EXCERPT FROM:
GEORGE & ME
by Claude Hall
I’ve only known George Wilson and David Moorhead since I joined Billboard. That
was in early 1964. But the magazine became my life, just as radio was the life of
George Wilson. I didn’t sacrifice my personal life. Not much anyway. I’m afraid
that George Wilson did. Many radio people had no private life at all. They literally
worked all of the time, sleeping, eating, everything. Me, too, I suppose. Lee Baby
Simms left behind in Tucson a wife and baby; she refused to move to San Antonio
where he had a new job on KONO. Wives, especially radio wives, don’t always
understand that when you get fired, your next job is probably going to be in a town
down the road. But radio men weren’t just married to the job … they were addicted
to radio. In their blood. I guess I was addicted, too, but not as much as guys like
Roger Carroll of KMPC fame and countless others. Art Wander, Dick Summers,
Dean Tyler.
Then, one day the phone rang. It was always ringing. I usually had seven or eight
people waiting on the phone to talk with me. But this was someone to see me, said
Tammy, the receptionist.
“Tammy, I’m much too busy. Vox Jox. Deadline stuff.”
“He showed me a badge. You rob any bank lately?”
“Tell him to make an appointment. I'm on deadline.”
Tammy … I don’t remember her last name … liked to joke and wore a cute little
smile as if it came with the turf. Her husband was a musician. Steel drums. Those
guys didn’t get much studio work.
“He also wears a gun,” she said.
“I’m come right out,” I said.
He was not your proverbial cop’s cop waiting in the lobby. Looked more like a
college student whose dark spectacles were almost too heavy for his nose. If he
was wearing a gun, you couldn’t tell.
“I understand you knew a gentleman named Nate McCalla. I’d like to talk with you
about him.”
“Come on back,” I said and led him to my office. Offered him a seat on my couch.
He glanced at my “assistant,” Sam Bellamy. She was fairly cute. Lots of my
visitors looked at her at least once. She was married to a nice black guy. I nodded
at her. She understood the message and left, closing the office door behind her.
For a year, my “office” had been a desk in the middle of the kids who did the phone
research on records. Then some bright soul in the organization thought we all
should have counseling. Psychological counseling was sort of “in” at the time. I
don’t know if they wanted to know why we were successful or what. I could have
told them. Hard work. Me, especially. I certainly deserved a raise.
So, I was given an appointment and I talked with a guy who I quickly realized
wasn’t all that bright. I quickly asked for a raise, a private office with no carpet (the
static electricity used to shock the hell out of me when I opened a door), a couch
and a window with drapes. I got everything but the raise. This was the office
where Beaver Cleaver of KHJ in Los Angeles came to see me with an entourage.
Later, he used his real name of Ken Levine when he wrote scripts for “M.A.S.H”
and other TV shows and also became a director. All major disc jockeys had
entourages. Lee Baby Simms also came to see me in that office. He, too, had an
entourage. Seems that he’d lost his plastic beer stein trophy from the International
Radio Programming Forum held recently in San Francisco. I had a few in a
cardboard box under my desk. I gave him one. He promptly pulled out a tire air
gage from his pocket and handed it to me. I used to explain to everyone that he
was probably trying to tell me that I was full of hot air. Could have been. I won’t
deny it.
“Are you really a cop?” I asked. He looked like Buddy Holly.
“Fed,” he said, “though the official term is special agent in charge.”
“In charge of what? The murder of Nate McCalla?”
“I can see that news travels fast,” he said. “I just mentioned that I’d like to
talk with you about him.”
“You made another mistake, too, Buddy. You said a gentleman named Nate
McCalla. I know an awful lot of people in radio and in the music business. Not
more than four or five … make that three or four such as Don Graham and Morris
Diamond … can be called gentlemen. Not Nate, though, poor guy. Funny about
someone killing him, too, because I always though it was Nate who sometimes did
the killing.”
His eyes lit up.
“Just kidding,” I said. “I never heard of him killing anyone. Heard once that he
might have stopped someone from killing someone else, but I don’t even know that
for sure.”
“How did you hear about Nate McCalla?” he asked.”
“You’re rather persistent. You sure you’re a fed? I don’t think you’re big enough to
pass the physical. I’m not trying to be insulting, but….”
“I’m older than I look. I used to work out with Bruce Lee. And my name isn’t
Buddy.”
“Whups. Pardon me. You look just like Buddy Holly. He was a singer. Dead now,
I’m afraid.”
“Worked out with Chuck Norris, too.”
“What about Gary Owens?”
“Is he into karate?”
I laughed. Gary Owens really was into karate.
“Phone. Disc jockeys like to talk on the telephone. Especially when they’re on the
radio. Up to and including Gary Owens at KMPC.”
He tilted his eyebrows.
“While the record is spinning,” I explained. “Disc jockeys … hell, everyone in radio
… is big on the phone. I sometimes think Alexander Graham Bell was an
out-of-work disc jockey.”
“Did your friend George Wilson kill Nate McCalla?”
“Hell of a question. Shock treatment, huh? No, I doubt it. And he certainly didn’t
kill Buddy Holly. I only met Nate once, that I can recall. Huge guy. The kind they
make telephone books for. George was berating him about being black. If Nate
had felt the slightest urge, he could have ripped George into pieces. We were in Al
and Dick’s in Manhattan at the time. George had had a few beers, I believe. I later
mentioned to George that he was verbally mistreating Nate and he ought to be
more careful. He said that Nate loved him. Anyway, George was hurt when he
found out that Nate had been killed. Me, too. We don’t have that many crass
killings in this business. I mean, a good friend of mine was found on a rooftop in
New York City. Stepped out of a window seven floors up, they say. Mike Gross.
Talent editor of Billboard magazine at the time. And I knew a disc jockey in
Nashville named Roger Scutt. On the air, he was known as Captain Midnight.
Body turned up in a trash dumpster in an alleyway. Overdose, I guess, and
someone thought that a trash dumpster was an appropriate grave site. Not me. I
sort of liked Captain Midnight.”
“Do you know everyone in the radio business and music business?”
“Heck, no. Not even half and sometimes you don’t know some of them very long.
Either they don’t have what it takes to really be big in radio or something else takes
them out. Long John Silver … I don’t know his real name … sneaked out of radio
by buying a couple of steakhouses in the South. The number of alcoholics in radio
is absolutely enormous. Some die from it or because of it. Others stumble into
Alcoholics Anonymous. Just lucky, I guess.”
“Would you know if Wilson is a member of Alcoholics Anonymous?”
“Yeah, I’d probably know something like that. But I’d never tell. I told someone
once a few years ago – I can’t remember who – that George Wilson was drinking
too damned much and the first thing I knew he was standing right there where
you’re standing … telling me that his drinking was none of my business. I thought
about it for a moment and told him that he was absolutely correct and I apologized.”
The special agent in charge wagged his head. “Awkward!”
“Can you imagine,” I asked, “him flying all of the way in from Milwaukee just to tell
me that he wasn’t drinking?”
“That wasn’t what he said. What he said was ….”
“I know what he said,” I told the special agent in charge. I looked him straight in
the eyes. “Don’t screw around with my joke, Buddy Holly.” He actually looked
abash.
“Pardon me,” he said.
“Anyway, I think George is one of those ‘born again’ persons, whoever they are.”
“Oh,” he said. He wagged his head. Slowly, this time. He glanced at his
wristwatch. “Can you think of anyone else who might have wished Nate McCalla
dead?”
“Not really. A good bagman. That is, I suppose he was good at his craft … I don’t
know that as a fact. Probably knew quite a few people, though. None of them
really well. But well enough.”
“Maybe he was going to tell.”
This time, I was the one to wag my head. Slowly. Because I had to do some
thinking on that one. Finally, I told him what I thought. “Nope. I’m sorry, Mr.
Special Agent in Charge. But you’d have to understand this industry. Guys either
know each other or know about each other. Closer than friends. More like
brothers. People even know about my family dog, Popsie. Nothing to tell that isn’t
already known. They gossip a lot, but you’ve got to take just about all of it with the
old proverbial grain of salt.”
“I like dogs,” he said with a faraway look in his eyes. He turned to stare out
my window. “Great view.”
“You would like Popsie?”
“Your dog?”
“Actually, I think he belongs to Darryl, my second son, more than anyone else.”
“Probably an ugly-looking dog.”
I gave a low whistle. “The FBI is good,” I said. “How could you know something
like that?”
“All good family dogs are ugly. Some kind of law, I surmise. Popsie probably
had a patch over one eye.”
“Wow! I apologize for the slur about the fed.”
“It’s okay. I sometimes make fun of them myself. Only way, sometimes, to
keep sane, I think.”
We both stood at the window, which was actually the entire wall of my office.
“Danny Thomas lives up there. Out the window and up to the left,” I said.
“You rich like Danny Thomas? That’s big dollar country up there. Must also
be expensive up in Bel Air where you live.”
So, Mister Federal Agent in Charge had done some research on me. I wondered
why. “Rich? Me? With three kids and a dog named Popsie?”
“Don’t forget the Park Avenue princess.”
“No,” I told him. “I could never forget her. She is definitely unforgettable. I’ve
never understood why she would marry someone like me. However, I don’t have
that kind of Danny Thomas money. I bought the house on Moraga at something
like $58,000. I don’t know what it’s worth now. Certainly, a great deal more. On
the other hand, in spite of the swimming pool, we don’t live rich. That Park Avenue
princess had to change her lifestyle when she married me. We live get by. My
salary is a bit lower than that. I wish I had the guts to ask for a raise. But Lee
Zhito, the publisher, keeps telling me he has 200 people a month applying for my
job.”
“I wonder why,” said Special Agent in Charge.
He looked away from the glass window and stared at me, waiting for an answer.
I didn’t know what to tell him. I kept staring at the window.
“Well, it’s sort of fun, I suppose. For example, you meet the very best in FBI
agents. The ones who look like dead recording stars. And some pretty good disc
jockeys. Guys like Robert W. Morgan at KHJ and Gary Owens at KMPC and if you
get lucky you might meet Beaver Cleaver at some baseball game. You also get
free records and also you get to see some great live performances.”
“I mean, why would someone like your editor lay that sort of thing on you about
people wanting your job.”
“Because he’s a son-of-a-bitch. I sometimes think he’s into pot. I’m not sure about
it. That’s, as they say, off the record. But there are a lot of perks that come with
the job. Great for your ego. I once heard Willie Nelson do four hours at a
Columbia Records conference at the Century-Plaza Hotel. Freddy Fender joined
him for four tunes. An absolutely phenomenal show that only a few hundred of us
in the biz got to see. I saw him do a show in Nashville once that was one of a
kind. Invited the band of the late Hank Williams to join him on stage. Great perk.
Some people would die to see a show like that, including me.”
“Who else, for example? The performances, I mean.”
“Fred Neil, Frank Sinatra, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Peggy Lee, Waylon Jennings,
Linda Ronstadt….”
“That’s enough.”
“Hey, I’ve just started my list. But I’m glad you stopped me. We could be here all
day. And probably tomorrow, too. You ever heard of Eliza Gilkyson?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“Pity. A lady who’s sort of funky, sort of folk, great voice that tugs at your toenails.
Best since Emmylou Harris. And there’s Tom Russell and Johnny Cash and Anita
Carter. I wish I could have caught your lookalike … Buddy Holly. I have caught
Bobby Vee, Sonny James, Tex Ritter, Eddy Arnold ….”
“Enough. I give up.” He held up his left hand, palm out, as if fending me off.
He grinned. Hey, he did look an awfully lot like Buddy Holly!
“You really do look a bit like Buddy Holly,” I said. “I think it’s those spectacles
you’re wearing.”
“I’ll check him out,” he said.
“There are some books around about Buddy Holly. Not much out there about the
rest. There will be books about Cash one day. Waylon and the others.”
“Why should I read up on Buddy Holly if he’s dead. Plane crash, wasn’t it.”
“Ah, Mister Special Agent in Charge who only looks like Buddy Holly, you’ve been
running a little shuck on me, huh?”
“A shuck?”
“Forget it,” I said. “I’ve got work to do. I hope you’ve got somewhere important to
go and important things to do.”
“One more question.”
“Okay.”
“How long have you been in the music business?”
“Since March 1964. Before that, I worked on the New Orleans Times-Picayune, a
newspaper. I’m your basic hardcore journalist. But I did hear Elvis Presley his first
time live on radio. ‘The Louisiana Hayride’ from KWKH in Shreveport, LA.”
“You are in the music business, aren’t you?”
“I sometimes wonder,” I told him.
He was still reluctant to leave. But I really did have a column to write. I mean, I
wrote some important stories, too, for Billboard. But Vox Jox was my nemesis. My
godsend, too. Guys in radio, ladies, too, read every word. As soon as the door of
the office closed, I sat down at my IBM Correcting Selectric and then reached
under my desk and grabbed the first letter from a cardboard box.
