The Name Game (Part 1)

THE RADIO NAME GAME Part One

In “DJ DIARIES; RADIO’S REMARKABLE LISTENERS,” I mention that a lot of disk jockeys change their names.  They do so for a lot of reasons like; not enjoying your home phone ringing as you’re sleeping at three AM and it’s a drunk calling wanting to request a song.  Or maybe the DJ is trying to keep a fanatical fan from finding out

"The Duke" John Wayne

where you really live, (Yes that really happen, and wives really hate that!)  You can bet when I was in one of ‘Duke’ John Wayne’s movies I never called him Marion Mitchell Morrison, his given name.  No way, dude!  Did you know talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, who now uses his real name, was known under the radio name Jeff Christie in his days as a top-40 disk jockey?

By now you’ve guessed that Dave Donahue may not be my real name, right?  Tis’ true!  In the course of my career I’ve had many ‘air names’ as we called them in radio.  Yeah, sometimes maybe a little ego had something to do with it, but in my case it was simply because no one seemed to be able to pronounce my real name right.

“Loyal Mum-or Numb something?” or maybe “Lu-well Nutley”  “Lloyd,” uh… “Floyd” even “Lodi-e Fum-blee” or simply…”what did you say your name was again????”  Hell, even the radio people that hired me couldn’t remember it, or spell it right on my paycheck…sooooo, I HAD to chance it.

It was the fifties and a lot of DJ’s started using cutesy easy to remember names like…”Moon Dog” “Mad Daddy”  “The Big Bopper” or like I said, “DJ Daddy-O-Hotrod” who was the future singing teen idol, Tommy Sands.  Tommy and I

The Big Bopper

spent many hours laughing over crazy things teenagers would talk about as we hung out at a small Chinese restaurant near the radio station where he worked in Shreveport, Louisiana.

One day I was complaining about my name problem and Tommy said, “Hey, let’s come up with a cool cat name for you.”  We banged around a lot of names, most I don’t remember, but we both got to talking about the old radio shows and how some of the great detectives had great radio names like, “Philip Marlowe”  “Joe Friday” “Boston Blackie” “Hank Mitchell in Night Beat” or “Yours truly Johnny Dollar.”

“That’s it!” I said to Tommy, “how about Joe Marlowe, uh, Johnny Dallas, Bobby Backbeat?”

“Gad,” Tommy replied, rolling his eyes, then he smiled, “saaaay…how about…Johnny Night?  That sounds mysterious, yet way, way cools-ville, like wow, man!”

“JOHNNY NIGHT”

So my very first radio name became “Johnny Night” which I changed to, ‘Johnny Knight’ as I would hit the ‘radio waves’ working mainly night shifts as I moved into larger cities.

But it would not be my last radio name.  I used ‘Mark O Marks’ or as I used to say on the air sometimes…”this is your MOM on the radio, ha-ha!”    And I developed a whole cast of voice characters like, ‘Skid’ Marks-a famous race car driver, ‘Whip’ Marks-a famous Cowboy, and ‘Water’ Marks-a famous swimmer, who always talked with a mouth full of water!  (True!)

 Some radio stations owned their own DJ names and when one jock left the new one coming in HAD to use the same name of the departed.  I was also known on the radio as ‘Paul J Thomas’ ‘PJ Thomas’ and finally as, ‘Dave Donahue,’ the name I still use to this day.

“DAVE DONAHUE?”

Dave Donahue's Radio Heros

Back in the 50’s, Tom Perryman, who was working for the Louisiana Hayride would get KWKH announcer Jim Reeves his first gigs as a professional singer.  Later, Perryman became Reeves manager and they would own a radio station in Texas.  Tom also worked with Bob Neal, a promoter who was a DJ like himself out of Memphis that booked Elvis.  I met them both for the first time backstage, as they were talking to a guy called, Colonel Tom Parker, and you sure know the rest of that story. Perryman, who is 87 years old, is also in the DJ Hall of Fame, still works on the radio AND manages Jim Reeves Enterprises!  He’s just received the “Texas Pioneer Broadcaster of 2013 award.

Congrats…good friend.  Nice to talk to you, see you soon. Another great DJ Hall of Famer, Terry Buford just got back in touch with me.  How ironic Terry and I work together at the ‘Radio Ranch,’ KFDI in Wichita, Kansas in the 90’s.  He played a part in the history of famous singer I never knew about until recently. 

On my trips to KWKH in Shreveport, Louisiana in the fifties, a small rhythm and blues radio station caught my ear.  KCIJ or K-JOE radio as it was called.  There I met a young DJ who blew me away.  He called himself, ‘Daddy-O-Hot Rod,’ whose real name was Tommy Sands.  

Only a couple of years older than me Tommy was another kind of radio DJ hero, a white guy doing a mish-mash of Rock-A-Billy, Country and R and B on the radio. 

Tommy Sands

Back then sitting in the control room listening to ’Daddy-O’ do his bopping-n-popping’ gig on the microphone was so different than the KWKH DJ’s.  Many times after his shift, we’d hang-out at a small Chinese restaurant and talk about the future.  Neither Tommy nor I knew it at the time, but he was about ready to hitch a rocket ride to stardom. 

He’d played the Louisiana Hayride; though I’d never heard or saw him sing there.  Still, at one performance his singing abilities and good looks would catch the eye of Colonel Tom Parker.  He would sign him and in short time Tommy’s appearance as an ‘Elvis-type’ singer on the Kraft Television Theater’s production of “The Singin’ Idol” would bring him national fame.  On that TV show he would introduce a song called, “Teen-age Crush.”  Capitol records would later record it and it would climb to the top of the charts.  Tommy Sands would be one of the first real teen idols that many others like, Fabian, Paul Anka, Dion and others would follow.

Later, in 1962 I’d reconnect with Tommy when I was working LA radio.  He’d become a Hollywood actor and been in a couple of movies.  He even offered me a chance to get a bit part in a movie he was working on called, “The Longest Day.”  (Boy, did I miss the boat on that one!)  At the time, Tommy was married to Frank Sinatra’s little girl, Nancy.  I recall we all went to the Whiskey-A-Go-Go one night together, and

Nancy Sinatra

Tommy was invited to sing on stage with Johnny Rivers. Today, Tommy lives in Hawaii where he owned his own night club and a clothing store.  

By the way, I haven’t forgotten DJ Terry Burford.  It was he that would replace Tommy Sands on KCIJ radio!  Amazing Terry never told me that story!  You know, it is truly ‘remarkable’ that Terry, Tom Perryman and I continue to be DJ’s on the air TODAY!

Oddly enough, K-JOE radio was owned at the time by promoter I mentioned in an earlier blog, Bob Neal. He was the first country DJ from in Memphis and it came back like thunder when I realized it was Bob I met at KCIJ radio in the days of Tommy Sands!  He even looked like the ‘Big Bopper.’  (All these years I thought Neal was ‘The Big Bopper’!)  His connection to Elvis came while he was a DJ at KMPS.  It was Sam Philips, owner of Sun Records who first recorded Elvis that asked Bob to book Elvis on some tours.  That led to the Louisiana Hayride.  Later, Bob became Elvis’ first manager.   Bob Neal was inducted into the Country DJ and Radio Hall of Fame in 1984, years before me.  Later, he would move to Nashville and have one of the largest talent booking agencies in Country Music.

Wolfman Jack even worked at KCIJ and WSM radio at one time, but…I’ll spin his story on the turntable trail at a later point.

- Dave Donahue

Dave Donahue is a Hall of Fame DJ and Author of the book "DJ Diaries: Radio's Remarkable Listeners". Dave currently writes from his offices in East Texas, just miles from his childhood home. Often referred to as "The Real Life Forrest Gump", there's few places Dave hasn't been, and few known people he hasn't interacted with. See pictures at DJDaveDonahue.com