Gary Pig Gold:
March, 2005
Gary Pig Gold Recalls Great Unsung Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll
Radio
Do you remember Murray the K,
Alan Freed and high energy?
Do you remember rock'n'roll radio?
Do you remember rock'n'roll radio?
(The Ramones)
Yes indeed, all you readers and listeners out there! In commemoration
of the grand new Jam Records release This
Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio Volume One, chockfull of highlights
from Dana Bonn and Carl Cafarelli's best three (weekly!) hours
of radio on the whole friggin' planet - streaming at wxxe.org
btw - I now boldly twist the AM dial all the way back to that
beyond-classic playlist known as Yesteryear. A torrid time
when sounds burst forth in strictly seven-inch, single-channel
three-minute bursts, and the jockeys of said discs were quite
often just as wild and as woolly as the Top Forties they rode
the night away upon.
So pull the covers and crank the volumes
Up to tune anew into some of the men who paved the airwaves
for Carl, Dana, and all others out there who still believe
in Rock, Roll, and Radio…..
Alan Freed
Hard to believe there hasn't been some statue
erected, or even some far-flung celestial body named after
the sole soul who can rightfully lay claim to the title, Father
of (Broadcast) Rock 'n' Roll. Harder still to fathom Alan's
recalled today as little more than the plaid-jacketed patsy
who cruelly took the Big Fall in the Fifties payola scandal
(while co-conspirator Dick Clark slithered relatively unscathed
to the safety of his $100,000 pyramid). The only man who could
plant Chuck Berry's duck-walkin' ding-a-ling and Jerry Lee
Lewis' flaming Steinway on the same stage and live to drink
about it, Alan Freed liberated an entire generation's ears,
torsos, and imaginations, single-in-handedly inventing Rock
'n' Roll Radio in the process. Kindly repeat after me, then:
Our father, who art in heaven...
Murray The K
The place is Ringo Starr's bedside inside
New York's plush Plaza Hotel, circa 2/9/64:
Murray: Hey Ring, what's happenin' baby?
Ringo: It's all happenin', Murr!
Only one man could have so adeptly, brilliantly,
and so thoroughly thought-provokingly introduced the four
Fabs to so unsuspecting a nation. Red-faced and sweatin' No.1
bullets from beneath a never-ending array of soiled golf caps,
clad crassly in strategically ill-fitting Sole Brother slacks,
bellowing like some Sanka-tanked auctioneer possessed by the
larynx of of Screamin' Jay Ward... this middle-aged (former
Mickey Mantle manager!)'s "Swingin' Soiree" show
introduced Johnny Mathis, The Ronettes, Rolling Stones, Tom
Jones, "Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands" (all thirteen
hours of it), Jimi Hendrix, and The Who to the previously
all-American airwaves. Yet despite teaching untold millions
to submarine race watch while loyally chanting in
*Measurray (his Own Official Language!) the clarion
call of the 1960's (…ready everyone? "Ahh-BEY! Ahh-BEY!
Kumasawa-SAWAAAH!"), history labels Murray as merely
the last - though loudest - in a long line of fifth Beatles.
But one glance at this afternoon's Billboard Top
Ten will cause any true fan of rock 'n' roll radio to ponder
wishfully, "If only the K were alive today…"
Dewey Phillips
It was on his "Red Hot and Blue" show one sticky
evening in August, 1954 that this late, legendary Memphis
good ol' first crept out on his limbs to spin a young local
singer's debut disc. Before anyone fully realized what had
been unleashed, that little Sun record had gone and sown the
seeds of a musical and social revelation the likes of which
can still be dealt with today. Somehow sensing as much, Dewey
invited the singer into the WHBQ studios, where the following
electrifying exchange took place:
"Elvis?"
"Uh-huh?"
"I said, Elvis?"
"Yessir?"
"Tell us a bit about y'self!"
"Well sir, I, uhh... I mean, uhh..."
"Tell us all about your new record!"
"Well... it's, uhh... I tell ya, uhh... it's... uhh...
well..."
"Okay! Thanks alot, Elvis!"
"Uhh..."
Not surprisingly, within a matter of months
Young America had found an articulate new spokesperson in
the former Tupelo truck driver, thanks in no small part to
the foresight and fortitude of one Dewey Phillips.
Jungle Jay Nelson
While Adrian Cronauer was wishing Vietnam a good morning,
on the far side of the globe an ex-kiddie TV host was presiding
over a battlefield of a different sort: Morning rush-hour
in Toronto, Canada. For years the kinky king-pin of mighty
1050 CHUM-AM, the warped wonder known to thousands as Jungle
Jay was in fact transmitting from some crazed and darkened
corner of his private, spectacular psyche. He often thought
nothing of ringing hapless housewives between platters to
report a fleet of UFO's had just abducted their children en
route to school, or announcing frantically that the entire
city's water supply had just been declared irrevocably contaminated
by microscopic radioactive spores found falling in the rain.
One wild and crazy jock, yes... but also a bonafide rock 'n'
roller at heart who once leaped on stage in front of a hockey
arena full of screeching teens, Flying-V in hand, to "jam"
with Gerry & The Pacemakers (and later torpedo the "Ferry
Cross The Mersey" by repeatedly screaming "Fire!"
into Gerry's mic).
Rodney Bingenheimer
Beginning life as not much more than Sonny & Cher's thirteen-year-old
road-eye, this persistent little pluck slowly but surely worked
his way up the dial first by doubling for Davy Jones on "The
Monkees" and later by opening the West Coast's only,
um, authentic English disco (wherein Led Zeppelin had their
very own, uhh, booth). As if that wasn't more than enough
already, he's helped launch Blondie, The Go-Go's, Bangles
and even those Wondermints on their merry ways, double-dated
with Jodie Foster
and Brooke Shields, amassed one of the largest known collections
of Mickey Mouse Club memorabilia this side of Cyril Jordan,
as well as (now this alone qualifies him forever as an undisputed
Hero Of Rock 'n' Roll Radio) tearfully reuniting Frankie with
Annette on the KROQ air in 1982: all to the sweet strains
of their maybe-someday-seasonal standard "Together We
Can Make A Merry Christmas" (...well, it made it to Number
One on Rodney's Top Twenty!)
Do you remember lying in bed with the
covers pulled up over your head?
Radio playin' so no-one can see.
We need change and we need it fast
Before rock's just part of the past
'Cause lately it all sounds the same to me.
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