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.