by Don Keith
Wizard of the Wind
A Novel by Don Keith
© 1997, 2012 by Don Keith
All rights reserved
First published as A Wyatt Book for St. Martin’s Press, New York, New York, January 1997
To Clyde, who taught me to listen.
This story is dedicated to all radio personalities, those wizards past and present whose banter is their incantation, whose air castles are built with only voices, sound, and music riding on the wind. Among them are:
Casey Kasem, “Brother” Dave White, Denny Ray, “Humble Harve,” Kid Red, Robert Murphy, Bob Arthur, Cathy Martindale, Dick Bartley, Hy Lit, Kris Stevens, Robert W. Morgan, Bob and Tom, “Cousin Brucie” Morrow, Wink Martindale, Larry King, Bob Burton, Cat Simon, Charlie Kendall, Dick Biondi, Kris Robbins, Rocky Allen, Bob Costas, Dick Purtan, Catt Stone, “Incredible Magic Christian,” Dick Clark, J. Akuhead Pupule, Kurt Kirkpatrick, Rodney Bingenheimer, Bob Dearborn, Charlie Chase, “Kansas Mack” Sanders, Johnny Dolan, Dick Orkin, J. Paul Huddleston, Roger Barkley, Bob “Boogie” Gordon, George Gilbert, Steve and DC, Charlie Douglas, “Shotgun Tom” Kelly, J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, Larry Lujack, Ron and Ron, Bob Elliott, Domino, J. P. McCarthy, “The Real” Don Steele, Laura Starling, Ron Chapman, Bob “Wolfman Jack” Smith, Charlie Davis, Don Geronimo, Jack McCoy, Steve Cannon, Lee Abrams, Ron Jacobs, Adrian Cronauer, Don Benson, Jack Thayer, Lee Arnold, Ron Lundy, Bob Glasco, Charlie Tuna, Don Imus, Jan Jeffries, Lee “Baby” Simms, Ron O’Brien, Al Lohman, Bob Grant, Charlie Van Dyke, Don McNeil, Jay Michaels, Ichabod Caine, Lee Logan, Ron Riley, Alan Burns, Bob Kingsley, China Smith, “Dr.” Don Rose, Jay Thomas, Lee Michaels, Ross Brittain, Shadoe Stevens, Alan Freed, Tommy Edwards, Bob Mitchell, Chris “Super” Fox, Don Walton, Jaye Albright, Lee Sherwood, Opie & Anthony, Rufus Thomas, Alison Steele, Bog Pittman, Chris King, Delilah, Mike Murphy, Dr. Demento, Jean Shepherd, Les Turpin, Rush Limbaugh, Arnie “Woo Woo” Ginsberg, Paul Oscar Anderson, Tom Birch, Bob Rivers, Chris Lane, Dr. Dre, Jeff Gonzer, Liz Kiley, Rusty Walker, Art Laboe, Bob Steele, Chuck Blore, “Dr.” Johnny Fever, Jeff Pollack, Lon Helton, Sam Riddle, Art Roberts, Bob Wilson, Chuck Buell, Duke Rumore, Jeff Wyatt, Long John Nebel, Sammy Jackson, Art Schreiber, Bobby Denton, Chuck Dunaway, Art Wander, Dwight Case, Jerry Clifton, Jack Armstrong, Lowell Thomas, Scott Muni, Ryan Seacrest, Arthur Godfrey, Bobby Irwin, Chuck Harder, E. Alvin Davis, Mike Oatman, Jerry Damen, “Machine Gun” Kelly, Scott Shannon, Scott Sherwood, Scotty Brink, Bobby Ocean, Chuck Leonard, B. Mitchell Reed, Ed Lambert, Jerry Williams, “Mancow” Muller, Barry Farber, Bobby Rich, Chuck Logan, Ed McMahon, Jhani Kaye, Marc Chase, Shelley “The Playboy” Stewart, Biff Collie, Brad Riegel, Chuck Nasty, Ed Salamon, Jim Christian, Mark & Brian, Sherm Feller, “Biggie” Nevins, Bruce Vidal, Clark Weber, Elmo Ellis, Jim Bohannon, Mark Driscoll, Sonny Fox, Bruce Williams, Garry Meier, Claude Tomlinson, Elvis Duran, Jim Kerr, Mark St. John, Sonny Laguna, Bill “Birdman” Thomas, Bubba the Love Sponge, Courtney Hayden, Bill Balance, “Emperor” Bob Hudson, Jim Ladd, Martin Bloch, Sonny Melendrez, Bugsy, Coyote Calhoun, Bill Betts, Eric Rhoads, Jim Morrison, Mary Turner, Stan Freberg, Bumper Morgan, Coyote McCloud, Bill Burkett, Father Tree, Jim Pruett, Mason Dixon, Steve Dahl, Buzz Bennett, Jimmy Gill, Cynthia Fox, Bill “Bubba” Bussey, Frazier Smith, Jim Robinson, Mel Allen, Steve Kingston, Steve Rivers, Mel Leeds, “Captain Midnight,” Dan Brennan, Bill Drake, Fred Jacobs, Jim Taber, Mel Karmazin, Sunny Joe White, Steve Norris, Carey Curelop, Dan Ingram, Bill Gardner, Fred Winston, Jim Zippo, Michael L. Carter, Susan Stamberg, Bill Lawson, Carl P. Mayfield, Dan Mason, Gabe Baptiste, William B. Williams, Jimmy Rabbitt, Mike McVay, Symphony Sid, Bill Lowery, John Lander, Dan O’Day, Garrison Keillor, Jimmy Steal, Mike O’Meara, T. Tommy Cutrer, Bill Mack, Dan Vallie, Gary Burbank, Jimmy Vineyard, Moby, Tac Hammer, Bill Tanner, Charlie Cook, Danny Bonaduce, Gary Guthrie, “Red Beard,” Joe Bonnadonna, Moon Mullins, “Tall Paul” White, Billy Parker, Dave Donahue, Bob Eubanks, Gary Owens, Joe Niagara, Murray “the K” Kauffman, Ted Atkins, Darrin Wilhite, Gary Stevens, Joe Pyne, Neal Rogers, Terry Dorsey, Dave Letterman, Rick and Suds, Gene Chenault, Joe Rumore, Norm Pattiz, The Greaseman, Dave Logan, Gene Rayburn, Joey Reynolds, Norm Winer, Tim Wall, Todd Storz, Dave Nichols, George Klein, John Boy and Billy, Oedipus, Todd Pettingill, Dave Roddy, George McFly, John Gehron, Orson Welles, Tom Clay, Del Clark, Gerry DeFrancesco, John DeBella, John “Records” Landecker, Paco Lopez, Tom Donahue, Del De Montreaux, Rick Dees, Gerry House, John Bozeman, Pat Clarke, Tom Joyner, Doug Layton, Dennis Constantine, Gerry Marshall, John Donovan, Pat St. John, Tom Leykis, Gil Gross, John Ed Willoughby, Patti Wheeler, Tom Reeder, Gordon McClendon, John Rook, Paul Harvey, Tom Rounds, Grant Turner, John “R.” Richbourg, Phil “the Bean” Cisneros, Tom Snyder, Greg Bass, John Sebastian, Phil Hunt, Tommy Charles, Guy Zapoleon, Johnny Dark, Ralph Emery, Trip Reeb, Hairl Hensley, Johnny Davis, Randy Michaels, Trish Hennessey, John A., John R., and John B. Gambling, Harley Drew, Steve Harvey, Johnny Gray, Ray Goulding, Venus Flytrap, Harold W. Arlin, Johnny Hayes, Red Barber, Vickie Buchannon, Harry Harrison, Johnathan Brandmeier, “Wild Bill” Brock, Regis Philbin, Wally Phillips, Herb Oscar Anderson, Jon Wailin, Rhubarb Jones, Walt “Baby” Love, “Hoss” Allen, Keith Hill, Rich “Brother” Robin, Ken Minyard, Rick Shaw, Ken Dowe, Howard Stern, Richard Belzer, Howie Castle, Kent Burkhart, Kevin Matheney, Rick Burgess, Kevin Weatherly, Kid Leo, Rick Sklar, and the thousands of others who may be faceless but still bless(ed) us every day with their aural alchemy.
--Don Keith, Indian Springs Village, AL July 2012
...and they shall seek to the idols, and to the charmers, and to them that have familiar spirits, and to the wizards.
Isaiah 19:3
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Incline your ear and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live...
Isaiah 55:3
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A demonstration of wireless communication was given by Nathan Stubblefield in Murray, Kentucky, in 1892. He never capitalized on his invention and died penniless. Patent No. 12039 for communication by electromagnetic waves was granted to Guglielmo Marconi in 1896. He also was the first to participate in a trans-Atlantic transmission and reception. The Morse code letter “S” (di-di-dit) was sent from Cornwall, Great Britain, to St. John’s, Newfoundland, in 1901.
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A radio program called Rambling with Gambling has been broadcast regularly on WOR in New York City since March of 1925. Three generations, John B. Gambling, his son, John A. Gambling and his son, John R. Gambling, have each hosted the program. Over 21,000 shows have been aired to date.
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In January, 1996, Tampa disk jockey Bubba the Love Sponge received a call on the air from a young girl who was attempting suicide. He was able to keep her on the line until he could get her help and thus saved her life.
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“The radio business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and weak men die like dogs.”
--revised version of a quote (originally about television) from Hunter S.
Thompson often found pinned to radio station bulletin boards
He spoke softly to her. But, of course, she could not hear him. Then, just on the off chance that she might, he said it anyway.
“I love you, Momma.”
She only lay there, though, her cheeks waxy and false-flushed, her lips turned up at the corners as if they might dissolve into a full smile any second. Her eyes were closed, her long blonde hair fixed the nicest he had seen it since his father had died.
“I miss you already,” he whispered.
But she ignored him, prett
y much the way she had done the last couple of years. Someone, probably one of the women she had once worked with, nudged him to move on.
He thought for a moment about touching his mother. Her hand or her arm. But he knew it would be cold and dead. He did not want that to be the last thing he remembered of her.
“Jimmy, move on, darling. There are some more people who want to pay their respects.”
It was his grandmother pushing him along now. Her eyes were blood-red and her mascara and make-up made her face look smeared and grotesque. Maybe she was afraid he was going to break down and bawl like a baby or pitch a tantrum and keep the pall-bearers from hauling his mother out to the waiting hearse.
No, he was eight years old, not a baby anymore. And this was already his second funeral. He was a veteran of sad singing and slow walking.
Before he stepped away from the casket, though, he looked for the bullet hole. They said it was behind her right ear, but the cheap fake-satin pillow hid it.
“Come on, honey. We’ve got to leave her sometime,” his grandmother gurgled through tears and finally broke down completely. He became the man and helped her back to the front pew.
While the preacher reached and clawed for something good to say about Delores Gill, Jimmy sat there and stared at the few inexpensive sprays of flowers around the coffin and tried to make his mind do a virtue-search of its own. He knew one thing for sure. His mother did not exactly have a ticket punched for the Promised Land.
Oh, at one time she might have stepped right out of the cast of The Donna Reed Show or been a dead ringer for Beaver Cleaver’s momma or maybe Harriet Nelson. If you didn’t notice her cheap clothes and the shack they lived in, that is. But when her husband, Jimmy’s daddy, died the awful way he did, she did a one-eighty as quickly as a stray bolt of lightning seeking the path of least resistance to ground. She began running with a crowd of loud, greasy men and loose, fragrant women who worked in the carpet mills across the Georgia state line in Dalton.
Sometimes, he would try to tell her about something that happened at school or with his army-playing, but he knew she was not listening to him. She usually ignored Grandmama’s gossip, too, as she ate a quick bite of supper over the sink and combed her hair and checked the thick, gaudy make-up on her ghostly reflection in the dark kitchen window. Then she would be gone with a slam of the screen door and a spray of gravel as she scratched away in his father’s old Plymouth.
Then, inevitably, just before the sun came up and chased away the darkness, he would hear her stumbling in, cursing the blackness, the rickety sticks of furniture that jumped out into her path, and her dead deserter of a husband. Young as he was, Jimmy knew she was only lost in a haze of drunkenness, a fog of grief.
That’s when he would climb from under the covers and go to her to try to make her listen to reason. He would try to put his arm around her and tell her that he was lonely and lost, too, but with Grandmama and Jesus and them, they would be all right together. But she would only cry and laugh and sing and cuss.
She did not hear what he was trying to tell her at all.
“Please listen,” he begged. “Please listen, Momma.”
But she never did.
Sign On
A generic punk-rock band was thumping away on the restaurant's juke box, with the off-key guitars and sneering vocals seriously out of place in the middle of the breakfast rush. But nobody at that morning's disk jockey "card party" seemed to be paying the music much of any mind. Or the eggs or biscuits either, for that matter.
The get-together was sometimes convened totally by accident at a place called Sadie's, a greasy spoon diner downtown that was a convenient equal distance from each of the town's radio stations. Or at least the ones that really mattered anymore. Or sometimes a bunch of the disk jockeys would gather at someone’s house or apartment with the pretense of watching re-runs of WKRP in Cincinnati on television. Or the four or five midnight-to-six jocks in town would wander into whatever bar was open at 6:30 AM for a cold-beer breakfast and a "card party" of their own.
There was rarely a hand dealt before the radio war stories took over. Everybody knew the WKRP episodes by heart by now anyway. Hell, they all considered the show to be more of a damned documentary than a sit-com anyhow. Hungry or not, breakfast sometimes lasted until lunchtime. Or until the coffee shop waitress or the manager would tell them to take their cigarette smoke and noise somewhere else.
The subject was always, eventually, sooner than later, radio. Broadcasting. The stations, the characters who waltzed through them, the groupies, the record promotion men, the music stars who made all the bullshit worth it.
A gray curtain of rain was falling outside Sadie's this particular morning and the windows were fogged with steam and conversation. Chick Charles had just stumbled in, ordered his usual four-eggs-over-easy-bloodshot-with-Tabasco, and was now holding court at the row of tables the jocks had slid together in the back of the smoky dining room. Charles had been a legendary deejay on a dozen different stations over twenty years in nine different cities from Jackson to Albuquerque. At that moment, though, he looked more like a bum than a radio star.
"Boys, if I could've just been paid by the word, I'd be a rich mother today," he declared. His deep-throated voice caused several of the other patrons in Sadie’s to look his way. "Instead, I get a dollar a day and all the records I can eat."
Chick Charles was bumping fifty. He was now doing easy listening, 10 PM 'til 2 AM, on the lowest-rated FM station in town, along with what few commercial voice-overs he could pick up on the side. But he was still de facto ringmaster of the "card party" circuses. That was simply because he knew more stories than anyone else. Or how to cue someone else to tell one of his favorite tales if he was simply too tired.
"Scotty, tell us about the mule that ate the transmission cable in Shreveport," he'd say, or, "Wild Child, wasn't you in Louisville the night the two old gals set Three Dog Night's hotel room on fire?"
None of the members ever questioned the veracity of the stories. They understood some of them were not even remotely true, that others had the embellishing benefit of time, that key facts often changed more than somewhat. But it did not matter. They got passed on from jock to jock, market to market, retold like Biblical parables. And they usually started with, “You’re not going to believe this one, but…” and ended with, “And that’s no shit!”
The primary common thread, though, was that they were about radio people, mostly from the late fifties and sixties when the medium was getting reinvented on the fly to stave off television, which was only the latest threat. When the personalities who cracked the mike and created Technicolor images in mid-air in ten second bursts became just about as big as the wild new rock and roll music they were introducing to a voracious audience of mostly baby-boomers.
The stars of their fables were the disk jockeys, the characters who carried on the tradition of earlier wizards who could make magic on the wind. Arthur Godfrey had been the original Peck’s bad boy. Edward R. Murrow was crazy for a story. Martin Block could build a swirling ballroom full of dancers out of ozone and voice and recorded music. They were the stars of the picture-less medium. Kindred spirits with the likes of Wolfman Jack and Rockin’ Randy Mathews and John "Records" Landecker and Jerry Diamond and Chick Charles and Larry Lujack and Don Imus and Wink Martindale and Joe Niagara and Jimmy Gill and Dick Clark and Alan Freed and a few hundred others who could bring a laugh or a tear with a word or two, hastily, craftily applied between three-minute records and a raft of commercials.
Chick Charles was having a coughing fit at the moment so Dr. Don Davis from Q-103 took the floor. He arbitrarily established "death" as the first topic of the morning's meeting. He opened the floor for contributions.
“We had a guy working weekends,” Cliff Carr from Rock 97 chimed in. “He was having girl trouble so one night he put on an album, went to the production room, turned off all the lights, and cut both wrists wide open with the tape-splicing razor blade.
The boss was listening and heard him breaking format, tracking the album, came down and caught him bleeding to death. Breaking the format saved the guy’s life. But he got fired the next day anyway. I hear the guy is a preacher now, saving souls and dunking Baptists somewhere up in Missouri.”
“Speaking of Missouri," Joey Reynolds from The Mix joined in. “When I worked in Kirksville, we had to have our tower painted so the owner cheaped out and hired two bozos off the street to do it. Well, they had painted their way up to the four-hundred foot level when the boson’s chair they had rented broke. Murphy’s Law, you know. Shit on a tower won't break when you're only up twenty-feet.
"People said they looked like manhole covers when they were scraped up off the ground. The owner was okay because they had started at the bottom of the tower and painted all but the very top. The old so-and-so never did get the rest of the tower painted.”
“You guys remember Rocky Graves?” Jack Ross from WKUY asked the question. "I think you worked with him in Raleigh, Cliff. He was married to a beautiful woman and he was insanely jealous of her. Had good reason, too. He was doing six to ten at night at KJAY in Des Moines. I did mid-days. He came to work early one night, got himself a reel of tape, went into the production room and recorded an hour of his show. At eight, he started the tape and drove home.
"Sure enough, there was his lovely wife, doing the horizontal bop with some professor from the community college. That was bad enough, but on the nightstand she had a radio playing and Rocky’s voice was coming through loud and clear, doing one of the best shows of his career. Coming from the tape, of course. She had figured she was okay to spread her wings as long as she could hear Rocky on the air playing the hits. Well, he shot both of them to death. And while he was at it, he blew hell out of the damn radio, too. Blood, teeth and radio parts every damn where!
