News from Our Archives

by Kerry Manderbach

“This is Doctor Jockenstein…operating on your mind. Here on W-W-W-W-ESL, East St. Louis!” Who is Dr. Jockenstein? And how did he get his degree in DJ-ology? For the answers read on…

ockenstein was born Roderick G. King, and was brought up with his siblings in East St. Louis, IL. His mother had a stereo and would buy 45’s which Rod loved to listen to. Growing up, Rod attended Rock Junior High School where one of his teachers was Mrs. Brooks, mother of KATZ personality Donny Brooks.

Attending East St. Louis High School, Rod got his first taste of the radio business in the late Sixties while doing an internship at KATZ-AM in St. Louis. Listening to Donny Brooks on KATZ, Rod approached him and offered to be his “gopher,” telling him that “Your mom was my teacher.” He started lugging the equipment Brooks used at his personal appearances and soon was helping Brooks out at the radio station. As Rod described it, “…Actually I did an internship (back in those days they called it a ‘gopher’) at KATZ in 1968, then the word ‘gopher’ became internship. So I would hang around the radio station and go for coffee—anything they wanted me to do.”

After graduating from high school, he attended Southern Illinois University at Carbondale on a law enforcement scholarship through the East St. Louis community relations department. However, he had been bitten by the DJ bug and began spinning records for campus sororities and frat house parties. After 2 years at SIU-C, he decided his classes were “obsolete” and left school to plot his entry into the broadcasting business.

Back at home, Rod began throwing parties in his basement, calling them “Bluelight Basement Parties,” while spinning records in his new persona as “Touché The DJ—The Jock That Never Stops.” The parties were always popular, drawing large crowds. It was about this time that “Super Soul 1490” WESL-AM radio program director “Gentleman” Jim Gates noticed a drop-off in attendance of the parties he was throwing. “I remember I used to give parties and it was almost empty,” says Gates. “I found out Jock was giving a party at the same time and it would be packed out, I mean jammed. He knew everybody. He could entertain. So I figured if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. So I hired him.”

Joining established WESL DJs like Charles Edward Smith and Curtis Soul, King as ‘Touché’ started perfecting his on-air persona over the next year. “He had no formal training,” says Bernie Hayes, a legendary St. Louis radio figure and close friend who worked with King on occasion. “He learned the business from Jim Gates and Donny Brooks. I met him when Gates and Brooks came over to KWK, and Rod was lugging records around for them.” At WESL he tried to reach the audience with his unique style of banter, and playing the hits of the day by artists like The O’Jays, Earth Wind & Fire, The Dramatics, and The Stylistics.

While playing this traditional “soul” radio station fare along with early disco hits by Donna Summer, Tavares and KC and the Sunshine Band, King was also spinning more and more of an R&B style known as “funk”, which was slowly but surely replacing “soul music”. Younger listeners were gravitating to a grittier sound than their older brothers and sisters, preferring the likes of the Ohio Players, the Fatback Band, and Kool & The Gang.

Correspondingly, King put an emphasis on this style of music, and later remembered “Gates used to say ‘what IS that you’re playing?’” Many of the funk cuts King was spinning were produced by a group known as Parliament-Funkadelic.

Riding herd over this conglomeration of musicians was future Rock and Roll Hall of Famer George Clinton. Clinton, also known as “Dr. Funkenstein”, brought Parliament to St. Louis on their “Mothership Connection” tour in 1976. Gene Robinson, a local performer known as the King of the Hollywood Blues, was acquainted with both Clinton and King and arranged a meeting between them. King ended up emceeing the St. Louis Parliament show, and the party afterwards. King later recalled, “I was working the gig and just like the album cover, I was dressed up like a doctor, trying to be the George Clinton Jr. All 20 of those guys came by and we just partied. At the end of the gig George said ‘Wait a minute, if I’m Dr. Funkenstein, you’ve got to be Dr. Jockenstein, the Mad Doctor of music behind the turntable.’” “He’s just like one of the band members,” Clinton said in a later interview. “He was totally into the group when we first started coming out that way, with ‘Chocolate City’ and ‘Up for the Down Stroke’. He was a big fan when he first started coming onto the radio. I remember him selling flashlights at the ‘Flashlight’ tour.”

With his new identity in place, Dr. Jockenstein started to pick up a wider fan base. He developed a new tagline: “This is Dr. Jockenstein…operating on your mind”. Soon, he took hold of an idea from the past…High School Roll Call. Bernie Hayes and DJ Jake Jordan had their own versions of shows called ‘Roll Call’. “I started ‘Roll Call’ at KATZ in 1966” says Hayes. “I would have the kids call in. Jake Jordan came in to KWK in 1969-1970; he also had a thing called ‘Roll Call’. When Jock became a disc jockey he then started what was called ‘Roll Call’ and it caught on pretty good.” “Jim Gates….put me on morning drive”. King said. “Going to work one day I was trying to think of something that would get the kids up to go to school…Then I got to saying, ‘Okay, it’s Roll Call time. Call in and say your name, your zodiac sign, and what school you attend.” Jock led his callers through the drill asking the questions in rhyme, and then let them loose with their own home-made raps. Thus, Dr. Jockenstein and his teenage callers were perhaps among the first ‘rappers’ on commercial radio.

The callers had to have something to rhyme to, so playing in the background of ‘Roll Call’ was what teenagers of the time called ‘skating music’. This was essentially an instrumental version of a contemporary hit, usually on the flip side of the record. These were radio station promotional copies, distributed by the record companies for DJs to play while doing a local ad. With no lyrics, the DJs could talk about the product they were selling and listeners may associate the product with one of their favorite songs. DJs also used these records in the part-time jobs they usually held, many times spinning records at the local skating rink. Jockenstein used the instrumental versions of hits like Chic’s “Good Times” for the ‘Roll Call’ show. ‘Good Times’ was also used as the backing track on the first commercial rap record, “Rapper’s Delight”. He also used other contemporary hits like Change’s “Lover’s Holiday”. “The ratings were great!” King recalled. “I had letters from Southwestern Bell to change the time I was doing the ‘Roll Call’ show, because I was tying up the switchboard, believe it or not.”
A typical ‘Roll Call’ segment would start off:

Here we go on the ra-di-o, I’m the DJ jock in ster-e-o. We’re gonna have a good time, On the Roll Call line’ (Freeman). On the go—on the radio! WESL!

Then Jockenstein would ask his callers:
Hey, what’s your name? What’s your sign? Give me that Number 1 school? Your favorite teacher with the Golden Rule? Your favorite station in the nation?

Or a variation:

Enie-meenie-minie-mo, let’s jam on the radio! Are you ready—like Freddy—to rock real steady? Said what’s your name? What’s your sign? Greatest school in the nation? Your favorite teacher with the education? Rock with it—what’s the greatest station in the nation?

By this time, King’s original 1 hour show had turned into an entire 4 hour program. He stayed at WESL until 1979, and then got an offer to be the program director of competing KATZ-AM / WZEN-FM. “They wanted Gates,” said King. “Gates asked at the time for some astronomical figure. And they said ‘Well, we’ll just take Jock’ and they brought me over and made me Program Director.” King became a Renaissance man during that period. “I think I wore every hat…Program Director, Music Director, Assistant General Manager, garbage man…(laughs)…Operations Manager, I did it all.” He also got a chance to work with Jim Gates again when the two of them did a morning program in 1992 on KATZ-FM, which had succeeded WZEN. “We had so many listeners I got scared” Gates recalled. A few years later, he was also heard on KNJZ (Z-100) with a blues-oriented program.

But FCC de-regulation was soon to cut a swath thru the radio industry, the St. Louis market included. “As I reflect on it now,” King lamented, “that was the end of community radio as far as the urban area or the Black neighborhoods were concerned, because…it was all corporate business.” After changing hands several times, the stations were bought by Clear Channel Communications and King was removed from his managerial duties and put on the air at KMJM-FM (Majic 104.9) part-time. “They kept him as a disc jockey, but not in an administrative capacity.” recalls Bernie Hayes “He got his training on the job for his administrative duties. And his disc jockey duties, as you know, where from the street.” Says King, “I went from full time different management positions to part time radio.” As voice-tracking became popular in radio King saw the changes and challenges ahead. “The way I look at it now, I grew up on personality radio, that’s how I was trained. And through the days of KATZ and WESL we still had that going where you felt [you were] a part of your audience because you were in the community.” “We’re in a situation now,” he continued, “where through the computer we can do our show a day ahead of time and be at home listening to it. To me it’s a scary situation. There’s no community effort being put out by the radio station, through the radio station, there’s no connection with your audience.”

Rod King had been spinning records for his “Jammin’ Oldies” show on Saturdays at Majic for about two years when, in early 2002, something went wrong. “Jock became ill, we were aware, when Deneen Busby and others at Majic said he was having all kinds of headaches,” Bernie Hayes recalls. “And a few times he got lost going to and from the job. And those are some serious indicators.” King was checked into DePaul Health Center in Bridgeton, MO where he lapsed into a coma. Thousands of fans contacted KMJM to inquire about his health, and several fundraisers were held to help out with medical expenses. In April of 2002, King’s old friend George Clinton gave a benefit concert at Pop’s nightclub, featuring blown up pictures of Jockenstein and a ‘Roll Call’ performance. The benefit was sponsored by WFUN-FM (Q-95.5), a competitor to Clear Channel’s 103.3 The Beat. “It’s not about the war [with The Beat] with this” says Q-95’s Craig Blac. “We know he’s an icon.” Other benefits were sponsored by Majic 104.9 at The Ambassador featuring local DJs along with Millie Jackson and Kenny Lattimore. “Jock is a legend in St. Louis, and he means a lot to me” says King’s Majic co-worker Deneen Busby. “He’s the one who put me on radio.” A benefit was also held at The Pageant featuring Ali, Doug E. Fresh, and Slick Rick.

Over the years, Rod King met Bobby Bland, BB King, Tyrone Davis, Al Green, Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson and The Temptations. He also toured for two months with Marvin Gaye, and went on tour with Parliament-Funkadelic, emceeing for them at Madison Square Garden. King received several awards, including 1997 DJ of the Year by Black Radio Exclusive Magazine, R&B Radio Personality of 1995, The Black Achievement Award from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, AM Personality of the Year two times, and one of the 100 Golden Voices twice by Gallery Magazine.

FM radio in St. Louis got off to a false start, just as it did in much of the country. When World War II ended, the federal government opened up the FM spectrum and many AM station owners applied for frequencies to simulcast their AM programming.

In St. Louis during the 1940s, KWK-FM, KFUO-FM, KXLW-FM, WIL-FM, KSLH-FM, KSD-FM, KXOK-FM and WEW-FM all went on the air. WTMV-FM was also broadcasting in the market from East St. Louis. It was a time for experimenting. Two of the stations – KFUO-FM and KSLH-FM – were non-commercial. The others ran into problems as the decade wound down.

WEW-FM pulled its plug as 1950 arrived, with a spokesman saying the new medium had not been accepted by the public. KSD-FM ceased operation in November of 1949 because of what was called a “business decision.” WIL-FM shut down the same month for what owner Lester Benson called “obvious reasons.” KWK-FM owner Robert T. Convey said, “Public acceptance of the medium has not been widespread” when he shut down in April of 1950. In short, there wasn’t any money in FM broadcasting in the 1940s and early 1950s.

Initially it appeared KXOK-FM could survive because of the streetcars. In St. Louis, the radio station owned by the St. Louis Star-Times was heard by people who rode on the streetcar lines as part of an experiment that was being carried out around the country. But even the so-called “transit radio” concept wasn’t enough to save the radio station, and it ceased operations in 1953.

It wasn’t until the 1960s that FM radio in St. Louis began its rise to market dominance, and the road was a slow one, even for the more successful stations.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 7/98)

KADI Montage 1976

The early days of FM rock radio in St. Louis were anything but organized, but that’s what made them so much fun. Sam Kaiser is 46 now, but at the ripe old age of 18 he was pressed into duty as a disc jockey at KADI-FM. As he tells it:

“Christmas night 1972 – 10:30 P.M – I was at my parents’ house in Ferguson desperately trying to start my car, my hands shaking so bad I could not get the key into the slot. I had scored an on-air position at KADI, which at the time was the prime competitor to rock powerhouse KSHE. I’d been hired to do mornings, and they figured the best way to break me in was to have me sit in with Gary ‘Records’ Brown that night until about 3:00 A.M. and then take my show solo from there.

I don’t really know if I was all that good, but I had pestered [program director] Peter Parisi relentlessly from my overnight air shift at WRTH while he was on KADI. It was the only time I’ve ever confirmed a new job at 3:00 A.M.

I was scheduled to go on at midnight that night, but in my absolute terrified state, I arrived at the concrete blockhouse on Bomparte in Brentwood an hour early. Gary looked up and said ‘You must be the new kid. Here are the music sheets, commercial logs and transmitter logs. I gotta go to a Christmas party.’ I was left alone with a record playing on the air, and it was about to end. So much for the break-in period.”

Throughout the 70s, KADI made many attempts to unseat KSHE, and that meant great radio for all the rock fans. There were free concerts, lots of giveaways, and listeners who called the stations and talked about the music with their favorite jocks. And being a jock, while it didn’t pay well, was great for the old ego.

“The KADI job put me in the St. Louis radio rock and roll culture I so much wanted to be a part of,” Kaiser says. “Boy, what a coming of age it was. Not only did I get paid for playing all the bands I worshiped, working at a station that I listened to 24 hours a day, but I also became part of the incredible cast of characters that comprised my hometown rock and roll royalty.

There were plenty of extremes at that radio station. I was fired and rehired at least three times. During one of those fired times, I went on the air at KSHE. We had complete freedom on what we played and how we constructed our shows. All we had to do was make sure the commercials went on as scheduled. I’m talking about 12-minute Pink Floyd epics, song sets that included Herbie Hancock and Brian Auger, obscure but famous tracks from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Sammy Hagar, Foghat, Nectar, J.D. Blackfoot, the list goes on.

The KSHE staff had hotwired an audio box from the soft-porn drive-in theater next door to the station on Watson Road. The jocks would put on long record cuts and watch the dirty movies with the audio coming in on the studio monitor.

During the KADI days, when the ‘Concerts for Bangladesh’ album was big, jocks would play the 16-minute long Leon Russell track ‘Youngblood.’ It was a musical signal to drop by the station and smoke a joint with the jock on the back stairway of the transmitter shack.

Then there was the story of the infamous KSHE staff meeting in which Shelley Grafman [the station owner] started screaming that ‘youse guys gotta stop smoking that shit in the studio…the fucking studio reeks of marijuana!’” Sam Kaiser also remembers his cohorts of those times: Radio Rich Dalton “still the best FM jock I have ever heard, bar none,” Shilo Brunswick, Steve Rosen “one of the original KSHE jocks,” Paul Donahue “the best audio engineer I ever encountered,” Sir Ed, Ron Stevens, John Ulett, Ted Habeck, Jim Singer, Tom Gordon “extremely talented,” and of course, Gary “Records” Brown “larger than life.”

The crazy days of seat-of-the-pants FM rock are gone, and maybe it’s for the best, but people like Sam Kaiser who lived to tell about it know what a “long, strange ride” it was.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 9/2000)

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