Who Is That Cool Cat?

After finishing my book “DJ Diaries; Radio’s Remarkable Listeners,” we looked back and realized I’d told a lot of stories about other DJ’s and their relationships with their listeners, and very, very little was about me.

So what about myself?  That is how this blog or…the ‘sort-of-unauthorized-unconfirmed-autobiographical-behind-the-scenes-stories’ of my nearly sixty years as a ‘happy-go-lucky-babble-in-a-box’ came about.

So, as I used to say on the radio: “Believe it or don’t!”   I’ll climb into the piles and piles of dusty memories in my cob-web-covered mind and try and sort out what I can remember. Like….

In person, Elvis Presley passed through my life more than once.

 

 

Remembering hanging out backstage at the Louisiana Hayride in 1955 at age 15 was the first time.  Elvis had just been introduced and brought onto the stage by KWKH radio announcer Frank Page.   Frank didn’t have to urge the audience at the live radio show to cheer and applaud as Elvis came on stage.  At the word, “Elvis,” a huge explosion of sound assaulted my ears.  That night the Shreveport Municipal Auditorium was packed to the ceiling with an audience of nearly 2,000 people.  I peeped

around the curtain and was shocked to see for the first time some of the wildest, wide-eyed, rowdy, foot stomping, clapping, and screaming teenage girls I’d ever seen.  Some standing on their seats were waving their arms so enthusiastically that they were nearly toppling over on more pubescent girls hysterically screaming and jumping up and down in front of them.

Then my ears were assaulted with the loudest sounds I’d ever heard.  Shocked, I watched Page coming off the stage in our direction watching the audience’s reaction in stunned disbelief.  He had an odd grin on his face as he got to the side stage where announcer friends Nat Stuckey, Jim Reeves and I were standing.  He cupped his hands to the sides of his mouth and shouted something.  No one could hear him.  I glanced at the sound engineers and they were shaking their heads from side to side, sort of dumb struck as what to do next.  On stage, Elvis said something, we couldn’t understand what, but the audience volume screeched up another few notches.  Then Elvis began to sing.  At least we thought so.  Standing side stage we still couldn’t hear anything.  I wondered what the radio listeners were hearing.  It was the first time the hair stood up on the back of my neck, but not the last. 

I think Elvis did two songs, I can’t be sure.  I heard a word or two come out of his mouth every so often--then the screaming would start all over again.

After it was all over, Frank Page simply said, “I don’t know what the kid has, but he’s got it.”

Nat Stuckey turned to Jim Reeves and I and said, “Now there’s the next cool cat, even if he dresses a little strange and wiggles a little too much.”

We all laughed.

Odd as it may sound now at this moment, I would not even remember meeting Jim Reeves until I got to know his widow in the 70’s.  But that’s another story down the line someday.  There are lots of names floating in the murky depths of my mind right now and as I pull them up I’ll try attaching stories to them.  That’s what this is all about!

NEXT: The Name Game.

Dave Donahue is a Hall of Fame Disc Jockey and Author. He currently writes from his offices in East  Texas, just miles from the swamps where he spent his early childhood. Follow Dave at facebook.com/djdavedonahue or at www.DJDaveDonahue.com (new site coming very soon).

SHADOWS

There was an old song years ago called “Standing In The Shadows.”  I know about that, for I’ve been in those shadows for nearly sixty years now.  Countless times I have come out from the darkness of stage right or stage left into the center stage spotlight myself; briefly enjoying the flash of knowing every eye is on me.  I am blinded by that spotlight to the audience before me, yet I hear them, I feel them…and it is my job to raise their excitement volume of noise to ear-splitting levels as I have brought many rock-and-roll and country music legends out of the darkness into their spotlight of stardom.  After all, the spotlight truly does belong to them.  I am just the concert announcer.  But you know what?  For every single soul that has come out to entertain those audiences there is a few split-seconds that legend, that star looks at you, smiles, pumps your hand or slaps you on the back or kisses you on the cheek and you know, in that moment in time the time spent in the shadows has been worth it.  Yes, especially when a stage show was broadcast on the radio.

My first inside track to show business backstage was Nat Stuckey.  He had been my program director when I was 15 years old, working part-time at KALT radio in Atlanta,

Nat Stuckey

Texas.  Nat Stuckey had grown up in Cass Country and after KALT, he moved up the ladder to KWKH in Shreveport, Louisiana.  KWKH radio was famous for the Louisiana Hayride!  Even I’d grow up hearing those famous broadcasts on my fishing camp-boat guide great-grandfather’s old battery radio long before I was even a teenager.

I started visiting Nat at KWKH where I met another young announcer who would later become the great ‘Gentleman Jim’ Reeves.  On Friday and Saturday nights, Nat, Jim and their boss Frank Page were the announcers that would bring out the stars to perform their musical magic on the live radio show stage.

Later, Nat would go on to write some pretty good country songs including “Waiting in Your Welfare Line,” for Buck Owens, and “Pop-a-Top” for Jim Ed Brown and Alan Jackson.  He also co-wrote “Digging up Bones” for Randy Travis.  I would eventually even introduce Nat on the concert stage myself in later years.  Sadly, we lost him in 1988.  Jim Reeves had died even earlier in 1964 in a tragic airplane crash just a year after the airplane crash of singer Patsy Cline.

Yeah, I had a lot of fun standing in the shadows watching those guys introduce the stars when they were disk jockeys first, and concert show announcers on the side.  I knew even then I wanted to bring out the stars.  Fact is, even today it is hard for me to sit out front and watch a music concert or any kind of stage show for that matter.  I keep looking into the darkness of the shadows just off stage.

Then sadly, I got the call this January with news that we’d lost announcer Frank Page, who -like me- was in the DJ Hall of Fame.  We’d had the chance a couple of times in later years to talk about the radio days of the 50’s.  I never tired of hearing the story of how Frank would be the first to introduce to the world a skinny, dark-eyed kid named Elvis!

Coming Next:  “Who Is That Cool Cat?”

 Dave Donahue backstage with Johnny Cash

 

Dave Donahue is a Hall of Fame Disc Jockey and Author. He currently writes from his offices in East Texas, just miles from the Louisiana swamps where he grew up. Visit www.DJDaveDonahue.com for more, and connect with him on facebook at djdavedonahue. For booking information, please contact Dave's Publicist, Kirk Downing of 1D3R PR, via the contact form on the website.