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They were pretty heady days for radio. The mid-1920s were a time when the stronger stations were gaining a foothold in popularity. Lesser stations – those whose owners had jumped on the 1922 bandwagon when everybody tried to get a station -were beginning to fall by the wayside. In St. Louis there were nine different stations, although six of them were paired off in shared frequency agreements, which meant that the two sharing stations had to coordinate broadcast hours on their single frequency.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch had its own station, KSD. A competitive newspaper, the St. Louis Star, didn’t own a station, but they entered into an operating agreement with Benson Broadcasting which allowed the paper to build studios in its building and promote the station as “The St. Louis Star Radio Station.”

And the broadcasts originating in those local studios were something. Looking at the evening of February 2, 1925, the Star described the “typical” scenes in the eighth floor studios. The portrait painted in the paper is one of a local radio station trying hard to impress, visually as well as aurally.

“While the radio fan is glancing at his clock, as the hands near 10 p.m., all is activity at the studio in The Star Building, a pretty gray room with softened walls and muting draperies. Within it voices sound echoless. There are stenciled decorations on the walls, a new grand piano in the center, overstuffed lounges, and on the wall, over the microphone, a gilded horseshoe. “Billy Knight, the Little Ole Professor, flits from studio to reception room, where the evening’s entertainers leave their coats and clear their throats. One of the earlier arrivals asks that the horseshoe, sent by a fair admirer and which hangs on the wall for luck, be turned prongs up according to tradition, and Billy fixes that, with many other things.

“It is ten, lacking a minute. The Professor has finished a telephone conversation [with the engineer two stories up]. [Pianist] Bud Fox has smoothed out his long black hair, and Miss Toots Thurman, a good looking girl with auburn hair and a dress the color of burnt ochre, is standing before the microphone, the bronze ear of all those listeners out in the cold, distant world.

“‘Now, everybody quiet,’ says the Professor. The piano starts, followed a few seconds later by the words of ‘Roses of Picardy.’ Up in the operator’s room, the needles on the dials are swinging, measuring the voice modulations and sending them on their far flung circuit.

“In the studio, the most striking thing is the interest of the performers in their appearance. No shirt sleeves here, but pearl necklaces, satin slippers, careful marcels. Each singer has his or her pet habit. One digs the heel of her shoe into the thick carpet, another fingers his watch fob, while Bonita Frede, a child blues singer, is assured by her mother that it will be quite all right for her to bend a knee in time to the music and roll her eyes, too, if she wants to.”

These were the days before radio networks took hold, so the programming originated locally. Broadcasts were not continuous. In fact, many local stations would go silent one night a week to allow listeners to tune in distant signals on the same frequency. The “stars,” if that is what one would call the performers, ranged from Lieutenant Felix Fernando and his Havana Orchestra, Jack Ford and his Peacock Orchestra, and Bud Fox (the studio pianist) to Miss Ruth Mitchell (contralto), Miss Edna Deal (blues singer), and Mr. Fred Otte (Swiss yodeler). While these may not seem to be a big draw by today’s standards, one must realize that every station in town was filling time using talent like this, and a two hour broadcast would usually consist of eight to ten different acts. A lot of listeners obviously thought this stuff was worth staying up for.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 11/1999)

by Larry Hoffman

Is this town big enough for two Johnny Rabbitts? Is a six-gun showdown on Market Street imminent? Not exactly. It seems that a swirl of controversy, claims and counterclaims found their way onto the pages of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch during the past several months.

At issue is the rightful ownership of the Johnny Rabbitt name and legacy, though the actual trademark, registered by the now-defunct Storz Broadcasting Co. in early 1964, expired over 12 years ago.

After a late May 1996 “Everyday Magazine” profile of former Rabbitt Ron Elz, who currently holds down the morning slot on WRTH, the Post received several letters and phone calls challenging certain statements, among which was a lengthy fax from Elz’s successor on KXOK, Don Pietromonaco.

The St. Louis Journalism Review decided to visit Pietromonaco in California for an update and retrospective of his years in St. Louis – from mid-1964, after Elz’s relationship with KXOK had ended, to 1970 when Pietromonaco returned to KRIZ in Phoenix after his act had run its course in St. Louis.

When the second Post article was published, a Rabbitt runoff was launched, inviting readers to phone in a vote for the DJ they felt influenced them the most. Discounting 500 votes for Elz which were determined to have been generated by auto redial from the same phone – the work of an “overzealous fan,” according to the Post – Elz still prevailed, trouncing Pietromonaco 1600 to 1100 votes.

Dick Weiss, Post features editor, was astounded at the number of responses for a poll of this nature. Unfortunately the airchecks which were to be used to refamiliarize readers with the two Rabbitts’ broadcasting styles were not ready in time for the voting. How this would have changed the tally, if at all, is not known.

What does all this mean in 1996? It means absolutely nothing. It’s ancient history. But it’s also interesting ancient history.

Both men, each with his own radio presence, have benefited greatly since the first time Johnny Rabbitt hopped onto the scene on KXOK in the early ‘60s. Each continues to thrive using the name. Elz appears on WRTH as Johnny Rabbitt, and Pietromonaco currently runs Johnny Rabbitt’s Voiceover Studio, offering demo tapes placement through agents, and individual coaching in the art of voicing commercials.

The baby boomers who blabbed it to the Rabbitt or who were thoroughly entertained by Pietromonaco’s special brand of radio ventriloquism really don’t care which Rabbitt was best. The only people for whom this dispute holds any significance are Ron Elz and Don Pietromonaco.

Elz at 58 in 1996 can look back at a widely varied and successful career as a disc jockey, format creator, broadcast school owner, record company representative, program director, newspaper editor and columnist, AFTRA president and college instructor. His contributions to the community are numerous. He is busier with his current endeavors than ever before.

Though Pietromonaco’s ties to St. Louis in 1996 are via his two daughters who still live here, at age 61 he can reflect on a star-studded six-plus year run on KXOK during the station’s rock and roll monopoly years. KXOK blew away the competition following the British Invasion , driving WIL to ill-fated talk and all-news formats, and forcing the disappearance of also-ran KWK as a rock and roll station. Pietromonaco’s Rabbitt/Bruno act was the spearhead, and the money rolled in, making KXOK Storz’s most successful property. By the time FM radio posed any threat to Storz in St. Louis with the advent of Bartell’s KSLQ-FM in the fall of 1972, Rabbitt’s years here were long finished.

Pietromonaco help raise several million dollars for medical research, and many laudatory newspaper articles appeared in local papers.

He was a clean-living, upbeat influence on his teen audience during those years. He resisted sleaze and corruption in an industry that got worse, not better, following the payola scandals of the late ‘50s.

“They called me a candy-ass,” Pietromonaco told SJR during an interview on his boat in Marina del Rey, Near Los Angeles. “I was the embodiment of my middle-class Italian values, and instead of accepting unlimited offers of anything I wanted – women, drugs – all I asked of the record companies was that they give me a thousand new record albums to give away to listeners. After they went along with it, I bought my audience. It worked.”

After the second Post article, sources close to the paper told SJR that all of the non-poll-related phone calls received were from fans of Pietromonaco, most of them women offering treasured memories of those “high rocking years.” One fan cited the Rabbitt as the person who helped her blossom into a fun-loving teen during the mid- to late-‘60s.

In person in 1996, Pietromonaco’s eyes still sparkle with enthusiasm as he relates classic stories of his interviews with the Beatles, celebrity friendships and on-air antics. He also recounted tales of a malevolent and imperious program director (the late Mort Crowley), duplicitous fellow KXOK jocks (William A. Hopkins and Nick Charles), and repressive and retaliatory station management. He offered high praise and heartfelt recollections of someone we both agreed was one of the greatest guys in the business, the late longtime KXOK newsman Bob Shea. He added that KXOK production director Richard Ward Fatherly’s technical wizardry saved him on several occasions, even though the two men clashed frequently.

Pietromonaco was a nationally prominent success during those six years, but he says he wishes he were a better businessman as he spoke of the frenzied teen clubs he ran such as Bruno’s Bat Cave and Cloud Nyne. Frequent flyers will remember his in-flight entertainment voiceovers for several airlines, including TWA. He has to his credit a long-standing voiceover training and production studio using the Johnny Rabbitt name in its title, and he lives comfortably in the marina amid pleasant surroundings.

He’s in regular contact with industry colleagues and calls his years doing the Rabbitt show with Bruno on KXOK the best of his long career as an on-air talent. Prior to beginning his radio career at KROG in Sonora, California in the 1950s, Pietromonaco was a child actor in Hollywood, acting in 37 pictures. His most memorable role was his appearance in the opening scene of “An Affair to Remember.” Since leaving live radio broadcasting he has done well over 1,000 commercials and currently writes and produces advertising, as well as offering instruction to aspiring voiceover talent.

A career highlight was his selection as “Personality of the Year” by Billboard magazine in the early ‘70s. In the mid ‘80s Billboard editor Rollye Bornstein wrote in her column that Pietromonaco was the only Johnny Rabbitt remembered by listeners, and the one who was a nationally known runaway ratings success.

Recently during a nationwide search for a morning host on KLOU-FM, both Rabbitts were offered the job. Elz decided to stay with Heritage because of their dedication to him during recent surgery which saved the vision in one eye. Pietromonaco passed up the opportunity when his proposal to do the show from 4:00 – 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time via a Switch 56 hookup was rejected by program director Dave Dunkin.

So instead of being hopping mad at each other, both Rabbitts should be thrilled at this unexpected burst of publicity. It jogged the memories of countless fans who, in the ‘60s, had one hand on their homework and the other poised to dial FOrest 7-6000 to “Blab it to the Rabbitt.”

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 9/96)

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)