Pictures like this were about all the WHBQ staff knew about me. I'm sure they were expecting the worst.

Prior to my arrival, Stu and I were on the phone almost daily discussing things I wanted done before I arrived. Michael Spears had been on the phone with Stu daily, also. Poor Stu didn’t know where to salute. My first day in the station, Michael Spears called me about a million times. Judy Smithart was music director at WHBQ. She was a very sweet lady who was fiercely loyal to Klein. She met with the reps from the record companies, called the music stores for record sales information, and was programming secretary. She didn’t make the decisions about the music added to the playlist, but she had been a strong influence on George and previous PDs. I didn’t change her position or responsibilities at first. Judy introduced me to most of the local record reps. A portion of the first few days were spent apartment searching. My wife and I were looking at one apartment when we ran into Frank Turner, the local Warner Brothers promo man. He was showing the same apartments to Michael St John, new PD at my cross-town rival, WMPS. It was an awkward moment and word quickly spread of the incident. Everyone assumed I would be angry with Frank. I called him and asked him to meet me for a drink. We met at a bar a half block from the station, The Bull Shotte. Frank and I hit it off immediately and laughed about the incident at the apartments. We decided to have some fun with everyone by pretending to be feuding. French suggested we host a cocktail party for the record guys to show our willingness to work with them; He wanted the record company advertising dollars. Frank and I decided we’d really ham up the feud. A lot of national promotion men flew to Memphis for the party. French went all out: ice sculptures, shrimp, crab, caviar, and champagne. Everyone froze when Frank and his boss walked in. I don’t know what they expected. I walked over to them and hugged Frank. Everyone clapped! His boss breathed a sigh of relief. That night I realized WHBQ was going to be very important to those guys.

Judy Smithart, Q Music Director, Lou Rawls, and me.

Rick Dees’s record "Disco Duck" was a national hit. When I accepted the job at WHBQ, we were playing his record in limited rotation at WAPE. As a gesture of just how serious I was about taking him and WMPS apart, I dropped the record and made a big deal about it to the RSO Records national guy. I wanted the message to get back to Rick in Memphis. I was known as a "hired gun" and I played the part well. My reputation preceded me. I met Dees for the first time at Chesterfields, a popular Memphis club. He was making a personal appearance. I waited and waited and waited; finally Rick walked in dripping women. He knew I was going to be there and after he did about fifteen minutes in the DJ booth, we went back to the managers office. After a couple of minutes of chit chat I got down to business. I told him what my ideas for WHBQ were and I wanted him to do mornings. Rick had a knack for avoiding answering a question that any politician would envy. While non-committal, he was interested in staying in Memphis. He and his wife had just moved into a new home. He had a no compete clause in his WMPS contract and Plough Broadcasting had no intention of letting him out of it. At the time he was fired, Rick was PD at WMPS. He was pretty bitter and I knew that would work to our advantage. Rick was getting offers to do TV shows right and left, another plus for us was. He wanted to revel in the glory of "Disco Duck". The no compete would allow him the freedom to ride the duck till it quacked. French had given me a little insight into what made the guy tick. I could see right away that if Rick accepted our offer, French and I would have to play "good cop-bad cop" in our dealings with him. Guess who got to be the bad guy.

Rick didn’t have an agent; all the negotiations were directly with him. French had done some preliminary discussion with him and I was more than happy to let him and Rick work out the details. Rick was being courted by several big stations. He didn’t seem concerned about getting another radio job. After a week or so, French finally signed him. We were prohibited from using his name, likeness, or voice on the air until after the no compete ran out. Once we had him under contract, I got down to the business of setting up the format for Q. Dick Edwards arrived from WAPE and he and I worked night and day reformatting the station. The fall ratings period was about to begin. I had to put the station together around Dees.

Me, a little more serious, in my office at WHBQ, fall 1976.

The backlash against Dees' firing at WMPS was enormous. Once word got out that we’d signed him, I could feel the audience moving our way. The request lines were ringing off the hook with questions about Dees.. We bought billboards on every corner in Memphis that said "Rick Dees is coming to 56/HBQ". That was the only thing we could do to keep the audience pacified till Rick went on the air in December of ‘76. Stu Robb would hold down mornings until Rick got there. Dickie was going to do 6-10PM. I needed a strong afternoon jock who would compliment Dees. Bob Landree had impressed me at B-100, so I hired him to do a "morning show" in afternoon drive. Bob and afternoon newsperson Janice Gordon were made for each other. They had immediate repartee. I encouraged their banter outside of the newscasts. Janice was a great newsperson and a character when she wanted to be. She was a Memphis native so she helped Bob, a California guy, blend into the soul of the city. They were as comfortable on air as Regis and Kathy Lee. Bob could lead Janice right up to a punch line and then let her deliver it with hilarious consequences. Bob allowed himself to be the butt of jokes. He even called himself "Boob". Occasionally, they got risqué, but never nasty. I could see that the afternoon show had the potential to rival Dees’ morning prowess. Robert Gray, a part-time swing jock, wrote and participated in bits for Landree’s afternoon show. One bit he did was Ronald Retiree, poster geezer for Alzheimer's. The bits were usually pretty silly and funny. Landree had about a hundred or so tape cartridges with sound effects and drop-ins. I got a huge carousel cart rack so he could keep his carts in the control room instead of taking them out and putting them back every day. Soon there would be a battle of the drop-ins between Bob and Dees.

Page 1 of "The Bible"; there were a total of 60 rules

Special thanks to Tad Griffin, who kept this copy (in his underwear drawer next to his pay stubs!)

Sid Leek had been at WHBQ forever. Dees had requested that he not have to work with Sid. There was no option except to let him go. The staffs of WHBQ Radio and Television seldom fraternized, yet there was a clique of people who had been there for years. French had been there for several years, but not long enough to enjoy "veteran" status. The decision to fire Leek caused a rumble in the building. I had lost track of Terrence McKeever since he left WAPE, but somehow I tracked him down or vice versa. I thought he might be a perfect compliment to Dees. Terry came to Memphis one weekend and I put he and Dees together for a day. They hit it off; McKeever moved to Memphis and went on the air immediately. Terry’s unique style caught on immediately and he taunted the audience with Dee’s arrival without ever mentioning Rick’s name on the air.

French further infuriated the WHBQ media-plex establishment by having the newly designed 56/WHBQ logo emblazoned on the hallways of radio in bright yellow, red, green, and blue .

Me, Barry Manilow, and June Colbert of Arista in the "colorful" halls of WHBQ

The TV people wondered what the hell was going on down in the "cellar". Radio occupied about a tenth of the total square footage of the big building on Highland Avenue. For years, radio had stayed down in it’s little space and not bothered anyone. Who were all these new guys? How dare they venture into TV? For the first time radio had a life of it’s own. We did things "our" way. The coffee klatch met upstairs in the TV break room each morning. We had a coffee pot in radio. I genuinely enjoyed bursting into the break room and watching the eyes of the old timers get as big as saucers. The TV anchors were pretty nice folks. They liked to come down to radio because we were loose, loud, and having fun. I insisted that the control room monitors be reworked so they would rattle the building. I wanted everyone to know that WHBQ was a cooking son-of-a-bitch. I had a rule that NO ONE was allowed in the control room. One night I came back by the studios and caught a TV engineer in the control room jaw-jacking with the jock. I grabbed him by the belt and collar and threw him down the hall, then ran after him kicking him in the butt and yelling. Of course, that incident was preceded by an evening at The Bull Shotte.

Dick Edwards committed the ultimate insult on the set of the 11:00 o’clock Channel 13 news on Halloween night, 1976. The Q co-sponsored the March Of Dimes haunted house, "Scream in The Dark" each year. Dickie did his show from there via remote. Halloween night, I had rented him a devil costume. Dickie was a short black guy with a smile as big as Texas. Seeing him in that devil costume was hilarious. Some of us were at the Bull Shotte, next door to the station. Dickie came there first from the remote, had a drink or two, then went to the station. As he passed the TV news set studio, he couldn’t stand it. It was about a minute before airtime. Dickie plopped down behind the anchor desk. The anchors got tickled. All viewers could see were a pair of red horns sticking up between Fran Fawcett and Dave Brown as they choked back laughter through the first few minutes of the newscast. Dickie left the studio and went home. The next morning French met me at the door. While, officially, he had to chastise me, he was laughing his butt off. I reprimanded Dickie, struggling to maintain decorum.

The engineers for TV and radio were union. Most of them had been there for years. French’s decision to hire a separate chief for radio didn’t sit well with the old timers. Chris Karb was hired from WGMS, the RKO classical station in Washington. Kris was young and hip in a nerdy kind of way. Chris and I sat down to discuss audio processing and I discovered quickly that he was from the "Eric Small" school. Eric was the phenom of RKO, having made WXLO’s signal the best sounding FM in New York. Eric’s claim to fame was a secret "black box" which was allowed the signal to be LOUD but not distorted. Eric also pioneered multi-band equalization, gated limiters, and other innovations. He’s still in business today running his own company. Karb revamped the control room to my specs. The production room was old but fairly elaborate. The production director had to have a first class license according to the union contract. I hired an old friend of Rick’s, Rusty Black.

The fall of ‘76 was fast and furious as we awaited the day we could put Dees on the air. The advertising sales on the station began to increase as clients got on board at "pre-Dees" prices. The WHBQ sales department was having a ball. By now my relationship with the record companies was pretty good. There were a few who resented the fact that Jimmy Davenport had an inside track at the station. I instituted a Monday night get together (modeled after the old WFOM days) for jocks, record guys, and Judy and me. We usually went to Judy’s house and the promotion people brought food and beer. We played all the new songs then voted on our favorites. It was fun and more than once I got voted down. June Colbert was the Arista promotion person for Memphis. She had grown up around the music business and knew her stuff. We became good friends, but when it came to records, fought like cats and dogs. Barry Manilow had just begun to really take off and in preparation for an upcoming Memphis concert, June arranged for me to go to Philadelphia and interview him I didn’t prepare for the interview and asked really dumb questions. Manilow got a little irritated with me, but was cordial just the same. We even joked about it when he came by the station on the day of the concert. One day Jud Phillips, the Mercury promo person, walked into my office followed by a bunch of guys with masks on. They ordered me to be blindfolded and handcuffed. I was then taken outside and out in a vehicle and whisked away. I didn’t know what was going on. The Bar-Kays kidnapped me and took me to Friday’s in Overton Square for a private luncheon and preview party for their new album. We had a ball and I added the single off the album. Not only was it a great song, those guys had gone to a lot of trouble to promote themselves to me. I became friends with James Alexander, the bass player. James and one other guy were the only original members of the band. The rest were killed in the same plane crash with Otis Redding. Spears went crazy because I hadn’t informed him that I was adding the record. Michael lived in San Francisco and thought WHBQ should play what KFRC was playing. You can hardly find two more opposite extremes than Memphis and San Francisco. That was it. I went to French and said "he’s got to go"; Spears was history. WHBQ got even funkier.

The first three months I practically lived at WHBQ. After work I headed to the Bull Shotte. Soon the record people found out where I hung out and they started coming there. Dave, the owner loved it. WHBQ’s staff also began to gather there every afternoon. The Bull Shotte was also a hangout for Memphis State Students. Despite my good intentions or changing some of my habits when I left Jacksonville, I was right back to my old ways. My wife and I separated and I moved in with McKeever. My daughter and I spend nearly every Saturday together. She loved to go to the radio station with me. There was "live" wrestling in the Channel 13 (WHBQ) studios each Saturday morning. She always watched the parade of wrestlers who used the "radio" restrooms for dressing rooms. At Christmas, Marge Thrasher, host of a daily "coffee chat" show on 13, invited all WHBQ employees to bring their kids to the studio for a special show. Meridith, my daughter, was there and Marge asked her what her daddy did. Meridith innocently replied "he makes a lot of money". My salary at WHBQ was supposed to be a secret, however the "old timers" had ways to find out anything. For the next few weeks, my salary was the fodder for lots of talk. WHBQ TV and radio were notorious for low pay, until Dees and I arrived.

L to R: Me, Walt Jackson, Manilow, Dickie Do, Rick ? June Colbert, Arista, ?, McKeever

Finally D day arrived, Rick’s first morning on the air. I arranged for a restaurant to cater breakfast in the parking lot at WHBQ and we invited listeners to come to the station at 5:30 in the morning to welcome Dees to WHBQ. When I arrived at 5:00, the parking lot was already packed. That morning Rick got calls from the Mayor, the State Representative for Shelby County, the Governor, and several new "showbiz" type friends. The phones rang off the hook all morning with people calling to wish him well. Advertisers were paying a premium for commercials in the morning show. I think French and the sales department figured with Rick in mornings, the rest of the day really didn’t matter. Everything was geared toward making revenue budget based on the morning show. I had no intention for WHBQ to be a one ring circus. Rick was the foundation, but every other person on the air had a job to do...WIN their time slot.

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