BROADCAST IT, AND THEY WILL COME!

And they did… from Mauldin, Simponville and Fountain Inn to the south; Travelers Rest, Tigerville and Dark Corner to the north; Taylors and Greer to the east; Easley, Powdersville and Piedmont to the west and all points in between.

Probably the only recording ever made of a Big Q remote at a Greenville area out door theater, it was the White Horse Drive In’s second broadcast during the summer of 1968. The first one had been so successful that White Horse management had to turn away overflow patrons trying to get in to the all night marathon.

Big Q would host several more not only at the White Horse but at the Augusta Road Drive In and the Belmont Drive In on Wade Hampton Boulevard. The Cedar Lane Drive In near Berea was strictly off limits to us because it exhibited only triple x fare.

Two things occurred most often during drive in remotes: The first casualty was the format which deconstructed and predictably went straight to hell; the second was that things got loosey-goosey and very folksy as befitting a country upbringing.

This particular night, Little Davey Dee was running master control. The tape includes a few precious seconds with John Hudson doing a Pepsi promo and a complete commercial with Noel Belue. Both of these Big Q colleagues tragically left this earthly coil far too soon.

While one may be hard pressed to call this great radio, it was definitely fun radio and our listeners honed in on that immediately. It also spoke volumes about T. C. Hooper, the manager/owner who fearlessly turned his station into a broadcast laboratory for some young guys to experiment and play in and sharpen their on air game as long as they kept things within bounds (just barely). Sadly, this kind of radio training ground rarely exists anymore. Most radio today is micromanaged, gate keepered and homogenized to death.

THE CARL STUBBS PROMOS

Our first Carl Stubb’s Show promos were some ten second straight voice “drop ins” designed for use over music intros. It didn’t take long to grasp that these were pretty lame for a show so highly regarded as Carl’s. Frankly speaking, Carl Stubbs was an extremely talented broadcaster who could have gone far (to Spartanburg at least-just joking, Carl) if he’d stayed at this crazy game.

Besides a winning on-air style, Carl also had an exceptional gift when it came to turning out great stuff from the production studio. So we set out to do a lot better. We decided to pull in a heavy hitter, an old chum from Chicago who’d become a fast friend during the infamous Chapel Hill days of the early ‘60’s.

Like Carl, Steve Iversen had a lot of talent all over the place going for him. Had he stayed at the radio game Steve would have also probably gone far. We decided to exploit some of Steve’s diverse talents.
 
For the Spanish flavored promo, we relied on Steve’s fluency with the Spanish language that he’d picked up while being around workers at his father’s business. Given present demographic realities up and down White Horse Road, this particular promo would probably go over big even today if the Big Q was still doing its thing and was still located near the bustling Greenville County suburb that we’ve decided to rename, “El Berea” (pronounced “bur ray uh”).

When Steve was growing up in the windy city he parked cars for a very popular Chicago night spot which, for health reasons, must remain unnamed here. Steve soon learned why he would get big tips even when he occasionally screwed up and happened to ding on a car here and there. The club was mobbed up! “Don’t ask, don’t tell!” actually started 60 plus years ago at this club owned and run by “made” guys. Steve would put his keen powers of observation and mimicking of real life together again for the “Chicago Skinnys” promo.

CONESTEE GIRLS…A CAUTIONARY TALE

This is a story of bad judgement, bad timing and bad outcomes all culminating in a three minute melt down in the Big Q production room late one evening sometime during the early to mid 60’s.

Along the way, I’d developed an unhealthy, unexplained obsession with the name, Conestee. I had nothing against the fine, upstanding folk who inhabited the little hamlet nestled on a back road between Greenville and Mauldin. After all, I’d grown up in Simpsonville, another little mill town nearby. I just liked rolling the name Conestee off my tongue and used it wherever and whenever I could on the air in as many humorous ways that I could conjure.

One of those ways was incorporating the name, Contestee, into a particular roach and rat kill commercial that we played far, far too often on the Big Q. I won’t mention the product by name but those of you with good memories should remember it well because we DID play it far too much. And there was a monetary reason why.

It was what we called in the biz, a P.I. spot. Per Inquiry. In other words for every unit of product sold as a result of our air play, Big Q would get a piece of the action. P.I.’s, for example, were how Ted Turner made a lot of his bread during the early TBS days…selling kitchen and other gadgets on the Super Station. 

Because it was a P. I., we played this roach and rat kill commercial as much as the sales staff thought it could get away with it… R.O.S.! R.O.S. is another quaint radio sales term which means, Rotation Of Schedule…wherever they could; whenever they could to maximize the number of on air sales. The dee jay’s were not pleased but house rules were the sales staff usually topped the on-air types. (That is Rule # 2 in the radio biz. See the info under the Charlie Sheen knock off pic for the refresher about Rule #1.)

The commercial began with a horrid instrumental which went on far too long before the spokesman chimed in. It sounded like two people doing the dirty deed on an old mattress whose springs needed a whole lot of oil.

One day, I decided the time had come to single handedly spice up the roach and rat kill spot by walking up to the announcer’s pitch with an introduction of my own over the horrid musical intro. I intoned in my most mock serious delivery: “And now, the Conestee Philharmonic Orchestra presents…”

Once the death threats and other onerous phone calls subsided warning of a possible cross burning in the field behind the station, I quickly surmised that I needed to make nice with the God fearing folk of Conestee.

I agreed to a meeting from two very fine looking young lasses from Conestee who reached out to me and offered to come by and demonstrate that Conestee did indeed have a “cultural “ side that shouldn’t be taken so lightly especially by a disrespectful Big Q  dee jay.

I thought maybe I could also turn this into one of the earliest “audience sampling” opportunities and set up the Big Q production room so that I could record and document their suggestions and comments to share with the rest of the staff.

To make really nice I decided at the last minute that I should be an even better host and have refreshments on hand for my female visitors to show my appreciation. Because it was after sundown (as you know, Palmetto red dot stores close at sundown) I decided to visit the old man who lived in the old shack on Old Anderson Road and purchase some adult “refreshments” from him. I figured that if his product was good enough for patrons I’d observed sporting Billy Graham crusade bumper stickers who dropped by his place on Sundays, it was good enough for me, too. That was my first mistake.

My second mistake was serving the adult “refreshments” to the Conestee girls BEFORE our production room session rather than AFTER it was over.

For some unexplained reason, one of the Conestee girls wanted to demonstrate her literary prowess by reciting the popular Mother Goose  poem, “I Saw A Ship A Sailing”. I mention that specifically because after the first line, you may have difficulty recognizing the rest of it.

I apologize for this longish “cautionary” tale. Just consider it a gentle reminder to parents about keeping your young, nubile women as far away from wild and crazy dee jays as possible without a chaperone in tow. (Consider that Rule #3 in the radio biz). Especially wild and crazy dee jays who visit old men who live in old shacks on Old Anderson Road.

Although decades have come and gone, these fine young women must remain unnamed because the Contestee residents tend to have long, unclouded memories…after all, they may know how to find me!

Ben Stiller had his Night In the Museum; the Big Q crew lived dangerously, too, and spent some remote broadcast nights at the wild and crazy White Horse Drive In Theatre. Featured in this piece, White Horse Drive In manager, Jim Wilder, with a solid cameo appearance from a young QOK jock named Little Davey Dee (Dannheisser) back at radio control.

I remember going to the White Horse Drive-In Theater many times as a child. We'd pile into the 1953 Buick station wagon and go out to the drive-in on Saturday nights. I don't remember much about the movies but I do remember the ride back home after midnight, after falling asleep in the back, looking upward at the sky and hearing the click-clack click-clack sound as the car drove over the joints in the road, and then being quietly carried inside to bed by my parents. Those are precious memories to me.

By LastDemocratInSC

(Courtesy, http://www.democraticunderground.com)