| THE LIFE AND TIMES OF DANDY DON LOGAN In the late 50's through 1967, he was a Top 40 DJ,being heard daily on 50, 000 watt KEEL, a Gordon McLendon station. He was hired in Dallas by Don Keys, the national PD of the McLendon chain. McLendon is credited with inventing Top 40 radio along with Todd Storz. Don hails from the small town of Poteau, Oklahoma. This is where his grandmother's family settled, getting there via the “trail of tears.” However, he was born in French Camp near Stockton, California after the great depression. Don was always interested in music. He was in the High School band in Wister, Oklahoma when he was only in the third grade. He first performed on radio on a jamboree program on WGGA in Gainesville, Georgia. The station had a staff band led by one of the station announcers, but it was Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers who provided the background for Don’s portion of the program. He would also be on Atlanta radio and TV meeting locals such as “Cotton” Carrier, Bill Lowery (who was also a DJ), Jimmie Smith, “Boots” Woodall and others. He sang his first song in public with a polka band in Hibbing, Minnesota. The Logan family followed construction work, living in such places as Hibbing, Minnesota, Hot Springs, Arkansas, Sugar Hill, Georgia and Montgomery, West Virginia. In Montgomery, Don was on radio station WMON every morning and played in three bands, “The Stardusters,” the “Happy Cowboys” and “The Gay Notes.” It was also here, that Don along with “Camel” Craver, did a two man DJ show mornings, and at other times, Don would have his band there and they would perform live on radio. Back in Poteau, Oklahoma for his senior year and graduation, Logan was very active in music. He had a band called the “KLCO All-Stars.” They played every bar and honky-tonk in the area. He was also a featured performer on the KWHN Saturday Night show in Fort Smith, Arkansas along with Jim Mundy, Ann White, Bob Jones, Tommy Holbrook, Jimmie Helms, The Roller Brothers, Chuck Mayfield, Lucky Plank, Pete Graves, Marvin McCullough, Linda Flannigan, Larry Morton, Fred Rose, Bobby Helms, “Little” George Domerese and Ben Jack. He also did a live 15 minute radio program with Glenn O’Neill each Saturday morning sponsored by Riley Smith Ford and Seamon’s General Store in Wister, Oklahoma. He also performed with Johnnie Lee Wills at Taylor’s Inn in Poteau and on their KVOO radio program from Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Johnnie Lee had an extra fiddle player in the band the night Don sang “Time Changes Everything.” Don says, “The fiddler was Johnnie Lee’s famous brother, Bob Wills.” Fort Smith, Arkansas gave Don his first taste of DJ stardom. KTCS, a day time station hired Don as an announcer, DJ and salesman. The station followed a block format. Don played an hour of country, an hour of gospel, two hours of popular music, an hour of easy-listening music and for an hour and a half each week day, he did a remote rock and roll broadcast from Beverly’s Drive In and it was this program that brought him stardom. Throngs of teens would surround this area each week day afternoon when he played the first rock and roll record. Police would be called out to direct traffic as the crowd got larger. You might say he created the town’s first traffic jam. He did live commercials with the teens, promoted dances, shows, got into confrontations with professional wrestlers who would brag about the damage they would do to their opponent that night at the wrestling arena, interviewed touring musicians who were playing the area and was the hottest radio thing going. It was here that he developed a technique for remote broadcasting and learned to develop a rapport with a live audience. Fort Smith was not a real crossroads for the entertainment world. Only one DJ is really remembered, by most people in the area, as a truly original personality and that would be the late Marvin McCullough. However, Logan would play unknown rock and roll artists along with the established stars of the day and the unknowns, sometimes received more requests than the stars and some even went on to have monster hits. Logan had an ear for the hits and probably would have eclipsed “Marvelous” Marvin as a local icon, if Don had stayed in the market. Don remembers Fort Smith, this way. “My radio audience for the rock and roll show was never measured by a Pulse or Arbitron rating, but the audience was there and it was large. I had played music in that area for a long time and I thought a lot of people knew me, but after the remote show from Beverly’s Drive In began, everybody DID know me. Anything that becomes successful has to be threatening to someone. I began to feel pressure from many sources, not just the preachers who bought time on the station and it was not my decision to leave the market. I make no apologies to anyone for Fort Smith. The kids and adults who came out for my remote shows were not juvenile delinquents, sex-starved-teens or maniacs, they were good kids, most from good homes. We had a lot of fun just listening to the music and making small talk on the air and I’m sure the listeners had the same kind of fun while listening. I never understood why anyone would feel threatened by what I was doing or the way I was doing it.” Logan spent some time at Eastern Oklahoma State College in Wilburton, Oklahoma as a music major and was in the Choir, College Band and Dance Band. He was also active in the daily college radio program that aired on a McAlester radio station. He left college at midterm. The entertainment bug had bitten him. Logan found work in Weatherford, Texas at KZEE. He was the news director and mid-day DJ. Next, he was offered a DJ/Singer gig at KCUL in the penthouse suite of The Fortune Arms Hotel in Fort Worth, Texas. Logan worked the Fort Worth and Dallas area for sometime. He sang on the Big D Jamboree talent contest, but was beaten out by H.E. and B. C., the Ferrell Brothers. He became a featured performer on a live program called “The Cowtown Hoedown,” a stage show from the Majestic Theater that was broadcast on KCUL radio in Fort Worth, Texas, the station where Don worked. It was there that Don became acquainted with Jack Henderson, “Major” Bill Smith and Jim Shell who owned record labels, “Uncle” Hank Craig, a DJ at XEG, Monterrey, Mexico and fellow musicians, “PeeWee” Short, Frankie Miller, Honey Bare, “Oakie” Jones, The McCoy Kids, Lawton Williams, Roy Orbison, Tony Douglas, The Ferrell Brothers, Mac Curtis, Johnny Carroll, The Braga Sisters, Bob Luman, Dee and Patti, Bill Emerson, Lonnie Smithson, Charlie Walker, Darrell Glenn, Orville Couch, Bill Mack, Deb Woods, Benny Barnes, Tommy Blake, Margie Singleton, Howard Crockett and Willie Nelson. The air staff at KCUL included “Dandy” Don Logan, Horace “Hoss” Logan, formerly of the Louisiana Hayride, “Easy” Ed Hamilton, James “Uncle Mac” McKrel, Morgan Choat, Rita Reynolds, Dick McLendon and Jose Guerrero. Logan’s remote broadcast experience paid off here, as Colonel Luke Bolton Ford bought Don’s afternoon drive show in its entirety. On the singing side, Don’s career changed directions when Horace Logan started booking acts for the Hoedown. Logan brought in big name country acts in like George Jones, Johnny Horton, Webb Pierce, Faron Young, Bobby Helms and Donnie Young(Johnny Paycheck), Hank Locklin, Ferlin Husky, Floyd Tillman, Jim Ed Brown with Maxine and Bonnie, the Browns, Leon Payne, Margie Singleton, James O'Gwynne, Benny Barnes, Rudy Grazzel, Tommy Cassel, Lefty Frizzel, Ray Price with Roger Miller and Don says, “I realized that I needed to change my game plan. These people had so much talent and I knew, I would never make it as a singer at that time. I did not have the determination and I did not have a commercial selling voice.” Bill Mack, who was in Wichita Falls, Texas, offered Don a job, but he cut his country roots and became a top rated Top 40 DJ for the “Kissin” radio chain station that was licensed for Grand Prairie. Buck Buchanan ran the station and convinced Don that this little daytime station could knock off KLIF and KBOX. They moved the station to Oak Cliff, a Dallas suburb and went head to head with radio greats Gordon McLendon and John Box. There, Gordon McLendon heard Don working on the air under the name “Jesse J. Huntley.” McLendon called him up and asked for his real name. Logan would not initially respond, as he did not believe this was the legendary “Mac” on the phone. As the conversation with McLendon continued, Logan says, “I realized that this was not some joker, but a legit job offer, so I agreed to meet with Don Keyes the next day. McLendon then asked me to prove to him that I was the jock Gordon was hearing on the air. On the spur of the moment, I dedicated the record that was just ending to Gordon. Don Keyes hired Logan the next day and sent him to the McLendon station in Shreveport, Louisiana. Don never met McLendon face to face. Logan replaced Ron Baxley in Shreveport and worked under program director Al Hart, who went on to become a radio icon in the San Francisco and Los Angeles markets. Logan became the program director at KEEL and was responsible for breaking many top artists and records. When Logan was hired by the McLendon Corporation, their stations included, KLIF in Dallas, KILT in Houston, KTSA in San Antonio, WAKY in Louisville, Kentucky, KEEL in Shreveport, Louisiana and KABL in San Francisco. KEEL was the solid number one station in the market. However, a guy named Larry Brandon came in with a station and tried to knock off KEEL. The KENT frequency had gone dark and Brandon revived it calling it KREB. Logan says, “Brandon was tenacious and played dirty pool. He put a jock opposite me named Dan DeVille. Thank goodness the listeners loved and stuck with Dandy Don.” Larry and his crew waged a good battle with some McLendon type promotions, but failed to topple the giant and their station went off the air with the call letters going to a station in Monroe, Louisiana. Larry just could not get his act together. Brandon then bought all the night time hours available on the legendary 250,000 watt XERF in Mexico from 6pm to 6am. Don says, “Brandon was a hard ball business man, but a nice guy and I felt bad about beating him in the ratings races and we had crippled his attack, by hiring his best two jocks, Bill Berkey and Johnny Mitchell, away from him. So, I, Buddy Blake and a guy named Bob Smith, who worked for daytime station KCIJ, started recording radio shows on those big 10 inch, one hour tapes and Larry mailed them down to Attorney Arturo Gonzalez, who would transport them on down to the station and they would be on the air within the week. Larry had kicked all the preachers off the air down there, so he needed six fresh hours of entertainment daily for the first month they were on the air and then he would start repeating some of the tapes. The XERF signal got into Shreveport good on a clear night and this became a problem for both Buddy and me, as we both worked at KEEL, we were sort of competing with ourselves, so I started doing my taped programs in the voice of E. Peabody Rasmussen, a gravely voiced announcer, I created. Buddy and I only had a limited amount of time to cut our tapes as we were a full time station. Bob, working for a day time station, had from 6pm to 6am to record the tapes. Trying to provide six hours of programming nightly for XERF was stressful and caused Buddy to lose his job at KEEL. He joined Shelby Singleton in the record business. Bob Smith started doing a gravely voiced character of “Wolfman Jack” and added a HOWL that would catch a dead man’s attention. I always called him Bob and I kidded him one time by saying, “That howl of yours would wake a dead man and that dead man might be Hank Williams and he, sure as hell, does not want you “Howling at the Moon.” The “Wolfman” voice and persona took off and soon, I was not doing any more tapes for Larry after they offered an autographed picture of Jesus on the air. When I worked in Fort Worth, Ed Hamilton had told me about the working situation from the studios of XERF and I knew that I would never want to have to go down there to work. I also had a top paying job at KEEL and I wasn’t about to leave, but Bob decided to go, as there was no way to keep up the programming by tapes anymore. Doing the show live really brought the Wolfman to life. His voice and delivery and funny stuff blossomed. However, business wise, Larry and Wolfman had many problems there. Wolfman’s new car had bullet holes in it, according to Tommy Moore and the station at one time was taken over by Mexican banditos who came riding in on burros and firing rifle shots. Needless to say, Bob and Larry split the Mexican scene. Wolfman went to Minnesota and then California where he became a super jock, TV personality and movie star and Larry wound up with a chain of stations with headquarters in Buffalo, New York.”, says Logan. “ I think my radio audience remembers me as bigger and larger than I really was. I feel that I never really peaked in radio before I took off for the record business. And there were other great local radio personalities like Frank Page with KWKH, who is in the country music Hall of Fame and Loveable Larry, a co-worker of mine. Black DJs Gay Poppa (Sonrose Rutledge), B B Davis and Jimmie the Playboy had a great share of the local radio audience too.” In 1967, Logan became a vice-president of the Jewel-Paula Record complex. Over the next 10 years, he directed, produced, wrote songs, signed artists, you name it.... he did it. “Judy in Disguise” was the only million seller the label had in 1968. Logan traveled with Ronnie Lewis, John Fred and the “Playboy Band” to do the Jerry Blavit show and the Johnny Carson Show on NBC which was emanating from Radio City Music Hall in New York at the time. “I had listened to Hoss Allen, Gene Nobles and John R Richbourg on radio when I was still playing popular and country music on radio and I must admit that being in the record business and dealing with them and other notable DJs was a great thrill for a former DJ, like me. The record business was a potpourri of individuals, both good and bad. I always tried to be the good guy, but sometimes you had to flex your muscles. Stan Lewis was once threatened by Don Roby of Duke-Peacock over a group called the Carter Brothers and Buddy Ace. He said something about putting Stan in a box. Roby disliked us intensely and bad mouthed us every chance he had. “Major” Bill Smith, a former associate and friend of mine, threatened to put a contract out on me when I signed J. Frank Wilson, the guy who did “Last Kiss”, to a Paula contract, unaware that J. Frank was still under contract to Bill. In an industry that was slow to pay, it was common to resort to threats of violence. Usually, the threats were just that. Others like Morris Levy, we called him “Moishe”, wound up in jail. Levy inspired more fear than any other single record mogul in the industry. Nat Tarnopol of Brunswick Records was acquitted on thirty-eight counts of fraud and the conspiracy count he was found guilty on, was later overturned. Nate McCalla never made it to court, he just died under mysterious circumstances and some writer once called all of us in the record business at the time, a bunch of cutthroats who cheated everybody out of everything they could, every time they could, every way they could. That remark never bothered me. I knew the reference was not about us.” Logan also formed his own production company. He booked bands and emceed shows by such stars as Paul Revere and the Raiders, The Monkees, The Uniques, Swinging Medallions, Willie Mitchell, Dave Clark Five, The Rolling Stones, Sam the Sham and other hot groups in the Shreveport area. He also owned Cabriolet Music, Cord Record Corporation and the Cal and Memorial Records. After he departed Jewel-Paula Records, Logan tried a comeback in local radio. He was not successful in reclaiming the audience that once was his. Logan reminisces on his radio career this way. “When I came to Shreveport, DJs like Bill Randle, Alan Freed and Dick Clark had already paved the way for rock and roll on radio and TV. Hollywood discovered rock and roll in 1955. “Blackboard Jungle” featured “Rock Around the Clock” and because of the movie, it became the first rock and roll tune to reach number one on the charts. Gordon McLendon and Todd Storz had invented Top 40 radio and the jocks, who had been at KEEL before me, made the station number one in the market. They put a lady named Marie Gifford in as manager and she was top-drawer all the way”. “When I came back to radio, FM was the thing. On radio, there was an overabundance of youthful talent. You had Jeff Edmond & Melinda Coyer at a new station, started by my fellow co-worker Billy Wilson, who pulled off a ratings coup. That team was probably the most popular radio show ever in the market and Melinda is still doing great things. TV news had Liz Swain and Al Pierce or Carl Pendley and Karen Adams and they would have been tops in any market. I had aged and no longer had youth to fall back on, however I did manage to work up to the program manager job at KCOZ, the last remaining good music station in the market. I brought it back to a number 4 overall rating in the market, but it was not good enough and they changed the station format to urban and my radio comeback attempt ended”. “For all things there is a time and a season. In my youth, it was time for radio and I enjoyed it to the fullest. I ate, drank and slept with radio on my mind. The season of my life changed when I turned 30 and the record business looked inviting. I accepted the invitation and dealt with some memorable individuals”. MY GREATEST MOMENT IN RADIO “No, it was not being on stage with the likes of “Paul Revere and the Raiders”, the “Monkees”, “ Fabian”, “The Rolling Stones” or any of the other big name groups I did shows with. My greatest moment in radio would have to be at the beginning of my radio career at KTCS in Fort Smith, Arkansas. For an hour and a half daily, I was the star of a rock and roll remote broadcast from Beverly’s Drive In. The youngsters who hung out there, treated me like a king. Young girls were hanging on my shirt sleeve. There would be a traffic jam each afternoon with police directing traffic and I never had that feeling again in my radio career. I made much more money in every other market I worked in and became more popular with a listening audience much greater than what I had in Fort Smith, but it was that moment in time that is forever etched in my mind, as my fifteen minutes in the spotlight. It was here that I learned the techniques of remote broadcasting. How to pace, program and gain a rapport with a live audience. This experience was the grass roots for my radio career and provided the radio bug that bit me hard and kept me running for many years.” MY GREATEST MOMENT IN THE RECORD BUSINESS “On January 27, 1968, the number one song in the nation was “Judy in Disguise” by John Fred and the Playboy Band, Paula 282. We took the group to New York to appear on the Johnny Carson show which was being telecast from Radio City Music Hall. Though I was not allowed in the NBC control room during the broadcast, they did give the following credit at the end of the program. “Technical assistance for Mr Fred and the Playboy Band” provided by Paula Records”. The elation I felt during this time would never be equaled in my record company career. It was like going to your senior prom dressed up in a tuxedo. Years later, Ronnie Lewis, who was with me for that trip agreed that this was a most special time for all of us involved with the record label. Incidentally, the week we were number one in Billboard, Cashbox and Record World Magazines, the Beatles were number six with “Hello Goodbye” and the Monkees were number eight with “Daydream Believer”. MY GREATEST MOMENT OF STAGE WITH THE STARS “At KEEL radio, we had a deal with A.V. Bamford out of Texas for some Sunday package shows at the Shreveport Municipal Auditorium. Since Shreveport was midway between Dallas and New Orleans, we got a good deal, price wise and the shows were always sold out. Usually, we would have to add a second show. The shows would feature about six or seven good acts and a top selling star. On one of these shows, we had Little Brenda Lee who was hot as a pistol with such hits as “Sweet Nothings” and others. I was to introduce Brenda on stage. Jerry Lee Lewis was visiting back stage and was not on the program. But, the Bamford rep, a guy named Eddie, wanted me to bring out Jerry Lee Lewis just before Brenda. I knew that I did not want to do this. You don’t put a tornado like Jerry Lee out on stage in front of the star. Jerry Lee had been down on his luck. That was back when radio involuntarily boycotted him as he had received so much bad press from his marriage to his teen-aged cousin. That was not the reason our station and others were not playing him, he really did not have any new hits at the time. But, he did have that tremendous string of hits before the sky collapsed on him. So, Jerry Lee needed some good press and wanted to impress the Bamford people. I told Dub Albritton, Brenda’s manager, that I was going to bring out the “Killer” before Brenda. He got angry. Brenda said “O.K. Let’s see what he can do”. I introduced Jerry Lee. The audience was not expecting him, so he received a minimal amount of applause as the audience really didn’t know who he was. Then, he went into his basket of hits and did five on his hottest numbers. The audience knew the songs and it had dawned on them that this was Jerry Lee Lewis on stage. Jerry brought the house down and then walked off the stage. I had the impossible job of trying to calm the audience enough to let Brenda come on stage. I went out, but the crowd was not to be calmed. I realized that I had pulled a boo-boo and for once in my life, I did not know what the hell to do. I tried to calm the audience and get Brenda introduced. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Brenda Lee walking out on stage. She changed the order of tunes with the band and made “Sweet Nothings” her lead number. I quickly introduced her as the “Star of the Show”, she grabbed my microphone and by the time she was four measures into the number, the crowd had forgotten all about Jerry Lee and they were giving her one of the most tremendous ovations one could receive. She went on to do one of the greatest shows she has ever done. She earned my respect that day, as a true professional entertainer. When she left the stage that Sunday, the crowd was jubilant and they wanted an encore from Brenda Lee. I took the stage and played around with the audience for about five minutes, teasing them that Brenda was too tired for an encore and built them up to a fever pitch, before I gave them what they wanted, an encore from the “Star of the Show”, Brenda Lee. She received rave reviews in both The Shreveport Times and The Shreveport Journal. Jerry Lee also received a nice mention and Bamford did book him several times after he proved that he could still move an audience”. MY BEST RADIO INTERVIEWS “There is no question in my mind on this. “The Cincinnati Kid” had a lavish world premier in New Orleans. It benefited victims of Hurricane Camille which hit on August 17, 1965. It was my pleasure to be there in New Orleans for this gala event and do radio interviews with Ann Margret, Karl Malden and Edward G Robinson. Tuesday Weld was also there, but I could not get her to do an interview. I have autographed pictures of these truly great stars that I will treasure for all time. The city of New Orleans went all-out for this occasion and I rode in one of the media cars in the special parade and it was one of the most festive times in my life. The movie had a really rocky start. Sam Peckinpah had started out as producer and Norman Jewison stepped in to finish it.” “I must say that the interviews I did with Ann Margret brought me great personal satisfaction. I knew very little about her until the night of April 9, 1962. I was watching the Academy Awards live on TV from the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Vince Edwards and Shelley Winters had just finished their part of the program by giving the award for Best Cinematography. In their closing moments on camera, there was some confusion. Then, I and fifty million other Americans saw a hand with snapping fingers coming out from behind a stage curtain and attached to those fingers and hand was the most sensual and provocative person I had ever seen on TV. Her performance had to be her fifteen minutes in the spotlight that she turned into a lifetime. Nobody introduced her that night, but the next day everyone in this country knew the name of Ann Margret. The reviews next day said, “She looked like a little girl in her first formal...who’d set out, bound for the Junior Prom and by some horrible mistake found herself on stage at the Academy Awards. Then, she began to sing. As she sang, she danced and a transformation took place right before our eyes....from Little Miss Lollipop to Sexpot- Banshee.” In my interview with her, I asked her about this most important night of her career, she remembered it fondly. There were many of us media types interviewing her singularly and collectively. In a later interview, she mentioned me by name, when an Atlanta journalist asked her the same question I had posed earlier. I was flattered. Ann received good reviews on her performance in the movie and that year the Motion Picture Exhibitors of America honored her as their “Star of the Year”. MY BIGGEST FLOP “One of the first shows I did in Shreveport was in partnership with Mira Smith and Margaret Lewis Warwick. We did a show at Fort Humbug, the National Guard Armory in Shreveport. I didn’t have my radio fan base together yet and the show was a flop. Maggie was a local favorite and was responsible for what crowd we had. I also had “Mitch and the Misties” on the program. The building had a sheet iron roof and the reverberation was terrible and the sound was inaudible. John Fred and the Playboys also did a guest appearance”. “Mira and Maggie were to become very successful songwriters. Later, Maggie was associated with some of the top names in the business, like Connie Francis, among others. Maggie Lewis Warwick is back in Shreveport and is currently active in developing the Shreveport music scene. John Fred went on to have a number one single with Paula Records. The hit made a lucrative contract with UNI records in Hollywood possible. I, along with “Major” Bill Smith produced a song called “Hey Baby” by Mitch and the Misties” , however the composer of the song, Bruce Channel, had the big hit of the tune. I never booked another show or group into the armory again, but my luck changed and I did have many successful shows and dances later”. “My biggest flop, found me in the background. One of my business partners, Jiving Gene, did a two show deal with James Brown, the Godfather of Soul. The show was in conjunction with Sonrose Rutledge who was known as “Gay Poppa” on the air. James Brown and the Famous Flames did the show for Gay Poppa and KOKA , but refused to do the show we had booked for KEEL listeners. Gene was stuck with the unpopular task of refunding money to disgruntled fans on the steps of the Municipal Auditorium.” A RETROSPECT ON RADIO “As I listen to radio today, I hear a similarity to what we did in the old days. The talent is youthful and their talent probably exceeds that of ours. The troubling thing is, not all stations feature live DJs. A lot of the programming is via satellite. That is not to say it is not good, because it is, but it is not local programming.” “I remain thankful for a guy named Martin Block who, in the 1930s, played records on the airwaves on his “Make Believe Ballroom”. Phonograph records were mostly manufactured for home use on the old Edison and Victrola phonographs of the day. It was not until after World War II, that radio stations started playing phonograph records on the air with any consistency and that gave birth to the personality radio jock. When this happened, recording techniques started to change and quality became more important and the record industry broke wide open”. “I knew from playing music in bands that rock and roll was a crowd pleaser. If it moved a live dance audience, it could also move a captive radio audience. So, when I was contemplating becoming a rock and roll DJ, I was aware of what had happened to personalities like Bob Horn, the predecessor of Dick Clark and as the big payola scandal broke, I saw DJ giants like Alan Freed, tumble and fall. I always played it straight in radio. I attended many music conventions in the record business, but I never went to a DJ convention as a DJ, so you might say, I missed out on the booze, broads and bribes. I just believed in what I was doing and I really liked most of the music. I still enjoy listening to my collection of old scratchy 45s and the few 78s that I possess. It’s true that the quality we have today, is not in the grooves of these recordings, but these gems possess the feelings of an era that will never return. If I sing one of the old songs on stage today, it will sound like the music of today, because of the up to date equipment and sound we now have. The only way to hear that raw, original sound is in the grooves of the old vinyl recordings. Even when you release those songs on a CD or other sound form, it does not sound the way it sounded on vinyl”. I was also in radio at a time when “Black Radio” expanded to dominance. Black radio first flexed it’s muscle when Patti Page released, “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window.” The tremendous initial sales came from the black DJ playing this record on his show in Brooklyn. The record was a smash in New York and the power of the black jock escalated from that time. During my stint in the record world, I remember E. Rodney Jones, Ernie Durham, Hamp Swain, B B Davis and Sonrose Rutledge. “I am happy to have been a part of radio in my youth. To have been in the same company as Dick Biondi, Murray “The K” Kauffman, Ron Baxley, George Klein, Bruce Morrow, Jim Lowe, Rusty Reynolds, Art Roberts, Hoss Allen, Bob and Ray, George “Hound Dog” Lorenz, Gene Nobles, Bruce Nelson, Moon Mullins, Dan Ingram, John R Richbourg and Wolfman Jack, is a fact that I will always cherish. I am glad that a couple of guys named Todd Storz and Gordon McLendon saved radio with their idea of Top 40 radio. That phrase is no longer used, but I can hear it in just about any radio format I listen to these days.” MY BEST MOMENT ON TV “Most of my TV work consisted of commercials and they were mostly prerecorded. However, when I first arrived in Shreveport, they were still doing live commercials and I did many. When I was vice-president of Paula Records, I continued to be on the tube, doing all of the commercials for Stan’s Record Shop and Woody’s Camera land. In 1966, KEEL Radio did a live, two hour TV broadcast of the Miss Teen Shreveport Pageant from the brand new Civic Auditorium on the Riverfront. I served as the emcee because I was youthful and looked handsome in a tux. Also, I had that remote broadcast experience under my cummerbund. This was quite a production for Shreveport, Louisiana at that time, complete with the live music of the Eddie Kozak Orchestra. I think it was the first live non-studio broadcast ever done in the city by any of the TV stations. There may have been some problems production- wise, but I was very pleased with what I did, the way the jocks performed and the beautiful talent we had competing for the crown. The city gave us a wonderful reception and response to this extravaganza was tremendous. I remember getting a ton of mail from viewers.” DON, THE MUSICIAN “I am an average musician. I can write lead sheets and arrangements and have played clarinet, guitar, piano and organ in my lifetime. At one time I thought of myself as a very good guitar player. I could use finger picks, straight picks, knew most of the hot licks of the day and could play any style from Chet Atkins to Les Paul. I once played lead guitar in the Jim and Ann White band in Fort Smith, Arkansas at a place called the Do Drop Inn. They had a good following and I sang a few songs also.” “Pete Graves was the star of their group. Pete just showed up in Fort Smith one day, stopped by the club where Ann and Jim were playing and joined the group. He wrote the song, “Bumming Around” and that is the way he lived his life. All of a sudden one day, Pete was on the road again.” "On Saturday nights, we would all do the KWHN radio broadcast before going to the club. On the broadcast one Saturday night, a new act brought a guitar player named Larry Morton with him. The show ran over and the act did not get on this first show. Ann asked Larry if he wanted to come by the club and sit in. Larry was dying to play, so he came by and blew all of us away. Here was a shoe salesman by day and nobody had heard of him before, but he could play licks that no one had ever heard. Needless to say, I lost my job as lead guitar man”. “Jim White, Ann and Larry Morton moved to Shreveport, Louisiana when I was vice-president of Paula Records and I used Larry on most of my sessions in Nashville, Tyler, Dallas, Shreveport and Muscle Shoals. Jim White changed his name to Jim Mundy and had a string of hits for ABC Paramount. When Larry moved from Shreveport, he joined the Nashville Brass.” “Wayne Raney, Lonnie Glosson and the Delmore Brothers stayed around Fort Smith for years. They specialized in doing school house shows. They had a daily broadcast on KWHN and also did taped shows for XEG, the border station in Monterey, Mexico and would manage to be on the Louisiana Hayride from time to time.. This was the first time I had heard of border radio. Wayne was a fantastic songwriter, but he sold most of his best songs for cash money. Wayne was a part of one of the most fantastic recording sessions ever. It happened at the Jim Beck recording studio in Dallas, Texas. Lefty Frizzell, Marty Robbins and Wayne Raney all cut hits during that session. Wayne did not sell all of his good songs. He kept a few for himself and sometimes used pseudonyms or pen names on his compositions. He made records for the Syd Nathan family out of Cincinnati, Ohio and had an exclusive publishing contract with them. Wayne, Lefty Frizzell and Marty Robbins all cut hits that day at Beck’s Studio in Dallas. That is a feat even Nashville could not duplicate. There was a group coming in to buy this unique Dallas studio. Jim Beck wanted to sell for top dollar. He and an associate shined and cleaned the studio to perfection, using the chemical, carbon tetrachloride. Then, for some unknown reason, Jim Beck became ill, was hospitalized and died before the sale could take place. The studio had a unique sound, but without the engineer/owner who had died, there was no sale. With this studio’s track record, Dallas could have become a recording studio hub to the music industry.” "Nelson King worked for Cincinnati Radio station WCKY when he was a young man. He was the jock for a program called, “Suppertime Frolics”. The AM signal from near the heart of the country gathered a vast listening audience. I picked up ideas from listening to him that would help me later, in my radio career. I didn’t meet Nelson until much later, when I was vice-president at Paula Records and he was working for a lady named Rhoda Schwartz at the Covington, Kentucky station just across the river from Cincinnati. When King was a hot personality in Cincinnati, there was another jock back in those days, Marty Roberts, who kept telling his radio audience that he had a record coming out soon. But, each time it was supposed to be released, he would announce that it would be another month or two before it would be out. The radio audience was teased and ready for the Marty Roberts recording debut. It was not unusual, in those days, for local small market DJs to listen to the guys with the big signal, to get the latest info for their local shows and actually, sometimes, steal the clever and cute sayings and ideas these jocks with the big signal came up with and of course, hear what the latest releases sounded like and be ready to play them when their station got a copy. So, when Columbia shipped the first Marty R-o-b-b-i-n-s single from this legendary recording session in Dallas, the jocks and the public were confused, thinking the name Marty R-o-b-e-r-t-s may have been misspelled on the label. Marty Robbins was a great talent and star, but he may have had some help from all this confusion that, maybe, helped jump-start his recording career. Incidentally, the Marty Roberts record did come out later, but was not a big hit.” “BREAKING THE HITS” “I don’t remember all the hits that I, or the radio stations I worked for, got credit for breaking. But, a few stick out in my mind. In Shreveport, we were first pop station to play the Willie Nelson song, “Hello Walls” by local Fair Park graduate, Faron Young on Capitol. We were also first to play “Funny How Time Slips Away” by a young man named Jimmie Elledge, who won his RCA recording contract as a prize in a singing contest. Red Jones in Houston and I played a Starday record by Frankie Miller called “Black Land Farmer”. I had played the record in Fort Worth and it had been in the charts. The record featured a vocal and the only background was a Martin guitar strumming the chords with the vocalist doing some humming on the break. This record did not become a national hit, but it did open the door for more country type records to be programed on Top 40 stations. We were one of the early Top 40 stations to play Roger Miller. I had met Roger when he was performing with Ray Price in Fort Worth and thought he was a very funny man, even back then. Years later, when in the record business, I would see a $5 bill with Roger Miller’s name on it in Buddy Killen’s office at Tree Publishing. Buddy told me it was a five that Roger had borrowed and paid back. He probably still has it as a lasting memento.” “The Bossier Strip” was alive and well back then and two local acts got together and formed a group known as the Newbeats. They did a song called “Bread and Butter”. Brothers Dean and Marc Mathis were products of the Louisiana Hayride. When they went to do their first session for their new label, Hickory, they took Larry Henley with them. Henley just blew into town one day and the club owner at the Diamond Head gave him a singing job. Henley joined Dean and Marc to form the Newbeats and the song “Bread and Butter”, took them on a world wide tour as the record was a smash hit. Dean and Marc sent me several post cards from places they were appearing. We played the record first when it was just a dub recording of the master. Larry Henley went on to become a very polished songwriter penning such favorites as “Wind Beneath My Wings” and others. The Mathis Brothers have remained active in some form of the entertainment field since then.” “We were instrumental in breaking the Bob Luman record on a very young Warner Brothers record label called, “Let’s Think About Living”. Luman was a former “Louisiana Hayride” star who moved with Horace Logan and James Burton to California when Horace left the Hayride and joined Fabor Robinson at Abbott Records. Horace got Bob on Capitol Records. However, it was Stan Lewis who got Bob’s very first record, “Red Cadillac and Black Moustache” released on Lew Chudd’s Imperial Records. The label was not a country label, but artists like Slim Whitman had great selling records with them. Savoy Records run by Herman Lubinsky, was a great black gospel and jazz label, but Stan got many of the Hayride artists like Werly Fairburn on the label. Fabor had an instant “in” with the local artists as his label was basically country. It’s ironic that Fabor’s biggest record would be, “Teach Me Tonight” by a group of Cuban sisters, “The DeCastro Sisters,” and it was a rock and roll pop hit.” “There was a time in Top 40 radio when a country type record would not be played. You could play rhythm and blues or soul, but country was out. I like to think that I, along with a few other jocks, helped end that type thinking and opened a few doors to some of the good-ole-boys. Also, I like to think that people did not consider me as only a rock and roll DJ. I interspersed some country, big band and easy listening records into the programming of my shows. Most of the jocks during that time did not do that. I can remember introducing Bobby Vinton and his Big Band years ago on the stage of the Municipal Auditorium in Shreveport. His first album was a big band album and I wore the thing out playing it on the air.” “We got credit for being one of the first stations to break the record, “Snoopy and the Red Baron”. Stan’s brother, Ronnie Lewis, called it my attention in a most unusual way. I was working part time for Paula Records which shared warehouse space with Stan’s Record Service and I came through the warehouse one evening as I was leaving to go home. I saw a monstrous stack of records, all with the same record number on the box. Ronnie had bought 10,000 copies of the record as it had broken in one of the major markets where he had accounts. The next day I came in to work at 1:00PM and the stack was half gone. That evening when I left around 10PM, there was no stack of record boxes left where “Snoopy and the Red Baron” had been. I asked Ronnie what happened to all those damn records. He replied, “I sold them”. There were no records left in the warehouse, so I went up front to the retail shop and got a copy of the record, took it to the station and played it the next morning. The phone rang off the wall. My listeners liked it.” WHERE DID ROCK AND ROLL BEGIN DANDY? “Most music authorities say “Sh-Boom” by the Crew Cuts was the first legit rock and roll record. Others say it was “Open the Door Richard” by Count Basie. Both opinions have validity, but my feeling is this. “Sh- Boom” probably was the first rock and roll record. It was a single record. The group was not a pop group, country group, soul or race group, so you could say they were a rock and roll group, even though they sounded very pop on most of their recordings. Hollywood discovered rock and roll in 1955. The movie, “Blackboard Jungle” featured “Rock Around the Clock” and because of the movie, the record became the first rock and roll tune to reach number one on the music charts. Bill Haley and The Comets were basically a country group, with a saxophone added and they just happened to do a rhythm type song and some producer put it in this teen type movie. If you played music in 1955, you had to include some of these rhythm type songs if your group was going to be popular for dances and that’s where most of us played, as there were not that many auditorium shows to play.” “I think that rock and roll actually began back when Glenn Miller played, “In The Mood”. Some of the big band leaders, like Artie Shaw, detested the jitterbugger and the jitterbug songs. Shaw even quit the business several times over this dislike. As the big bands disbanded, only the smaller groups were left to perform and this is where you can find the start of rock and roll. Tommy Dorsey, Jimmie Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Woody Herman, Harry James, Jan Garber, Les Brown, Bennie Goodman or any of the other great bandleaders of the time really knew what was happening, but could never define why certain songs would make the jitterbuggers go wild and they felt they could not properly entertain with anything less than a big band. They could not or did not turn their big bands in the small four or five piece group needed for rock and roll. Shaw did attempt it with a group called the “Gramercy Five”, but they were always a small group contained within his big band. You may recall their hits like “Summit Ridge Drive” and “Special Delivery Stomp”. The harpsichord on “Summit Ridge Drive” was unusual at the time of the original recording.” “And this brings me to Shreveport, Louisiana and a show called the “Louisiana Hayride”. My friends Frank Page, Stan Lewis, Maggie Warwick, the late Tillman Franks and Horace Logan may disagree, but I think we once had a man here, named Hank Williams, who understood what music can do to people. He probably never studied music, but could play more chords on the guitar than most country singers at the time, including some minor chords. He probably never consciously knew that he had the gift in his head to put the beat in songs like “Lovesick Blues”, “Move It On Over”, “My Buckets Got A Hole In It”, “Mind Your Own Business”, “Rootie- Tootie” and many others. Hank found the song “Lovesick Blues” which was not an original composition, even though his name appeared as the writer on the first pressing of the 78RPM record and the song itself was a crowd pleaser. His rendition of it was right on the money and the crowd response gave him the inspiration to come up with all the other rhythm beat type songs. Horace Logan used to tell me that Hank was just an ordinary man with all the problems of life and a serious health condition. Somebody quoted me in a national magazine as saying an artist I recorded some sides on, legendary blues man Lightning Hopkins, was illiterate. Many have been quoted as saying the same thing about Hank Williams. I believe that Hank Williams was very literate. He not only invented the small group rock-a-billy, rock and roll sound that took this nation by storm in the 50's, but he was a connoisseur of stage presence. I am told that he was kind of sullen, but when he was on stage, he had an aura about him, he became animated and he could excite a crowd as few entertainers can do. You can talk about the late Howard Hughes being emaciated, Hank was more skinny than that. Hoss Logan once said “He looked like a tooth pick on stage”. And he used this to his advantage. He would wrap those long skinny legs around the microphone stand and slide up and down the stand while singing and the crowd became excited. As far as I know, Hank was only filmed one time, so he probably was never aware that the things he did on stage generated excitement. I’m told he was not a happy man, except when he was on stage. A happy man can not write great songs and Hank Williams did write some great songs. Hank may not have been able to write the music notes down on paper or maybe even all the words, spelled correctly, but he could put some of the finest phrases together with such meaning. So, why am I the only one who thinks he created rock-a-billy and rock and roll’s first performances?” “Hank Williams came to the “Louisiana Hayride” in it’s infant years. The show became a super success while he was here. Not only did the Hayride need Hank Williams, but country music needed a hero. Country music was dying and Nashville was sleeping. A national publication at the time headlined, “Country Music Is A Farce - It All Comes From Tin Pan Alley In The Brill Building-Not Real People”. Hank was a real person. Besides being able to excite a crowd with his up tempo songs and stage presence, he could write some beautiful heart felt ballads. So, country music claimed him as their king because his ballads were masterful, polished and his vocals were a combination of raw soul and naked emotion.” “When Hank left for Nashville, the Hayride flourished. Artists saw Hank as ordinary and if stardom came to him so easy, it would be that easy for them. All they needed was to be on the “Hayride” and it’s on to Nashville and glory. Nashville sent Hank on a world tour with a special Opry group. Nashville had awakened and war was declared on the Shreveport show. Jim Reeves, Johnny Cash, Faron Young, Gordon Terry, Webb Pierce, Floyd Cramer, Goldie and Tommy Hill, Johnny and Jack, Kitty Wells, Red Sovine, Jimmy Newman, Merle Kilgore, Bob Luman, The Kershaw Brothers, George Jones, The Maddox Brothers and Rose, The Wilburn Brothers and others were lured away and the city fathers of Shreveport never really knew what they had.”. “Hank returned to Shreveport a broken man, after Nashville used him up. This time, there was lots of promotion and hype for Hank and the Hayride. The Hayride may have already peaked in popularity, but this exciting time with all the glitz and glamour, added years to the life of the show and would stretch it out just long enough for another young man named Elvis, to bring real rock and roll to the stage of the Louisiana Hayride. On TV over the years, episodes featuring a wedding have been real rating bonanzas. That was proven during this time, when Hank married Billie Jean Jones on the stage of the Hayride. The auditorium was packed, the listening audience was tremendous and they actually did the wedding twice for two shows. The Louisiana Hayride was having a field day and nothing could stop them. Then, Hank died on New Years Day, 1953 in the back seat of his Cadillac. Most fans thought he was still on the Grand Ole Opry as promoters booking him were calling the shows, Opry Shows. Hank Williams died in Oak Hill, West Virginia while on his way to do a show in Canton, Ohio, never living to see the rock-a- billy, rock and roll trend that he started, evolve into a music category by itself.” “In my early years in Shreveport, the movie, “Your Cheating Heart” was released. George Hamilton starred in it. However, there were so many misrepresentations and distortions in the movie script that a lawsuit was filed by Billie Jean Williams Horton and the picture was shelved and pulled from the market and later a reworked version was released.” “If Hank Williams Sr. had not been a great composer of country ballads, others would probably agree that he is the one who brought the rock-a- billy, rock and roll type songs to the attention of America. But Hank Williams Sr. WAS a great composer of country love songs and country music claimed him as their own, so rock and roll could never have him, even though he is in the “rock and roll” Hall of Fame.” SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE - OCTOBER 17, 1989 I was born in Stockton, California at the end of the great depression. In the recording business and when I was in radio, I visited San Francisco several times and fell in love with the city. I, probably like you, was comfy in my home and just about to enjoy the third game of the World Series in 1989. It was evident from the television picture that something had happened. It was a 7.1 earthquake. Seven point one was the official reading on the Richter scale and strong enough not only to shake the ground but collapse buildings, bridges, apartments and cars. As an adult, I have never been in a quake area, but my mother tells me they had them all the time when I was a baby living in California. As human beings, we like to think we are in control of our lives. Something like this lets us know that we are not. OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA - APRIL 19, 1995 Oklahoma is my adopted home state as that is where my mom and dad came from and where I spent a good deal of my life. My grandmother, Zona Free Logan's family got there via the “trail of tears”. There have been Logans in Oklahoma ever since it became a state. My brother, Larry Logan, worked at Prudential Bache in Oklahoma City. His office was near the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Radio, the thing I used to sleep, drink and go to bed with, made me aware of this tragedy of a truck bomb exploding at a Federal Building. I was personally concerned because of my brother working there in the city. I followed the TV reports and when I saw the devastation, I was astonished that something like that could happen in this country, much less, the heartland. The force with which the truck bomb exploded was so great that half of the nine story building was ripped away. Miraculously, only 169 people died. My concern for my brother, his wife and two children intensified, when I started trying to call. If you’ve ever had a similar situation in your life, you know the phone lines are cluttered and you can not get through. I finally did get through to the Prudential-Bache switchboard and the recorded message said the office in Oklahoma City was closed and the phone calls were being rerouted to the Dallas office. My concern grew as I thought Larry’s building might have suffered damage. My brother, Larry, was at his desk when the explosion occurred. His building shook as a result of the concussion of the bomb. His office was evacuated quickly and efficiently. The children were safe miles from the occurrence. My mother called me late in the day and informed me she had talked with Larry and he, the wife and children were all okay. I was relieved and escaped personal grief, but I, like all Americans, grieved for those who lost loved ones. When my brother married Debbie Bloustine Logan, we stopped at the site of the Murrah Building, before the memorial was built, and grieved again for those who died. FORMER WORLD FAMOUS RADIO PERSONALITY (DON WHO?) Wolfman Jack and many other famous jocks had syndicated radio shows. Don Imus is a current famous personality on radio and video and many other great jocks now are on satellite radio and heard in numerous markets. Don Logan has not been a star on radio in over 36 years. So, why is “Dandy” Don Logan considered a former world famous DJ. “I was in radio when AM was king. Fm was just beginning. Satellite and cable were unheard of. My major station was KEEL and that is where most people remember me from. But, I was also on XERF, the infamous border station in Mexico and that AM signal originating from Ciudad Acuna, Coahulia, Mexico on a clear night, could go halfway around the world. I did taped shows on XEG in Monterey, Mexico. I also did some taped shows for Gordon McLendon’s pirate radio station that was on a ship off the coast of England in International Waters. So, I think that validates the claim. This is not something I came up with, but the people who know me and my career say this. A few of them even still call me “Dandy”.” WOMEN IN THE MEDIA “During my greatest success at KEEL radio, the general manager was the late Marie Gifford Wright. She was also heard on the air with stimulating editorials and she was very imaginative, coming up with great on and off the air promotions. Lin broadcasting owned the station at the time and they thought highly of her.” Ms. Gifford-Wright was well versed in the theatre and everything she does, she does with a flair. Whether it was selling the image of her radio station to a New York ad firm or a bunch of Chicago media moguls or telling the story at a dinner shortly before her death of how she hired a Young Midwesterner named Larry Ryan. She told the story with such drama, I wrote a song about it. When she died, I put it aside, but may release it at a later date. Also to her credit, she was the first female manager of a 50,000 watt station in the great southwest. She also ran for mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana. “When I first came to Fort Worth, they were trying to do a “Dream Girl” segment at night live. With my production skills, I turned the show into a tasteful, entertaining and educational hour each night. “Dream Girl” not only sounded personal and sensual, but she read selected romantic lines by the great poets with music backgrounds of Jackie Gleason, Nelson Riddle and other instrumentalists of the day. The program was very tasteful and entertaining. “Dream Girl” was Rita Reynolds whose sister was married to sales manager Stu Barondess.” “At KEEL, I was on the air alone, but had a newsman and farm director, John Philpot to fall back on. We would do a little banter and John and I actually did a segment on the air each morning called the “Dancing Girls” that was very successful. John is still active on Arkansas Public Television. I also had taped inserts of women that I used throughout my show saying, “I just love to LOGAN each morning”. The female voices definitely added a lot to my show and I think when the first female announcer went on the air, I had warmed up the listener to the sound of the female voice. Not all of the inserts were on tape. Sometimes, when a nice sounding lady called in on business or for a request, I would have her do a live insert. Many different female voices were used over the years, some of them, famous ladies in high places who will always remain anonymous.” “I never did a man/woman radio show in my radio career. There was talk of having Mimi Hussey, the wife of Shreveport Mayor John Hussey do a show with me when I did my final radio gig at the good music station, KCOZ, but it never materialized.” “When WHER, a 1000 watt radio station went on the air in Memphis, Tennessee, I thought that format would become a national trend, but it never happened. This station featured all female announcers. The station had Dot Abbott and Marion Keisker, the first lady to swoon over Elvis when she worked at Sun Records. Totally female stations never became a trend like black radio did. Instead, we do have a vast array of talented females in the mainstream now.” I believe the first female owned and operated advertising agency in Shreveport was that of Carolyn Dunn Mosely. Being the program director/manager, I always made sure that she had ample studio time and a good engineer at the KEEL production studios where she did her early audio spots. That was back during the time when KEEL had temporary studios in the old Grady Buick building, which now houses the Antique Auto Museum. Anyway, nothing worked right in those makeshift studios, so she broke in the hard way. However, with that extra time, she experimented with sound and delivery and quickly developed into a top notch professional. She was quick to branch out to TV and did her TV spots at the KTBS studios. “While I never championed the cause of females on the air, I felt as though I did my part and was receptive to the idea. We had one guy at KEEL, who went his own way because he did not want to work for a female general manager. I never thought that way. I was happy to help Ms Gifford-Wright become the success she was.” “Incidentally, working as a bureaucrat for the State of Louisiana in my non music years, I found that the work force was predominately female. There are now more males employed by the state than when I first came to work, but women still comprise the larger segment. My bosses for the two different divisions I worked in were Dr Danetta Bardsley, a woman and Neil Johnson, the man who was the Enforcement Regional Manager and Carolyn Bardwell and Robbie Endris, both women. Ms. Endris has now been promoted in our State Agency and is working in Baton Rouge.” BORDER RADIO and PIRATE RADIO “Paul Kallenger was a DJ on XERA, which later became XERF when they moved from one end of the dial to the other. Paul was DJ of the year several times and the last I heard was running a furniture store in Del Rio, Texas. He was probably the most popular DJ on the station until The Wolfman came along. The station had a ship’s generator to provide the electric current for their 250,000 watts of power. If they used the local electric source, all the lights in town would blink and become very dim as there was not enough power to feed that big transmitter. I learned about XEG through Wayne Raney and Lonnie Glosson. When I was in Shreveport, I worked with Larry Brandon and Bob Smith, before he became Wolfman Jack, doing taped programs for XERF after they bought all the night time hours on that station and kicked all the preachers off the air. Six hours a night of fresh programming via tape was more than the three of us could keep with, so Bob went down to the Mexican studios in Ciudad Acuna, became Wolfman Jack and started doing live programming. Then the preachers wanted back on the air and they would pay Brandon a premium price for the air time. Larry and Wolfman must have made a bundle off that alone and the record packages they were selling brought in good revenue too. Larry and Wolfman formed a partnership with each other and at that time I did not know who Arturo Gonzales and Harold Schwartz were. I learned of Harold Schwartz from Bernie Harville, who ran Harold’s station near St. Louis. I would have programs on both of these stations later in my life. Harold Schwartz had XEG and Arturo Gonzales, an attorney, had XERF. The most successful program I ever had after Wolfman left was a record package program that came on just after “The Rev Ike” on XERF. The listening audience Rev. Ike built up and left for me was astronomical. Border radio had a unique way of collecting the money owed them. At first, in the old days, you had to pay for the time in advance. Later as their popularity declined, they would decrease the wattage during your broadcast time, if you were not current with your payments. In other words, you didn’t get the full wattage on your program if you weren’t paying the bill. They also used a directional signal, even though they were clear channel. They could pinpoint the eastern states when the local daytime stations would be going off the air. A smart programmer would buy more than one segment of air time, so his program could get maximum exposure. Arturo Gonzales was in Del Rio, Texas and he was the man I dealt with after Wolfman had long gone. Hoss Allen and Bill Mack also did programs from there. The transmitter was actually in Ciudad Acuna, Coahulia, Mexico.” “Wolfman had to be the biggest thing to ever happen on border radio. Prior to this time, these stations had been strictly religion and country. Wolfman was neither of these. In my radio career, I always included in my Top 40 programming a sound for my Milam street audience. I may have been young, but I knew, even back then, that all my listeners were not young, white teenagers. I had black listeners and my white audience was usually a little older, as I slipped in some big band, easy listening and country. I could have never been a shock jock as my upbringing just wouldn’t allow it. I think Wolfman was the first of the so-called shock jocks with his phrase, “Let’s get NAKED”. “Wolfman went to Minnesota when the XERF thing fell through. When he took over XERB on the coast, he did the same thing he and Larry did at XERF. He kicked all the preachers off and as we all know, what started out as a make believe or mythical radio voice, turned into a genuine rock and roll, radio, TV and movie personality. Some say Wolfman failed in his attempt to take over New York City on a regular radio station with commercials, news and the other things a commercial radio station has. Others, including the Wolfman, told it in a different manner.” “Wolfman was not the only phenomenal thing I witnessed in my lifetime. I once worked for Gordon McLendon. He had a radio station transmitter on an ocean liner known as the pirate station in International Waters off the coast of England. The English have always liked rock and roll and McLendon gave it to them. They began by using tape-recorded shows by some of us DJ’s here in the U.S. who worked for their various stations, but later, went with live DJs. England tried many ways to put a stop to their broadcasting and I think in the end did, but the signal was there for quite some time and who knows, probably influenced the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.” “Border radio started many years ago, when an unscrupulous doctor slipped over the border into Mexico and started broadcasting in English on XERA at night. Nashville artists would do transcriptions for almost nothing, just to get the exposure. The good doctor sold a goat by- product that was supposed to increase your sexual desire. They say he made millions. XERA became XERF and it was on XERF that Wolfman repeated history. He sold a thing called Forex which was called an antidote for bad sex. He never actually came out and said it would improve your sexual drive, make it longer, harder, but you got that impression. I don’t know how many of those he sold, but he could move 500 record packages a day for 50% of the take for Stan’s Record Service. He was making 100% on his Forex. The problem was that it didn’t do anything and he and his partner, Larry Brandon got a letter from the Federal Trade Commission to “cease and desist”. The FCC also threatened to shut them down. This was not quality broadcasting, but Wolfman proved that this type radio can become very popular.” IF I COULD CHANGE ANYTHING IN THE PAST “In radio, I never put a brand-new station on the air. Lin Broadcasting was about to put KEEL FM on the air when I became vice-president of Paula Records. Bill Berkey and Vern Stierman had the honors of getting the station up and running. A former colleague of mine, Billy Wilson, took a dark FM frequency, changed the call letters to KVKI and signed it on the air and became number one in the ratings in only six months. I always thought that was a fantastic accomplishment. If there was anything I missed in radio, it might be this.” “In the record business, I did just about everything I wanted to do before I got out of it. I had worked so long in the background that I was hesitant about doing something in the forefront, even though I did actively operate my record labels for a time, but without the enthusiasm of Stan Lewis, I found no personal satisfaction in it. When I started singing the old songs for the people who enjoy hearing them again, I discovered that old sense of urgency and excitement that radio and the record business used to bring me. With the world wide web, the Internet can be that answer to finding and discovering fresh new talent and quenching the thirst that the public must once again have, as they did back in the 1950's, for something different. I must confess that all radio stations pretty much sound alike to me and even the music sounds the same. Just like we did at Paula Records, creative talent should be unchained, freeing the creative spirit to be innovative.” “In life, I would not change a thing. My grandmother who was one-half American Choctaw Indian used to tell me to be a “good Indian”. As a little boy, I always tried to do the right thing and I carried that over to my adult life. I hope the people I have worked with and came in contact with, think of me as a good Indian. I never was really interested in being a chief. I enjoyed working with those around me and together doing a job and feeling the pride of accomplishment as positive things happened because of what we had done. I was a husband once, my wife died in 1995, a father four times and a grandfather six times. I think that’s just about as good as it gets.” EARLY DAYS AT JEWEL-PAULA “Bobby Charles and Dale Hawkins worked for the label for very short periods of time before I came on a part time basis. Bobby was a singer and song writer, having written several songs for Fats Domino. The first record Jewel put out was by Bobby Charles and the label was then distributed by Chess records. Bobby was more interested in promoting himself, rather than a label, so he soon departed. Dale Hawkins and Stan had produced, written and Dale did the vocal on the song, “Susie Q” for Chess Records in 1957. Dale stayed for a while with the label, but there was no big budget to feed off back then, so he left. He was the one who introduced me to John Fred before John started making records for us at Paula. As a matter of fact, the early records on John Fred were on the Jewel label. When I came to the label, there was not a lot to do, so I would do the mail orders. There was a great deal to do there, however I just did the paperwork and others pulled and filled the orders. One of Stan’s programs kept pulling orders from a Bobby Zimmerman in Hibbing, Minnesota. The reason I remember this is because I had gone to school in Hibbing in the fourth grade. I never knew who Bobby Zimmerman was until, I read Bob Dylan’s book. Bob Dylan, in his book, says he ordered records from us at Stan’s. when the very popular "Gatemouth” was doing one of Stan's program's. When we released, “Not Too Long Ago” on Paula, the label had no design, just the letters PAULA across the top. The record charted and the Dick Clark office called wanting the Uniques to do American Bandstand. His coordinator called back and asked me how many girls were in the group. I told him, the group was a male band, however there were girl background voices, so we found ourselves in much the same dilemma as Buddy Killen did when he had the group, “The Little Dippers”, an instrumental studio group who had background singers on their hit record “Forever”. The Clark office perceived the group as similar to the “Fleetwoods”. We thought about adding the girls for the show, as Killen had done with his group, but the Uniques said “no” to that and they appeared on “Bandstand” without the female background singers.” “As we started growing, one of my early tasks was designing the Paula and Jewel labels. My original Paula label had a pinkish background and the black label copy overprint could print the DJ copies and the stock copies, making it more economical and efficient than most labels. The model for the label silhouette was Pauline Taglavore Lewis, Stan’s wife. My favorite was the blue tinted Jewel Label, even though the white DJ copies looked a little one sided. When we started the Ronn label, I may have made a mistake by using the full top half of the label for the sig and logo. Excessive label copy did make the finished label look crowded, but most people liked it, so it was left that way until just recently, when all three labels were redone by the new owners and they now have today’s look.” “In my DJ capacity, I started doing local dances with John Fred and the Playboys and The Uniques. They were super successful. The first dance that I was involved with in Shreveport was a flop and the second with Bobby Powell was a near disaster with the musicians local not letting Bobby’s band on stage because none of the musicians had valid union cards. Dale Hawkins’ brother, Jerry and Bob Hogan, the vice-president and president of the Shreveport Musicians local were on my back for every show and dance I booked from that time on. The next, a Bo Diddley dance, was a huge success. Al Hart was at the door taking admission money when a kid showed up in blue jeans, saying I had told him to come by and he could do a couple of songs with Bo’s band. Since we were crowded, we had already decided not to let anybody in for half price or leave the door unattended during the last 30 minutes of the dance. The dance was a smash and we wanted to make every buck we could. We were not greedy, just trying to make up for past losses. So, Al had decided that this was some guy trying to get in for free and was turning him away from the door when Vern Stierman and I walked by. Vern recognized Roy Orbison and invited him on in and we let him do several songs for the crowd. He received no pay, as I remember. He was in town and just wanted to play for a crowd.” “I have always thought that rock and roll began back when the big bands played, “In The Mood” and the jitterbug became the exciting dance of the day. When economics caught up with the big bands, they disbanded. They never tried to do it with a smaller unit. Being an old clarinet player, I have always liked horns. When I met John Fred, I thought that his band, being a horn band, had something that would go. Now it’s true, everybody was a four-piece group like the Beatles back then, but I really thought John’s bigger group had tremendous potential. John never knew it, but many people knew of him outside of the region where he was hot. The group known as The Boogie Kings got most of the credit for what John was doing in the beginning. Mainly, because, prior to his coming with us at Paula, The Boogie Kings had wider representation and they were getting credit for things Fred had done. With our national distribution, when people talked about the horn band down in Louisiana, we said, “sure, that’s John Fred and the Playboy Band”. The one thing I didn’t realize and John didn’t realize until the hit, “Judy in Disguise”, was that it is hard to transport a group the size of his band around the country. They were smaller than the big bands of old, but it was still a major job keeping everyone accounted for on the road.” “The one thing I could never understand about the record industry, was why there were no limits to the number of records a dealer or distributor could return for full credit. The record company is out the expense of the artists sessions, which kept getting larger and larger back then and has probably quadrupled by now. The record company is out the expense of production, packaging and promotion. The dealers, distributors and wholesalers have no risk, they return all unsold merchandise and laugh all the way to the bank. The returns could bankrupt a small company that was just starting up. Of course, most of this expense is charged back to the artist and recouped. That is not a rule I made up, that is the rule you have to go by if you are going to stay in business because that’s what the industry does. We worked long and hard for the big hit “Judy in Disguise”. It happened at the end of John Fred’s recording contract with us and I felt John would stay with us because we had really worked on our groups. Instead, UNI records, a division of Universal Films, offered him more money that we did and Fred went with them. I have not seen John since we spent 12 hours one night in 1968, negotiating a new contract with our attorneys Marvin Katz, Mike Meyer and C.P. Brocato and John’s attorney, Harold Lipsius. I was never more frustrated that I was at the end of that session. I knew John would be leaving us and I thought it was very unfair. It’s like the words to a Peggy Lee record, “Is That All There Is To That”? The horse that we had ridden to the Carson Show and the top of the charts was going to another stable. That was the first time I thought about leaving the record business. I had heard all of our artists, including John, when he was hungry for that hit, ask us to “please get me a hit” or “put another record out on me quickly while I’m still hot from the last one”. We did not force our groups to record songs that I wrote or Stan wrote, we gave them the artistic freedom to come up with their own creative hits. Of course, we had our own publishing company and we did like to publish our releases. The LOGAN MANSION “When I attempted a comeback in radio, I was hired to be the Operations Manager of KCOZ by Jim Reeder, the owner. The station was a good music station, that had fallen on hard times rating wise. Their studios were in the Logan Mansion.” “It was a wonderful place to work and had been somewhat refurbished at 725 Austin Place, a one block long street. It was built in 1897 for around $15,000 by Colonel Lafayette Robert Logan for his wife, “Lavinia “Libby” Wilson Seay Logan. They were prominent citizens of Shreveport. Prior to my being hired by the radio station housed within its walls, they had always used the tag line, “Music from the Logan Mansion”. After, a comment was made to either Jeanelle Saucier or Jim Reeder by someone at a cocktail party, that line was dropped from being mentioned on the air for as long as I was there. I see a print of a painting of “The Logan Mansion” that is sold by various merchandisers at the Red River Revel each year.” “The house is still standing, but from reading an article by Shreveport historian, Eric J Brock recently, the house is said to be in a bad state from lack of repairs. When I worked within its walls, I was appalled at the $2500 monthly electric bill. Of course, that included the electricity used by our FM transmitter, which was in the building.” FT. WORTH, TEXAS, U.S.A. When I left Eastern Oklahoma State College in Wilburton, Oklahoma with my ‘55 Chevy packed with my music and earthly belongings, I was bound for California, the place my dad set out for by unpaid rail, when he was a youngster. I never made it there. I made it as far as Dallas, Texas and had a flat on the paper thin tires I was traveling on. I spent the first night in my car and the January nights in Big “D” are cold, or at least that night was. The next day, I found a rooming house with a vacancy. I stayed around Dallas for four weeks. I auditioned for every radio station I could, including the McLendon Corporation and was turned down. I went to Palestine, Texas, Ft. Worth and Weatherford, Texas, applying for work. Just as my money was running out, I was hired by KZEY Radio in Weatherford. They also had a station in Shreveport, Louisiana. I replaced Mac Curtis, who had a good-selling rock-a-billy record out on the King label and he was kind of a local hero. Mac had been called to service. In Weatherford, I was the news director and also pulled an air shift of easy listening music. It was here that the program director of KCUL, radio, Ft. Worth, Chuck Dixon, heard me and hired me. Dixon left shortly after I got there and I pretty much ran the station program wise. I became a featured entertainer of the Cowtown Hoedown, a Saturday night stage show, which emanated from the beautiful old Majestic Theater at 1101 Commerce Street in Ft. Worth. A guy named Jack Henderson was running the show at the time. He, Uncle Hank Craig and myself were the emcees for the show, until Horace Logan was hired. Henderson also had a three track recording studio on the premises and I started putting down many of my songs and arrangements, including some big band stuff. The phone number for the studio back then was ED 5-0710. I called in regularly as the studio gave me the opportunity to pick up some extra cash doing demo recordings and actually writing songs for hire or out and out selling some of my songs. I also had my second record release from a session I cut there. The thing that bothered me was, I was not making a lot of money from the stage show. I was making a good living from the station. I was the program director and there were sales commissions and I had the most popular show on the station which was a live broadcast from Colonel Luke Bolton Ford showrooms daily. I was such a good sales tool for the motor company that I talked myself into buying my first new car, a custom 300, 1958 Ford. I had fallen in love, married Mary and my first child, Penny was born. When Horace Logan became the program director and started booking and producing the stage show for the station, I knew it was time for me to make a decision about my future. Up until then, I did not know if I wanted to be a musician or a radio person. Ft. Worth, Texas had shown me that I could make a decent living as a DJ and that is the field I chose. With the responsibility of a new daughter, I joined Buck Buchannon at the Grand Prairie, Texas station, KBCS at AM 730. The signal was strong because of its location on the dial. We changed the call letters to KKSN, completely redid the station format, moved it to the Dallas suburb, Oak Cliff, started calling ourselves “Kissing Radio” and set out to whip Gordon McClendon and John Box, the two AM radio giants at the time by stealing their audience. We were only a daytime station, but I believed we could do it. WHY DOES AN OLD GUY LIKE YOU, WANT BACK IN THE BUSINESS? “First off, my success was as a disc jockey and record company executive. So, I am not getting back in. This is something that I enjoy doing and have never done successfully before, so there is this one more challenge. Plus, I no longer have a lot of responsibilities, so I don’t have to make a living at it.” “The one thing that set this desire in motion, was the death of my youngest grandson, Nick Benson. For the first time in a decade, I felt a desire to write a song to express my emotions. That song would not come to me. But, I did recall an old Hank Williams record of a song written by blind man Leon Payne, a tune called “Lost Highway”, and my desire to sing the old songs and bring new life to them was born. It’s true, I had thought about what I might do after retirement and music naturally came to mind, however the final decision came after Nick’s death.” “I don’t want to sing the music that is happening now, but I do enjoy singing some of the old tunes, songs you no longer can hear on radio. The bulk of the old songs I sing are of popular origin with some rhythm and blues and country thrown in for good measure. I have found an appreciative audience who likes what I do and the way I do it. Also, they tolerate my performing some of the original songs that I have composed and I find it very satisfying.” “I use some electronics in my band. One of my keyboards can sound like a Xylophone, Harpsichord, or any instrument, just about, but for the most part, it is singing and instruments played by talented musicians. We have basic arrangements with musical freedom to improvise and keep it fresh. I think that is what good music is all about. I despise it when a singer gets up with pre-recorded background music and calls that entertaining. That’s karaoke. I also believe it’s not how loud or fast you can play, but how much feeling you can put into it. Sure, I sing a lot of ballads, but I also do some of the funky, party, good-time songs and I do the ballads with a dance beat. Those who don’t understand me and what I do, may consider me square. Maybe I am. Many thought Lawrence Welk was, but he thoroughly entertained millions.” “No, I will not become a big star. I am my own boss and I am not catering to the mass public, just a few people who like to listen to the old songs and enjoy my original songs. You read about the Beatles, suing their record company for unpaid royalties. The Stones did it, too. The artist is never happy with the company. When I was with Paula Records, we paid our artists the royalties due them, but many felt they got short changed. When an artist hears his product on radio, TV, cable or the movies, he always thinks the sales are bigger than what they are. This is natural and part of an artists self esteem. Our Paula distributor in Miami, Tone Records was owned by a guy named Henry Stone. Stone saw our success with The Playboys when “Judy” became number one across America and we sold a million 45RPM records. When disco came in, Stone formed T. K. Records. K.C and the Sunshine Band had many hit records for his label. The first time I heard one of their records, I thought that K.C. sounded like John Fred Gourrier, who was the vocalist on our Paula hit “Judy”. However, I’m told that the lead voice was actually that of Harry Casey. Casey claimed that Stone short-changed him by Ten Million Dollars. That’s one thing I don’t have to contend with and don’t want to contend with. I will stay small and do what I want to as long as a few people like it and continue to buy it.” “Deep in my heart, I would like to discover a bright new young talent and unleash that talent on the music world. It is a great rush, to take a chance on new talent. I know what my talent is and it is limited, but new talent, not yet stereotyped, can run the gamut and full circle of music. When I was Vice-President of Paula Records, I enjoyed the release of a new artist’s material, the adrenalin would start flowing. I enjoyed signing these new artists and once had a chance to sign a “Singing Pig”. No, you read right, a singing pig, complete with an overall wearing manager. This pig could oink out “Sitting of the Dock of the Bay” perfectly. It was a great live act, but I could never figure out how to make it sell on record. Plus, at that time, it was hard enough to get a DJ to play a record by a human being, much less a pig. Anyway, the pig probably would have claimed I used coercion to sign her up and didn’t pay her royalties and would hire a Philadelphia music-attorney to sue us, so I took the easy way out and opted not to sign the pig and never even called it to Stan’s attention. Incidentally, “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” was the only tune she knew.” AMERICA "I was born after the end of the great depression. My father, Carl Logan, went to California by rail, without paying the fare. In other words, he stayed in the hobo camps and hopped freights going in the right direction. He picked crops in season and in the off-season he worked at the Spreckles Sugar factory, making and packaging sugar for America. Our life in California was good, but poor. Shortly after I was born, my dad bought a 1937 Ford. It was repossessed before the war broke out". "We were in one black-out when we traveled to San Francisco one evening and it was frightening to a child and possibly to my very young parents also. The air-raid sirens blared and we knew then, we were at war. Until then, we only knew Pearl Harbor had been bombed and war had been declared by our President, Franklin D. Roosevelt". "We returned to Oklahoma and bought an old Model “A” Ford to get around in. My uncle, J. D. Hope Junior enlisted in the Army. My uncle, Tony Logan, volunteered, but was turned down because of the black lung from working in the mines. He went to Washington state and worked in the Kaiser shipyards. Dad was rejected as he had me and he applied for work at a defense plant in Pryor, Oklahoma. With his mechanical knowledge, he was hired immediately and he struck out. Mom and I went later. We first lived in Muskogee, Oklahoma, then a nearby town called Wagoner. As gasoline became more scarce, we moved closer to the powder plant, to the town of Chouteau, Oklahoma, where I started school in the first grade and my younger brother, Larry, was born. Shortly after Larry was born, the Japanese surrendered and the war was over". "The most destructive war in all of the history of our planet had been concluded and we were victorious. America fought a just fight, but to get us involved and make us want to fight, our government taught us to hate. Racist posters about the cowardly Japanese appeared in public places. As descendants of the American Choctaw Indian tribe, one of the five civilized tribes, we had never hated anyone. But, during this war, Americans hated their enemy with a vengeance. Music played a big part in this war with Glenn Miller conducting the service band of the U.S.A. Miller lost his life in this war. My dad came home early one afternoon and told us the rumor around the powder plant was the war was over. I don’t remember any celebrations in the town of Chouteau, Oklahoma, but I do remember mom and dad glued to the Walter Winchell or Drew Pearson newscast and their reaction to the news that the WAR WAS OVER"! "With the war behind us, the U.S.A. was in a position to benefit from an economy that made this country the world's supplier of manufactured goods and technology. In future years we would lose that position to some of our former enemies, but during that time this was unthinkable. Coming back to a peacetime atmosphere, the returning veterans set their sights on home and family, and in an echo of an earlier time, a "return to normalcy". "One of our great diversions was the entertainment field. Television was in its infancy and radio was still king, but its days were numbered. Movie going was a weekly ritual for a majority of the citizens of this country, and the changing face of music was an important part of the scene. The 1940s was the single most revolutionary decade in the history of American music. The SWING music of the 30s, had evolved into the big band sound that were serving as backdrops for featured vocalists. The more inventive and daring of these musicians had developed the strange and slightly frightening sounds of bebop that would evolve into modern jazz. Country music was down from the hills and was dropping its "hillbilly" image and added many trappings of more serious popular nature and instrumentation behind developing stars such as Eddy Arnold, Sol “Tex” Williams, Slim Whitman, Ernest Tubb, and a young Hank Williams, who was singing a different kind of song. The country blues of the white southern share -cropper, that the African-American adopted, had been electrified, figuratively and musically, into the urban blues of the northern cities and would soon become Rhythm & Blues which helped fuel the rock and roll revolution. Mainstream pop music had seen the big band era come to an end as the last years of World War II concluded. Rock music was on the verge of becoming the dominant sound, and it would wind up being a hurdy-gurdy of many competing formats and styles". "Amidst all this, I found my way into radio stations and music. I was in the high school band in Wister, Oklahoma when I was in the third grade. I was learning about music, I started writing songs, giving them away. We didn’t have a piano, but I loved to touch the keys whenever I was around one. My dad bought a Wilcox-Gay recorder that would make 78RPM sound recordings, that was right after the wire recorder bombed out and before magnetic tape recording came in. My brother and I could sing songs on these recordings. After I learned to play the guitar, I could accompany my uncle Lon Free, the Marshall of Wister, Oklahoma and a fiddle maestro". "A period followed where there was no central hero that led the way for Elvis. Bing Crosby was the hero in the 30s and skinny Frank Sinatra in the early 40s. However, radio did not die because the disc-jockey was born. Local DJ’s played recorded music and most stations still featured some kind of live musical entertainment. As more and more TV stations emerged, radio did not die as the forecast called for, because Gordon McClendon invented TOP 40 radio. Before this time, it was play it safe and pander to the more mature audience, leaving teenagers and young adults to search for their own outlets which led to the rock and roll explosion of the fifties. The music of these years was carefully crafted which certainly differentiated it from what was to follow. There were no throwaway tunes, no 'B' sides, the songs were recorded with serious professionalism, so they would last for future years and could be works of pride. At least that was the thought process that went into the making of many of the post war pop recordings, and given a careful listen you can tell that a certain amount of craftsmanship is obvious in a great many of these recordings". "The time between the fall of the big bands and the rise of rock and roll was unusual and hundreds like me, were trying to get a foot in the door. Music had taken us to a guy named Martin Block who was the first to play phonograph recordings on the air on his “Make Believe Ballroom”. Live radio broadcasts took us to “Tuxedo Junction” and we thought we would be forever-young and Glenn Miller would always be around. We got our “kicks” on Route 66, but now we wanted to rock and roll". "In the late 1940's, Shreveport, Louisiana, through the KWKH “Louisiana Hayride” live radio broadcast gave the country Hank Williams. He was the founding father for today’s country music and an inspiration to the rock and roll four-piece bands of the 50's and 60's. Though he used country instruments, he had that raw, rhythmic edge to many of his songs. In the 1950's, Shreveport again gave the world a gift of the King of Rock and Roll when announcer Frank Page introduced Elvis Presley for the first time on the same “Louisiana Hayride” show". "I am proud of being associated with the music business. I take pride with my contribution to the music industry, however small. Sure, everything was not the greatest and a lot of the rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and pop was not that professional, but people liked it and it sold. That’s what the recording industry does, produces what the mass public will buy". "I am proud that I was born and live in America. I agree with what she stands for. We are not perfect. The songs we have sung have been varied. As a descendant of the Native-Americans who lived and traversed this land for centuries with no technological advances, I am glad that the Europeans came and created an industrial revolution that has brought this great country to this point". (C) 2008 - CAL Discs/Dandy Don Logan - all rights reserved. For mechanical license contact Cabriolet Music (BMI) Media may reprint with permission of the parties above. P. O. BOX 9 - BENTON, LA 71006 318 965 0781 dandy71006@yahoo.com caldiscs@yahoo.com |
| THIS MONTH FROM THE DESK OF DANDY DON ........................... (C) 2008 Don Logan Productions |
A Landrum ART.LA photo by DAWN LANDRUM
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| NOVEMBER 2008 These past weeks, I have been contacted through this web-site by Robert Zickafoose concerning Basil and West Virginia (Mr. Logan, I was reading through your website and you mentioned that you went to school with a guy by the name of Basil Zickafoose in West Virginia). George Bryant wanting information on the soul DJ Gay Papa (I'm looking for information about a DJ named Gay Papa. Can you direct me to where I may find out more about him. I remember him from when I was a boy growing up here in Shreveport and was curious as to what became of him, his real name etc.) Max Abod asking about George Carlin stories and a Boston Globe writer, James Sullivan who is writing a book on George Carlin. Death continues to dominate the local movie-industry news. Arkansas TV Anchor, Anne Pressly, died from a brutal beating in her Little Rock, Arkansas home recently. Earlier, she was here in Shreveport doing scenes in the movie “W“ where she was cast as a conservative newswoman. She worked for the Little Rock ABC affiliate and was only 26. Opening weekend for “W” had it coming in fourth in the standings bringing in $10.5 million dollars at the box office. The movie was rushed out to do some late Bush-Bashing before the upcoming elections. I never knew you could get a movie out this quickly. Shreveport continues to get a bad ‘rap’ from one of the stars of “W” on the national talk show scene. Look folks, we ARE what we are and when you get to know us, we are pretty nice. DON’T try to change us. We accept you as YOU are, so WHY all this hassle. As to the way Shreveport officials handled the situation, I’m sure, if there was wrong-doing, it will come to light! Ryan Glorioso Casting called me to do the extra re-shoots for a new ending to the film, The Year One. I spent five full days on location before they wrapped it at the Sibley Sand Pit in Webster Parish. They have constructed a whole town movie set with lots of sand around it, so we can even do desert movies now in North Louisiana. It’s quite remarkable. On the set, I ran into several media people including Tony King, formerly of KRMD fame and many interesting people. It was rumored that Mark (In The Dark) Christopher was also there, but I didn’t run into him. This is the kind of movie where everyone is costumed with turbans and shawls and nobody in the background can be recognized! There is a link on my FILM page of this web-site that will re-direct you to the Glorioso Web-site. IF YOU are interested in being in the movies, you should register there. On this past shoot that I worked on, they used 400 plus extras daily, plus an additional 120 were added on one day. Working as an extra is hard and you need to be in good health and able to run, walk and stand for long hours. I’m working on my new CD that will be out around the first of the year. Sonny Harville, former member of the Louisiana Hayride Band slipped out of retirement to do a recording session, leading a gospel song with the Sleepy Brown Group for my next CD. Here’s what many typed in the search-box to come to this web-site last month - morgan choate radio disk jockey" famous sayings by ann-margret - paul harvey letter to my grandson - lafayette coowner - susie shams - mary ann van osdell Helen Clare France - older radio personalities - shreveport la gene kent - song in factory girl motorcycle scene" mechanical license for dvd recordings - derrell stephens bmi - jeff edmonds shreveport keel kvki" It’s amazing that the names Jeff Edmond and Melinda keep popping up. Jeff died many years ago. Of all the big name DJs who have worked this area and that includes Wolf Man Jack, George Carlin, and so many others, Jeff and Melinda still ring a bell in the heart of the people who listened to them. They are probably the best radio team to ever grace this area and Melinda is still one of my favorites. The information and memoirs from this website have been used in another book. Remember, if you use my comments in a book you are writing or film documentary , proper credit MUST be given. Thanks for visiting - Don Logan don@dandydonlogan.com |
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