11:30am | Guests came in to my show in all sorts of ways. Curtis Mayfield was one of the very nicest guys I’d ever met. Just like Don Julian, he’d always come in with a woman, and just like Don, not always the same woman.
But the most memorable guest arrangement was for Hank Ballard (pictured right with Eugene Church and the author), the man who wrote and first recorded “The Twist” (1958) with the Midnighters, among other giant hits like “Work With Me Annie” in 1954 and “Finger Poppin’ Time” in 1959.
Disbarred Texas attorney Jumpin’ Jim Tucker set this up. He’d gotten caught up in some supposed bad drug deal and as he told me, a Texas shootout, and went to the big house. Before that, he claimed to have been on the air with soul singer Joe Tex, known as Jivin’ Joe on a station in Baytown, Texas. He’d also owned at least one nightclub in Austin and had booked and was friends with the guys who were later ZZ Top. He was also friends with Hank Ballard, who wrote and first had the big hit on “The Twist” and his guitar player Cal Green.
Jim told me he could get Hank on the show. Hank was appearing in L.A. and Jim went to meet him, and so Hank wouldn’t oversleep, they stayed up all night and true to his word, Jim brought him in the next day.
The interview went fine and by week’s end, I found out Jim had moved Hank into his apartment in Long Beach. A few weeks later, Jim and Hank showed up at a KLON jazz event at the Jazz Safari near the Queen Mary.
One of the KLON volunteers was a lady named Theresa McNeil. Theresa saw Hank, Hank saw Theresa. Enter Theresa, exit Jim. Hank was ensconced in Theresa’s really nice house in Los Alamitos and going to church because she told him to.
Theresa made it her life’s work to get Hank into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame. She was really good at what she did. Hank and Theresa were in a New York hotel when she got the call. Hank would be inducted. Happy, she walked out of the hotel, stepping into the busy street without looking and was immediately killed by a taxi.
Hank stayed in Los Al, invited in his friends, keeping the house over Theresa’s husband’s objections, until Hank moved on. He died not too long ago.
KLON’s blues involvement brought in guests like Bo Diddley and Ruth Brown, Joe Liggins and movie actor Little Caesar who performed at what we liked to call the First Annual KLON Beer Drinking Contest.
It was really an R&B concert at CSULB with Whitey Littlefield, whose Budweiser distributorship underwrote my show, supplying the beer. At a KLON affair, Whitey confronted Ken Borgers about the lack of his product and the subject of kneecaps came up. What they had to do with beer I’ll never know. Probably just joking around.
Anyway, the concert was a great success, but a second one was never held.
But there were memorable Blues At the Nugget concerts. Oh boy. Like the one in which Johnny Otis fired Shuggie Otis on the spot for over stressing the wah wah pedal on his guitar and psychedelizing the joint or Etta James coming out groin first, singing “I Just Wanna Make Love To You.” Wow.
I was offered either Screamin’ Jay Hawkins or Etta James as guest. I chose Etta, but she didn’t show. Shoulda taken Screamin’.
Betty Miller of the L.A. Blues Society brought in Ike Turner, who spent the first hour in the men’s room and was very talkative when he came out. Then there was blues shout legend Big Joe Turner, who as much as anyone, invented rock and roll with “Shake Rattle & Roll.”
Joe brought in a six-pack of Coke or Pepsi because he liked to drink, and liquor was a no-no. One of the cans leaked, made a mess on the floor and pissed off my student assistance board operator, who wasn’t at all impressed with Big Joe’s credentials. He was before a legend, but all he could think about was some sticky stuff on the floor. Oh well. That’s the only time I recall people waiting outside the studio to meet one of my guests. We were a bit worried over that.
Joe came on thanks to Mary Katherine Aldin, who had a blues show on KPFK and was, and is, a friend of Dawson’s and I still appreciate that. Joe died in ‘85.
Mary called me one Sunday morning with the news that Big Joe had passed on, but I wanted to verify before I went on the air and couldn’t find it on the wires – we had an actual wire service ticker. I later found it, but too late. Truth to tell, I didn’t want Joe’s death to be a wet blanket on my show that day. Mary and I didn’t talk for years after that.
One of the subscribers to my show was a New York R&B fanatic named George Carlin. He donated money to my show and somehow, we were able to talk him in to coming on the show. He was a great guest and we played his R&B faves, you bet.
His taste was pre-doo wop, but somehow doo wop snuck in and in the long run, maybe that was a bad mistake.
Stay tuned for more tales of Steve’s experience with George Carlin in his next column.