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.
Jerry Thomas, starting his career in Houston, when oldies weren't oldies yet
Jerry Thomas, starting his career in Houston, when oldies weren't oldies yet
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"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.
