A few days ago my friend JB put up a post with a picture of
Jerry Lee Lewis on his excellent blog The Hits Just Keep On Comin’ – a great
blog that’s part of my daily reading ritual. I left a comment on JB’s post
telling about the time I kinda sorta met The Killer (Jerry Lee’s nickname), threatening to post some of my recollections on my own blog. Well, here it is.
It was at the Country Radio Seminar in Nashville, right
around 1980 or so. The CRS, as it’s known in the broadcasting biz, is the
premier annual gathering for country music radio broadcasters and has been
since back in the day, when it was called something like “the Country Music
Disc Jockey Convention”. In 1980 I was in management at WYTL-AM in Oshkosh,
an extremely successful country station with a huge following.
Every year, the station’s music director and I would attend
the CRS. That picture at the top of this post is from Billboard Magazine in
1980. I was Operations Manager of the station at that time, but I had not yet
begun my sales training at MidWest Family Sales University (that’s what they
called it) but as the most senior official of the radio station present at the CRS, I
accepted the award on behalf of the station’s outstanding sales department,
which had sold the highest dollar value of ads of any medium market country
station in the nation.
As usual, I digress.
Back to the Jerry Lee Lewis encounter. Here’s a shot of
Jerry Lee, who, as my friend JB said, uses all necessary body parts during a concert.
Quite a few of the Wisconsin country radio station
programmers and execs almost always wound up on the same flight from O’Hare in
Chicago to Nashville. The gang consisted of folks like Marty Green, from
WAXX/WAYY in Eau Claire, Chuck Mokri and morning man Andy Witt from WTSO in
Madison, me and another person or two from WYTL in Oshkosh, and Ned Hughes,
owner of WYNE in Appleton, and assorted other Wisconsin radio folks. Every year
Ned Hughes would pick up the bar tab for all the Wisconsin radio folks waiting
to board what Ned called “The Margarita Flight to the CRS”.
When we got to Nashville several of us crammed into a cab
and headed to the big Hyatt Hotel in downtown Nashville, where the CRS was held
at that time. A couple years later they moved the whole kit and caboodle to the
huge Opryland complex, a few miles northeast of downtown Nashville. As we
rolled up to the Hyatt, there was a long black limo in front of us. The door of
the limo opened, and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s fell out, followed by a gorgeous
young blonde in a tiny black dress. Then Jerry Lee stepped out of the limo,
followed by another gorgeous young thing about a third of Jerry Lee’s age.
He looked back at our group, which was standing around the
cab retrieving luggage from the trunk, and said “you boys here for the disc
jockey convention?” We said we were. Jerry Lee said “welcome to Nashville,
boys, and thanks for playing my songs on the radio!”
The years are all a blur now, 30-some years after the fact,
but 1981 was another memorable year at the CRS. Our station, WYTL, made the
Seminar’s “Country Aircheck 1981” tape. WYTL was one of 12 stations all across
the nation selected to have an aircheck included on a cassette which was
distributed to every attendee. I still have that cassette and consider it an
achievement higher than many of the numerous other awards WYTL won.
We’d been notified that our aircheck had been selected as
one of the twelve best in the nation for 1981, and one of the nights we were at
the CRS that year one of the Nashville record promotion guys who worked hard to
get his label’s songs played on WYTL, Gene Hughes, took us out for drinks. We
went to some lounge after the day’s seminar sessions and Gene picked up the
tab. Payola was still very much alive in the 80's, although no one would ever admit it. Record company paid for a cruise for you and your wife? No problem. Just put a note in the station's FCC Public File acknowledging it, and hope the IRS never cross-references with the FCC.
Gene is the guy in the middle of the album picture above –
after his recording and touring days with The Casinos, he went to work as a
record promoter. There was a small band playing at the lounge we were at, and
they recognized Gene and called him up to the bandstand to sing his signature
song, “Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye”. I don’t know why, but that evening is
still very clear in my memory, and Gene’s voice was every bit as powerful that
night in 1981 as it was when he recorded this top ten hit in 1967. (Listen to it here.)
Now, as advertised in the title of this post, the story
about how I knocked Marie Osmond off her feet, quite literally. It was in a
lounge at the Opryland complex, at the end of the day’s sessions. I don’t
remember the year. Marie had several hits on the country charts, and like many of
the biggest country music artists, she made sure to attend the CRS to rub
elbows with the folks that played her music on their stations.
I was in a small group that had gathered in the lounge,
consisting of Dick Clark (yes, that Dick Clark, who at that time owned several
big country radio stations, including a very successful one in of all places New
York City), John Parikhal, an up-and-coming research guru who was the marketing
genius behind the success of several big-time big-city county music stations,
and a few other fellows. There was a lot to be learned in these informal,
impromptu gatherings of top-flight professionals, which is one of the many
reasons attendance at the CRS was mandatory.
As the small group was talking shop, Dick Clark turned to me
and said “you’re from Wisconsin, right? So you ought to know a thing or two
about beer. I’ve got a tab running at the bar – if you wouldn’t mind, pick out
a beer for me and get one for yourself”. I don’t remember what I selected, only
that I was in a hurry to get back to the discussion. The bartender handed me
the two bottles of beer and I turned quickly to get back to the group, and took
a step in that direction, when suddenly - BAM! - and Marie Osmond was on the floor. I hadn’t
seen her come up to the bar (no doubt to get some ice water) and when I turned
around and moved I knocked her literally off her feet.
I quickly set the beers back on the bar and reached down to
take her hand and help her up. She was a completely good sport about the whole
thing, made some joke about how we “had to stop meeting like this” after I
apologized and introduced myself, and we had a short, pleasant conversation. And yes, she is just as beautiful in person as on TV and in her pictures.
When I went back to Dick Clark and the group, beers in hand,
I was thankful they hadn’t seen what had happened, and the conversation
continued. (I do remember that Dick approved of my beer choice.) At the next
year’s CRS, Marie Osmond came up to me after one of the sessions, we had a
laugh recalling the prior year’s calamity, and she joked “I’ll always remember
you as the man who swept me off my feet.”
In one of the other years at the CRS following the Marie
Osmond incident, I managed to baptize Ronnie Milsap in beer. For those who
don’t follow county, Ronnie is a very talented singer and piano
player. He's also blind. That’s him, in the picture above. He was one of the biggest stars in
country music at the time. It was a similar situation – in a lounge at the
Opryland complex, following the afternoon sessions at the CRS. I had a tap beer in my hand and turned to go
to a different part of the lounge, and managed to run right into Ronnie and
spill a lot of my beer all over him.
I was mortified, but he said “I’m not sure but I think
somebody just spilled a drink on me”. Again, a hasty apology and introduction,
and I guided him to the bar, where a bartender gave us a towel to help soak up
the beer on Ronnie’s shirt. He, too, was completely gracious about the mishap, although I was mortified - again.
The Country Radio Seminar is still going strong, and is
still one of the most significant media gatherings of the year. Now, the
Seminar is held in the new Omni Hotel on 5th Street in Nashville. It's attached to the Country Music Hall of Fame.
