Like DFW Airport is to travel, the ubiquitous ABC Radio Network is an international hub for standardized radio formats. And like DFW Airport, and unbeknownst to the listening public, the ABC Radio Network is based here, quietly nestled in North Dallas. The stations that broadcast from here are syndicated in hundreds of markets, though most of their programs do not, in fact, air in Dallas. No matter, for they are generic formats with market-tested playlists set in stone, relevant to anywhere and nowhere.
In a nondescript building, they are lined up like fast-food chains: Country Coast to Coast, Star Station (Adult Contemporary), Hot AC (which reaches for a younger demographic), classic rock and oldies radio. And the list goes on and on.
During one particular Sunday evening, each station's DJ can be seen through the door window, huddled alone over the controls in a private world, no engineers or sycophants present. It appears to be a sterile, soulless, corporate environment, an assembly line of identical studios. Even the security guard doesn't know one station from the other, as the night man attempts to lead the way to oldies radio.
But upon arriving, you quickly learn that, at oldies radio, all the soul you need is in the records.
"Radio is a theater of the mind," veteran oldies DJ Jerry Thomas says, a man who has been in the business for nearly 40 years. Alternately known to his listeners as "Jerry Thomas, the semi-legendary, almost king of rock and roll" and "Jerry Thomas, the cool fool," he announces his favorite tag line over the air: "This is Cruisin' USA, where we take you back to when the cats wore ducks and the chicks wore poodles and the cars wore skirts."
Thomas speaks to me between spins, as he serves up the most versatile playlist in the oldies business. Each Saturday, from 7 p.m. to midnight, Cruisin' USA goes out to 141 affiliates through the ABC Network, and to the Armed Forces Radio Television Service, known by the unfortunate acronym, AFARTS. It does not, however, air in Dallas. Since DJs never mention Dallas on air, most of the 800-number request-line callers, from 141 different locales, presume it broadcasts from their own downtown.
"I still have a vision of playing this music when it was new," Thomas says, earnestly reliving his youth. "I try to get listeners in a state of mind that they're back in time. My show is basically pre-Beatles. I like to stay down in the '50s."
The once-vinyl 78s and 45s he plays, now digitally transferred, provide instant access to the past. Danny and the Juniors' "Rock 'n' Roll is Here to Stay," a bit too common for play on Thomas' show, remains the most prophetic song of the 1950s.
Except, not all rock-and-roll records are here to stay. "You're dealing with program directors who are 23; they don't know this music from beans," Thomas explains, with a subtle Texas drawl he loses once on the air. "All they're going by is some consultant's list. They weren't here when this music originated; they weren't even born in the '50s. They don't have the knowledge of the music. Unless you're there to live it, you don't get it. They don't know Sammy Turner and the Twisters."
He does live the music. A muscular, silver-haired 58, he looks just as cool as the '58 Chevy Impala with gulf scallops (named Christine) he exhibits at vintage car shows. And he also drives it to the grocery store. His cat's name is Speedo (but his real name is Mr. Earl). He attended Thomas Jefferson High in Dallas with future-Monkee/Liquid Paper heir Michael Nesmith. Encyclopedic on doo-wop and rock and roll, he is empowered with the clout to play what he chooses, a rarity in commercial radio.
Little Richard, for instance, gets play mainly with "Tutti Fruiti" and "Long Tall Sally" in these modern times. Thomas, however, spins "Miss Anne" and "The Girl Can't Help It."
"I've heard 'Tutti Fruiti' to death," he complains. "These songs are in a burn-factor situation. You only hear Buddy Holly's 'Peggy Sue' or 'Every Day.' I play 'True Love Ways' and 'Not Fade Away.' I have nothing against Dion, but instead of just 'Runaround Sue,' let's play 'Dawn of the Prima Donna.' Let's include 'A Teenager in Love.' A better example is Tommy Edwards' 'All in the Game.' Well, he also had 'Sunny Side of the Mountain.' I like to deal in depth of the artist."
Thomas plays "Cry, Cry Baby," a three-minute spin. "I gotta get three minutes in to cover these clowns in El Paso who don't have automation," he mutters to himself. He's always on the lookout for the rare three-minute 1950s record. It also allows time to take a piss, something that DJs in the '50s didn't have time for, with all the two-minute songs. Thomas makes a run for it, and since there's no engineer, and we are alone at 10 p.m. on Saturday, I'm tempted to run to the controls and throw on a British record.
Back in the booth, he cues up Dale Hawkins' original "Suzy Q"; he won't play Creedence's version. But in response to my question about Creedence, he cues up "Bootleg," a more obscure tune that he considers the best track CCR ever did.
According to Thomas, the oldies stations play the same 350 records. Program directors screw the playlist down to the same songs, and they're all cookie-cutter records. "They've been tested and tested and tested," Thomas says. "In my opinion, an oldies format should not consist of anything less than a 1,000 songs in rotation. You can have your power songs by the Supremes or Rolling Stones. But they need to expand the playlist. That's the problem. That's the nail in the coffin of the oldies format: the screwed-down playlist. They burn up. People just get tired of hearing them.
Advertisers, such as beer companies, require that focus groups test and analyze every "power" hit to death, making sure each tune appeals to a maximum number of listener-consumers. They have charts and graphs that map out the audience's habits, right down to their daily bowel movements. Every commercial radio station keeps a Big Brother-like folder of such demographic surveys. If these same measures had been in force in 1964, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones never would have been allowed into the American marketplace. Giving people exactly what they think they want is not conducive to art, spontaneity, innovation or cultural change. It keeps everybody frozen in predictable mediocrity. American pop music might as well be under the direction of the KGB.
But long after Murray the K and Alan Freed have expired, Thomas is still fighting for the underdog records, B-sides and shoulda-been hits, as if they were just issued last week. "Deep cuts" that could have become standards had they received the golden touch of payola at their crucial moment of release.
Even Bobby Rydell has his "deep cuts" explored (beyond the Palisades Amusement Park theme, a New Jersey standard). However, a random listen to one of Thomas' recent air-checks demonstrates depth beyond such aforementioned icons. You'll hear Slim Harpo, followed up with a totally forgotten Leslie Gore single. And Jimmy Reed's sleazy gem, "You Make Me Dizzy." You won't hear Peggy Lee's cover of the Otis Blackwell tune, "Fever"; you'll hear Little Willie John's rare original. ("That kid could sing," Thomas says.) Likewise with Big Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle & Roll"--no disrespect to Bill Haley.
Once, Thomas held a contest on the air: He played Joe Turner's version of "Shake, Rattle & Roll," backed by Haley's, and had the audience listen to where the lyrics were changed. Turner's version had the line "I see the light come shinin' through your dress/I can't believe that's all your mess." Haley was required to omit the verse. "I won't play 'white-boy cover junk,'" Thomas says. "If you're gonna play 'Blue Velvet,' play it by the Clovers [not Bobby Vinton]. 'Little Darlin' by the Diamonds was a white-boy cover of the Gladiolas."
Records by the Gladiolas were race records, unplayed on white stations until the late '50s. Ironically, they're still not played on most oldies stations today. Tracks such as the original Big Mama Thornton version of "Hound Dog," early Bobby Blue Bland, Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters. Thomas mixes and matches the flow, including one or two "power" songs per 10 spins, throwing in the proverbial Supremes blockbuster so he can hold the attention of Joe Sixpack and Mr. & Mrs. Front Porch with obscurities.
"The other night I played a record, 'Over the Mountain' by Johnny and Joe," Thomas begins. Every time I hear this song, from 1957 to right now, I know where I was--in a military academy, with a radio in my pillow--and I heard this song coming out of Nashville. Oldies music takes people back to when times were simpler, when they didn't have kids, a fat mortgage and car payment. They didn't have all this violence. When you could walk with your girlfriend down the street and not worry about getting shot. You could sleep with your windows open, your doors unlocked, went to sock hops, held hands, played Spin the Bottle--things that are gone. We want you to relive that with this music. I try to create a mindset with what I play. 'Oh, wow' records--like, 'Oh, wow, I haven't heard that record in 30 years.'"
Thomas calls this time--1954 to 1963--the "pre-narcotics" era. He doesn't cover British music. Once in a while, he'll throw in a Dave Clark Five song, get crazy and bend the rules. He only likes a couple of "post-narcotics" songs--an odd example being the Moody Blues' "Ride My Seesaw."
As a kid, Thomas was glued to his Philco radio. He remembers the first record purchase he ever made: "Cherry Pie," by Marvin & Johnny, in 1955. His second was the Drifters' "Adorable." Thomas' career encompasses a half-dozen Houston and Dallas stations, where he's spun records almost continually since 1961. He recalls a phone call in the 1960s from Smokin' Joe Frazier's training camp; Joe began his workout each evening skipping rope to Thomas' opening theme, "All Night Long," by Rusty Bryant.
As further testimony to his life following song lyrics, the DJ just got married for the third time last July to Kathy, with whom he once shared a junior high summer romance in 1955. They hadn't seen each other in 30 years, until he did a live DJ gig for his class reunion. When he played the Johnny Mathis song "12th of Never," and simultaneously heard her announce, "This is a voice from your past," the memory hit him like a ton of bricks. She'd once told him that she'd love him "till the 12th of Never." They found their lives contained uncanny similarities: Kathy's daughter's name was Lisa Dawn; his daughter's name was Pamela Dawn. They both drove '86 Chrysler Lazers at the time. Both their fathers were named Walter. They used the same car finance company, and both held day jobs across the street from each other in Carrollton. After 30 years, they started going out again, and she joined him as sidekick on his radio show, which he momentarily renamed J.T. and the Girl. They modeled their between-song routines on a favorite 1940s radio show, The Bickersons, starring Don Ameche. (He: "Why was my lunch bag off today." She: "That wasn't the lunch, honey, that was the garbage.")
"But I was a radio freak, and she wasn't," Thomas says of his wife-to-be, who left the show after a year. At that time, in 1986, Thomas went to ABC's then-program director Robert Hall to develop his current show. He wanted to compete with Solid Gold Saturday Night and Dick Clark's Rockin' Oldies.
"But they were all playing the same music," Thomas remembers. "There was a segment that needed to be filled, and they weren't doin' it. The audience wasn't getting the Eldorados, the Cadillacs, the Turbins, the Jacks. You could maybe hear one or two of those songs on an AM radio station out in the desert."
J.T. goes back on air to announce Johnny Maestro and the Crests' "What A Surprise." "Listen to the wisdom of this song," he tells his listeners. The guy singing the song starts crying on his birthday, when he spies his girlfriend with his best friend. In a surprise twist, the song turns out a happy ending--the best friend and girlfriend are planning a surprise party for him. Thomas groans in ecstasy and doubles with the falsetto at the end of the song. "That gives me chills; it just does," he says. "That kid could sing."
Of course, nobody out there today can sing like they used to, Thomas believes.
At most oldies stations, the songs played are programmed on a hard drive and the computer makes all of the segues. The DJ may talk on top of the intro or take a commercial break. In the 1970s, when '50s rock and roll became oldies, radio stations avoided the term, not wanting to remind their listeners they were aging. Then the term oldies became more prevalent and acceptable, losing its negative connotation. Covering a 15-year period from the 1950s to the '60s, the radio industry tried to float other market terms for a while--"dusties" and, even worse, "rock 'n' roldies."
"They came out last year with 'jamming oldies,'" Thomas says. "It died. I knew it would never work. They screwed down the playlist where you hear the same damn record over and over."
Fewer than 500 hall-of-fame records make the cut, thanks to the totalitarian oldies format across North America. And that number will shrink each year, as oldies radio now creeps into the 1970s, where Billy Joel and The Cars may supplant records by the Platters and Dion. As with the classic-rock canon, the wealth of music has been relegated to radio oblivion. It becomes the domain of historians, musicologists and aging greasers. The oldies listener is now approximately 60 (a generation with the longest continuing childhood in history), and sponsors are aware they are croaking, along with the original artists.
Larry W. King--one of Thomas' fellow DJs at ABC, 20 years his junior, and known as Big Lar on the air--points out that, "To today's 20-year-old, Elvis and some of the Beach Boys are dead guys in a history book. My 12-year-old came home laughing because his friend in school said he only listened to oldies. My son asked who, and the kid said the Beastie Boys."
Thomas doesn't know the Beastie Boys, or even local rockabilly genius Ronnie Dawson, some of whose recent songs could have been genuine hits, if released when Eisenhower was president. Thomas doesn't go for anything after 1964, and as long as he's alive and spinning, the ever-expanding archive of unplayed music from the not-so-complacent 1950s still has a popular champion. And a future.
