Interview with John Polk

JF:

Today is Wednesday, April 17th, 2013. And I'm sitting here getting ready to talk with John Polk about memories of WHAS. John, how are you doing today?

JP:

Pretty good. You stimulated my memory yesterday so I've been thinking about a lot [crosstalk], the good old days of HAS.

JF:

We're actually sitting here at the American Printing House for the blind where we both record books. And we've got John just ahead of his schedule here, and we're going to talk with him. So John you're from you're from Louisville.

JP:

I'm from Louisville.

JF:

You grew up here.

JP:

Yeah.

JF:

Where'd you go to school?

JP:

Went to I.M.Bloom, which is a great school, which is right here in Bardstown road, then Barrett Junior High, back before they had middle schools and then Atherton, graduated in '67. Left to go to the Navy. Had a brief stint at the Naval Academy. I got appointed there.

JF:

Really?

JP:

I decided, this was during the Vietnam era and I decided that the military wasn't for me. So I left the Naval Academy only to be drafted right back into the Navy...

JF:

Really?

JP:

... and spent a couple of years on a Destroyer in Vietnam. And then we got out in '71. I actually enrolled at University of Kentucky and stayed there a couple of years. Got married, had a kid, came back to... I didn't come to HAS then. I got hired by the station which is now WRKA, but had been WSTM.

JF:

Yes. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

JP:

And it played... The kind of music that WHAS played, and I remember that during those years looking up to this new gang at WHAS radio.

JF:

Was it an FM station?

JP:

It was an FM station. Alan Brown, who ended up at WAVE. Several people that ended up at either WAVE or WHAS were there. But I remember hearing about this 2:00new crew that had come into town. That was you and Wayne Perky and I think Jeff Douglas and...

JF:

Jerry David Melloy.

JP:

... Jerry David Melloy, and then they were the old staples, Milton Metz, who did the talk show at night. And I remember thinking, "I want to work at that station."

JF:

Your damn right.

JP:

I had to take a detour to Indianapolis first. Got a job with the big stations up there, IBC and NAP.

JF:

Oh, yeah. Okay.

JP:

Counterparts roughly to WHAS.

JF:

By the way I was a filming Roy Cooper at WIBC, remember our station manager.

JP:

Yes. Oh yeah.

JF:

I worked with Roy years ago in Evansville, Indiana when he was rocking and rolling.

JP:

It's a small world in the radio world. Yeah. So I spent two years there and for about six, eight months, I was courting WHS, and they were courting me. This was Hugh Barr, of course.

JF:

He was the station manager.

JP:

Yeah. They needed to get you guys some time off. They didn't have a swing guy. You guys were... You'd get your vacations...

JF:

We just worked hard.

JP:

You'd have to extend your shifts or whatever you had to do. And so he eventually considered me for the afternoon drive spot. And then Gary Burbank was available.

JF:

This is in the middle... You came...

JP:

This is '76.

JF:

'76. How did you get, by the way, to... When were you exposed to radio, in high school or in college, in the Navy?

JP:

Actually, during the Navy.

JF:

During the Navy.

JP:

I thought, "I need some employment to get me through school and I don't want to work at the soda shop or at McDonald's. What can I do?" Well, I've always enjoyed...

JF:

You listened to radio when you were a kid.

JP:

I used to listen to rock radio, WAKY and WKLO, who were big rivals in '40 radio when I was growing up and they used to have a competition at WKLO where they would let a student actually do a shift. You had to win the opportunity.

JF:

Like a high school student?

JP:

And you had to audition. And I didn't win, but that's what got me started. And 4:00then during the Navy I took a broadcasting course. Remember the Columbia School of Broadcasting.

JF:

Sure do.

JP:

And I had a guy from KCBS in San Francisco, who was my mentor in that program and would review my tapes, reel to reel tapes I'd record on board ship and send.

JF:

This was on ship?

JP:

On board ship.

JF:

Like a correspondence type thing?

JP:

Correspondence kind of thing. But with a guy who was a major CBS news man.

JF:

Did you broadcast some while on the ship? Did you do some broadcasting?

JP:

No, we didn't have a little radio station or anything like that, but when I got back to town, I decided to apply for a job at the university radio station at University of Kentucky. And the time call outs were WBKY. And then stayed there a couple of years and then got the job at WASTM. And from there, WIDC, NAP and then finally hired at HAS, where I had always wanted to work anyway.

JF:

Now, were you listening to HAS? By this time you've gone from [inaudible].

JP:

Oh yeah. Because of the clear channel, the sky wave at night, you could hear HAS anywhere at night. So I would listen a lot at night. And there was a guy on it at night that I really liked. That was in the year of progressive rock, and here was this old state community radio station, 50,000 clear channel watts, and all of a sudden they were playing Pink Floyd and all this stuff late at night. His name was Dave Macquarie. And I said, "Boy, I love that guy's voice." And he is really good at this, all this stuff. I ended up working in the production room that at one time had been the the on air studio that all you guys used and including him. I remember first walking in there, "So this is where it all happened."

JF:

How about that.

JP:

And I looked at it and said, "It's not much, is it?"

JF:

So you remember the day that you walked in for the first time? The studios were there at Sixth and Chestnut.

JP:

Right.

JF:

On Armory Place in Chestnut. Pretty impressive building. Really nice lobby and everything.

JP:

Way more impressive than the one I came from in Indianapolis.

JF:

Oh really?

JP:

Yeah. So I thought I had made it. Interesting side like the general manager at WIBC had been a former program director and air personality and he called me into his office the day I had accepted the job at WHAS. Hugh Barr had called me that day. And I said, "I'm coming." I'd already been down to visit. So they called me to their office, and his name was Jimmy Hilliard.

JF:

Oh yeah.

JP:

And he said, "Listen, we'd like to offer you a job in Philadelphia." Because they had a chain of stations.

JF:

Oh yeah. Wow.

JP:

And they were fighting over whether the program director in Indianapolis would get me in as their production guy or whether the guy in Philadelphia would get me. So Jim Hilliard says, "Let's settle this. Why don't we ask him? What would you like to do?" There they were and they went through this spiel where they 7:00were fighting over me for five minutes. And I said, "Hold on, I can't let this go on any further. I got to be straight with you guys. I just got an offer from WHAS." And Jim looked at me and he said, "We looked into buying that station. Why would you want to go there?" And I said, "In that question, Jim, is the reason I'm going."

JF:

How about that.

JP:

"Because you don't understand how important that radio station is to the community. And although you built something very good here, it's nothing like WHAS."

JF:

How about that.

JP:

"And I've always wanted to work there and I finally got a chance. So I' going." Yeah.

JF:

You were doing production in Indianapolis?

JP:

Right.

JF:

Were you doing an air shift also?

JP:

No. That was what was a little scary because one of the reasons he would hire me 8:00was to do not only production, to assist Jim Ferguson, the production writer, for both the AM station, 840, and the FM station, which at the time was playing classical music.

JF:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

JP:

Getting ready to switch over to country, which is now WMACE.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

But he wanted me to be the swing guy. In other words to fill him on vacation time. Well, you guys have three or four weeks of vacation each. And I did the arithmetic and I thought, "My God, I'm going to be on the 30 weeks a year." So I sub for Milton and you, and Wayne Perky. Wayne Perky had a problem getting up in the morning by the way, which meant I subbed for him a lot. He would get sick or it would be a hard night or whatever, a long week at the station.

JF:

Crusade for Children.

JP:

Oh yeah. Lots of reasons. He was so... I couldn't see how that guy did everything he could do, but I would work with Barney Arnold.

JF:

Oh yeah?

JP:

The famous, farm anchor on the radio for many years, Fred Wiche. And I remember Ken Schulz on one of the mornings I was subbing...

JF:

He was the weather guy. Yeah.

JP:

He was new.

JF:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

JP:

And he came in... He had a great sense of humor. He then went on to television later and has since retired. This was his first year there, and he was hired originally by the radio station to be its first meteorologist.

JF:

That was another Hugh Barr.

JP:

Yeah, another... Hugh Barr set that up. So there I am in Perky's chair and they used to have these cartridges that she played commercials from and promos that you put into a machine. And it's a great, big, huge round, circular metal rack filled with maybe a thousand of these cartridges. So it weighed a lot. And I'm doing this early morning, like 5:30. Little newscast and Ken Schulz comes in and 10:00we're talking and we get to talking about a commercial that was just on, which was about bots, which is apparently some kind of a disease or a short for a disease that horses get. And there was this cure for it and it was being advertised in this commercial. And just the name bots started to tickle Ken and we, after the commercial was over I said, "Ken, can you pull yourself together?" He says, "I can't stop thinking about what would happen if my horse got bots." And we started getting tickled, how you do.

JF:

And you can't stop.

JP:

He then gets this look on his face like I had just pulled some carts out, they called them carts and put them into the machines, getting ready to run [crosstalk]. Well, I'm talking to him, and then I turned around, I look at him and he's got this look on his face of pure terror. He's just been laughing and 11:00now he's got this other look and I think, "Oh, he's just pulling my leg or something. He's trying to make me think somebody's behind me or something." Because he was a cut-up. But it wouldn't go away. "So what's the matter Ken." He said, "Look." And the tower of cartridges, the bottom base had broken and it was falling towards me like a building falling on you and all the carts are in, and it was this huge crash, which then precipitated a number of phone calls to make sure John Polk was all right, one of which was Wayne perky, who had been listening.

JP:

Lots of great stories in those days. HAS was such a personality driven station.

JF:

It was.

JP:

Which is a tribute to Hugh Barr because he created that, shall we say, image for the station, and hired people like yourself who could express that through an 12:00entire shift. And each of the personalities was very different.

JF:

Yeah, that's true.

JP:

However, there was a common thread. A positive...

JF:

That's a good way to put it.

JP:

A common thread of positiveness, a concern for the community. The station could pivot on a dime because of these really talented people who could ad-lib.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

You were good at that, and I looked up to all of you for doing that and learned how to do it myself.

JF:

Grabbing the situation.

JP:

And if something happened, there would be a, in the community, a tragedy or something positive like a basketball championship or something, the station could just pivot all day long. You guys were taking phone calls and playing a little bit of music but mostly responding to what was happening in the community.

JF:

That's a good way to put it. Responding to what was happening. I told somebody the other day that we were a talk radio station but we didn't have anything to say, we played music, but if we had something to say, we just stopped and reacted to it.

JP:

Yeah. Some of those community events were created by the station. If you'll remember when Hugh Barr, after Hugh Barr, hired Gary Burbank, who had been at WAKY, very successful at WAKY, a competitor, and had been out of town for several years. And when he became available, he wanted to come back to Louisville but he had to have the right deal. And finally, he worked out a deal with him and he came. And so Gary just brought everybody's game up to another level and...

JF:

Tell people what campaigns he did. He did characters...

JP:

He did lots of characters. He brought them with him and he would go into the production room and I would have to give him an hour and a half before he went in. He would create what he called bits and whether it was Reverend Deuteronomy Scags, remember him or [crosstalk]. Yes. Or Eunice and Bernice, the something 14:00sisters who would spoke in unison all that time, or the news lists of the time, they were two anchors and Louisville, one at wave, one at WHAS, both named Melissa.

JF:

Oh yeah.

JP:

So he had them call in to report something that was going on in the community that was bogus but they were the news listeners. So he had a number of characters like that. And one winter after he'd been there a couple of years, you'll remember this.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

There was a very, very heavy snowstorm. We must have had 16 inches of snow. It was cold and bitter, when I think about that today I think, we don't have snows like that anymore, but Gary put out a snow shark alert, and what is he doing with this? And people began calling in not just to his show but to all, your show, Wayne's show with snow shark sightings. "Yes. Yeah. Just off the Waterson, 15:00over there. I saw one rear his ugly head and I saw him for about half a mile then he went under again." And that became a thing for a week or two.

JF:

People still talk about that.

JP:

They still talk about snow sharks.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

We even did, I think it was a TV spot about snow shark alerts and it just became a fun community thing to get through the tough part of the heavy snow storm.

JF:

That's the way it was though.

JP:

Whether it was something difficult like the '74 tornado and the reporting thereof, which HAS won many awards for, or whether it was something fun that was created by one of the personalities or whether it was Christmas shopping season and all of a sudden we stop playing music and just...

JF:

The Christmas shoppers guide.

JP:

Yeah, shopper's guide, and direct people to where they could find the rare toys.

JF:

Oh yeah.

JP:

The community nature of the station was just... I don't think I've experienced anything like it or heard anything like it around the country.

JF:

And it felt like that one time on the Christmas shoppers guide, the first year and he started talking about, he was doing a tongue in cheek. He said, "I want to find some of those black velvet, Elvis paintings." And he was kidding around, but somebody called, "Yeah, the hikes point." And so every year he'd call and then people would call the other over here.

JP:

Things you just, unless you open the airwaves to the public and you manage that right with the right personalities. There's nothing like that in the radio.

JF:

That was a nice plan like that.

JP:

Yeah.

JF:

And Hugh was the architect of that, getting the right people. But you were the kind of glue to hold all that together because you would take things into the production room, put them together.

JP:

All right.

JF:

Tell me about your duties in the production room. What was your responsibility? What did you do?

JP:

Well, we had never had a department that wrote commercials and produced them for the local ad agencies and clients that bought time on the station. So we created 17:00a department, it already begun a little bit before I got there with Jim Ferguson and Brench Bowden. Brench Bowden being the writer producer and Jim Ferguson was the production director. When I came, I was bringing my expertise in advertising and also my production skills, and of course my voice. And so now we had a variety of voices to choose from and we had a couple of good writers. I was a writer. And we put together, actually competed with the best writers and producers in the community to actually come up with campaigns for clients, and the idea was to increase revenue at the station by getting a larger portion of the advertising budget of a particular client...

JF:

You wrote it yourself, through an ad agency.

JP:

Yeah. And so if an ad agency was placing times for say Big O tires, time on multiple stations, we wanted to get the larger share of that or as large a share as we could. So we'd offer to produce their spots for them and since we had some good writers and good producers, we decided we were going to do just what an advertising agency does.

JF:

In house advertising.

JP:

Exactly. And that worked like a charm.

JF:

Sure.

JP:

And revenue shot up. And then with the addition of you guys and then Gary Burbank, the station went to number one, which only helped things more.

JF:

And it kind of had to be fun to do that kind of [crosstalk].

JP:

Right. And then the other side of my job was to create an image for the station. Jim Ferguson had started that, and he and I worked together to create a new sound for the station. Much more in that era, much more like say a top 40 radio station or a rock radio station.

JF:

Adult oriented.

JP:

Still adult oriented to create an image for it. And I remember we had University 19:00of Kentucky basketball and football, so we were heavily sports oriented. And we also had mostly news and information in the morning and morning drive. So it wasn't like we could promote music like a music station.

JF:

Right.

JP:

So it was about promoting the parts, promoting personalities, promoting the basketball and football coverage, promoting the station and creating an image for it. And so we went through several image campaigns. One of them was, we transposed the 84 and the WHAS. It had always been WHAS 84. And I don't know who came up with this idea, "Well, let's just transpose it. Let's call it, it'll flow off the tongue."

JF:

And it did.

JP:

84 WHAS, so when we get the place on the dial and the call letters, all in one fell swoop. And that then lent itself to some cool ways that we could write promos and put them together.

JF:

And these were like commercials basically. They played throughout the day.

JP:

Anywhere from 15 to 60 seconds. We had contests with prize packages, and this was to build up our ratings. Hold on to people longer, have them listen a little bit longer to see if they won a prize.

JF:

You would produce a commercial for them.

JP:

Yeah. Basically. Promoting various day parts, yourself, other people, and then putting together the audio and video for a TV commercial for the station, which had never been done before. And we put together a campaign called radio active.

JF:

Oh yeah.

JP:

Remember that. A commercial was produced for each of the air personalities and they were just fun things. By the time, let's see, I guess we had that campaign on the air three, four months, billboards, everything, and everybody was going. "That's cool. WHAS is radio active."

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

Which fit right into the image of the station and the way we said it didn't have any connotation to nuclear fallout or anything. Radio active. Well, I'm on the air on a Saturday morning, my regular shift. I forget what year this was, this had to be maybe, let's see, '78 maybe, '79. You probably have a better memory than I do, I hope. I'm on the air Saturday morning and just the day before the story had broken about three mile Island.

JF:

Oh, wow. Mm-hmm (affirmative). The nuclear reactor.

JP:

And it was the early stages of what we knew about that. And there was still a great fear that there would be a, what's it called, a meltdown. And the public didn't know much about that at that time. Chernobyl had not happened. And so there was a great fear of a meltdown and people thought that meant, heck, the 22:00nuclear, it can just penetrate the earth and contaminate everything, and this is in Pennsylvania. Not that far from here.

JF:

Right.

JP:

And so there was a great deal of trepidation about that in the community and around the country. So I got a call while I was on the air from the then program director, Jerry David Melloy, and he said, pull all the spots, pull all the radioactive promotions. And it was probably one of the neatest campaigns we'd ever come up with. We'd spent a lot of money, a lot of time and energy on it, and we couldn't run it. We had to pull it. That then stimulated thinking about another way to go about doing this. And it really did, promoting the station, and it really did, there's always a silver lining. So Brench Bowden and myself 23:00and Jim Ferguson we just all put our heads together and came up with another campaign. And I think it was more effective in the long run and it had a lot more of a sustaining capability over time. I think it was called depend on us.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

And I think they still use it today, in some ways.

JF:

Yeah. Very good. What was your typical day like? Did you have a typical day? Maybe one of the things that was great about a production, there was no real typical day, was there? I mean, you had certain things to do but all the elements would get mixed up every day.

JP:

Oh yeah.

JF:

Then you'd also have a set routine but then some sales guy would come in and say, this has got to be done right now. I'm sure.

JP:

One of the toughest times of the year was right prior to the football season.

JF:

Why is that?

JP:

Because it was like producing a whole new show that had in terms of commercials and promos. And there were all kinds of new clients that only bought time during 24:00the football and the basketball season. And this also happened prior to basketball season, but the big push was the two or three weeks, and all the sales people would wait till the last minute to get their clients to commit to copy.

JF:

No.

JP:

And we'd eventually be kind of up against, the last three or four days before the first game. And I remember just working 12, 15, 18 hour days too. And so did some of the other people. I even had some of the air personalities do some production work as I couldn't do it all. Somehow we always made it.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

And that was one of the big pushes and the other push was Derby.

JF:

Oh yeah. The listener may not realize when they hear the end result, how much work went into getting that 30 second spot of that commercial on the air. And then you combine that with many other commercials.

JP:

And we had set a standard of high quality. So it's not like you could just throw 25:00every commercial together.

JF:

No, but does that involve research, getting the right music, getting the right words, putting it all together and editing it and then getting the end result in that cartridge rack so it could fall on you and Ken Schulz in the studio.

JP:

Well, you remember when you would come into the studio and I would hand you five pieces of copy and say, "Okay Jack, we got 10 minutes."

JF:

Because each on air guy had a certain production shift too. You would use our voices. We would come in and do a commercial and then you put it all together.

JP:

Right. Yeah. One of the things we did at Derby, the Derby coverage...

JF:

I was going to ask you about Derby next.

JP:

HAS was... And it really, this is another thing Hugh Barr started with the coverage of big events that were more entertaining. Create something on the air that attracts a larger audience, but it's a community spirit kind of thing. It just happened to coincide with the beginning of the Derby festival as being a real festival, managed by a large group of people and a number of events. It was 26:00really growing fast. So I would go out during the two weeks of the Derby festival and to cover all these events, and I'd take a tape recorder with me and interview people. It was really exciting, tiring and then I'd bring the pieces in and edit them down and create a little Derby festival moment. Maybe a minute and a half, that would raise the excitement level on the station.

JP:

We're the only station doing anything like this, we're covering everything. And then on Derby day where we went wall-to-wall coverage.

JF:

We started at the morning, six in the morning.

JP:

Yeah. And guys like you would be either out in the infield or on millionaire's row. I remember Milton in a millionaire's row where he wanted to be. Don't put Milton in the infield, things might happen. The many, many celebrities at the time that he interviewed, it's legendary.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

I hope HAS kept all those interviews because they really are something. But those would be on the air. Wayne Perky anchored the coverage. Caywood Ledford was in the booth with him, calling every race, talking about the upcoming Derby, not just the odds, but all the backstory. And the previous week Wayne had been on the backside of Churchill Downs.

JF:

Doing his morning show.

JP:

Doing his morning show from there and with an engineer, I think it was me, back at the studio. And he would interview all the trainers and jockeys and owners, and those were just fascinating interviews. Then you take all of the coverage from Derby festival week, and then the 12 to, what was it, 16 hours of Derby day coverage. So let's say it's 20 hours, 25 hours worth of material, all on large, 10 inch reel-to-reel tapes that had been constantly running from off air. And I would take those big stacks of these things into the production room while all you guys were like... You had had a big long week, the day was over at the end 28:00of Derby day. And you guys were, I don't know, you went to a restaurant, had dinner and I'm back there working my butt off.

JF:

How did you find things in all those big tapes? Had you made notes during the week?

JP:

Well, especially the Derby day coverage, I had saved stuff from different times. But the Derby day coverage I was on the air as a coordinating producer. Brench Bowden was on site and I was in the studio running things. And I would make notes during the day and then when I wasn't on the air I made notes about what some great pieces, some great things that were going on.

JF:

It was forming in your mind while this was going on.

JP:

And then I would go in with all these tapes and I had roughly an idea where they were, this tape is for this hour and a half. So I'd have to actually go through 29:00the tapes, almost listen to them linearly, minute by minute until I found those pieces. And then in the listening, I would hear other things that I hadn't noted that were great. And then, and this is before the days of digital editing, which we had audio tape. And if you were going to edit together a lot of pieces, you had to get your piece of audio tape and tape it up on a shelf or something.

JF:

So you would cut it out with a razor blade.

JP:

I would cut it out with a razor blade, and I'd have a piece that was seven feet long and a piece that was three feet long and a piece that was just a little snippet that was two feet long. And I had them labeled.

JF:

Oh my goodness.

JP:

I was up until usually four or five o'clock in the morning on Sunday morning putting this together, because once I had all that done, then I had to splice them all together, was called then a splicing block.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

And then listen and go, "I should move that over here. I should move that over here." And it was called the Derby day montage.

JF:

Oh, a masterpiece.

JP:

And they usually ended up... Now this is, what, 30 hours worth of material condensed to between eight and 10 minutes.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

And it got to where after several years of doing that, people would look forward to...

JF:

Oh yeah. They would call, "Where's the montage? I want to hear that." They were masterpieces.

JP:

And I think they may still do that because I know they still have Derby coverage and it's still important for them to do that. And in fact it was so successful doing that, that we started doing a crusade for children.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

Montages, which put together all the entertainment and the various important things like the fire department that had the largest donations or whatever. And I would, during the crusade, I would go down and interview the different fire department chiefs and ancillary personnel. Sometimes just kids, and I would put together these montages of not only the coverage and the entertainment, but also some of the people who were volunteering to help and put together a montage for that. And the fire department personnel, all of whom compete to raise the most money for the crusade for children, they would then look forward to their 31:00montage, to see if they were mentioned. And it got to the point where I had to mention, I have to include every fire department.

JF:

Wow.

JP:

A lot of fun to do those.

JF:

Fun time. Hard work, a lot of fun time. That was the thing about it, it was hard work but it was fun and rewarding and it was good. You mentioned awards a while ago, was there something called a Leo? Do they still do that?

JP:

Clio. No. The Louis.

JF:

Louis. The Louis. Yeah. They were the Louisville advertising club.

JP:

Right. They started those awards, I guess, at some point in the 70s. I think HAS had not submitted many entries until we had a writing team and a production team. And the first year I was there, they had won a few Louis before that for some promos and for some coverages. They used to give Louis for the news and sports casts and that's where the station won it's awards mostly. Then they 32:00started... But not in the advertising awards as much. And so when I got there, Brench and I put together our heads and we came up with a lot of great campaigns for radio station, I mean for ad agencies and clients, and I remember if we had got to three years, we stole the limelight at the Louis awards from the mainstream ad agencies because we were doing such a great job coming up with campaigns and great commercials and effective commercials.

JP:

In fact, one year we submitted, the station had Indie 500 coverage.

JF:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.

JP:

Radio coverage. And so one of the promos that I produced for the, it was written by, then Barbara Owen, who eventually became my wife, using some sound I had 33:00retained from my days at WIBC, which was the original station that covered the Indie 500. One of their top sports casters had gone out there and recorded the sound of the, what they used to call, champ cars, Indie cars. Went in practice and in qualifying. And if you've never heard that sound live, it just goes through you. It is so amazing the sound. You have to hear it live. But capture it on tape is hard too because it's so loud. And he had captured a really good maybe 15 minutes of these champ cars, both close up and at distance, coming at you, that feel of a race car coming at you at 200 miles an hour.

JP:

Well, I had retained some of those tapes because I thought they were cool. And then when it got time to do a promo for HAS' Indie 500 coverage, I thought, "I'm going to go dig that up and put together a promo." And so we put together a 34:00promo using the sound, it was almost all sound. Really exciting. We used some really hard music. And it won a Clio award, which is the national advertising awards in the promotional category for radio stations. And that was the first time HAS had won a Clio.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

So for that period of time, with the help, it was really a team effort, the station really did create an image of being, for advertisers and for listeners a home to really dynamic coverage of local events, National, sporting events and... Commercials sometimes are not easy to listen to.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

We try to make them entertaining and fun. And Brench Bowden was a tremendous writer and we loved putting together some of the funny commercials we did. We wanted to entertain our audience as well as get them into the store.

JF:

Well, I remember that part of Hugh's philosophy too, was that we don't want 35:00people to tune out during commercials because that's part of your program. And so he made the part of the program.

JP:

Exactly.

JF:

I like to even lead into it because I knew some particular funny line was coming up. You could set it up that way.

JP:

Right.

JF:

Come out of it with a conversation. But it was because they were that way. They weren't just standard run of the mill commercials. They had something that people would talk about that.

JP:

Sure.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

Really was... I was at HAS for 10 years.

JF:

'76 to '86?

JP:

To '85.

JF:

'85.

JP:

And one thing I do want to want to say is, and there's very few companies that you work for these days that can match the feeling that you had when you worked for a Bingham company. WHAS, WMZU, WHAS television were owned by The Courier-Journal, which is a privately owned company that the Bingham family owned at the time. And they gave, one of the reasons WHAS was able to do so so 36:00much and be so creative and become the powerhouse it became is because that family allowed that to happen and hired good people and let them do their thing, gave them free reign. And in the ensuing days of radio after that, eventually radio got very homogenized and a lot of stations would end up being owned by one owner who was mostly profit oriented.

JP:

And I just want to, it's a bit of a shout out to the Bingham family for those days because they established a standard in both radio and television and with their newspaper that gave people like me and you an opportunity to shine.

JF:

Yeah. That's well said.

JP:

And those were, in my opinion, the golden days of radio. And it wasn't just my era, it goes back to the '30s and '40s. The flood coverage in 1937.

JF:

The Foster Brooks' and people [crosstalk],

JP:

Oh yeah.

JF:

Tom Brooks. All those people.

JP:

And not to mention the incredible community outreach that was created by the crusade for children.

JF:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.

JP:

Still going strong.

JF:

Yeah. Did you have much personal contact with the Bingham's at all? I know you worked for their company. Did you...

JP:

I longed to. I heard many stories, but no, I didn't have much contact with them. I do remember Barry Jr.'s handlebar mustache, whenever he would walk through the station, he was such a character and I loved that mustache. I wanted a picture of it so bad. I never got a picture.

JF:

My first introduction to him was in the production studio. This is probably, while I came in '73 so it was shortly after that. But I remember I was at the station till five or six o'clock one evening, everybody had gone and I'm walking through by where the studio was and I heard these jungle sounds coming out and I had not met Barry Bingham Jr. And I walked to see what was going on. This 38:00gentleman turned around with his huge mustache. He said, "Hi, I am Barry Bingham Jr.." And he had been on a safari.

JP:

Right.

JF:

And had recorded all of these jungle sounds and was transferring them to tape there in the production studio.

JP:

Wow.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

Wow.

JF:

Was it your production studio? Interesting. Let's see. Now, were you there during the transition to clear channel or had you left?

JP:

I had left before that happened.

JF:

In the latter part of '85. So you left just before then.

JP:

I did have a great opportunity to be with one of the... Spend time with and be a kind of a little, I don't know what, Cawood Ledford.

JF:

Cawood Ledford.

JP:

Who came in to my studio a couple of times to record things, but for the most part was off doing his thing. At the time when I came, he was, I think he was the sports anchor on television. His primary job was play by play for the 39:00Wildcats, and he did afternoon sports reports. He was soon to be replaced by his protege, Paul Rogers, while he still worked there. And I remember when he decided to retire from his radio job and just concentrate entirely upon his own company and play by play stuff. This is a guy by the way, and this is what WHAS nurtured in talent. This is a guy, by the way he comes from a small town in Kentucky, eventually ended up being the play by play guy for the University of Kentucky Wildcats football, basketball, and eventually became so well known for his, the quality of his play by play that CBS television when it was covering the NCAA final four, and I think it was Caywood's last year on the air for the wildcats.

JP:

And Nance, Jim Nance, I think it was Jim Nance and Billy Packer decided during the final four, let part of the audio for about five minutes, they switched over to Cawood's feed because that was the one thing he did nationally. He did covered for CBS radio and did the play by play for the final four and the championship game. And when you heard him do play by play for anything, everyone else paled in comparison even people you thought were tremendous.

JP:

He was one of those enormously successful talents. And since he's not around to tell this story, I'm going to tell this story for you. He told me this story and then he told it many times in speeches he gave later. He attributes to a general 41:00manager at a small station, I forget what town it was, and it was his early day and wasn't ready. He was at [inaudible], maybe 22 years old, 24. The Cawood I knew was an establishment figure, to me, he was just as sophisticated as they come, a great down to earth guy at the same time and a tremendous talent. But in his early days he was a playboy, a carouser, and his wife would tell you many stories about that when she met him.

JP:

So in those days when he was starting out in radio, and this is the story he tells, one particularly, shall we say, fun night that he had in which he was up pretty late. He did the five o'clock sports report, 5:00 PM. Well, so he's been up all night and he doesn't get up until noon that day or one o'clock. And he barely gets himself to the station in time, and five o'clock rolls around. And 42:00he puts together a sports report and the general manager calls him into his office the next morning. He waits a day and he says, "Cawood, I was listening to your report yesterday, strange thing, I just don't think it was up to your standards. And I was wondering why I have never heard anything like that before. And I'm really worried about, are you okay? Is there anything I can do to help you? Would you like to talk about anything?"

JP:

And Cawood said when he came into his general manager office, he knew what it was going to be about and yet the approach that general manager took to Cawood's carousing was, "You're okay, aren't you? Because that wasn't like you. That 43:00report wasn't like you at all. And I know you pride yourself on your reports." And he's waiting for the bomb to fall and the hammer never drops, like, "You're fired. Go look for another job." "Well, I just wanted to check with you." Cawood said that episode in that general manager's office, that particular day set the stage for the rest of his career.

JF:

I'll be damned.

JP:

He said, "I decided right then and there never again was I going to let anything interfere with the quality of what I was capable of and the work I was doing."

JF:

Interesting.

JP:

From that day forward that was going to take top priority. And it was all because his GM had understood that the most important thing he needed remind Cawood of was his own pride.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

Not how you messed up the day before, but remind you of your pride in your work. And that's a theme that I think Hugh Barr created at HAS. I think Cawood was a part of the early days of that. The Bingham set the stage for that, letting their people, hiring great people and letting them do what they do best and hiring managers and leaders who knew how to bring the best out in people. And I think that's why the station ended up with Gary Burbank and great personalities like yourself. There was this team spirit, this team effort and a camaraderie that I don't think can be replicated today. Yeah.

JF:

Well, talk about a Hugh Barr, how did you meet Hugh? And you had a good relationship with Hugh over those years, what was he like?

JP:

My image of Hugh is he had a mustache and a beard, right?

JF:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.

JP:

A little goatee beard.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

And I thought Hugh was the coolest, most sophisticated guy I had ever met in 45:00radio or any other field.

JF:

Tall, thin fellow.

JP:

Yes. And refined and soft-spoken and did he wear a bow tie sometimes? I have a memory of that.

JF:

He might have.

JP:

I just remember him always being well-groomed and well-dressed and well-spoken.

JF:

Always in control.

JP:

Always in control.

JF:

Not in a controlling way, but in a...

JP:

Not in a controlling way at all. And he wasn't manipulative and try to get what he wanted out of people by fooling them into doing. He was just very straightforward and honest. And so calm about it. What I loved about Hugh was his creativity to try new things and to take risks. And I think that's the legacy he left at HAS and other people emulate that in the radio community and then it broadens beyond that. My first contact with him was I had sent a 46:00audition tape to the station when I was up in Indianapolis. And he called me.

JF:

To be a production person?

JP:

Well, they had an opening and they didn't say what it was. They just said, we have an opening on our staff. Understand, Hugh created the transition from the '40s and '50s in which outfits like WHAS, which was a television station and two radio stations that worked, they were all under the same umbrella, would have an announcer staff.

JF:

And by that time, television was pretty much in control. Radio was sort of...

JP:

Right. So before you guys were hired, Jerry David and yourself, and Wayne Perky, there was Jim Walton and Bill Britton and Van Vance, and all those guys weren't 47:00specifically sportscasters or newscasters. They were announcing.

JF:

They were announcers. Yeah.

JP:

Assigned to do news or assigned to do sports. And they never touched a piece of equipment. There were engineers who took care of that. And this was true at many of the large television radio station combinations around the country. When Hugh came in, he had to change that whole system. And it was entrenched, to create a more free flowing creative environment for people like yourself to blossom and do what you do best.

JF:

That was the trend in radio by then.

JP:

It was the trend in radio.

JF:

Wave was already doing this, Wave radio.

JP:

That's right. HAS was still doing the old fashioned stuff, having a staff of announcers, and he wanted to hire specialists. And he knew some of the people that have been with the station for quite some time, also announced for the television station, also did some TV and then did radio or they did sports, there were even guys who used to go into an announce booth in the '40s and do 48:00live announcements for the television station. Milton Metz used to do that.

JF:

Well, I came in '73, we were recording it, but that was part of our shift. We would go up into the television booth and record breaks for the hour.

JP:

Right. So you have to credit Hugh with convincing the Bingham's to change the whole feel of the station and to bring in the people, and they had not experienced that. So it was the power of his personality.

JF:

He was the right guy for it.

JP:

The right guy for it, because he was able to convince people of just about anything. He had that enormous confidence that he was right. Not in an arrogant way, more in a, trust me, let's try it.

JF:

Were you ever in any meetings where he had to be tough but it didn't come across 49:00as toughness. Were you ever in meetings with him like that, where had to associate something or do something?

JP:

Yes. And I feel like it was the power of his ability to persuade. That was that toughness. When you can't refute an argument, well-made, I consider the guy on the other side of the table tough because, especially if he does it in a non-threatening way, and I don't think he was ever threatening in any way. So you felt like you could say what you needed to say. His argument was usually better because he had always thought through to the end game.

JF:

He knew where he was going.

JP:

He knew where he was going, and in fact I think he taught me a lot about negotiating and about persuasion and how to get along.

JF:

That's interesting because you became the union shop steward here at HAS and here at the printing house for the blind, and I'm sure some of those skills were helpful to you there.

JP:

Now, there is a little story about, who was then the GM of WHAS Inc, which was 50:00the television station and the two radio stations. So he was over all of that.

JF:

Hugh was under him. Yeah.

JP:

Hugh was under him. And I think by this time Hugh had left, his name was Fred Osler and he was a younger guy. He wasn't one of the old staid guys. He was really a younger guy who was real sophisticated and easy going, fun guy too, and a real administrator. And so many years later after he left, we had a negotiation while he was there.

JF:

[inaudible].

JP:

And the management represented by him. He was rarely ever in the room. He had either the program director or the general manager of the radio station there. And all we were really haggling over was a proposal to give all of the radio guys a five day week. And many of us were still working a weekend day on the 51:00air. We were like three or five, four guys left. It was going to cost the station maybe $5,000 in pay to some extra part-timers to do that. Station wasn't doing extremely well at that time. They dug in their heels, "We're not going to do that." And we made a presentation that would rival the best.

JP:

"This isn't going to cost you this much money. And here's how we can work it out." We were doing their work for them. So Fred was getting these reports and in the end, they wanted to see how badly we wanted this. So they forced a, what's called a strike authorization vote, and that had never happened at HAS. So I go around to everybody and most people said, okay, we'll give you the authorization to call a strike. This was to our union rep.

JP:

And one or two of the guys were a little shaky on it. So our union rep went back to the table and he wouldn't do the strike authorization vote. He was a little 52:00afraid that if they pushed him any further, he would have to call a strike and it wouldn't work. So we didn't get the five day week as the bottom line and it was okay. We all, eventually two or three years later, it just happened because it made sense. Many, many years later, Fred Osler has by this time moved to Florida, he was running a cable company down there, and my wife at the time, Barbara Polk, she had taken a mini vacation with her son down there and she, out of nowhere, she ran into him at a restaurant.

JP:

And so she sat down with him and one of the questions, he was such an outgoing guy. They just had a great talk. "How's John doing? How's Milton, all those guys, how they doing?" And she said, "As far as I know everybody's doing well. John still talks about you." "Oh yeah. I remember. I remember those union 53:00negotiations." Now, he was never present in the room.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

And she said, "Yeah, I remember how frustrated he was. They couldn't get the five day a week." And Fred said, "Oh yeah, that. All I wanted to do was see how badly you wanted it. If you told me you would have... If you had authorized a strike, I would have given to you."

JP:

It was a moot point because several years later it came anyway and he just laughed about it. And what it does prove to you in all negotiations, whether it's between union and management or negotiation between a husband and a wife, there's always a solution.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

If you get in the other person's shoes and he had already done that. I and others had tried to do that. Well, the one thing we missed was he just wanted see...

JF:

If you were serious.

JP:

Serious.

JF:

Don't have to vote. That's wild.

JP:

But I guess the larger point is all the great personalities from management down to the part-time people, all great people.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

I could go on and on. During the years of... Wasn't it Hugh that started the helicopter coverage?

JF:

Yeah. Dick Gilbert did.

JP:

Dick Gilbert. I remember what a great personality he was.

JF:

Great stuff. Hugh also carved out the news department. I think Glen Bastin was the news director. And then it became on some won, later under Brian Rublein won I think five Peabody awards, which were just unheard of for a local radio station.

JP:

I remember Jerry David came to me at one point and said, "Listen, I'm going to hire another swing guy." And I said, "Is my job safe?" "Of course. We need somebody else who can do some other stuff and I want you to listen to this tape." I listened to the tape. He said, "When you listened to it, remember the guy's 19." And I said, "19!" And he's from Lebanon junction, Kentucky. Okay. 55:00Couldn't be much, right?

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

So I listened to tape and out comes this velvet deep voice and with just a slight accent to it in, almost like a Texas accent, a little bit of Kentucky in it and just syrup. I mean, just so beautiful a voice. And I said, "Wow. And he's 19. Okay." And then I thought this guy he's going to take all my clients away. I'm going to be... So I had to give a recommendation because he's good. So he comes in and I meet him. He's got cowboy boots on, he's got a cowboy hat on, he's got a Western shirt on and tight jeans. And I go, "Who is this character?" And he introduces, "Hello, my name's Bill Cody also known as Trent klutz." His 56:00real name was Trent Klutz. So he had changed his name in his early days in radio when he was 16 to Bill Cody.

JF:

Did he look like he was 16 when you saw him first time?

JP:

And he probably was at HAS for six, seven, eight years. He is now the morning drive personality at WSM in Nashville.

JF:

Wow.

JP:

He was for many years the, I think, one of the hosts of one of the Nashville network, television network shows. He had been lead personality on the Grand Opry shows on WSM. He loved country music.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

He came to a jazz nut WAMC, the country station. And he filled in everywhere and he was a lot of fun. Everybody loved him.

JF:

Always got a smile on his face.

JP:

Yeah.

JF:

And that voice, you didn't expect that voice to come out of him.

JP:

That's right. And the reason I'm telling you about Trent Klutz is because the production room was a place for people to come in, close the door and tell John 57:00their problems.

JF:

Oh yeah.

JP:

I didn't start it, I got to tell you, I didn't start it. But it started to happen. I don't know who it was who started it. And then the word got around and we be recording a commercial and we'd be through, and I'd say, "How you doing Jack?" "Well, I can't believe that Hugh Barr has me doing this or whatever."

JF:

Yeah, right.

JP:

And there would be... and I would say, "Well, maybe he's got a reason for that." So it would be a place for people to talk about things.

JF:

A little sanctuary.

JP:

And it wouldn't go any further than that. It was just a place to let off a little steam. I don't know how it got started with but it became a thing. So one day after Trent had been there about five years and he's still doing the same thing, filling in for people and he's not gotten an air shift, which was his main goal. And he was hoping one day to maybe be morning drive or afternoon 58:00drive on WAMZ because that was still part of the group. And by that time Coyote Calhoun had taken over AMZ and really wanted him but there wasn't an opening. And there wasn't one for several years. So Trent was getting, "I got to move on. I got to do something. I'm 24. My life is about over."

JP:

So he comes into the production room and he says, "John, I really have a dilemma. I've been offered a job at..." It was a country station in, I think it was Jacksonville, Florida or Tampa, one of those places. "And it's a great opportunity. It's morning drive and I'll be leaving home." He was a home boy. I mean, he just loved Kentucky and married, already married and had a couple of kids. And he said, "I don't know what to do. I have no idea what to do." And I 59:00had learned this some years ago, somebody had done this for me. So I said, "Hey, this is a simple solution." He said, "Oh good. I'm so glad I knew you'd have the answer." So I said, "You got a coin?" And he got a coin out, and I said, "Here. Heads, you're going to Jacksonville. Tails, you stay at HAS. And I want you, before you do this, I want you to commit that whatever it says, you're going to do it."

JP:

And he says, "Okay. It can't be any worse than what I've been going through." So he accepted the premise. So we flipped the coin and while it was in the air, this is the trick, while it was in the air, I said, "What do you want it to be?" So his face froze. And I said, "You got to tell me because we're not picking up that coin." The idea is you never look at the coin. And I said, "Tell me the truth. What did you want it to be?" And he wanted it to be heads, I go to Jacksonville and he told me that, he said, "I want it to be heads. "There's your answer."

JF:

How about that.

JP:

And he went. That job didn't work out, but it led to another very prestigious country music job. And then he ended up at WSM, the premier country station in the country.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

And that led to lots of other things, Nashville network. I saw him. We had a reunion of the HAS guys over at Glen Bastin's house a few years back and he came.

JF:

That's something.

JP:

Great guy.

JF:

And the production studio was also a counseling center then too.

JP:

Five sets.

JF:

How about that. Great stuff. Well, we're going to run out of time here. You are going to have to get ready to do a recording session it looks like, but anything else you want to add? Great stuff, great memories. As you said, well, we could probably come back tomorrow and just do another hour.

JP:

Just keep it going. If I think of anything, I'll let you know.

JF:

There's been some great insights and some good memories obviously.

JP:

It was a wonderful time. And good fortune to have that opportunity. They weren't many people who had the opportunity to work at that radio station.

JF:

And longevity. There were people there for a long, long, time.

JP:

A long time. That's not so much true anymore in the business but it was certainly true then. And so many people wanted to work there, like Trent.

JF:

Yeah.

JP:

Who had dreamed of it ever since he was a little kid and myself and many others. Once you came from Denver, you never left.

JF:

Yeah. That's right.

JP:

And Wayne he came...

JF:

30 years.

JP:

Yeah.

JF:

You know Schulz was there 40 years? Did you know that?

JP:

Is that right.

JF:

30 years.

JP:

We turned them in to Kentucky. Did we?

JF:

Absolutely. That's right.

JP:

Yeah. Once a Kentuckian, always a Kentuckian.

JF:

Blue blood. Well, thanks, John.

JP:

You're welcome.

JF:

I appreciate the good stuff and...

JP:

Thanks for the chance to participate.

JF:

You did well. Thanks.

JP:

Okay.