A Sentimental Journey Through Timeless Country Classics and Radio Antics Episode 45
Mar 10, 2024
Randy
Join us on a heart-tugging trip back in time as we explore the undying charm of country classics and the heyday of radio shenanigans. Ever wondered why some tunes, like John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads," seem to defy the decades, enchanting everyone from nostalgic seniors to spirited teens? We've got stories that'll paint a picture of the magic these songs carry, including how "Sweet Caroline" became an anthem across generations at my granddaughter's wedding. And for those of you curious about the inner workings of radio, I'm serving up a slice of my life with tales of resistance from the days when corporate bigwigs were wary of spinning those vintage tracks we all adore.
But that's just the start of our journey. Settle in as we remember Bill Monroe's impromptu drop-in at WWNC and how the legendary 'Father of Bluegrass' mellowed with time, a transformation shared by my Uncle Arville Hogan. We'll also chuckle over the quirky contests that hooked listeners by their ears, like the infamous "secret sound contest," and ponder the shifts in parenting and discipline that we've seen along the way. Wrap up your day with a bit of banter from 'Hot Mike with Houston and Hogan,' and don't forget to let your friends in on the fun—after all, our tales are best enjoyed with company.
Join us on a heart-tugging trip back in time as we explore the undying charm of country classics and the heyday of radio shenanigans. Ever wondered why some tunes, like John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads," seem to defy the decades, enchanting everyone from nostalgic seniors to spirited teens? We've got stories that'll paint a picture of the magic these songs carry, including how "Sweet Caroline" became an anthem across generations at my granddaughter's wedding. And for those of you curious about the inner workings of radio, I'm serving up a slice of my life with tales of resistance from the days when corporate bigwigs were wary of spinning those vintage tracks we all adore.
But that's just the start of our journey. Settle in as we remember Bill Monroe's impromptu drop-in at WWNC and how the legendary 'Father of Bluegrass' mellowed with time, a transformation shared by my Uncle Arville Hogan. We'll also chuckle over the quirky contests that hooked listeners by their ears, like the infamous "secret sound contest," and ponder the shifts in parenting and discipline that we've seen along the way. Wrap up your day with a bit of banter from 'Hot Mike with Houston and Hogan,' and don't forget to let your friends in on the fun—after all, our tales are best enjoyed with company.
Speaker 1:
Hello everyone and welcome to another Hot Mike with Houston and Hogan. I'm Randy Houston.
Speaker 2:
And this is Dave Hogan. How are you, randy?
Speaker 1:
I'm doing great, my friend. It's good to be back with you behind the Hot Mike. We had such a good time last week talking about some of the shenanigans we've pulled in radio over the years promoting different products and music and stuff, and we kind of thought we'd continue along those lines today and talk about some of the some of the great classic country music hit songs that we've heard and played and been around and some of the radio promotions that we've done over the years. You were telling me a story about John Denver and one of his classic hit songs.
Speaker 2:
Yes, the question that you and I pose to each other what is the country classic? When does the song become a classic? Well, I was going down a rabbit hole on the internet one day, just recently, a few days ago, and I came across I think it was on TikTok. I came across about a three minute piece and it was this young teacher, middle school teacher, oh, in her early to mid twenties. Young, young, good looking gal. The teachers didn't seem to be as good looking back in my day as they are now, randy but I'm getting off the subject.
Speaker 2:
Anyway, she teaches middle school and that means the kids are about what, eleven, twelve, something like that, and apparently I don't know if it's once a week or if it's every day. She lets one of the students name a song and she'll play it for them. You can find any most anything on the internet and she'll take her tablet and she'll pull up a song and she'll play it for the students. Well, apparently one student requested John Denver and Take Me Home. Country Roads.
Speaker 1:
Good song.
Speaker 2:
Good song. She came out around 1970, 71, right in that time frame, so that makes it over 50 years old. That's right, right.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Now these kids are eleven, twelve years old. She started she was not familiar with the song and she started the song, listened to the intro and a few words and she said why this song? Because she didn't apparently feel like it fit that group of students. But she let it play and then the students started singing along. Now I can't sing, but you can, oh, west Virginia, I can't get that to me.
Speaker 1:
I can't sing mama, take Me Home Country Roads.
Speaker 2:
When it got to the chorus. All by the time it got to the chorus the students were all singing and the look of amazement on this teacher's face. And she reached over and she stopped the tablet and she just let the students sing. And don't you know, those students knew every word and it was like a church choir singing John Denver's Take Me Home, country Roads.
Speaker 1:
Wow, what a lesson. What a lesson right there.
Speaker 2:
So here are eleven and twelve year old kids who know a song that was, that's over 50 years old, and know the words to the song. And I was telling Margot oh, in fact I showed my wife Margot the clip and she says well, they probably heard their parents or grandparents singing the song, but I think it may have to do more with the internet. Another example now, this is not a country song, but it's a classic. You were present at my stepson Aaron Lawson's wedding.
Speaker 2:
Just recently, he and Denise were married, aaron's daughter, my granddaughter. She's 12 years old, she's a middle schooler, same age as the kids in the video that I mentioned. She was sitting at the table and there was a DJ this is, after all, the after the ceremony and it was the DJ was playing music, playing them off of the off of the tablet, off an iPad. Playing the music, had it wired in some way to a speaker and Rayleigh is her name and right out of the blue she said I hope he plays sweet Caroline.
Speaker 1:
By Neil Diamond.
Speaker 2:
And then, don't you know, that song is about the same age as Take Me Home Country.
Speaker 1:
Roads.
Speaker 2:
Came out around 1970, 71, 72, somewhere in that timeframe.
Speaker 1:
Sweet Caroline Do do do so.
Speaker 2:
Even though that's not a country song, it gives you an example of a classic. During my career in radio and yours too we, we, down through the years, have played all kinds of music, but my favorite has been country classics, which is what you play on your radio show now daily on WHKP in Hendersonville. Right, you play country classics every day. And the question is, what is a country classic? And I've had some experiences with management. You know the bosses, particularly when corporate radio took over most radio stations. Fortunately you're not in that situation in Hendersonville Still work for the owner and I like that a lot. And for for years I worked for the owner.
Speaker 2:
And then corporate radio came into existence, yeah, and they started meddling in the programming and dictating the programming and I was playing classic country and I remember playing San Antonio Rose by Bob Wills, which came out originally around 1940. And there was a remix of the San Antonio Rose in the 1960s and I used to do something I forget what I call it, the double play or something like that, and I played Bob Wills version of San Antonio Rose and then I played Patsy Klein and her version of San Antonio Rose. So I was called in by management, dave, that Bob Wills song goes back to 1940. And I said so. So what? Well, don't you think that's a little bit too far back in history to play here in 2004 or whatever it was, whatever year it was.
Speaker 2:
And I had to try to convince the management person that a classic, by definition, is a song that never dies. It's always good, it's always great to listen to. What's your opinion of that? How far back do you go when you pick out your country classics? You have a. You know. They told me at that time when I was arguing with management oh, we don't need to play songs that old, we need to start playing songs that were popular maybe in the 80s until the present day. And I said well, if you leave out the 1960s, you're leaving out some of the glory years of classic country music. So what's your opinion on this?
Speaker 1:
Well, I don't pay any attention to that now because, like I said before, I work for the owner and we want classic country music on the radio. He does too, and we're in the same church on that. But the corporate thinking is that they move into a market and they say, okay, they buy four or five radio stations and create a cluster of radio stations. They're gonna and they say this one is gonna reach this demographic age 25 to 54. This radio station will be predominant in the 45 plus demographic. This radio station will be prevalent in the 35 to 64 demographic and they're trying to target their radio stations into the most prolific demographic there is. And they start putting these age limits on everything, everything, everything that the radio station does, or any of these group of radio stations does, is geared toward reaching that target demographic.
Speaker 1:
They'll tell you everything you say, think or do or play. We want you to be thinking of a 35 year old female. Everything you do, we want you to think and target this certain age demographic. And if you go outside of that, like you did with the San Antonio Rose, that's when Well, I disagree with that.
Speaker 2:
I mean, I know what you're saying.
Speaker 1:
I know what you're saying.
Speaker 2:
I disagree with it too, but I contend that a song like San Antonio Rose, a great country classic, is just as attractive to that 35 year old if that person's into country music is just as attractive to that person who's 35 years old as a song that Alabama had in the 1980s.
Speaker 1:
I totally agree with you. I totally. It will not offend that 35 year old person, even though that song She'll sing along.
Speaker 2:
She'll sing along.
Speaker 1:
Exactly exactly.
Speaker 2:
They know the words to San Antonio Rose, If they're into country music at all. They know the words to San Antonio.
Speaker 1:
Rose. That thinking and that philosophy creates a very short playlist of songs that are repeated over and over and over again. And how many times have we both heard and been a party to people saying they play the same songs over and over and over again? Variety and reaching all of that classic country genre is our goal, and it's what I have the privilege of doing every day.
Speaker 2:
Well, you're very fortunate because in today's marketplace, in radio, most disc jockeys don't have that flexibility. No, they don't?
Speaker 1:
They have to follow a playlist, exactly, exactly, and.
Speaker 2:
But the examples I gave, where you have middle schoolers singing along to a song that's over 50 years old, kind of Proves your point. Yeah, it proves the point that a good song is a good song, doesn't matter when it came out, right. Same was true in classic rock.
Speaker 1:
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:
One of our radio stations in the cluster that I worked in in Johnson City and the Tri-Cities in Tennessee played classic rock and they had the same situation in classic rock as I had over playing classic country we are. People who wouldn't know. Bob Denver from Bob Dylan telling you what to play.
Speaker 1:
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:
In our case it was. The headquarters of the company was and is in Atlanta. So somebody in Atlanta is telling somebody in Johnson City, tennessee, what to play, what to play on the radio, and in some cases the example can be more extreme. It could be somebody in Los Angeles, yeah, telling somebody in Appalachia, in the hills of East Tennessee and Western North Carolina. Somebody in Los Angeles telling you what to play on the radio, what those listeners are going to like, yeah, uh-uh.
Speaker 1:
No way Jack.
Speaker 2:
Well, if you really want to get the suits, as they're called you know the suits, people that wear the suits, the management you want to really get them irritated. Sneak in a bluegrass classic.
Speaker 1:
They go off the rocker.
Speaker 2:
Sneak in Bill Monroe and Mule Skinner Blues.
Speaker 1:
That's when the door to the control room cracks open halfway through your shift and this suit sticks his head in there and says come see me after your show.
Speaker 2:
Speaking of Bill Monroe. I just listened to a documentary three days ago on Bill Monroe. Oh man, the first words out of his mouth Asheville, north Carolina. Really, the very first words he says I started my career in Asheville, north Carolina on WWNC. Oh man, tell the story about seeing Bill Monroe walk down the hall.
Speaker 1:
I was doing afternoon drive on 570 WWNC in Asheville at the time the number one station in the nation and I was playing country music. And I looked up one afternoon about 3 o'clock and coming down the hall was this older gentleman with Coke bottle, thick glasses on and a cowboy hat big as the hall and he was looking all around and he came into the control room. I saw him go by the window and he came around and came into the control room by himself. Uh, an older gentleman, this would have probably been in the 80s. And he said, uh, just as meek and nice as he could be. He said my name, bill Monroe, and I used to play on this radio station many years ago and I just traveling through and I wanted to come by and say hello.
Speaker 2:
And of course, when Bill Monroe played on the radio station it was in downtown Asheville and you were out at Radio Ranch and I'm sure he had to get directions. He had to find yeah, exactly To find the place, but he hunted us down. Bill Monroe. Yeah, you know you want to shake up management, sneaking Bill Monroe and Kentucky walls, or or mule skinner blues. And I did that one time I played uh, I played Bill Monroe and mule skinner blues and played Dolly Parton and mule skinner blues back to back you.
Speaker 1:
uh, loaned me the book. Uh, a book about Bill Monroe, I think it's called High Lonesome. Uh, just a phenomenal book to read about his career. And of course it talked about him playing on the Western North Carolina Farman home hour on 570 W W N C.
Speaker 2:
And he says that in the documentaries that I started in Asheville, north Carolina.
Speaker 2:
Wow, Well, I thought my uncle Arville Hogan was acquainted with Bill Monroe. They were friends actually because he my uncle was a musician Also. He was part of a duo on the Breyer Harper's on WBT and Charlotte in the 40s and 50s. Whitey and Hogan and Arville told me. Uncle Arville told me that he had never seen a man change as much as Bill Monroe changed. He said early on Bill Monroe was hard to get along with, hard to get along with, had a temper and went through musicians by the score. Every month he would turn over members of the band. But then in his later years he said he to use my uncle's words, I've never seen a man change as much. He became very mellow and friendly and easy to get along with. And I don't know what caused the change, whether it's just a matter of age. You've seen people change Absolutely. In fact my dad changed a lot Melodolot Melodolot in his later years.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, you know I was the youngest of the family and I got spankings, I got whoop-ins and then by the time my younger siblings came along, dad had mellowed and they never got a whipping. Oh, never got a whipping. You know I was kind of the pattern. You know I was you know, let's experiment a little bit here and see what this parenting is all about. This is the first time I've ever seen a man change. I've never seen a man change. This parenting is all about. Let's try a whooping him.
Speaker 1:
I believe if we watch him long enough he'll screw up and we get to whoop him.
Speaker 2:
You know Steve Harvey. I heard him talking with somebody Dr Phil, I believe it was and he he said it's hard to do comedy doubt nowadays because every time you say something somebody is going to not like what you say. And he used the example of whoop-ins. He said now, out in the country where I grew up, youngins got a whoop-ins. He said when I said that I got all kinds of mail or people would approach me and say you oughtn't just talk about kids getting whoop-ins. Then he said the next day or the next time I did a standup piece, he said I mentioned that I was a wiring alligator shoes. So Peter got after me he said ain't nothing you can say anymore, but watch, somebody don't object to it.
Speaker 1:
That's very true.
Speaker 2:
Even though there is substance in what the people were saying. You know you should. I don't believe in whooping kids there was a. I believe in discipline, but there's ways to discipline without beating on a kid.
Speaker 1:
There was a substance in those whoopens. We got to talk about those whoopens and eulogy for my dearly departed mom, but we all got a laugh out of it.
Speaker 1:
You know we talked about 570 WNC where I got my, where I spent a lot of years, like 17 years, and still do some work for 570. And, dave, what are some of the radio promotions we used to? And we've got about 10 minutes left on this podcast to talk about some of the promotions that we used to pull during our ratings period In the Asheville market. We had one ratings period it was the spring ratings period for a period of about 12 weeks or something like that. The market would be surveyed by then Arbitron that's now the Nielsen TV ratings company but during those specific times we would do radio promotions to get people to fill out that listening diary in our favor.
Speaker 1:
And we used to do some crazy stuff at Radio Ranch and some of the contests that we had and one of the most, if not the most popular contests that we had was called the secret sound contest and we would come up with a just a 5 to 8, 10 second clip of a sound, the sound of anything that could happen in your daily life a door slamming or the sound. I remember one in particular that really spoofed everybody was the sound of a ladies nylon stockings whisking together as she walked.
Speaker 1:
We would play that sound we would get the fifth caller, or whatever caller we'd done, you know, and get them on the line. Play that sound, and what is what? Do you think that sound is Ain't wrong? We had $50 to the jackpot and we'll play again next hour for the secret sound contest. Those would go on and on and on, and we had such a great time playing the secret sound contest.
Speaker 2:
I did something similar one time, where I took a tape recorder and I went out and recorded this little snippets of people's voices. People who were known in the community like the city manager or the chief of police or some other person, a politician, a congressman Try to get people to guess who that voice belongs to based on just two or three words or whatever.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah, that's great, that's great.
Speaker 2:
So I've done Several type. The best thing you can do is give away money. Oh yeah, that, that is the best thing. But I've given away and you have to all kinds of things on the radio, trying to get people to get interested in listening.
Speaker 1:
Well, that Money thing you talked about, one of the and listed right under secret sound, is another contest we did called the money man the money man contest.
Speaker 1:
We were roaming around the community and if we come up to you with a tape recorder and you are listening to WWNC will give you a hundred dollars, and if you've got it written down somewhere We'll give you another hundred dollars. And we'd take that tape recorder out, go find WWNC play in somewhere. Walk up, hey, I'm the money man. You, you're listening to 570, you just want a hundred dollars. Do you have it written down somewhere? We'll double it. Two hundred dollars. We did.
Speaker 1:
The one that's written up over there on the wall is the mystery Santa contest. They issued day the suits in the radio station issued this memo that Randy Houston's been suspended for two weeks. He berated a WWNC listener on the telephone so he will not be on the air for the next two weeks. They rented a Cadillac and two Santa suits and gave me a pocket full of one dollar bills and and said go out and buy people's Christmas dressed up as Santa Claus. Wow, and the suits were inside the radio station calling the other local media in town. So did you hear about him, the mystery Santa? He hit them all yesterday, bought one woman's whole Christmas and then he was gone.
Speaker 1:
And we did that all over town. We had all of the other media, the citizen times newspaper, wlos, we had them all following us, looking for us. The money man showed up at Sky City today. The money man bought everybody's lunch at the hot dog king today, on and on and on, and it was a great promotion. It was really a great promotion. And then, of course, we got caught. We revealed and you should have seen those other media companies when they came to the radio station that day we.
Speaker 2:
They go all over their face and had to reveal who that? Secret Santa was. I remember promotion. I didn't do it. I think it was WA PE in Jacksonville Florida that did the big eight, the big eight, and they, they had a a person. Go around town and an out money. Yes, here, take ten dollars, take twenty dollars. Here's fifty dollar bill, just randomly right. Well, newspapers wrote it up. Yeah, all the radio stations talked about this person, this that nobody knows who is handing out money handing out money all over Jacksonville.
Speaker 2:
So they would give him maybe $500 thousand dollars or whatever to do that Then. Yet by then everybody's trying to figure out who this money man is. And, like I say, it was written up in the newspaper and all the radio and TV stations talking about the money man, the mystery money man, given away all this money. And then WAPE got on the air and said we have found the money man and he's going to give money away here on the big eight, wape. He's gonna. He says he's tired running all over Jacksonville and he's gonna give his money away Right here on this radio station.
Speaker 1:
So y'all stay tuned.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and so the other media egg on their face.
Speaker 1:
But One of the greatest games For radio that I think I've ever been around was the Hello game. And you've played that, and sure, yeah, we came up with a prize package and you've got to guess the value of it. And You're, you're you? The radio station are in total control of how many times you play the game the high bid, the low bid and and after a while of playing this game, the listener gets to narrowing it down.
Speaker 1:
Narrowing it down and when you finally get to the place where you know the next caller Is going to get this, the next caller is going to get it because we've had a high guess and we had a low guess. This next caller we started at WWNC doing a high-low bidding game on a dream house giveaway was in South Asheville, a new home. We were going to give it away for a year. Then you got to qualify for the loan on this house but you get to live there for a year. Brand new house. It had a brand new car in the garage, a Ford Mustang. It had been furnished by some furniture store and we had a value on that Dream house giveaway and we played high, low, high, low, high, low, high, low.
Speaker 1:
And the day came when we were getting real close and we locked up the whole phone exchange in the city of Asheville. Locked it up. 9-1-1 services were no longer available. The whole telephone system was shut down Because so many people were calling to try to. They knew the answer. They knew the answer, just couldn't get through. That created a whole new telephone exchange that only radio stations in Asheville, north Carolina, used to this day and the prefix on that is 240, 240, if you'll notice, all of the radio stations around Asheville have the prefix call 800, 240, 9962 to 40. Only radio stations have 240 and that's why because you could only lock down 240, you couldn't lock down the whole central office with just that one exchange. It was a great game, hi low. I love playing that game.
Speaker 2:
I had a station manager one time came up with the idea and it was a good idea. It was back when ski resorts first started becoming popular Sugar Mountain, yeah, and yeah, yeah, you.
Speaker 2:
He came up with the idea of giving away a white Christmas and worked out a deal with I don't know if it's Sugar Mountain. It was one of the ski resorts where they would bring their snow-making machine to your house Christmas Eve and you'd have snow on your roof and in your yard and all around. It's a great idea. You would have a white Christmas. It's a great idea. But it was 70 degrees Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so all promotions don't work.
Speaker 1:
I remember and we'll tell this one. Then we're gonna go to lunch, because that's what the whole Hot Mike with Houston and Hogan podcast is predicated upon. We get them together and go to lunch. We just happened to record some podcasts but one radio station that I was associated with was giving away a classic car. It was a 67 Pontiac GTO and we had it in the parade for the Bell Share parade. That car quit right in the middle of the parade.
Speaker 2:
All the fluids and smoke and stuff started belching out of that thing. It was not good, not good. One of the best promotions that the longest running promotion I guess I ever did was we gave a. We worked out a deal with a limousine company and with a restaurant and I gave away lunch. Pick you up in a limousine and take you to lunch once a week. And we used all kinds of different contests to win that lunch. Right, but that was what you won. You won lunch with Dave Hogan. Dave will pick you up in a limo, take you to the house of ribs for lunch and that was a long-running promotion that that we did.
Speaker 1:
It's fun reminiscing about some of the things we've done in broadcasting. We got close to a little over a hundred years between the two of us of being behind a Hot Mike. We got to go. Y'all have a great day. Thank you so much for downloading Hot Mike with Houston and Hogan. Forward these to some other friends that you might think would enjoy listening to two old radio guys.
Speaker 2:
And if you're the 10th caller at 2-4-0.
Speaker 1:
Bye y'all. Be sure to click the subscribe button for another episode of Hot Mike with Randy Houston and Dave Hogan.