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Sometimes it’s hard to imagine life in the “old” days, especially when those who have firsthand knowledge are no longer around. Such is the case when it comes to remembering St. Louis’ first black disc jockey.

Wiley Price, Jr. got his first radio job in 1944 at WTMV, then a local powerhouse station with studios in the Broadview Hotel in East St. Louis. He was 31 years old. The country was at war and Negroes were considered 2nd class citizens. What would possess a radio station to hire one and put him on the air into a high-profile job?

Even though WTMV was only operating with a 250 watt output at 1490 Kc., the station had an excellent reputation for news, sports and entertainment in the region. It once boasted in a promotional article that 35 of its people had graduated to “big time” radio within a five year period.

In the 1940s and ‘50s, a person could carve out a radio career by being a savvy self-promoter. Station owners were always interested if money could be made, so many announcers would buy their own time in hour-long blocks and then sell ads on their programs. Wiley Price III says, “My father could talk his way into anything.” But talk wasn’t always enough. According to radio veteran and historian Bernie Hayes, a Negro announcer would “have to convince management that he was articulate and that he could pay for the time.”

Once Price had made his case to WTMV management, he was given a late night air slot. To his listeners, he became known as “Mrs. Price’s Boy Wiley.” His radio shows were a mixture of gospel and rhythm & blues music, with gospel artists often performing live in the studio. His on-air approach was smooth and intelligent, according to the late deejay Roscoe McCrary, who would have his own program on WTMV in 1951. It was said Wiley was a “class act” on the local airwaves.

The rhythm & blues music of those days was called “race music,” according to Bernie Hayes. It was actually a mix of r&b and jazz, featuring artists like the Ink Spots, the Five Blind Boys, Ethel Waters, Andy Kirk’s Band, Cab Calloway, and many others from the Chitlin’ Circuit who emulated the sounds of the white musicians. Wiley Price’s son, Wiley III, says his dad was personally acquainted with the great jazz artists like Duke Ellington and Count Basie, and he grew up in North St. Louis with Clark Terry.

Wiley Price, Jr. was a St. Louis native, raised on Aldine on the north side, a graduate of Sumner High School with additional schooling in accountancy, and a military veteran. Hayes says of Price’s place in radio history, “He was something to be idolized by the Black community. On the air he was laid back, very sincere. Everybody liked him.”

Price moved on to work as a deejay on KXLW and KSTL, playing the same mix of music he’d become accustomed to on WTMV. He left the business when station owners insisted he start playing a new form of music that was being called “rock ‘n’ roll.” His son says Wiley Price, Jr. called it “the ignorant man’s music” and said it would never last.

The first Negro to have his own radio show in St. Louis suffered a stroke in 1961 and died at the age of 56 in 1969. The death of the market’s first Negro disc jockey did not even merit a story in either of the city’s major newspapers.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 12/02)

by Larry Hoffman

The passing of legendary St. Louis radio personality Don Pietromonaco was recognized by various media outlets in St. Louis including a detailed obituary in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Pietromonaco, who was perhaps the most theatrically gifted broadcast talent in the history of St. Louis radio, was remembered by a retrospective segment on KSDK-TV and by KLOU jock Mike Jeffries. Jeffries commented on the Post article, noting that KLOU listeners who lived here during the heyday of Johnny Rabbitt on KXOK, 1964 – 1968, surely remembered Pietromonaco and his antics.

Former KXOK employees and associates of Pietromonaco offered tributes in interviews conducted by the St. Louis Journalism Review. Delcia Corlew, former owner of the Delcia Agency and spokeswoman for Famous Barr in the mid-60s as Delcia Devon, told SJR, “I was really saddened to hear about it,” after which she offered fond memories of this dynamo of a disc jockey and his remarkable radio ventriloquism.

Voiceover artist and former KXOK News Director Robert R. Lynn recounted the hilarity of one Saturday morning during a Johnny Rabbitt remote broadcast from the downtown Stix, Baer & Fuller store. Lynn agreed to appear as Rabbitt sidekick Bruno J. Grunion and arrived in full attire, including several stick-on pimples. During the bit he had some sort of cake thrown in his face at which point a few of the pimples transferred to his dessert. After he cleaned up, somehow a couple of fake pimples ended up in a piece of cake being served to the crowd.

An astute kid confronted Lynn and said, “Hey, you’re not Bruno, and one of your zits is in my cake!”

SJR was fortunate to receive a call from former Storz-era KXOK Station Operations Manager Bud Connell who is currently a California-based writer, director and producer of “anything except full-length motion pictures.” Connell’s company is known as BCTV.

Connell went on record with the history of the Johnny Rabbitt name and its eventual stellar achievements for St. Louis’ premier rock ‘n’ roll radio station during the ‘60s.

“Johnny Rabbitt is my invention,” Connell told SJR. “The roots of the name and the character began in Miami in the late winter of 1961 with an Easter promotion which used a character named ‘Daddy Rabbitt.’ Eventually we borrowed a first name from Johnny Carson, grafting it onto what we already had, and Johnny Rabbitt was born. I originally voiced the character on WFUN in Miami. Then, when I moved to KXOK in July 1961, I was given free reign under General Manager Chet Thomas to build KXOK into what it eventually became. I hired Ron Elz as the first person to use the name Johnny Rabbitt on the air at KXOK. He was adequate, but he had some serious shortcomings.”

Connell went on to say that he continued to improve KXOK, and by mid-1962, the station was #1 in the Pulse ratings survey. “Don Pietromonaco came along after Elz was no longer with the station and became the definitive Johnny Rabbitt – he became the figure, the image – he fulfilled the potential of the character. Pietromonaco lived the part 24 hours a day and rose to the occasion due to his inherent sense of show business.”

Connell saw KXOK through its best years, indeed the best of Pietromonaco’s career, according to an interview in SJR in 1996. Pietromonaco said, “By the time I left KXOK in the summer of 1968, the owner, Robert H. Storz, who had no concept of broadcast programming other than to make money and imitate others…began to downplay personalities in favor of turning the station into a jukebox. That was the end of KXOK as we knew it during those unforgettable years.”

Pietromonaco continued as a disc jockey in Phoenix after his departure from St. Louis, winning numerous industry awards including Billboard Magazine’s Personality of the Year in the early ‘70s. He had returned to his native California during the early ‘80s, teaching broadcasting and operating a voiceover studio at the Don Martin School of Radio/TV in Hollywood, according to former associate Darrell Wayne.

“What energy this man had, punctuated by old radio stories from his days in St. Louis,” Wayne told SJR.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 5/97)

The best part of being an avid radio listener in the 50s and 60s was the accessibility of people on your favorite stations. Many listeners felt as though they “knew” the folks they heard on the radio. A few made the effort to get to know a lot of radio people at a lot of stations.

Take Jerry Mitchell, for example. In 1947, at the ripe old age of 10, Jerry would hike from his home at 18th and Russell northward to the Mart Building, which was then the home of KMOX. “I would go up and sometimes they would take me back into the studios. There was a musical show then featuring Russ Brown and the KMOX Orchestra, and they’d let me watch the broadcast.”

Mitchell continued his radio visits, even through his adult life when he worked delivering mail for the Post Office. “In most of the stations the people were friendly. At KATZ in the Arcade Building they were particularly friendly. I am white and their on-air staff was all black, but that didn’t matter. Gracy was very gracious to me, and Dave Dixon, of course. I knew Jerome Dixon from the Post Office, and he did some on-air work. Out at the old KXLW in Brentwood I met E. Rodney Jones. I’d go into the studios and talk to all those guys.

“I remember Spider Burks when KXLW was in Clayton. It was so novel in those days to have a black man on the air, especially on an otherwise all-white station. It was Spider Burk and his ‘House of Joy’ program. Later on he had a coffee house at Gaslight Square. There was a place called ‘The Dark Side’ and Spider had a coffee house in back of that called ‘The Other Side.’ They had a great jazz combo in there.”

In the late 1950s, there was a classic battle among this city’s popular music stations. KXOK suddenly faced a challenge from an upstart at the right end of the AM dial. “WIL came on with Color Radio and knocked them out of the box. They had such a stable of jocks: Jack Carney, Bob Osborne, Gary Owens, Bob Hardy with ‘Action Central News,’ Ron Lundy, Dan Ingram, Dick Clayton – what a droll, funny guy he was.”

It wasn’ t just a matter of being able to walk into the studios to talk with the jocks. “WIL was in the old Coronado Hotel, and some of the secretaries there really thought they were gatekeepers, and I guess with their teenage audience they had to be. The studios were in the basement, and you entered off a patio just to the west of the hotel entrance. Things were sort of cramped.”

Meanwhile, at KXOK, “Radio Park was a dandy facility. I think they bought it in anticipation of getting a TV license. North Kingshighway was a good neighborhood. They had a Parkmoor and the station facilities were just great.

“I remember KWK from the forties. Ed Wilson was always one of my favorites, and Gil Newsome, or course. Ed was probably one of the better salesmen in the history of radio. Any commercial he ever read sounded like a personal endorsement. It wasn’t ‘Go to Central Hardware.’ It was ‘Mom and I went to Central Hardware last night.’”

KSD moved out of the Post-Dispatch Building and into new studios at 1111 Olive. “I remember they always sounded so dignified. They had some guys with some great pipes: Walt Williams, Bob Ingham, Howard DeMere. Later on they had the guy I considered to have the best voice in St. Louis radio history, Harry Gunther. I got to sit in with him a few times. Bill Calder would rag Harry on the air because he preceded him. Harry was doing a jock show from like 7 to midnight, and Calder would spend about half of his time using old Jack Carney material and giving Harry a hard time because of his great pipes.”

When WEW was sold to Bruce Barrington by St. Louis University the format was changed. “They played country music for awhile. They were in the Landreth Building down on North Fourth Street.

“KMOX also moved around. They moved out of the Mart Building, but their new building wasn’t ready, so they went to Ninth and Sidney. I remember seeing Harry Caray there. He was a dresser, the epitome of sartorial splendor. They had a very nice facility in what was the previous office of Bank Building Corporation. I remember delivering mail to the new studios on Hampton. Jack Buck would always speak to me. You know, he never meets a stranger. I always thought KMOX was the greatest station I had ever heard. I remember they used to do a quiz show on Sunday nights called ‘Quiz of Two Cities.’ They would have teams from each town, and Jack Sexton, who later became Jack Sterling, and Al Bland were the quiz masters.”

Even for a little kid radio could be fun. “I remember going over to WTMV when I was real little and talking to Santa Claus. It was in the Broadview Hotel in East St. Louis, and I never actually got to see Santa. His voice came through a speaker. That way they didn’t have to spring for a costume.”

Ask Jerry Mitchell who stood out more than anyone else in all his years of radio listening and the answer comes quickly: “Jack Carney. When Carney left WIL and went to New York. I missed him – I missed him like one of the family. And it seemed like he was gone for so long, but it was only about six years before Mr. Hyland brought him back to town. My brother used to listen to him in San Francisco, and he remembered him as a great salesman on the radio.”

Today the personal aspects, as well as much of the personality, are gone from radio. But those of us who lived through the earlier times remember them with fondness, even if we never did get to visit the studios.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 12/1999)

In spite of what he said, “Records” was not his middle name, but that didn’t stop Gary “Records” Brown from becoming very popular among the St. Louis “oldies” crowd. Few people, however, know that he got his start here as a disc jockey on a “black” radio station.

Gary Brown was hired at KWK by Bernie Hayes in the summer of 1970. Hayes remembers him “asking to observe us while we did our airshifts…Gary also volunteered to relieve anyone who wanted time off. We utilized his services and he became our main substitute.” The stable of jocks at KWK during that time included Jim Gates, Al Waples, Donn Johnson and newsman Al “Scoop” Sanders, along with Hayes.

Gary Brown lived on The Hill and he loved to brag about his Sicilian roots, a trait that entertained the KWK jocks. He also loved the camaraderie of the radio world and the world of professional musicians. Bernie Hayes has fond memories of the night Gary accompanied him when they took Earth, Wind and Fire band members on an all night tour of East Side clubs.

In the early ‘70s Brown got a chance to move to Kansas City where he was a jock at KWKI-FM, again with a Black format. He always enjoyed telling the story of a personal appearance of all the station’s announcers at Municipal Auditorium there. Before a concert all the announcers were introduced. Brown, who was last on the list, came running out on stage to shocked audience silence. None of his listeners had realized what his ethnic heritage was. His fellow jocks whooped it up and the audience followed suit.

Gary once told interviewer Patrick Murphy that his interest in radio went back to the early ‘60s when he used to catch the bus to KXOK’s Radio Park on North Kingshighway. He’d hang around watching Ron Elz do the “Johnny Rabbitt Show,” picking up techniques he later used as an oldies jock at several stations.

Many of his years in St. Louis were spent working for the various incarnations of KADI-AM and FM. It was there that he developed his oldies persona as host of the “KADI Original Oldies Show” on Sundays. Ownership borrowed a slogan from another market, promoting “the music that was playing in the front seat while you were playing in the back seat,” and Brown used all the clichés to make the program a high-energy listener destination. The station’s listeners didn’t seem to notice that he’d sign off that show at midnight and be back in the studio to sign on the AM station six hours later.

In the late ‘70s, Doubleday Broadcasting came to town and started spending a lot of money. Brown was lured to their AM station when the oldies format was introduced in 1984 and he stayed at KGLD into the ‘90s, functioning as a DJ and program director.

Gary Brown also realized the dream of having his own radio station. He bought WJBM in Jerseyville and later added an AM/FM combo in Pittsfield. Fate brought him back to St. Louis in the form of a job offer from KLOU where he worked as the morning personality from 1996 – 1999. During this time he held his ownership position with the Illinois stations, and he confided to friends that he had finally, after many years, figured out the key to being paid well for his on-air work: Getting a job offer when you didn’t need it. He was fired from the KLOU job in 1999 on the same day he had been given a pay raise for his work in increasing the station’s ratings.

Brown died in his sleep a year later at the age of 51.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 7/04)

Newspapers and radio stations are usually portrayed as competitors for news stories and advertising dollars. But in St. Louis, as in many other cities, newspapers scrambled to be associated with stations, even taking ownership positions. Some were more successful than others.

(There is even a name given to the skirmish that escalated between the news providers: The Press-Radio War. It lasted from 1924 – 1939 and involved a series of efforts by print media to force radio stations to stop broadcasting news. At one point, the papers had radio reporters banned from Congressional press galleries.)

The most prominent newspaper/radio relationship was the Post-Dispatch ownership of KSD, which lasted from 1922 to 1978. The St. Louis Star jumped on the bandwagon with WEB in 1925, buying stock in the station, changing the call letters to WIL and moving the studios to the Star Building at 12th and Olive. No documentation has been found detailing the removal of the Star as an owner of WIL, but in the mid-1930s, the paper began application for ownership of another station, KXOK, which went on the air in 1938. The paper, by this time known as the Star-Times, built the station’s studios in its new building at what is now Tucker and Convention Plaza.

Through all of this, the city’s third major newspaper was left out of the radio ownership circle. The Globe-Democrat finally entered the fray December 19 of 1948 when it signed on with KWGD-FM. A brand new building was constructed at 12th and Cole with enough space for a radio station and, some said, a television station. The enterprise was short-lived. KWGD-FM went dark April 4, 1949, a victim of the very small audience listening to FM radio in those days. The paper responded quickly by purchasing minority stock interest in an existing radio station, KWK, owned by Thomas Patrick, Inc.

The agreement appears to be beneficial to both parties. The Globe was hooked up with a viable radio station and KWK got a facility big enough to house its proposed television station. Robert Convey’s station had been headquartered at the Chase Hotel from 1927-1949. The last program from that facility was broadcast May 8 of 1949. Quoting a newspaper account: “Then a staff of 75 will move in time for Ed Wilson, disc jockey, to greet the dawn from the new location, to be followed later in the day by such KWK favorites as Gil Newsome’s ‘Bandstand Review’ and Tom Dailey’s ‘Recall It and Win.’”

“From 9:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. tomorrow there will be a special program to mark the occasion, including a description for KWK listeners of the new quarters, which Robert T. Convey, president of KWK, has called ‘one of the finest radio stations in the United States.’” The new facility was called the Globe-Democrat Tower Building in all stories in the paper.

The Globe wasted little time in burying its old FM operation. Publisher E. Lansing Ray announced that the 98.1 megacycle frequency allocation had been returned to the Federal Communications Commission. It was expected that KWK would apply for the frequency later.

The announcement of the Globe-Democrat’s purchase of a minority position was greeted with surprise by the Washington commission. F.C.C. officials said they had received no notification of the paper’s purchase of stock in the Convey company, and such notification was required within 30 days of the transaction. All 29 employees of KWGD-FM had been fired and given two-weeks’ severance pay.

Finally, the newspaper could be on the radio ownership bandwagon riding in the same seat as its St. Louis competitors. It was no longer relegated to a second class radio operation hampered by an FM frequency few listeners could receive or were interested in receiving.

Within two months, the paper and its station planned a pair of parties. The first, an invitation-only affair, was for 1,300 ad executives and public officials, who were given private tours of the station. The second, two weeks later, was an open house for the public. Anyone wishing to take part in one of the three daily public tours was required to send in requests, along with self-addressed stamped return envelopes.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 6/00)

When Edwin Armstrong provided a demonstration of FM broadcasting to RCA’s David Sarnoff in 1933, he was successful in showing off “staticless” radio, but RCA and CBS were both eyeing a technology with even more commercial promise – one that sent live, moving pictures through the air.

Realizing that his project was not a corporate priority, Armstrong continued to develop FM on his own, and in 1941 the federal government authorized commercial FM broadcasting. It would be several years before St. Louisans heard regular broadcasts.

Part of that delay is due to the fact that the country was involved in World War II, but many other cities, some of which were significantly smaller than St. Louis, were active in FM development. It wasn’t due to any lack of support from Washington.

As early as 1939, several existing AM stations in the U.S. had been designated as Apex station operators, and two of them were in St. Louis: W9XPD (KSD owned by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) and W9XOK (KXOK owned by the St. Louis Star-Times). Many of these Apex stations around the country evolved into FMs.

The FM band, like its predecessor AM, also underwent technical changes on the way to its current incarnation. Early frequencies ranged from 41.02 – 43.98 mHz for the Apex stations with 40 kHz separation, and by May of 1940, 15 FM stations were on the air in the U.S. A year later the number had risen to 24. In 1945 the Federal Communications Commission reallocated FM stations to higher frequencies, 84 – 108 mHz, with the lower end, 84 – 88 mHz set aside for non-commercial stations.

There were several false starts here. WIL-FM was authorized at 92.1 and later moved to 97.3; KMOX-FM was allocated 45.9 mHz but later dropped its application; KWK-FM was assigned to 95.3; KXOK-FM was at 93.7; KXLW-FM was at 101.1; KSD-FM went on the air in September of 1948 at 96.1; and KWGD-FM became a reality in December of 1948 at 98.1 in studios now occupied by Sinclair Broadcasting.

WEW applied for an FM station in 1942, received a frequency of 45.1mHz, and was later given 95.1. WIL-FM was also on the air in 1948, as was KFUO-FM at 104.1.

The early days of FM in St. Louis were not as exciting as the early days of AM. Government control precluded a lot of unauthorized experiments that had been the rule in the early 1920s.

The first programs on AM consisted of whatever station managers could find to put on the air. Most FM stations here provided simulcasts of what their co-owned AM stations were broadcasting.

By 1950, several stations had already pulled their literal and figurative plugs here, but some new ones had been added. The dial included KSLH (91.5), KXOK-FM (93.7), WEW-FM (95.1), KWK-FM (98.1), KFUO-FM (99.1), and WTMV-FM (102.5). F.C.C. records in 1958 list only three FMs here, KFUO-FM, KCFM (93.7) and KSLH. It appeared the fad of FM radio would not take hold in St. Louis.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 11/1997)