Wisconsin! He was always held in very high regard by the members of the White Caps. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2004 at the age of 84.

The Rockets (1958)

Meanwhile, Jerry (Gerald) Van Dynhoven, who had been the drummer for Rhythmaires And The Rockets, left the White Caps the day before the Northland recording session to form his own band called The Rockets. In the above photo we see the founding members (top row, left to right) Roger Loos (sax) and Jerry Williams (drums), and (lower row left to right) Cliff Peronto (lead guitar), Denny Noie (vocals, rhythm guitar), Larry Russell (vocals, rhythm guitar), and Bill Pable (piano). Jerry was not happy with the way WAPL radio in Appleton was handling the White Caps. He said, "They were really throwing the shaft to us because we were all young kids. Like we were making $60 when they made $1000. So, I broke away!"

In 1958, the band regrouped under the name The Rockets and started performing across Wisconsin. Jerry Van Dynhoven added his first and middle name to dub the band Jerry Williams And The Rockets. Later Jerry's brother Donnie joined the band and began using Williams as his last name. Jerry Williams started out playing drums, but switched to sax and guitar later on. Other members that contributed their talents later included: Jerry Starr, Tom Gebheim, Gary Laabs, Ricky Leigh, Dave Hermsen, Jim Kobs, Dave Yokeum, Pete Miller, Brother Don Van Dynhoven, Dennis Heimerman, Bobby "Bryll" Timmers, and Mike Pluger. The group backed Danny And The Juniors at the Cinderella Ballroom in Appleton on March 16, 1958. They also appeared with Fabian in March 1959 at the Riverside Ballroom in Green Bay. They also backed up other bands like Johnny Cash at the Eagles Club in Oshkosh, and Johnny And The Hurricanes at the Riverside Ballroom.

Carol Bosman started out singing at night clubs with her mother who played guitar and her uncle who played the accordion. Many people compared her to Brenda Lee. She was chosen to become the band's new vocalist after beating out 15 male competitors in auditions. Carol said, "They needed a novelty to top Noie, since Noie left for the military service, and that is why they needed a replacement and brought a girl into the group." She added, "No other band had ever done that, and it became an attraction." Apparently, she was also an attraction to Jerry Williams, and she became attracted to Jerry as well. About six months after joining the group, the two started dating. They ended up getting married to each other in 1961, after which she also started using the last name of Williams! Denny Noie later formed his own group, Denny Noie And The In Crowd, and then worked with the Catalinas, while band-mate Roger Loos ended up working with a Wisconsin rock group called The Temptations.

Jerry eventually got over his early troubles with WAPL, later letting a station dee-jay named Bob Falkner produce his group's only record. which they recorded on January 6, 1962 at the WAPL studios. It was produced by the Gold Star Recording Company in Appleton and released in June 1962 on Rocket 001 (above) and featured an instrumental cover of Blueberry Hill (called Blueberry Lane) on one side, with A Boy Like You, sung by Jerry's wife Carol (formerly Carol Bosman), on the other side. A Boy Like You was a female "answer" cover version of a Gary Stites song from 1959 called A Girl Like You.

Jerry Williams And The Rockets were in head-to-head competition with the White Caps. According to Bob Timmers, who later joined Johnny And The Rockets playing bass guitar, "The White Caps just stood there and played. The Rockets had uniforms, we had Chuck Berry Stuff, we were flying all over the stage, we were doing the showman stuff, so the band was a little more popular." The photo of Jerry Williams And The Rockets shown above was taken in 1961. That's Jerry Williams on the front row left with the sax in his hand. Right next to him is his brother, Donnie Williams (Van Dynhoven), who played drums at this point. In the back row we can see Dennis Heimermann with his bass guitar on the left, Jerry's wife Carol Williams (Van Dynhoven), and Bob Timmers with his rhythm guitar on the right.

The band played at Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) dances, school functions, weddings and night clubs. According to Jerry, it was the Wednesday evening Pierce Park dances in the late '50's and early '60's where the group attained its popularity peak. "Because we were all the same ages as the people out there and playing the kind of music that they liked, we were very popular with the crowds," Jerry said. They won a "best band" contest in Green Bay in 1962. In 1964, when Beatle-Mania hit the country, they continued performing, adopting the sound of the Fab Four.

Here's another photo of the band with Bob Timmers on the far left. Bob was (and still is) a huge fan of guitarist Johnny Meeks of Gene Vincent's Blue Caps. He went on to work with many other rock bands in Wisconsin. He did some British Invasion style music with an actual Brit, Lord Beverly Moss And The Mossmen. Bob's father was the founder of The Bargain Bulletin, a shopping tabloid that still exists today. He worked in the family business for many years, all the while staying tuned in to the music scene. One day he visited the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in Cleveland where he was disappointed at the lack of early rock and roll and rockabilly displays. He started talking about starting up a Rockabilly Hall Of Fame. With the help of Joe Wajgel, the Rockabilly Hall Of Fame became a reality on March 21, 1997. On June 5, 2000, Bob moved from Wisconsin to Nashville to set up the Rockabilly Hall Of Fame office there. He's living in Tennessee now.

Johnny Williams And The Rockets went into retirement in 1979, but got together again to perform at the Pierce Park Apple Sock dances revival in 1990-1994.

Bill Broege in 1953

Much of the information and photographs in this post came from my friend, Bill Broege. Bill worked as a representative for Columbia/Epic Records for 34 years. Bill had been a close friend of Johnny Coy since they first met in 1957. You will still find Bill selling records at an eight foot table at the vinyl record collector's shows in Milwaukee that take place at Serb Hall on the south side every month or so. Another valuable source of information was Gary E. Myers great book about Wisconsin bands called Do You Hear That Beat, and his follow up book, On That Wisconsin Beat. I also found pieces of the puzzle at the Rockabilly Hall Of Fame website.

If you have any more information about these guys, or you were a former member of the White Caps, Jitterbugs, Rockets, or any other associated group, I'd love to hear from you! Please send me an e-mail by clicking HERE. Now, let me tell you a story about how I managed to get my hands on a copy of this historic record!

Back in April 2003, I bought Great Lakes Music at 78th and Burleigh Streets on the north side of Milwaukee. The previous owner, Doug, had been very sick and the shop had been closed up for about a year. I tracked him down, found out the store was in his brother Dave's name, so I purchased the contents from him. The old store was stuffed full of used records and collectables that filled four very large rooms on two floors. Everything was totally disorganized. Some parts of the store were blocked so badly by stacks of boxes and crap that many of the records hadn't been seen by anyone in many years. I hired a bunch of helpers and we spent a couple of months cleaning it out, sorting the records, and putting them back in on nice shelves and album racks. I merged in a bunch of records from my own collection, and added a few other large collections that I bought from other dealers around the country. The store reopened as Great Lakes Records, one of the best-stocked used record stores in the country. In October, I moved the whole operation to Brookfield, a western suburb of Milwaukee, where I continued to operate it until April 2006 when I sold the inventory to a bunch of guys from New Zealand who operated a chain of stores called Real Groovy Records. Running Great Lakes Records was one of the best experiences of my life!

One day, while the shop was open in Brookfield, a lady walked in with a big cardboard box filled with old records. People used to bring in old records all the time looking to trade them for some cash. Actually, this is the best reason to own a used record shop -- especially if you're a record collector like me! She walked in, set the box down on the floor, and then waited to speak with Gary, who was busy with another customer at the time. Gary Mason practically ran the store for me, especially since I was busy most of the time running my MusicMaster software business. Most of the time, Gary was the guy at the cash register checking out customers. He helped me price records, arrange them on the racks, and keep the racks in the front of the store updated with "good stuff" that had recently arrived for resale. We both liked to go through new arrivals to see what kind of goodies we'd find in there. But, on this particular day, Gary was really busy and I was out of the shop running an errand or something. After a while, the lady got tired of waiting. She told Gary, "I just wanted to drop these off. I don't want anything for them. I just wanted them to go to a good home!" Gary thanked her and she was on her way. We never got her name.

Before Gary finished up with the customers, I came back to the shop and saw the box of new arrivals. Before I did anything else, I pulled that box up to the counter and began digging through it. Most of the time, people brought in records that had no real value at all. Many were "too new" to be valuable. Some were extremely common, such as Fleetwood Mac's Rumors, Boston's first album, Herb Alpert's Whipped Cream And Other Delights, and so on. We already had way too many of those in stock. Some of them were more scarce, but had very little demand among collectors, like big band reissue albums or lounge stuff like Jackie Gleason's Orchestra. Some had both factors working against them, such as the Firestone Christmas Albums. We once filled a 40 foot dumpster to the top with overstock of these albums! I think they were given away free at tire stores and gas stations and everybody in the world got one! Sometimes, someone would walk in with a bunch of fairly valuable records, such as the good soul stuff, or a rare variation of a Beatles album. Unfortunately, too often these used records were in terrible condition and too beat up for us to sell. We used to have a box of these "expensive but beat to crap" records sitting up front by the cash register with a sign saying "Free records - Take one!" Some of the records in this box were listed in the price guides for a lot of money, often more than $100 each. Still, very few people ever took one of the records from that box of freebies.

As I started digging through this new batch, I was half expecting to be disappointed as was usually the case. Almost immediately, however, I knew this was going to be a good batch. For starters, the records were in pretty darn good shape. They were all in sleeves, and many of them were in those old 45 single cases that were popular back in the 1950's and 1960's. Kids used those little cases to carry their records to a friend's house for a party or neighborhood sock hop. Even better, I saw that many of the records in this batch were on local Wisconsin labels featuring fairly small, local bands from the 1950's and early 1960's. That's the cream of the crop! Those are always worth a lot more to collectors because they're very scarce, virtually unknown, and usually quite good. I got about half way through the records in the box and there it was -- a nice clean copy of Rock 'N Roll Saddles by Johnny Edwards With The White Caps on Northland Records! This record is listed in the price guides at about $300 for a clean copy. I showed the record to Gary, who immediately knew what it was (you get to know the rare stuff when you work in the business), and all he could say was, "You lucky dog!"

We both wanted to track down the lady who brought in those records and give her some kind of cash for them, but we had no idea who she was. She never came in the shop again. She was probably just visiting town, maybe cleaning out her parent's old house or something.

Here are some pictures of the inside of Great Lakes Records, which was actually a huge warehouse filled with used records. In the front was a showroom where you'd find the more expensive records (above photo). Still, with all those records to organize, there were plenty of hidden treasures lurking around in the back!

Saddles, by the way, refer to a type of shoe called Saddle Soles that were really popular back in the 1950's.

Here are the lyrics to Rock 'N Roll Saddles, in case you want to sing along!

Well I went to a dance just the other night,

the band they was a-rockin' to the left an' the right.

I sure got a shock as I walked in through the door,

I saw the rock roll saddles boppin' 'cross the floor.

Well th' rock 'n roll saddles, white and black,

the rock 'n roll saddles with a buckle on the back,

the rock 'n roll saddles, dancin' to the rock an' roll.

Well, the cats they were jumpin' and goin' hog wild;

The chicks sure looked cute with their ponytails high.

I really had'a smile when I took a peek,

at the rock 'n roll saddles on the pretty gals' feet.

Well'a rock 'n roll saddles, white and black,

rock 'n roll saddles with a buckle on the back,

a'rock 'n roll saddles, a'dancin' to the rock an' roll.

All right now, it's your chance! (guitar break)

Weird man! (guitar break continues)

Well that pretty little girlie came out to me;

She said, "Come on honey won't ya bop with me?"

I said, "Okay baby," but I couldn't keep from starin'

at what that little rock 'n roll-a mama was a-wearin'.

Well'a rock 'n roll saddles, white and black,

a'rock 'n roll saddles with a buckle on the back,

a'rock 'n roll saddles, boppin' to the rock an' roll.

Well'a rock 'n roll saddles, boppity bop;

a'rock 'n roll saddles, boppity bop,

a'rock 'n roll saddles, teach me to da-do the rock 'n roll.

You can find Rock 'N 'Roll Saddles on these compilation CDs:

Buffalo Bop: Rock 'N Roll Riot (CD 55004)

Pure Rockabilly - Volume 5 (Club LP 005)

Ultra Rare Rockabilly's - Volume 13 (Chief CD 1156513/2)

Wisconsin Rock-A-Billy (CD)

32 Original Historic Rockabilly Classics - Volume 3 (CD)

And, here's a recording of that record I got out of the cardboard box, Johnny Edwards With The White Caps doing "Rock 'N Roll Saddles." This is the very first rock and roll record ever pressed in Wisconsin, recorded in 1957:

The flip side of that record is pretty good too!

Here's the rarely heard flip side, Why'd You Leave Me? I actually like this side very much, too! I hope you enjoy it as well:

Here's Gary Stites doing A Girl Like You from 1959:

Here's Jerry Williams And The Rockets doing Blueberry Lane from 1962:

Here's Jerry Williams And The Rockets doing A Boy Like You from 1962:

You'll hear all of these songs, along with more than a thousand great rock and roll songs from Wisconsin, on MusicMaster Oldies! Thanks for listening! Tell your friends!

Shall I Come Back Again?

Certain songs give me a creepy feeling when I hear them because something in the lyrics reminds me that the singer has passed away. This happens when I hear Buddy Holly singing, "That'll be the day that I die." The same feeling comes over me when I hear Otis Redding sing, "I've had nothing to live for" in his last recording, (Sitting On) The Dock Of The Bay. It happens when I hear Sam Cooke sing, "It's been too hard living, but I'm afraid to die" in his version of A Change Is Gonna Come. Jimi Hendrix delivers some pretty spooky lyrics in I Don't Live Today when he sings, "Will I live tomorrow? Well, I just can't say. I know for sure I don't live today." Even though his accident wasn't fatal, it still creeps me out to hear Jan And Dean sing their prophetic hit, Dead Man's Curve. And I don't care what John Lennon says, I can clearly hear him saying "I buried Paul" at the end of Strawberry Fields Forever, and not the words "cranberry sauce" as he later claimed.

I could go on and on with references like this, but this post is all about what happens whenever I listen to Elvis Presley singing Are You Lonesome Tonight. "Is your heart filled with pain? Shall I come back again?" I know, it's a bit of a stretch, but it's a question that always makes me want to shout out, "YES! Elvis, for God's sake, please come back!" By the way, I'm NOT one of "those people" who claims to see Elvis buying cigarettes and lottery tickets every night somewhere in lower Michigan.

Now, let's take another little trip down musical memory lane. You may already know that Elvis wasn't the first person to sing Are You Lonesome Tonight. The song was actually written in 1926 by Roy Turk and Lou Handman.

Lou Handman was born in New York City in 1894. He toured in vaudeville and played piano for soldiers during World War I. He then hit Tin Pan Alley where he became a song plugger for Irving Berlin and an accompanist to vaudeville star Marion Harris. Shortly afterward, he started writing his own songs which would become some of the most important hits of his time. Are You Lonesome Tonight became his biggest hit. In 1930, Handman and his wife, fellow vaudeville star Florrie Le Vere, moved to Hollywood to write music for Universal Studios and Republic Pictures. He worked on movies like All Quiet On The Western Front, A Star Is Born, and The Hit Parade. He died in 1956. He was posthumously inducted into the Songwriter's Hall Of Fame in 1975. This is a photo of Lou Handman (center) with his sister Edythe (left) and his wife Florrie (right).

Rumor has it that the song may have been first recorded on June 18, 1926 by Bob Haring and his Cameo Dance Orchestra, but no copies of that disc (Cameo 967) have ever been located. Bob Haring was a bandleader who recorded under several different aliases, such as the Caroliners, the Lincoln Dance Orchestra, the Society Night Club Orchestra, and the Colonial Club Orchestra. He also also appeared as Bob Haring And His Velvetone Orchestra. He wasn't the only bandleader doing things like this back in the 1920's. They did it to get around recording contract restrictions. This allowed them to release material on a different label without breaking their exclusive contract. In fact, the labels themselves often asked bandleaders to record cover versions under an assumed name which they issued on subsidiary labels in order to generate competition. A lot of this was necessary because large chain stores often negotiated a monopoly on the sale of certain labels. Bob's son, Bob Haring Jr., became a music librarian who probably spent a lot of time tracking down the various recordings done by his father! If this disc does exist, it would be a highly-prized find for record collectors. If you know I can lay my hands on a copy of Cameo 967, please contact me immediately!

The song was actually recorded first on May 8, 1927 by Ned Jakobs, but his version was not released until May 17, 1927 on Brunswick 3561. That means that the first time it appeared on a record was May 9, 1927 by Charles Hart on Harmony 431. He may have also released this on Victor 18467. I do not have a copy of the Charles Hart version and I can't find one anywhere, so I think it must be pretty rare. If you have a copy of the record or an audio file you'd be willing to send me, I'd really love to hear from you!

The hit version, which rose to number four on the sales charts, was sung by "The Radio Girl" Vaughn de Leath on June 13, 1927 on Edison 52044. The Edison discs spun at 80 RPM and were laterally recorded, which meant they could only be played properly on an Edison talking machine.

There were several other versions released in 1927 as well.

On June 27, 1927, the original composer, Lou Handman, released his own version. He played piano while the vocals were sung by his sister Edythe Handman on Gennett 6186. This is another version I have yet to hear, so please contact me if you have the record or audio file.

On July 22, 1927, Little Jack Little recorded a version that was released on Columbia 1173 in August 1927.

On August 5, 1927, the famed tenor Henry Burr released yet another version of the song on Victor 20873.

On September 1, 1927, Vaughn de Leath re-did the song again, this time backed by the Colonial Club Orchestra.

In October 1927 it was released by Elliott Stewart on Gennett 6297 (many sources incorrectly list him as Stewart Elliott). He was an actor who appeared on Broadway in 1924 in a musical production of Madame Pompadour. It appears he also recorded the song as Harlow Lashley on Champion 15371 in that same month, which is the version I have in my collection.

It was also done by Lew White on Brunswick 3672, and also by the Newport Society Orchestra also released a version of the song on Harmony 511, both in 1927.

Many a crooner would follow with a straight cover of the song through the years. Some performers, however, adapted the song to their genre. For example, the Carter Family, pioneers of country music who went on to produce June Carter (wife of Johnny Cash) and Anita Carter, recorded a bluegrass version in 1935 which was musically and lyrically quite different from the original.

The song enjoyed a revival in the 1950s, being redone first by Al Jolson on Decca 6262. He ends the spoken part with the sentence "...in the part of a broken clown". Elvis changed this to "with emptiness all around".

The arrangement used in Elvis Presley's version is based on the 1950 recording of Are You Lonesome Tonight by the Blue Barron Orchestra on MGM 10628. The Blue Barron was born Hershel Freidland on November 19, 1913 in Cleveland, Ohio.

Elvis Presley's manager, "Colonel" Tom Parker, persuaded The King to sing this old standard because it was one of his wife's favorite songs. Mrs Marie Parker liked the 1940's version by country star Gene Austin, and also the 1959 remake by Jaye P Morgan.

The spoken part is loosely based on a play by William Shakespear. It's from a speech given by the character Jacques in As You Like It, Act II Scene VII where he recites, "All the world's a stage, and all men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts."

While appearing at the International Hotel in Las Vegas in 1969, and while no doubt overdosed with amphetamines, Elvis Presley started cracking up after hearing the high-pitched voice of backing singer Cissy Houston (Whitney Houston’s mother). Elvis would sometimes mess around with the lyrics while doing his hits on stage. In this instance, he spotted a bald man in the audience and the words, “Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there” turned into, “Do you gaze at your bald head and wish you had hair!” This set Elvis off into a fit of laughter, while the band and backing singer just kept going as if everything was normal. The "Laughing Version" was issued by RCA several years later on the Live At The International Hotel album.

Except as I've noted above, you'll hear all these versions of Are You Lonesome Tonight, along with many others, on MusicMaster Oldies. You'll also hear "answer" songs, parodies, and live versions as well, including the infamous "laughing" version Elvis did, along with another one by him where he sounds totally loaded and really destroys the lyrics!

And now, recorded from MY copy of Vaughn de Leath's original hit version on the thick Edison record, here's Are You Lonesome To-Night by The Radio Girl:

Most people know that Al Jolson had a legendary voice. Here's his take on the song:

The Blue Barron version is the one Elvis probably copied:

The Colonel's wife probably liked this one from 1949 by Jaye P Morgan:

And here's that Bluegrass version from 1935 by the Carter Family!

Stormy Weather

As a record collector and dealer, I've heard many interesting stories over the years. One of the most incredible I've ever heard was the story of Stormy Weather / Sleepy Cowboy by the Five Sharps on Jubilee 5104 from 1952. Now, thanks to Marv Goldberg's R&B Notebooks, I know the real story behind this legendary record.

Stormy Weather was written back in 1933 by Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen with Cab Calloway in mind. After putting the song together at a party one night, the two later decided it would sound better sung by a woman. They gave it to Ether Waters to introduce during a revue at the legendary Cotton Club in Harlem. But before that revue had a chance to open, Harold Arlen had already recorded his own version of the song with Leo Reisman's Orchestra. His version went to number one on the charts, so it was already a big hit by the time Ethel introduced it in the show. She recorded a version in that same year which also became a number one chart hit. There were a few more versions of the song, which all ended up in the top ten during 1933, performed by Guy Lombardo, Duke Ellington, and Ted Lewis. Ethel Waters once said, "I sang Stormy Weather from the depths of my private hell in which I was being crushed and suffocated.” With passion like that poured into a song, it had to become a hit. In 1943, Lena Horne sang her big production version of Stormy Weather for the movie of the same name. It only reached number 21 on the charts, but it's the version that most people remembered through the years.

Now we fast-forward several years later to 1952. At that time, the South Jamaica Projects in New York City were fertile ground for a number of street harmony (Doo-Wop) groups, such as the Rivileers, the Cleftones, the Cellos, and the Deltairs. These groups sang on street corners where people would gather around, sit on benches, and listen to their music. One evening a group of younger kids who also loved to sing, Pete Le Monier, Billy Boatswain, Bobby Ward, Wilbur “Buzzy” Brown, and Robert Brown, were all sitting outside on the benches and listening to the Rivileers. They decided to put together their own group, initially calling themselves the Bencholeers. They later changed their name to the Love Larks, and, according to member Bobby Ward, the Rivileers started listening to them!

Not content to be with just one group, Bobby Ward also began singing second tenor with another group called the Five Sharps, which also featured Ronald Cuffey on lead, Clarence Bassett on first tenor, Mickey Owens (Ronald's cousin) on bass, and Tommy Duckett on baritone. Tommy also played piano and arranged the songs for the group. According to Bobby, Tommy was a full-fledged singing member of the group, so there were always five voices. They called themselves the Five Sharps because it fit them musically, and also because they dressed really well and always looked really "sharp" in their nice clothes! The group sang mostly ballads in the style of the Orioles, the Dominoes, the Larks, and the Royals, which were all groups they admired.

One night, while performing in the Villa Grove in Flushing, and after singing their version of My Mother's Eyes, a woman in the audience asked them to sing it again. Turns out that woman was none other than the legendary Billie Holiday who was nearing the end of her career at that point. A guy named Oscar Porter was also in the audience that night and he, after being impressed by that request, approached the group with an offer to manage them. Porter, who probably knew Jerry Blaine well enough to get an act signed without an audition, got the boys into a recording session at Jubilee Records, home of their idols, the Orioles. They worked on two songs. The first was Stormy Weather, which Ronald Cuffey chose because he favored older songs (Bobby hated the song).

The flip side of the original Five Sharps record featured Sleepy Cowboy, which had been written by Ronald Cuffey and Bobby Ward in Ronald's garage. Although they came up with different lyrics, the theme was borrowed from Sleepy Little Cowboy by the Deep River Boys which was originally issued in May 1952. But the only composer credited on the record was the group's new manager, Oscar Porter! That was a common practice back then as a means of shifting future royalty income to others. Ronald and Bobby worked on another tune in the garage that day called Duck-Butt Dottie. Sounds like a great title, but it appears they never managed to get it down on record.

One evening in the middle of October 1952, the Five Sharps showed up at the Jubilee studios in Sugar Hill around 6:00pm. Tommy Duckett played piano while singing along with the others on Stormy Weather. The studio dubbed in the rain and thunder sound effects later. Four hours later, they had both tracks laid down after several takes, during which they consumed franks and sodas. Ronald Cuffey sang the lead on both sides with the prominent bass vocals of Mickey Owens behind him. With the session ending at 10:00pm, it took then until almost two in the morning to get back home to Jamaica. Bobby's father was not pleased!

The record was basically ignored by Jubilee. No review copies were sent out after the December 1952 release, and lack of distribution killed it. Unfortunately for the Five Sharps, the competition was pretty tough at the time. They were up against songs like You Belong To Me by the Orioles, Night's Curtains by the Checkers, Big City by Linda Hayes, Last Laugh Blues by Little Esther And Little Willie Littlefield, and even Please Have Mercy On Me by Little Richard. Hal Jackson, a dee jay on WLIB, gave the Five Sharps several spins on his radio show, but it's almost certain the switchboard didn't light up. Bobby Ward thought his recordings with the Five Sharps were terrible, and he's convinced that everyone else thought the same, since almost no one actually bought the record. Stormy Weather did make it onto the record racks at two stores in Jamaica, Triboro and Green Line. Someone who worked in Triboro told them “If you guys don't sell some of these things, I'm gonna throw them out.” He probably did just that. Each of the guys had a copy, but Bobby couldn't recall if they got them for free from Jubilee or if they had to buy them on their own! Bobby's copy ended up in the possession of a girl he was dating at the time!

The legend behind the record begins in January 1962 at Time Square Records in New York City. This was THE used record shop back in the early 1960's, and it was operated by a guy named Irving "Slim" Rose. A record collector and regular customer by the name of Billy Pensabene came to the shop with a copy of a 78 RPM record he'd found somewhere either in New Jersey or Brooklyn wanting to play it for Slim. Neither of them had ever heard it before, but they both liked it a lot. It was on original copy of Stormy Weather by the Five Sharps.

At the time, Slim was doing a radio show on WBNX called Sink Or Swim With Swingin' Slim. He borrowed the record from Billy because he wanted to play it on his show that week. Supposedly, as Slim was walking home from the studio, he accidently broke it under his arm. This was not a good thing! Slim tried to claim that his pet raccoon Teddy sat on the record, but that didn't help much. Slim still "owed" a copy of the record to Billy and he figured he had two options to replace it, his store and his radio show.

On January 22, 1962, Slim asked his customers to search for another copy and bring it in to the shop. In return he offered a $5 store credit for a 78 RPM copy, or $10 credit for the same songs on a 45 RPM single. Nobody came forward. Slim started to increase the reward each week, all the way up to $500 for a single copy of Stormy Weather. Still, nothing surfaced. In the process, however, Slim managed to stir up a big demand for this mysterious record, so he went to visit Jerry Blaine, owner of Jubilee Records, asking him to reissue the original. Jerry told Slim that he couldn't do it. It seems there were about 80 master recordings that got destroyed in a fire and Stormy Weather by the Five Sharps was one of the missing masters. Blaine later changed his story and said these missing masters were the victims of water damage instead, but it was clear they no longer existed. In fact, Jubilee went to the trouble and expense of putting together a totally different black group to record Stormy Weather along the lines of the original so they could reissue the song on Jubilee 5478 in May 1964. They even called this new group the Five Sharps, but this later recording just didn't have the "magic" of the original. But before Jubilee got that record out, Slim had already recruited a group called the Florals and had them record a bogus version of Stormy Weather on his own Times Square label under the name The 5 Sharks. The flip side of that remake was a tune called If You Love Me.

Remember, NOBODY could find a copy of the original at this point, and the masters were lost forever!

A few years later, in 1968, a Brooklyn collector named John Dunn found a second copy of the original 78 RPM pressing of Stormy Weather. Unfortunately, it was badly cracked and could not be played. He took it to a recording studio where they pieced the song together, made a tape recording, and then edited out the loud pops caused by the crack. Now there was a recording of the original, but few people got to hear it -- that is until March 1972 when Bim Bam Boom, a record collector's magazine, purchased the cracked record from John Dunn. They took it to another studio where a recording engineer spent around 50 hours editing out something like 200 non-musical sounds. Later in 1972, the original Stormy Weather / Sleepy Cowboy was reissued on the Bim Bam Boom label. Finally, the world would get a chance to hear these legendary recordings!

In August 1977, a third copy of the original Stormy Weather 78 RPM pressing turned up! This time it was auctioned off in a magazine called Record Exchanger. The winning bidders were a couple of coin collectors named Gordon Wrubel and David Hall who now run the Good Rockin' Tonight auction house. They shelled out $3866 for it, which they claimed was the highest price ever paid for a single record up to that time. Actually, that wasn't quite true. A 1920's jazz record called Zulu's Ball by King Oliver on the Gennett label had sold for $4000 in 1974. Still, it was big money for a used record back in those days! Amazingly, this same auction featured a FOURTH copy of Stormy Weather which we have to assume was sold to someone else. That copy was in much worse condition with a big piece chipped off the edge of the record.

Researchers have learned that a 45 RPM pressing of the original Stormy Weather probably existed at some point, but none had ever been found. The reason these records were so scarce may take us back to the 1950's and the Korean War! Some of the materials that are used to make records were classified as "essential war products" during World War II. In fact, all production of records stopped for a full year during that war so the shellac used to make them was available exclusively for military purposes. Now the Bakelite Company started to cut back on shipments of the materials needed to make records, which made the record companies worry that the Korean War would bring about a similar ban. The most important ingredient in vinyl is acetylene, which was another essential war product. There was also a strike going on against the companies that made chlorine and chlorides, both vital ingredients for making vinyl records. On top of all this, the industry was trying to kill off the production of 78 RPM records in favor of the new 45 RPM singles that had been introduced by RCA in 1949. It's quite possible that Jubilee Records collected up records that were not selling well, including all the pressings of Stormy Weather, and recycled them. If you own any old Orioles records on Jubilee, chances are some of the vinyl in them was reclaimed from those unsold Five Sharps 45's! Still, there's a chance (SLIM) that one of the original 45 RPM copies of Stormy Weather did survive and is out there somewhere waiting for a lucky collector to discover!

A FIFTH copy of the original Stormy Weather on 78 RPM Jubilee turned up on October 31, 2003. That's when Nauck's Vintage Records in Texas offered a copy on eBay. This one also had a crack across the radius of the record, but supposedly it did not adversely affect the sound when played. After being listed for only three days, the bidding had climbed to a whopping $19,990.00! At this point, eBay pulled the auction down because the sellers had violated eBay's posting rules when they included a direct link to their home page and offered to consider a trade if the minimum bid was not reached. The problem was corrected and the auction was posted again on November 6, 2003. Strangely, the re-listed auction received no bids at all. Afterward, a collector from New Jersey contacted Nauck directly and purchased the record for $19,000. According to the buyer, the hairline crack is "barely noticable and it does not affect play."

Believe it or not, a SIXTH copy surfaced in June 2008! This one had been purchased by a Harlem resident in 1952 at the Blue Note Record Shop and held in his personal collection all through the years. This copy was put up for sale at the famous Christie's auction house in New York City. It was expected to bring in $20,000 to $30,000, but nobody ever met the minimum bid. It remains unsold, probably because the photo used by Christie's revealed a somewhat less than pristine copy. Not only that, Christie's is probably the wrong place to sell a rare record, since it's not a place frequented by record collectors.

In August 2008, yet another copy appeared on eBay. This one sold for only $5200 -- which was actually way too much, considering that this one was a fake! The seller had taken an earlier photograph of the original label, modified it a little, and pasted it on some random 78 RPM record. Fortunately, the winning bidder got a warning in time to cancel the transaction. Be careful when buying expensive old records on eBay!

Although they were still in junior high school, the Five Sharps did manage to make a few appearances at schools and small local clubs. They also appeared on the Apollo Theater's Amateur Night show where they sang a song by the Larks (either Hopefully Yours or In My Lonely Room). They came in third, with the first place prize that week going to the 5 Crowns who sang You're My Inspiration. A few months later, the group called it quits. By the end of 1953, Ronald Cuffey had joined the army and Bobby Ward had gone on to high school. Tommy Duckett ended up joining the Rivileers as accompanist and arranger.

When Ronald got out of the army, he reunited with Clarence Bassett to form the Videos. He sang both first tenor and bass, along with Charles Baskerville (second tenor), Ronnie Woodhall (lead tenor), and Johnny Jackson (baritone). After the Videos, Clarence and Charles went on to become members of the Limelites backing the legendary James “Shep” Sheppard.

One day in 1974, Bobby Ward was listening to a radio show called The Time Capsule. All of a sudden he heard his old group singing Stormy Weather! His wife, Bernice, called the studio and told them that her husband had been a member of the Five Sharps. At first they didn't believe it, but finally Bobby convinced them. He and Tommy Duckett wound up meeting with the staff of Bim Bam Boom records and, as a result, Bobby and Tommy re-formed the Five Sharps around 1976. They appeared at a couple of Gus Gossert shows, and also did a show at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, all with rave reviews. They also managed an appearance on the Good Day TV show on Boston's WCVB, by which time Clarence had returned, replacing Buzzy. Although this new-found fame didn't last too long, Bobby was happier the second time around: “This time it was about having fun,” he says.

Ronald Cuffey passed away from leukemia around 1970. Tommy Duckett had several strokes and left us in May 1996. It's rumored that Mickey Owens has died too, but Bobby can't confirm it. Clarence Bassett retired and moved to Virginia, where he passed away in January 2005.

So now, thanks to Marv Goldberg's interview with Bobby Ward, along with pieces of the puzzle he collected from a few other record dealers, we now know the complete story behind this legendary piece of vinyl record collecting history.

Now, please enjoy the original Stormy Weather by the Five Sharps!

Find an original 45 RPM pressing of this song on Jubilee 5104 and you'll probably be able to sell it for at least $50,000!

By the way, here's a very interesting garage rock take on the song from 1963 by a group calling themselves The Counts. This appeared on Smash 1821, but that's all I know about it. If you know anything about this group at all, please let me know.

It Must Be Jesus

Gospel music had a big influence on Rock And Roll. In fact, the words "rocking" and "rolling" have been used in prayer meetings for over 100 years. That's where the term "Holy Rollers" came from! Religious chanting is hundreds of years old, but Gospel music as we know it today probably got started in the late 1800's. This music ranges from slow church hymns to wild uptempo black spirituals, and both of these forms had an impact on early Rock And Roll.

Ray Charles got into trouble when he "borrowed" the tune of a well-known Gospel song called It Must Be Jesus, adding new lyrics to create his first big hit, I've Got A Woman. Here's the actual song he copied, done by the Southern Tones on Duke 205 from 1954!

Listen to this early recording of an actual prayer meeting and see if you can tell how these rhythms evolved into Rock And Roll. This is from a 1916 recording on the Little Wonder label, a record company known for producing children's records! The artists are identified only as Male Quartette and the title on the record was simply The Camp Meeting Jubilee. A little warning, by the way, some of the lyrics in this are NOT considered Politically Correct these days!

There's another Gospel record that I'd like you to hear called Pains Of Life by Elijah Fair And The Sensational Gladys Davis Trio. This appeared on Feron 108 in 1967, a full year before Aretha Franklin belted out her big 1968 hit, Chain Of Fools. Of course, Chain Of Fools was written by Don Covay and produced by Jerry Wexler on Atlantic Records. Some people claim that Don Covay ripped off this earlier recording without giving any credit to the original author! Take a listen and you'll clearly hear the similarity. Aretha Franklin, by the way, was born on March 25, 1942 in Memphis, Tennessee. She was raised in Buffalo, New York, and then moved with her family to Detroit, Michigan. She was the daugther of Reverend Cecil L. Franklin, pastor of the Bethel Church in Detroit. She was taught to sing gospel at age nine by Reverend James Cleveland. Clearly, she'd heard and sung a lot of Gospel music in her lifetime.

Speaking of Aretha, her cover of Bridge Over Troubled Water is a very nice Gospel treatment of the Simon And Garfunkel hit. Obviously, Gospel and Rock And Roll music are tightly woven together.

Of course, you'll hear all these recordings, and MUCH more, on MusicMaster Oldies!

I was in Philadelphia for the past few days, but now I'm back with a whole bunch of fresh ideas for future posts. Stay tuned!

Vinyl Records Are Worthless, Right?

I can't believe how many vinyl records were stamped out of the presses over the years! You can still find them by the thousands laying on the floor at Goodwill, strewn around in various booths at antique malls, in those cute little carrying cases at yard and garage sales, and at vinyl record shows all over the world. Used record stores are slowly disappearing, but there are still some big ones around that are jam packed with millions of little plastic discs. Vinyl records are one of the biggest selling items on eBay, with millions of them listed for auction or sale at any given time. Entire websites like GEMM and MusicStack are dedicated to the sale of vinyl records. With all those records in circulation, you'd think they'd be nearly worthless, right? Well, many of them are -- but....

I've been a record collector for many years. I actually owned a used record store that had two million records in stock. In that business, I met and got to know many of the biggest record collectors and dealers across America, and a few outside the country as well. One of them is a guy by the name of John Tefteller up in Grant's Pass, Oregon (above photo). John's got a huge collection of blues records dating all the way back to the beginning of recorded music. Record collecting is a very competitive sport, so we each get a little jealous of the others at times. Last month, however, John made me feel pretty good, even though he doesn't know it.

John managed to win a copy of a very rare record on eBay. Well, he didn't just "manage" to win it, he put in the winning bid to take it down for a mere $10,323. Yeah, that's US Dollars. The record is called Lonesome Old Jail backed with Greyhound Blues by D. A. Hunt. It's on the legendary Sun record label out of Memphis, Tennessee, the same label where Elvis Presley cut his first five records. That company was run by Sam Phillips whose magic ears could hear the star potential in Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and a whole slew of others. Anyway, this particular record appears to be quite rare. According to the news, John Tefteller now holds the only copy in the world in his hands! Except, of course, there's also MY copy of that same record...

Sun 183 (left photo) has been found in small quantities on the larger 78 RPM discs, but until recently nobody thought that any 45 RPM pressings had ever been made. In fact, Sam Phillips himself "confirmed" that years ago. Back in the 1950's, a bunch of British record hunters came to America on a Record Safari. They went to Sun Records and met with Sam Phillips and, with his help, documented everything that studio ever produced. They found 78 RPM stampers for Sun 183, but no 45 RPM stampers. Sam told them he never made any, but time has proven otherwise. He must have made a very small quantity and then forgot all about them. It's hard to imagine he only made one or two, so there must be more of them out there waiting for you to find in a dusty bin somewhere! The one John Tefteller has is a "stock" copy, meaning it was made for distribution to record stores. The one I have is a "promo" copy, meaning it was meant for free distribution to radio stations. This record is so rare, both versions are worth a ton of money. Find either one and you can jam ten grand into your bank account!

John won his copy from a dealer in St. Paul, Minnesota named Tim Schloe (left photo). His copy is not in very good condition, and condition really counts for a lot when you're figuring out what an old record is worth. They rate John's copy at VG-, which means it's been used a lot and possibly abused by a previous owner. In fact, the eBay description said that it skipped in the middle and the seller didn't attempt to fix that problem. Hey, John, my copy plays all the way through and sounds really nice on the old record player!

Bootleg copies of this record have been made. There was a guy in Florida who made a whole bunch of copies of rare Sun 45s back in the 1970's after getting his hands on some stampers and blank labels. In fact, I have a copy of Sun 183 that he made as well -- which is fake. There's an obvious difference between the fakes and the original. The printing on the label is not the same, and the fakes do not have the three "push marks" that are easy to spot on the originals. These were three small circular indentations in the plastic just inside the label area where a machine pushed the finished record out of the stamping machine. If you find a Sun 45 and it doesn't have these markings, be careful. Many a sucker has been known to pay thousands of dollars for an original Elvis Sun 45 that wasn't really original!

By the way, D. A. Hunt was a bluesman out of Alabama, and this was his one and only record. While there's a lot of buzz right now among record collectors asking each other if John paid too much for this one, it's certainly not the only record worth this much money. If you should happen to find a nice Robert Johnson 78 RPM on the Vocalion label, call me. I'd probably mortgage my house to buy it from you. Likewise, if someone came along and handed me $50,000 in cold hard cash, I'd be very tempted to turn over my mint copies of all five Elvis Presley 45s on the Sun label!

So I thought you'd enjoy hearing one of the most expensive 45's in the world! Here are both sides of Sun 183 for your listening pleasure! Of course, if you listen to MusicMaster Oldies, you've probably already heard them. Yeah, we play BOTH sides of EVERY song ever pressed on the Sun Records label.

Greyhound Blues by D. A. Hunt:

Lonesome Old Jail by D. A. Hunt: