Hey Kemosabe! The Days (and Nights) of a Radio Idyll

Hey Kemosabe! The Days (and Nights) of a Radio Idyll
A Rock and Roll Radio Story from Chris Ingram
(Chris Ingram is WABC Legend Dan Ingram's son)

I can think of no better venue to provide an exclusive preview of my new book than the place where Musicradio still lives, Musicradio77.com.

"Hey Kemosabe! The Days (and Nights) of a Radio Idyll" is different from most of the works exploring the glory days of WABC. Rather than re-hashing the moments we all recall from that great era (Brief Showers, Schickhaus Franks etc.), I like to think it takes us beyond those touchstone moments into new territory.

"Hey Kemosabe!" is scheduled for release around July 25th. It will be available on all the usual internet suspects (Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com etc.) as well as through a link on my soon-to-be activated website, heykemosabe.com. I expect it to be on bookstore shelves some time later.

The following is taken from the book's forward, and is important to note:

This is not a biography, nor is it a history book. Many of the events contained on the following pages are recreations of actual events, drawn from the memories of many of the people who lived through them. Others are fictions in which actual people are placed in imaginary situations during real historical events. The result is an episodic romp through an amazing time. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did creating it.

Chris Ingram

C lank. “Shit!” A naked woman stands before a black faux marble bathroom sink, swallowing the last consonant before it passes her half-painted lips. She reachesinto the sink to retrieve her Maybelline as a previously inert body stirs beneath gold satin sheets in the bedroom behind her. She’s hoping to slip out of the one bedroom bachelor pad on East 57th street unnoticed. Holding her breath for five beats, she returns to her makeup, confident in a discreet getaway.

The man in the bed is playing possum himself, lying with his back to the bathroom, waiting for his latest conquest to get the hell out of his apartment and his life. He wouldn’t mind her laborious retreat if it weren’t for the rising sun searing through his closed eyelids, turning his world bright red. He’d left the blinds open last night so they could both take in the view while he took her from behind. Now he can’t get up and close them, or he’d have to talk to her, whoever she is. He throws an arm across his eyes and waits.

She’s wondering who he is, too. She knows he’s a celebrity, someone everybody seemed to know, or want to know, at the party last night. He caught her eye in his hip silver raw-silk Nehru jacket and single gold chain. She caught his eye because she looked … available. It was a look she cultivated carefully. They were at a party for a rock group, fresh over from England, “across the pond,” as she’d heard someone put it, and there were a bunch of radio stars in a suite on the eighteenth floor of the Hilton on 6th Avenue.

She’d noticed an acrid smell—marijuana, she’d assumed—and several long-haired youths going in and out of one of the rooms, where she surmised Mary Jane was being smoked. She was curious about it, hoping for an invitation, but just as she had made eye contact with one of the boys (bushy-haired, impossibly thin, with improbably thick lips) she heard a voice rumbling in her ear.

“So what brings you here?” The voice was deep and resonant, luxurious as dark chocolate. “My name’s Dan, and I think you’re very beautiful.”

That’s it, she recalls as she dabs at her lips. Dan Ingram. The disc jockey. “Daaaan In-grum.” She’s heard his name sung out on the radio for … all her life, it seems. She sits on the closed toilet, pulling on her pantyhose.

She thinks back to the party, remembering the assortment of characters parading in and out of the suite (and the pot room). There was the shorter, kindly guy, whom Dan introduced as his “best friend in the world.” Ron Lundy had been sitting at a small leather-trimmed bar where a mustachioed bartender had smiled knowingly as he chatted amiably with a stewardess from BOAC, about the possibilities of supersonic air service.

And a tall slender fellow (what was his name. .. Bruce?), who, it seemed to her, was trying too hard, slapping backs and slinging one-liners. And there was that young guy—open-necked shirt, with intense, dark eyes who looked completely bombed. He was sitting in a low-slung chrome and leather Barcelona chair, knees to his clavicles, rocking gently as his eyes seemed to roll in their sockets, each independent of the other.

“Roby, my friend, you’re trying too hard,” she remembers Dan addressing the kid in a kindly, almost paternal tone with that rich deep voice she suddenly couldn’t get enough of. “There’s plenty of booze, pot, women, whatever you want. Take your time, man!”

Roby Yonge looked up from his seat, his eyes grateful, but with the despairing, slack-jawed face of a man who had just bet the mortgage payment on the wrong horse. The kid steadied himself, ran his fingers through his thick, longish bangs, and walked purposefully to the bar. He clutched the leather-edged bar with both hands, then leaned unsteadily against the bar as he perused the selection of liquor. “That one.” He pointed at a bottle of expensive Cognac on a shelf behind the bar. “Make it a double.”

Ron looked across the room at Dan, nodded at Roby, and shook his head. Dan replied with a shrug, palms upraised. He looked at the striking brunette he’d just drawn into his orbit and intoned, “Let’s take a walk.

On the bed the next morning, eyes protected from the rising sun by his left arm, Dan is reconstructing the night’s events as well.

Just before the end of his Friday afternoon air-shift, he’d been reading a short weather forecast as Bruce Morrow (Cousin Brucie to his legion of fans) walked into Studio 8A for his six-to-ten evening shift. As Dan continued his forecast, Morrow turned his back and bent over a shopping bag.

Dan read, “Brief showers tonight,” before erupting into laughter. The studio was suddenly filled with flying pairs of underwear. Bruce had scattered the briefs into the air and over the control board.

Dan let his laughter fill the studio, and thus every room where a radio speaker was tuned to WABC. “Cousin Bruce Morrow wears Jockey Classic Briefs! He just tossed a dozen of them all over the studio!” Dan sniffed into the microphone. “They smell new!” Then he loosed another gale of laughter, letting it run a few beats longer before signaling his engineer to fade him down and under a jingle and then to start a commercial break. Only then did he give the cue to cut his microphone.

He stopped laughing on a dime. “Good one, Bruce!” “Thanks, Big Dan,” replied Morrow, beaming with the knowledge that he had succeeded in pulling off a brilliant prank. Bruce asked, “You going to the party at the suite tonight?” He knew Dan avoided the official company-sanctioned parties, preferring to stalk his female prey as a lone wolf.

Dan considered his options: brave the rush-hour traffic to get home to his North Shore home overflowing with kids he barely knew, or spend the night in town at his secret pad with some as-yet-undiscovered partner. He reached for the phone to the right of the control board on the Formica countertop and dialed home.

“Hi, hon,” he practically purred into the mouthpiece. “Got another late session tonight—I think I’ll stay at the suite tonight.”

WABC had a permanent suite reserved at the Hilton across 6th Avenue, or at least that’s what his current wife had been led to believe. He paused. “I know. You’re right. I know. We will. I promise. I know. Hon, I just said we will. Next week, all right? Okay. All right, babe. Just call my service if you need to get in touch with me. Okay. I love you. Gotta go. Bye-bye.”

He hung up the phone with his right hand, using his left to cue the engineer to start his closing theme, an edited version of “Tri-Fi Drums” by Billy May and His Orchestra. He gave a thumbs-up to Bruce, who replied with a pair of his own. Dan turned to wrap up his show.

Bruce was glowing. He knew his antics didn’t always garner him the respect of his colleagues, particularly the brilliant, sometimes acerbic Big Dan. Having pulled off a hilarious stunt and convinced Dan to join the party made him feel like part of the team. It was a sensation he didn’t get when he was dressed in a leopard-print suit with a similarly attired schnauzer at live shows before thousands of fans at places like Palisades Amusement Park. He certainly got the love of the crowd—basked in it, really—but the respect of his peers was something he’d pined for ever since he’d crossed a union picket line at WINS to get his first shot at an on-air gig in Gotham. The knowledge that Dan was likely to mutter insults about him as soon as he was out of earshot didn’t even bother him as he warmed himself in the light of the briefs joke.

Dan clamped his leather briefcase shut and headed out the door. He had two hours before the party would really start swinging, so he headed for a favorite watering hole.

There were two such joints on the same block as the bronze-and-glass tower housing the headquarters of the American Broadcasting Company: Mercurio’s, and Poor Richard’s. Both were classic New York bars: dark oak and leather; discreet, crisply-pressed attendants; professional bartenders; excellent steaks. The two were almost indistinguishable to the uninitiated, but the difference was vital. Poor Richard’s was the place to let it all hang out, where deejays, executives, even the occasional salesman could blow off some steam. Mercurio’s was a place where business was done.

When Dan wanted to make a point during contract negotiations, or just wanted to get the backstory on what was going on in the corporate offices high above the eighth floor, he knew that was where he could find the decision makers and cut

to the chase. VPs, presidents, hell, even the head of the network, could be found in booths at Mercurio’s. Dan was welcome there, just as he was the only deejay who would walk into those rarified executive suites at ABC without an appointment.

Dan decided on Poor Richard’s. He turned left out the glass main doors of the ABC building and left again down 53rd Street. He could feel the hum of a city shifting from work-week grindstone to weekend playground as he descended a half dozen steps, pausing at the bottom as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The place was busy, the usual for a Friday. He was met at the door by Antonio (never Tony), who greeted him with a broad smile framed by a thin mustache and even thinner lips. “Mr. Ingram, welcome back. Would you like a table this evening, or will you be joining us at the bar?”

Dan surveyed the packed bar. Roger Grimsby deadpanned the latest news on a new TV high in one corner. Even in color, he looked pale and vaguely nauseated. But brilliant, thought Dan. Peering at Dan over their drinks were four perfectly coiffed young women, all of whom he was sure he’d had back to his pad. “Booth,” he replied.

“Excuse me,” a falsetto voice cut through the cigarette smoke as Dan sliced through a filet mignon, black and blue, cold in the middle. “Aren’t you famous?” Ron Lundy plunked himself down across the table in Dan’s claret-colored booth. He was already laughing. Hell, he was always laughing, or on the verge of it, anyway. Dan’s face brightened. He’d known Ron since they’d worked together at WIL in St. Louis. Ron had been the WIL Wil’ Child back then, 1960.

“Ron!” Dan put down his fork. “Don’t tell me you’re going to this thing, too?” Ron nodded as he caught a waiter’s eye, pointed at Dan’s martini, and held up two fingers. “Yup, I’m going. Sklar says if we don’t start making nice with the new groups, he might have to resort to payola!” They shared a slightly nervous laugh. Ever since the payola scandal of the late fifties, some bigger stations had resorted to hosting soirees, where the bands would mingle with the jocks, eat and drink to their hearts’ content, and make nice with the program directors who decided on airplay.

No money or gifts changed hands, and the government seemed to approve. WABC Program Director Rick Sklar had raised the practice to a fine art. Present at WINS when the station’s legendary jocks Murray the K and Alan Freed were broken by the payola scandal, he was hypervigilant. It was the station that would buy the drinks, the station that would provide the food and entertainment. He wanted the deejays there to put on a unified front, and besides, the press couldn’t hurt. It was great for ratings when a picture of Dan Ingram or Bruce Morrow sitting with the odd Beatle or Young Rascal showed up in the Post or the News.

Ron noticed Roby Yonge, all twenty-four years of him, his impish grin charming the ladies, sitting at the bar. He nodded in Roby’s direction. “So what do you think about the new kid?” Roby had been a force in Miami radio, the Big Kahuna, or some such thing. Sklar liked his youth and had brought him up to New York to handle various shifts and fill-ins.

“Kid’s in over his head,” replied Dan. And he was right. Roby seemed to think that the way to impress his new major-market colleagues was to party harder, screw more women, take more risks. What he didn’t seem to get was that these icons of radio had attained their status by excelling at work, not play. Besides, thought Dan, there’s only room for one Big Kahuna around here. He looked up at Ron and said, mid-chew, “Fuck him.”

“That’s all right,” answered Ron, gazing wide-eyed at the coterie of pretty gals surrounding the kid. “I think he’s got better options.” The waiter returned with the drinks. “You drinking tonight, Ron?” Dan asked. It was a rhetorical question.

Lundy was always drinking. Dan sometimes wondered whether he’d ever seen his best friend sober. But then again, Ron may have wondered the same thing about Dan. Besides, they both recognized as much as anyone that, while they didn’t have to out-drink anybody, they’d be considered killjoys if they weren’t holding glasses in their hands. It didn’t hurt that they liked it.

Ron took a long draw from his sweating martini glass, and screwed his face into a wry knot. “Ugh! You and your martinis. What have you got against whiskey? Now bourbon, that’s a man’s drink.” He pinched his nose with one hand while lifting the glass to his lips with the other. “Oh well, when in Rome ... down the hatch!”

Dan loved this man: his gentle southern drawl, his ever-positive outlook; he envied Ron his apparent peace of mind. Ron never, as far as Dan knew, screwed around on his wife. He was a country boy, and proud of it. He’d said more than once that he longed for the day when he could return to his beloved Mississippi and live out his days in peace and quiet.

Dan looked at his own, wafer-thin, timepiece. It was 8:30. He’d been sitting there for over two hours. “Hmm,” he rumbled before affecting his best Foghorn Leghorn. “Time do fly when you’re having fun!”

“Or three or four martinis,” rejoined Ron. “Let’s get going. You don’t want to miss this one. There are some stews coming, and Rick has been inviting all the secretaries, telling them to bring their loveliest friends.” Dan grinned. Rick really knew how to throw a party. As they picked up their coats from the hat-check girl, Roby Yonge sidled up beside them, a giggling woman on

Dan rolled his eyes. “Something like that.” They pressed through the heavy wood door into the autumn cool.

Back at his apartment that night, Dan swept the girl (Sally? Alice? He wasn’t sure.) off her feet. As for her, she had never met someone so charming yet direct. Blatant, even. No one before had ever looked her in the eyes and said, “I find you very attractive and want to make love to you. Shall we cut through all the nonsense and go back to my place?” At first, she was shocked. Then she found it very alluring. Of course, anyone else, with a different voice, might not have gotten away with such brazenness. It didn’t hurt that he was drop-dead handsome, 6’2”, thin at the waist, well-dressed, with cuff links and that silk Nehru jacket. He wore a fancy wristwatch, and on his right wrist, a heavy gold ID bracelet bearing his name in capital letters: DAN INGRAM. She ignored the wedding band.

Now she’s looking for her left shoe, trying to peek under the bed without disturbing Dan. He’s still lying there, eyes in the shadow of his left arm, waiting. She contorts herself to reach underneath the platform without leaning on the mattress, snags the shoe by one of its straps, and pulls it to her. But just as she’s got a grip, she loses her balance, landing on the bed. Now Dan can’t ignore her. “Huh?” He feigns a sudden awakening, rolling over and sitting up, supported by his elbows. The dark hair on his chest half-obscures the gold chain. “Leaving already? What time is it?” The state-of-the-art flip chart-style digital clock radio reads 7:22. She looks shocked, like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “I’m sorry,” she almost cries, springing from the bed and pulling on the shoe while standing on one foot. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I’ll be out in a minute.”

Dan puts on an act. “Don’t be silly, Alice, stay as long as you want. There’s juice in the fridge.”

But she’s already out, grabbing her coat from a leather club chair in the living room. “That’s okay, I really need to get home. Thanks, though.”

“Well, grab some cash for a taxi. My wallet’s on the hall table.” He shuts the blinds, lies back down, rolls onto his left side, ready to go back to sleep.

She opens the glossy leather billfold and eyes a thick wad of twenties. She pauses a minute, then takes one, placing the wallet exactly where she found it. As she pulls the door open, she shouts over her shoulder. “Thanks! I had really nice time.” She walks out. “And my name’s Sally.” The door pulls itself shut with a slam as she walks to the elevator, headed for the subway.