Ron Harris is not a household name but when you read a lot of radio history sometimes you run across the same name multiple times. It makes sense that you'd see famous names repeatedly. It makes a lot less sense when they are not famous names. It gets downright mysterious sometimes.
I've come to believe that some people were almost famous, that they had some kind of inertia that the rest of us lack and they veered off of that trajectory at the last second, perhaps for reasons only they understand. After the sixth or seventh time I tracked down Mr. Harris and he was very giving of his time to answer my questions ...even the ones I didn't know to ask.What followed where tales of creatively liberated equipment, FCC violations, rock stars, Russian profanity, and an unexpected intersection with Rush Limbaugh...
He had so many stories I'm just going to go ahead and call this "Part 1." I know I'll be back for more answers.
JF - How did you end up becoming the music director at WCPR?
RH: I started at Stevens Sept. 14, 1969. I was active as a DJ and production guy there, but the Music Director position was open so I volunteered for it.
JF: WCPR was a carrier current station at that time.
WCPR indeed was carrier current for most of its existence. Because the carrier current transmitters were put in many of the dorms, the 740 frequency on one transmitter would "beat" against a nearby one. So they decided to change some to 750. While in those days there were very few (if any) AM radios that would show the tuning like today's digital ones, it would have been unnoticed by dorm students. At least until we started calling it "WCPR - the Sporty 7-40 and the Nifty 7-50." :)
JF: Is there any truth to the story about WCPR broadcasting (perhaps unlawfully) from the S.S. Stevens?
RH:That was a year or two before I got there. The story as it was recounted many times over the years was that when the station engineers installed our carrier current transmitter aboard the ship (the metal hull basically blocked all the commercial radio stations, so our signal was the only one that could be picked up in the cabins), the AC power circuit they hooked it up to fed the dorm cabins and also the string of lights that spanned the length of the ship, on typically tall masts. Evidently it acted as a terrific antenna, and the station could be heard all over the eastern seaboard and beyond. Whether they did that deliberately or accidentally is not known. Things were great until the Dean of Students received a letter from the FCC informing him that it was a very illegal situation! That was the end of our semi-national broadcasting experience!
However
there were a few years when they put a low power FM transmitter on top
of the Stevens Library, pretty much in the center of the campus dorms. I
don't know the story about why it was taken down, but I suspect a
certain government agency sometimes referred to as "Fred's Cookie Company" might have been involved.
JFK there was also a WCPR pirate in Brooklyn in 1976? Do you know anything about that?
I think I heard something about that, but it had no connection with us. Stevens Tech was on what's known as Castle Point in Hoboken, NJ, hence Castle Point Radio. It's literally a stone's throw from the Hudson River, across from West 4th St. in Manhattan. The original call letters were WSRN (Stevens Radio Network), but they were changed in the mid 1960s.
JF. Back in the early 1970s you were reporting airplay to the Billboard "Campus Programming Aids." What was that like and how did it work?
RH:As Music Director, I wanted to increase our record company service, so,
being a 15-minute PATH/subway ride from the Billboard offices, I got to
know Bob Glassenburg, the College Radio Editor for the magazine. I was
also sending out our playlist every other week to every record company I
could find, and I had a talented classmate drawing a radio-related
cartoon on each one. I also got to know the local (NYC) major record
company promotion guys, and all those contacts and connections increased
the number of promo records we received to something like 40-50 singles
and 10-20 albums each week (I don't remember the exact number, but it
was probably higher than that). The promotion managers at the record
companies would call me to push their current product. All in all, it
was a really successful project and I was respected at the station and
by the record companies. A side benefit was getting comp tickets to
shows at the Fillmore East and other local venues!
Stevens being a science and engineering school, our Top 40 chart was called "The WCPR Slide Rule Survey." Yeah, I know it's a groaner!
JF: You won a "Campus Humor" contest with some kind of news report about kidnapping a college Dean. Can you tell me about that and does that audio still exist?
RH: The Gillette Company, makers of men's shaving items, released a new
product, a hairspray for men called The Dry Look. One of their
promotion ideas was a national college campus push. They went to some
30 or 40 colleges and offered the student radio stations a contest.
Each station would have several people or teams create audio vignettes
about some aspect of college life. The vignettes would be played on the
station, and there would be a vote by the students for their favorite
vignette. When they voted, they'd also be given a can of The Dry Look.
The winning creative producer/team would win a $100 prize and the
college station would get something also. Then, the first place winners
from each school would be submitted for judging by several professional
broadcasters, as well as the College Radio Editor at Billboard. The
judges included Leonard Probst from NBC and kids show host comedian
Soupy Sales. I wrote a script for "The Kidnap," a satirical take on the
unrest and protests at campuses across America. I enlisted our Chief
Engineer, Mike Ferriola, to co-produce with me, and we both did some of
the voices, as well as utilizing some station members and even one of
the overnight campus security officers for voices. I added some sound
effects and music, and it was voted #1 by the students at Stevens. Now I
knew we were up against much bigger schools (I think Dartmouth and
Harvard were among them), so I didn't have very high expectations. When
all of the local winner creations were being judged by the professional
panel, I got a call one day from my connection, Bob Glassenburg at
Billboard, saying "Ron, you S.O.B.! I'm not supposed to tell you this,
but no one even came close to what you created! Just please act
surprised when they contact you!" Both Mike and I couldn't believe it,
but it was true! Our prize was $1,500 and an all-expense-paid week's
trip to New York City, plus $1,000 for WCPR. Of course, since we both
lived on campus right across the river from NYC, the "trip" was a few
subway tokens, but they did put us up in the Loew's Midtown Motor Inn in
Times Square, and set up meetings for us with ad agencies and radio and
TV stations! We also were guests on the Joe Franklin radio show, and
Joe played our winning entry on the air on WOR during the show! It was a
truly exhilarating and heady experience for us both!
[I have heard this audio and can confirm its amazing what he did with 1/4" tape. Will post later on]
JF: In 1973 you moved to Illinois to attend Southern Illinois U. What drove that change?
I was in the middle of my junior year at Stevens, and by then I realized my heart wasn't in computer science or electrical engineering, but rather in radio broadcasting and production. During my first semester of junior year, I was spending all my time at WCPR, and went to something like two classes and took one test, an open-book test on which I got a grade of 26 (out of 100). So, as the semester was drawing to a close, in the first week of December I was summoned to the Dean's office. The conversation started with, "Ron, I know you're not happy here at Stevens..." and my reply was 'Dean, I LOVE it here at Tech, and especially WCPR!" But the decision had been made: I should transfer to another school. As the semester was virtually over, I asked the Dean if I could get grades of "W" for "Withdrew" instead of what I should have gotten, "WF" for Withdraw-Failed." "WF' grades for every class that semester would have made it tough to transfer to any college, and no school meant I'd lose my deferment from military service. This being the time of the war in Vietnam, I really needed that deferment. The Dean said they would bend the rules for me, and so my grades that semester were all "W".
I went to the Stevens Library and looked at all the college catalogs on file (Stevens was a very hard school, and I wasn't the first to need to look for an alternative). The one that stood out was Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, a brand new satellite campus from the main school in Carbondale, IL. What clinched the deal was that they had a brand new 50,000 watt FM public radio station, and that the campus was about 25 miles from St. Louis. Their classes started on January 3rd, 1972, giving me about three weeks to apply to transfer there. I was accepted right before Christmas, 1971, and on New Year's Day 1972 I loaded up my car and drove to Illinois without having any idea what the school and station would be like. I graduated a year and a half later with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mass Communications/Broadcasting.
JF: You were also a DJ at WSIE-FM. That's mostly a Jazz station today, what was that like in your tenure?
Back then WSIE was a mix of pop, classical and opera. I was working on the air on Saturdays and Sundays, doing a show, "Swing Easy," with light pop and big band jazz, as well as "Masters of the Opera" (no easy task, as I knew nothing about opera nor how to pronounce most of the names!). I was also doing production at the station, and was a teacher's helper in the Radio Production courses. There were some talented people there. Two who had graduated before I got to the school were Peter Maer, who went on to become a reporter for the Mutual Broadcasting System, and Bill Plaschke, senior sports columnist for the Los Angeles Times. I also worked part time at a country music station, WGNU in Granite City, IL (part of the St. Louis market), and I did a full semester as an intern at KIRL radio in St. Charles/St. Louis.
JF. You started in commercial radio in 1973 at KGMO, did that overlap with WSIE or was that after graduation?
I graduated in June, 1973, and sent out about 10 audition tape airchecks to stations around the Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois areas. KGMO was the first station to reply, (with a phone call) and I started on-air from 8pm to 1am in mid-August. I was on KGMO-FM only, as the AM was a daytimer. DJs on the AM and FM would make $100 a week salary, but those of us on the FM only started out as hourly employees for much less money. Well, a month later I came down with mononucleosis, and had to recuperate for a few weeks. KGMO had a reputation for not wanting to wait for a sick DJ to return, and I fully expected to be let go. To my surprise, the station manager called me and said they liked my work so much they were moving me to afternoon drive on both AM and FM, and even more surprising, they made it effective for even the time I was sick, paying me the $100 weekly salary for the month I was out! Interesting fact: the DJ who was doing afternoon drive and had left before I got there was a guy named "Rusty Sharpe," and he was pretty good, but we all knew he got his job in part because his father was half-owner of the station, a Mr. Limbaugh. And "Rusty Sharpe's" real name was Rush Limbaugh, who went on to have the number one network talk radio show for many years!
JF: What was KGMO like 40 years ago? I think it was an AM/FM simulcast at that time.
Yes, it was. The station was in a building that had a metal building added-on as the studio. It would get extremely hot in there when the air conditioning stopped working. Of course, the service company deal was a "trade out" where KGMO gave them lots of free advertising in lieu of having to pay them, so when our AC died, we were way down on their priority list! I did many shows in the blazing inferno wearing just my briefs!
JF: By the mid 70s you seem to have mostly left on-air roles and become primarily an engineer. Was that a difficult change?
I had always been interested in radio station jingles, and had collected a large number of them from stations all over the U.S. and the world. The major companies that produced jingles were in Dallas, TX (due to favorable union agreements with the singers and players). I had gotten to know the two biggest and best known jingle "collectors," who each ended up working for the two biggest production companies. Jon Wolfert was at PAMS Productions, and Ken Justiss was at TM Productions, both in Dallas. Ken was looking for someone to work with him in production, and had heard a lot of my KGMO production work. He offered me a job at TM, and I didn't hesitate a second! Even though I had never worked with basic stereo, I was determined to become proficient at using the 16-track multitrack recorders and other studio gear. Being the new "hotshot kid," it took me a while to gain the confidence and respect of the other engineers at TM, but I did. And although TM and PAMS were competitors, Jon, Ken and I stayed great friends, and I still stay in touch with them 50 years later!
JF: You went on to be an engineer at Westwood One for decades.
In 1981, I went for an interview with Norm Pattiz, founder and CEO of the Westwood One Radio Networks. I started there as a production engineer in April, 1981, and would stay there for the next 31 years! In that time, I produced some of the top radio shows, like Casey Kasem's countdown shows; Scott Shannon's Rockin' America countdown; Randy Jackson's Hit List shows (Randy was, in addition to being a top music producer and a former member of Journey, was also one of the original judges on American Idol); as well as Technical Director and board op for many live concert specials, as well as "Radio USA For Africa" and a 90-minute Larry King interview show with then-President Bill Clinton in our studio! There was even a 54-hour show called "The Rock Years," yet another history of album rock! One of the first live concerts I board-op'ed was the Moscow Music Peace Festival, a major production involving several satellite hand-offs for a concert coming live from Russia. It was going well until an American band frontman decided to teach the Russian crowd how to say "F__K!" in English! This was before we had digital delays to cut out obscenities, and I had to just mute the feed to try to avoid having Russian youth gleefully screaming you-know-what on a high-profile broadcast all across America!
Westwood One merged with another radio network in 2011. One stated goal was to combine the best people from each company for the new incarnation. And of course, the day the merger was approved by the Justice Department, the powers that be laid off something like 98% of the Westwood One employees! I lasted another few months, and then on February 6, 2012, it was my turn. I was 60 years old, and after 31 years of doing what I loved and more, often on 14-hour days, 6 or 7 days a week, I was ready to retire! The irony of it was that they ended up having to hire three people to take over all the work I'd been doing!
As I write this almost 15 years later, I really can't complain at all.
I've had an incredible life, from my DJ days to working with presidents,
rock stars and learning and doing things I never imagined I would be
able to learn and do. I'm still one of the only Chief Engineers who
can't solder worth a damn, but hey, there are people for that! For a
kid from West Caldwell, New Jersey, who flunked out of his first
college, I've done pretty darn well!