Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
Glen Rutherford Article on WAKY and I'm A Mummy Remembered
Also see the web link
City's airwaves went WAKY in the old days of rock 'n' roll
By Glen Rutherford from 1982
Cityscape is a weekly column in which members of the news staff ruminate on intriguing aspects of the life in the Louisville area.City's airwaves went WAKY in the old days of rock 'n' roll
By Glen Rutherford from 1982
In the days before rock 'n' roll became an entry in the dictionary, a youngster had two choices if he wanted to hear the likes of Chuck Berry, Laverne Baker or Betty Everett.
He listened to the black radio stations - WLOU in town until sundown, then WLAC in Nashville at night, with "the Hoss Man, layin' it down for Royal Crown." Not the cola; the hairdressing cream.
'LAC had a midnight show, too, sponsored by "Randy's Record Shop. If it's ever been recorded, you can get it at Randy's."
That was it. That was before your mother knew what rock 'n' roll meant, before Elvis or Bill Haley, and yeah, before WAKY radio.
WGRC radio - the "George Rogers Clark radio station" - was playing who-knows-what kind of music before 1958; nobody I've talked to can remember. But they know what happened when a Texan named Gordon McLendon bought the station and changed its name to WAKY -- say that wacky.
The airwaves around Louisville haven't been the same since.
WAKY radio took to the air with 24 straight hours of one song, the immortal "Flying Purple People Eater."
Oh, they'd introduce other songs - "Hey, here's Louis Prima and Keely Smith," or "We know you're rarin' to hear Bobby Darin," but the song they'd play was Purple People Eater.
That was just the start of the craziness, of a decade or so of off-the-wall radio. It was radio that brought Louisville face to face, or ear to ear, with music that changed the way young people thought about practically everything.
WAKY has mollified over the years. The craziness gave way to less radical radio, which gave way to oldies -- in recent years they came play the same stuff that had made the station famous.
Now the oldies have given way to computers.
WAKY has switched to an electronic format; all the music is pre-programmed, played automatically without the aid of a disc jockey.
It's probably making Jumpin' Jack Sanders turn over in his grave.
Jumpin' Jack was perhaps the best known on-air personality WAKY ever had.
Probably the wackiest, too.
Thomas Shelby "Bob" Watson works for the Associated Press now, but back in the crazy days of WAKY radio, he was the station's news director. Like everyone who recalls Jumpin' Jack, Watson does so with a smile.
"I started at WAKY when I was still a student at UK," Watson recalled, "and all my teachers in Lexington thought I was crazy. They did not view WAKY as legitimate radio."
Little wonder.
Would a legitimate station air a "news report" about the alleged sighting of a giant alligator in the Ohio River near the foot of Fourth Street?
Would an on-air personality at a legitimate radio station set fire to the bottom of the news wire the real newsman was reading?
Would a legitimate station seriously promote such events as a man spending a weekend in a coffin with 40 poisonous snakes?
WAKY did all those things, and Jumpin' Jack Sanders was behind much of it.
"At one time, we had a three-man news department with Tom Perryman, Gerry Wood and me," Watson said, "Wood came to become one of Sanders' favorite people, and when that happened, look out. He couldn't wait 'til Wood got on the air to harass him."
On occasion, said Watson, Wood would still be typing his newscast right up to the second he was to go on the air, and occasionally he'd rip copy from the Associated Press wire machine and lay it on his lap.
Sanders would delight in seeing that," said Watson, "He'd sneak behind the turntables, make his way to the newsroom door and he'd light the copy. Just set it on fire."
It made for an interesting newscast.
So did the WAKY promotion centering on a guy who called him Wacheetanokai, the snake man.
Perryman, now general manager of WCII radio in Louisville, remembers that WAKY staged that promotion with the old Rambler City auto dealership in Jeffersonville, Ind.
"The guy'd read a book or something, lying with 40 or 50 poisonous snakes - least I guess they were poisonous," said Perryman. "This time he did it in the dealer's showroom, and they had about 40,000 people come in that weekend. Didn't sell a single car, that I know of, because it was too crowded for anybody to get any work done."
An incredible amount of talent came and went from WAKY radio, Perryman said. Not just DJs, either, but talented newscasters, program directors and station managers.
"It was, no kidding, a tremendous station," he said.
Sanders, who died in Nashville four years ago ( Ed Note :Jack Sanders died in February, 1978 in Nashville from liver disease and pneumonia), wasn't WAKY's only famous crazy. Those who followed him were sometimes just as crazy -- jocks such as Bill Bailey, Jim Brand, Gary Burbank, Weird Beard and Coyote Calhoun.
And especially Skinny Bobby Harper.
Harper was at WAKY just a year or so, but he left an impression. He was one of the first in town to write comedy bits for his show ahead of time -- he did routines such as "The Itty-Bitty News," and phony commercials for non-existent products or movies.
Who can forget his famous promotion of a bogus film called "The Monster That Ate Pleasure Ridge Park."
"Pleasure Ridge Park," went Harper's ad. "Where men are men, women are men, and the children are confused."
He was also the guy who started the "Ties for Columbus" project, an effort to get people to send neckties to Louisville Police Chief C.J. (Columbus James) Hyde.
I think he inundated poor C.J. with ties," said Watson. "Tell you what, it (WAKY) was the kind of place where work wasn't work. You looked forward to coming in every day 'cause you never knew what was going to happen."
It was also the kind of station you loved to listen to. To this day, it's easy to recall the station's Sunday night jingle -- one of the last things my radio played before I drifted into sleep and into another week of school.
"The weekend's over," the jingle singers sang, "it's Sunday night, time to dream a dream or two. With WAKY, seven-nine-oh, Sunday night radioooo…"
Note From Bill Grubb
Wasn't it Jack Sanders who locked himself in the control room and played the Mummy song ?
Here it is to jog your collective memories
Wasn't it Jack Sanders who locked himself in the control room and played the Mummy song ?
Here it is to jog your collective memories
Thinking of the 60's --New Music from Best Coast -
Give us comments and tell us what you think please also send me your memories and items to post . Look froward to hearing from you .
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Louisville Native Harvey Fuqua, Who Passed Away Yesterday Afternoon By Bob Davis, Co-Founder www.soul-patrol.com
A Few Words About Harvey Fuqua, Who Passed Away Yesterday Afternoon
By Bob Davis, Co-Founder www.soul-patrol.com
Harvey Fuqua (1929-2010)
*If you look up Harvey Fuqua online or read a book on the history of American Popular Music from any angle you want to take it from, you will be able to pretty much piece together the idea that he was important person. Here is an example from a short bio that someone sent to me soon after I announced Harvey’s passing
At Chess Records not only was he the lead singer of the Moonglows, he also is the person responsible for bringing Etta James to Chess (despite what you may have seen on the silver screen in Cadillac Records.) He was a great songwriter and producer, responsible for bringing both Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell to Motown, as well as Jr. Walker, Shorty Long and the Spinners. Pre-Motown, he was a record executive with his own label, Tri-Phi. Post-Motown, he gave us New Birth, Weather Girls and Sylvester.
That is pretty much what you would be able to piece together.
What you could never piece together is the impact that he had over American Popular Music. If I had to make an analogy, Harvey Fuqua was like Pete Rose of Magic Johnson. He could play any role that you wanted him to, onstage or offstage. He was a great singer, but he also put together & managed a tour. He wrote hit songs, but he also managed record companies. For the past 10 years or so, I have had a chance to be around Harvey Fuqua quite a bit and to observe how some of the most important historical figures in the history of American Popular music behaved when they were around Harvey. He gave me the chance to be “the fly on his wall.” Here are two examples.
–MARY WILSON OF THE SUPREMES: While I was in the middle of interviewing Mary, Harvey walks in the room and Mary says; “that’s who you need to be interviewing, not me, he’s the guy who knows it all and did it all.”
–PAUL SIMON OF SIMON & GARFUNKEL: I was standing next to Paul Simon, while the Moonglows were rehearsing at the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame Inductions. Paul Simon was completely oblivious to the fact that I was standing next to him. He was so mesmerized by the strength of the Moonglows performance that he started talking to himself and said; “this is what rock n’ roll sounded like when it first started.”
–MICKEY MCGILL OF THE DELLS: “Harvey is the one who taught the Dells how to sing.”
I could easily quote another dozen artists…suffice it to say that Harvey Fuqua was a larger than life character. Not only should a movie should be made about him, there are quite a few people in the music business who should be quite happy that Harvey never made a movie and that he has taken their secrets to the grave with him
Whenever he would enter a room everyone would stop doing whatever they were doing and say, “there’s Harvey.” He was a big guy, physically imposing, who when he spoke, sounded like the “voice of God.” You might not know who important he is, but take it from me, everything that we think that we know about American Popular Music, would be different, if not for Harvey Fuqua.
Despite being placed on such a lofty pedestal by his peers, Harvey always impressed me as being a very humble person.
For example, Harvey was the victim of one of the most scandalous episodes in the history of American Popular Music, when he was forced to allow Disc Jockey Alan Freed’s name to be recorded as “co-writer of the Moonglows song “Sincerely.” In exchange for securing airplay on Freed’s radio program. Allan Freed of course wasn’t satisfied with gaining ½ of the royalties Moonglows hit song. He also had the song re-recorded by the McGuire Sisters and it became a hit all over again, creating more profits for Alan Freed.
When I asked Harvey how he could allow something that he created to be stolen in this fashion, his response was: “all I cared about in those days was hearing my song on the radio and if that is what I had to do in order to be on the radio, then so be it.”
What Harvey didn’t say (cuz he didn’t have to) was that what Alan Freed did is quite literally the definition of something called PAYOLA, for which Alan Freed ultimately served jail time for. So in reality Harvey actually got the last laugh on Alan Freed.
Back in the early 2000s, I was able to cover the RRHOF induction ceremonies for the first time because of Harvey Fuqua. While I was in the press room, a woman from VH-1 was walking around the room, basically looking for people to kick out. She checked my credentials and once she was convinced that I was legit, she then questioned me about the “legitimacy” of all of the other Black people in the room, looking to kick them out if need be. She pointed to each one and asked me to identify them. When she pointed to Harvey, I told her who he was and she replied; “oh I thought that he was a janitor.”
A few weeks later when I wrote about this incident, Harvey told me: “never stop writing about stuff like that, till it stops happening….” In fact it was Harvey who told me: “Make sure that you continue to write about more than just R&B music or else they will try to marginalize you and keep you in the ghetto…”
I could write a whole lot more about Harvey Fuqua, and I may do it in the future at some point, but I am not going to do it right now. Harvey Fuqua was a good friend to both me and to Soul-Patrol during the years when we were just getting off of the ground. He opened many doors to me that would have otherwise been closed. He cared very much about the idea of the website and helped me as much as he could in taking that idea and making it into a reality.
In closing out this piece, I would like to quote Harvey himself. He wrote the following back to me in response to the essay that I wrote about him a few years ago entitled “The Ten Commandments of Harvey Fuqua.” Harvey sent me back the following in a short email:
“THANKS BOB YOUR ARTICLE IS WONDERFUL, I’M PROUD OF YOU AGAIN, KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, BLESS YOU MAN, MR. QUAZ. (Harvey Fuqua)
One last thing I will say about Harvey….
Harvey identified, saw potential in and mentored Marvin Gaye. He did the same thing for me. He did it for anyone that he thought was deserving!
IMHO, a big part of what is wrong with America today, is that we don’t have as many men in this country anymore who are like this as we used to.
And now you have an idea of just what Harvey Fuqua meant to Bob Davis…….
RIP
—————–
Bob Davis
earthjuice@prodigy.net
bobdavis@radioio.com
At Chess Records not only was he the lead singer of the Moonglows, he also is the person responsible for bringing Etta James to Chess (despite what you may have seen on the silver screen in Cadillac Records.) He was a great songwriter and producer, responsible for bringing both Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell to Motown, as well as Jr. Walker, Shorty Long and the Spinners. Pre-Motown, he was a record executive with his own label, Tri-Phi. Post-Motown, he gave us New Birth, Weather Girls and Sylvester.
That is pretty much what you would be able to piece together.
What you could never piece together is the impact that he had over American Popular Music. If I had to make an analogy, Harvey Fuqua was like Pete Rose of Magic Johnson. He could play any role that you wanted him to, onstage or offstage. He was a great singer, but he also put together & managed a tour. He wrote hit songs, but he also managed record companies. For the past 10 years or so, I have had a chance to be around Harvey Fuqua quite a bit and to observe how some of the most important historical figures in the history of American Popular music behaved when they were around Harvey. He gave me the chance to be “the fly on his wall.” Here are two examples.
–MARY WILSON OF THE SUPREMES: While I was in the middle of interviewing Mary, Harvey walks in the room and Mary says; “that’s who you need to be interviewing, not me, he’s the guy who knows it all and did it all.”
–PAUL SIMON OF SIMON & GARFUNKEL: I was standing next to Paul Simon, while the Moonglows were rehearsing at the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame Inductions. Paul Simon was completely oblivious to the fact that I was standing next to him. He was so mesmerized by the strength of the Moonglows performance that he started talking to himself and said; “this is what rock n’ roll sounded like when it first started.”
–MICKEY MCGILL OF THE DELLS: “Harvey is the one who taught the Dells how to sing.”
I could easily quote another dozen artists…suffice it to say that Harvey Fuqua was a larger than life character. Not only should a movie should be made about him, there are quite a few people in the music business who should be quite happy that Harvey never made a movie and that he has taken their secrets to the grave with him
Whenever he would enter a room everyone would stop doing whatever they were doing and say, “there’s Harvey.” He was a big guy, physically imposing, who when he spoke, sounded like the “voice of God.” You might not know who important he is, but take it from me, everything that we think that we know about American Popular Music, would be different, if not for Harvey Fuqua.
Despite being placed on such a lofty pedestal by his peers, Harvey always impressed me as being a very humble person.
For example, Harvey was the victim of one of the most scandalous episodes in the history of American Popular Music, when he was forced to allow Disc Jockey Alan Freed’s name to be recorded as “co-writer of the Moonglows song “Sincerely.” In exchange for securing airplay on Freed’s radio program. Allan Freed of course wasn’t satisfied with gaining ½ of the royalties Moonglows hit song. He also had the song re-recorded by the McGuire Sisters and it became a hit all over again, creating more profits for Alan Freed.
When I asked Harvey how he could allow something that he created to be stolen in this fashion, his response was: “all I cared about in those days was hearing my song on the radio and if that is what I had to do in order to be on the radio, then so be it.”
What Harvey didn’t say (cuz he didn’t have to) was that what Alan Freed did is quite literally the definition of something called PAYOLA, for which Alan Freed ultimately served jail time for. So in reality Harvey actually got the last laugh on Alan Freed.
Back in the early 2000s, I was able to cover the RRHOF induction ceremonies for the first time because of Harvey Fuqua. While I was in the press room, a woman from VH-1 was walking around the room, basically looking for people to kick out. She checked my credentials and once she was convinced that I was legit, she then questioned me about the “legitimacy” of all of the other Black people in the room, looking to kick them out if need be. She pointed to each one and asked me to identify them. When she pointed to Harvey, I told her who he was and she replied; “oh I thought that he was a janitor.”
A few weeks later when I wrote about this incident, Harvey told me: “never stop writing about stuff like that, till it stops happening….” In fact it was Harvey who told me: “Make sure that you continue to write about more than just R&B music or else they will try to marginalize you and keep you in the ghetto…”
I could write a whole lot more about Harvey Fuqua, and I may do it in the future at some point, but I am not going to do it right now. Harvey Fuqua was a good friend to both me and to Soul-Patrol during the years when we were just getting off of the ground. He opened many doors to me that would have otherwise been closed. He cared very much about the idea of the website and helped me as much as he could in taking that idea and making it into a reality.
In closing out this piece, I would like to quote Harvey himself. He wrote the following back to me in response to the essay that I wrote about him a few years ago entitled “The Ten Commandments of Harvey Fuqua.” Harvey sent me back the following in a short email:
“THANKS BOB YOUR ARTICLE IS WONDERFUL, I’M PROUD OF YOU AGAIN, KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, BLESS YOU MAN, MR. QUAZ. (Harvey Fuqua)
One last thing I will say about Harvey….
Harvey identified, saw potential in and mentored Marvin Gaye. He did the same thing for me. He did it for anyone that he thought was deserving!
IMHO, a big part of what is wrong with America today, is that we don’t have as many men in this country anymore who are like this as we used to.
And now you have an idea of just what Harvey Fuqua meant to Bob Davis…….
RIP
—————–
Bob Davis
earthjuice@prodigy.net
bobdavis@radioio.com
Wikipedia Entry on Louisville Native Harvey Fuqua
Harvey Fuqua, (pronounced /ˈfjuːkwɑː/, July 27, 1929 – July 6, 2010), was an African-American soul singer, songwriter, record producer, and record label executive.
Fuqua founded the seminal R&B/doo wop group the Moonglows in the 1950s. He is noted for later having been one of the key figures in the development of the Motown label in Detroit, Michigan: his doo-wop group gave Marvin Gaye his musical career a start, and he and his wife at the time, Gwen Gordy, distributed the very first Motown hit single, Barrett Strong's "Money (That's What I Want)", on their record label, Anna Records. Fuqua later sold Anna Records to Gwen's brother Berry Gordy, and became a songwriter and executive at Motown.
[edit]Life and career
Fuqua was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and was the nephew of Charlie Fuqua of The Ink Spots. In 1951, with Bobby Lester, Alexander Graves and Prentiss Barnes, he formed a vocal group, the Crazy Sounds, in Louisville, later moving with other members of the group to Cleveland, Ohio. There, they were taken under the wing of disc jockey Alan Freed, who renamed them "The Moonglows" after his own nickname, 'Moondog'. The Moonglows' first releases were for Freed's Champagne label in 1953. They then recorded for the Chance label in Chicago, before signing for Chess Records in 1954. Their single "Sincerely" reached #1 on the Billboard R&B chart, and # 20 on the Hot 100, in late 1954.[1]
Recording on Chess Records, Fuqua initially shared lead vocals with Lester, but eventually asserted himself as the leader of the group. This changed in 1957 when he, in effect, sacked the other members and installed a new group, previously known as the Marquees, which included Marvin Gaye. The new group, billed as Harvey and the Moonglows, had immediate further success, but Fuqua left in 1958. The Moonglows reunited temporarily in 1972, and in 2000 were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
While on the Chess label, Fuqua also appeared on record in duets with Etta James, having hits with "If I Can't Have You" (#6 R&B, #52 pop, 1960) and "Spoonful" (#12 R&B, #78 pop, 1961).[2]
Fuqua left the Moonglows when Leonard Chess suggested that he join Anna Records in Detroit. At Anna Records, Fuqua began working with Anna Gordy, Billy Davis, Lamont Dozier and Johnny Bristol. He also introduced Marvin Gaye to Anna's brother, Berry Gordy, and married their sister Gwen Gordy. In 1961, he started his own labels, Tri-Phi Records and Harvey Records, whose acts included the Spinners, Junior Walker and Shorty Long. However, tiring of running a small independent label, Fuqua welcomed the opportunity to work at Motown, and was hired to head the label's Artist Development department and meanwhile worked as a producer for the company. Fuqua brought the Spinners and Johnny Bristol to Motown, and co-produced several hits with Bristol. He was also responsible for bringing Tammi Terrell to the label, and for suggesting and producing her duets with Marvin Gaye, including "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "Your Precious Love".
Around 1971, Fuqua left Motown and signed a production deal with RCA Records, having success particularly with the band New Birth. He also discovered disco pioneer Sylvester, and "Two Tons O' Fun" (aka The Weather Girls), producing Sylvester's hit singles "Dance (Disco Heat)" and "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" in 1978 as well as his album Stars in 1979. He also served as Smokey Robinson's road manager. In 1982 he reunited with Marvin Gaye to produce the singer's Midnight Love album which included the single "Sexual Healing". In 2000 he set up his own "Resurging Artist Records", and also acted as a trustee of The Rhythm and Blues Foundation.
Fuqua resided in Concord, North Carolina until his death from a heart attack in hospital in Detroit on July 6, 2010.[3] His nephew is filmmaker Antoine Fuqua.
[edit]References
- ^ Hogan, Ed. "Biography: Harvey Fuqua". AMG. Retrieved 15 May 2010.
- ^ Whitburn, Joel (2004). Top R&B/Hip-Hop Singles: 1942-2004. Record Research. p. 222.
- ^ obituary in Miami Herald
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