by Don Keith
Jimmy Gill had vowed to himself that he would one day reach the point where he could control his own destiny. That he would arrive at the place where he could truly touch people with his voice and a blend of songs. Have them listen to him. Hang on his words.
After the showdown with Charlie McGee, Jimmy spent long nights in front of the Zenith, his schoolbooks practically untouched. And there, with the music pounding and the announcers talking, he began to lay his plans and dream his dreams.
It was no different from chasing the signals on the radio as they drifted in and out, waxing and waning, lost in the fade and then strong and powerful, stretched out all up and down the broadcast dial.
WBMH
Sixteen
"Dammit! You're either the damn stupidest black man or the damn blackest stupid man I've ever seen, Detroit Simmons!"
The cuss fit Jimmy Gill was throwing did not seem to be bothering Detroit at all. He kept on tinkering at some project spread out before him on the work bench, a tongue of smoke from his soldering iron curling around his head like a halo, as he completely ignored Jimmy’s frustrated fussing. Jimmy stood there for a moment, angrily clenching and unclenching his fists, then spun around quickly and left Dee sitting there.
He did not have time to stay and try to do any more convincing at that very moment. The Monkees were involved in the last screams of "I'm a Believer," and even the insomniacs who might be awake at 4:30 in the morning did not appreciate it when their music stopped cold and was not followed up immediately by something just as inane and juvenile.
For his part, Dee was not sure he was up to hearing any more wild schemes from Jimmy. Not when the modulation monitor needed calibrating and the newsroom headset amplifier was on the fritz.
"Home of the Good Guys...ninety-seven B-M-H...Jimmy Steele here with Question Mark and the Mysterians!"
His own voice in the headphones sounded high-pitched, strained and syrupy to him. He immediately dropped the silly grin on his face like a heavy load as soon as the mike was killed. But that was what they insisted on sending out over the airwaves from WBMH. A smile in the voice. Excitement in every word. Scream! Yell! Push! Never be down or subdued. Never sound natural or conversational. Heavens no! And God forbid that you sounded at all like a normal human being talking one-on-one to another normal human being. Jimmy angrily twisted up the volume on the inept organ riff at the start of the song but just as quickly spun down the monitor control so he did not have to hear the damn song for the fourth damn time since his damn shift had started at damn midnight.
He was really getting fed up with teeny-bopper radio. With bubble-gum music. With teenaged girls and drunks and drug addicts on the telephone all night. People who did not give a shit what music he was spinning, as long as it was noise in the night-time to keep them company as they passed through their miserable existence.
When Jimmy looked up, Detroit stood in the studio doorway, a twisted link of solder in the corner of his mouth. He was still shaking his head in wonder at what Jimmy had been telling him before he had to rush off to the studio to catch the song’s ending.
He had decided to humor Jimmy. Why not?
"Where in hell do you get all these crazy ideas, Jimmy Gill?"
"It's not crazy, Detroit. We can do it. We can get that Nashville FM license, and there are lots of people out there who would listen to a radio station that played something besides this shit. Damn good music! There's money to be made and it might just as well be us that make it."
"But what makes you think you can get a radio station license, Jimmy? You're just a skinny, long-haired, midnight-to-six jock, barely twenty-six years old. And here you are talking about putting a damn radio station on the air!"
"Yeah, but I know what I'm doing. I've got a plan, Dee. And it will work. You’ll see!"
The revelation of his sure-fire plan was interrupted again by the fade-away ending of the song, a screeching jingle on a tape cart and the segue into a Herman's Hermits record on the back turntable. And by the agitated arrival of Wacky Jack Bruno, WBMH’s morning newsman.
Jack was tall and thin, with a voice like God, but, as usual, he did not notice Jimmy or Detroit when he burst into the control room like an Old Spice-scented cyclone. His pants were unzipped, his shirt sleeves unbuttoned and flapping like wings, a screaming paisley necktie draped around a flipped-up collar, and his shoes on sockless feet were untied, the laces threatening to send him sprawling as he exploded into the room. A comb was still stuck in a partial part in his long, thick, gray hair and a dab of shaving cream clung stubbornly to his cheek. As he staggered into the control room, he dropped a twisted pair of headphones near the small desk where he would deliver the news twice per hour during the morning drive-time show, then kicked off his shoes.
He had a sheaf of teletype paper ripped from the machine down the hall wadded under one arm, and, as he did every morning, weather permitting, Jack stumbled groggily over to the lone control room window, lifted it, and climbed outside onto the twelve-inch-wide ledge. He always preferred sitting on the ledge in the cool pre-dawn air, bare feet dangling seventeen floors over downtown Birmingham, as he culled stories to use on his newscasts. As he edited, he allowed the rest of the rejected wire copy to drift down like huge yellow snowflakes to the streets below. As he worked, Wacky Jack reached for doughnuts and sweet rolls he kept hidden away in various pants or coat pockets and sipped steaming coffee from a paper cup. He would alternate bass-voiced belches while trying out the news stories aloud, reading them to the pigeons who joined him on the ledge to hear the latest news of the day and to share his pastry.
Sometimes, he got a notion to stand up and wander along the ledge, to take a piss off the side, to dance to music that only he could hear. He would often yell at janitors and early arrivers in adjoining buildings or at the morning disk jockey at WBMH, Doug Dempsey, as he parked his car in the lot directly but far down below him. Doug yelled back, angrily shaking his fist up at the loony newsman. Jack usually sailed a cruller down at him with practiced accuracy and a maniacal laugh.
No one ever questioned how Wacky Jack got his name, but someone said he had actually calmed down since he quit jocking and became a news reader.
Jimmy had been doing the overnight shift at WBMH for a couple of years by then. After WROG, he had finally given up on his education, quitting that school foolishness altogether while half-way through the eleventh grade. Then he had worked mowing grass at the cemetery for a while and as a go-fer at a foundry. A tiny radio station south of town let him do a few shows on the weekend for no pay and another one twenty miles farther down the highway hired him to mow the lawn, take out the trash and do an occasional on-air shift.
Then he got a full-time overnight job at a station in Montgomery, ninety miles south of Birmingham. He was Jim Gilbreath there. He made enough money to send Grandmama a few dollars to supplement her Social Security. That job led to a ten-P.M.-to-two-A.M. show in Augusta where he was Jim McGill, but he soon got fired from there when a new program director told him he talked too much and that the PD wanted to bring in his own man.
Next Jimmy landed a weekend job in Pensacola that barely paid his flophouse rent, and then took a seven-to-midnight shift in Jackson. He was Jim Gilroy there and made enough money to buy an old car and Grandmama a birthday present. But it only lasted until the station was sold and the new people told him he was an egomaniac and the format changed to country and western with a whole new line-up of announcers brought in over a weekend, all while no one noticed. His severance had been a free trade-out pizza from a local restaurant, an oil change from a car dealership, and a “Thanks...good luck.”
He worked several other stations, from overnights to afternoon drive-time. The story was always the same.
"You don't take direction, Gill. Goodbye."
"We don't need somebody who can't follow the format, kid."
"You'd be a great jock if you'd learn the music is what they listen for and not you running your mouth."
Fate or blind luck had finally brought him to WBMH after two months “on the beach.” He spent most of that dead time watching television with Grandmama or visiting with Duane and DeWayne George the rare times they were home.
He had a good time at each of the stations, but he still missed something he had never actually had. Being “on the big wind.” Missed it as badly as he might have breathing or eating. The puny jobs in Montgomery and Augusta and Jackson had each been on shows late at night, when the little AM stations’ power had been lowered to protect some other weakling halfway across the country. Or the signal aimed narrowly directional in deference to the Canadian or Mexican border. None of the stations were important, the ones with the big “numbers” and thousands of listeners and mega-dollars of advertising on their air.
He longed for the strength of the more powerful stations. The Number Ones. He had hungered for any chance to satisfy his radio appetite, the craving that had only been whetted with the parade of also-ran stations he had graced with his presence and who had lacked the vision to let him help them to the top.
Then a chance came. The overnight guy quit WBMH to begin a career preaching in a Holiness church. BMH was now the top-rated top-forty station in town, full-time, with high night-time power and a non-directional signal. WROG, with its daytime-only broadcast day had long since been left in the dust and was an also-ran. Jimmy figured he must have been the only one who had wanted the terrible hours and miniscule pay of overnight radio, but he leapt at the chance to get back on the air in his hometown with a station that mattered. Even if his show was on the air at a time when only a few shift workers and the various drunks and burglars and night crawlers made up his audience. At least they could hear him. And at least he had his foot in the door. He could eventually move to seven-to-midnight. Then mid-days. Then, God willing, drive time. But the long hours also gave Jimmy time to think, to scheme, to plan. And to develop an idea.
In a roundabout way, Detroit Simmons had come along with him to WBMH. The timing was perfect because the Federal Communications Commission, the agency that regulates radio stations, had finally started pushing for more minorities to be given a chance to break into the business. Detroit had quit school when he turned sixteen, about the same time as Jimmy, but he attended classes at a technical school in nearby Bessemer where he taught the staff there a few things about electronics and got his first class broadcast engineer's license. Until then, no one in radio wanted to hire him. He had been working as an electrician’s helper at minimum wage. As soon as Jimmy heard the station needed another engineer, he told them about Detroit. WBMH was glad for the chance to have a colored engineer sit there and watch the transmitter meters overnight, quietly and invisibly filling a quota for very little pay.
Detroit used the long, empty hours to good advantage as he learned to design and build more black boxes and blinking circuit boards. He devoured every book and equipment manual and F.C.C. rule book in the station, and was soon rebuilding everything in sight as he had at WROG. As long as the stuff worked and did not make their jobs any harder, the other engineers did not give a damn.
Jimmy was happy to be working again with his best friend. They had kept in touch while Jimmy made the Southern radio circuit and Detroit soaked up all the electronics he could hold. But Jimmy had plans he needed to share and he was impatient, anxious to finally tell Detroit how crucially his friend figured into the whole scheme.
It was proving impossible to do while he was on the air. The top-forty songs he played at WBMH were short so he had to rip off a line of clever patter or punch a series of buttons to play jingles, sound effects and commercials after every single one. It required concentration, even from somebody like Jimmy who could do the whole routine by rote.
Then Leon called just as he was about to approach Dee again and make his sit down and hear the plan.
God, why had he answered the telephone? Other than the fact that the program director threatened to fire them if they did not pick up the request line by the third ring.
Leon was an older black man who had begun calling shortly after Jimmy started at the station. He always began his conversations with praise for how Jimmy ran his show, how much pleasure Leon got from listening to his “wonderful voice.” Then he would quickly move to offers of “presents,” money or whiskey or his wife’s home cooking, if Jimmy would come by and pick it up.
“Mr. Steele?” he said sweetly. “I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate your fine program. I’ve got you a little gift to let you know how much I enjoy your beautiful voice and all the happy music you send out. Can you run by the house…?”
“I can’t talk this morning, Leon. We’re real busy. Thanks for calling, though.”
He knew Leon was only trying to hit on him and he really needed to talk with Detroit. Jimmy rudely hung up the telephone before Leon could say more.
And then Doug Dempsey stumbled into the control room. He was in a foul mood as usual, cursing Wacky Jack Bruno, the damn elevator, the damn air conditioning in the damn on-air studio, the damn bitter-ass coffee. It had always been a quandary for Jimmy. A mystery how Doug Dempsey could be so stunningly happy and naturally funny when he was on the air yet instantly become so dismally, perpetually unpleasant when he wasn’t.
No matter. His tenure was to be short-lived at WBMH. His career was soon to be redirected by management when his ratings dipped for two Arbitrons in a row. Dempsey would learn of his firing when the security guard in the bank lobby downstairs refused to allow him to get onto the elevator. That's how WBMH usually informed employees that their talents no longer fit into the long-range plans of the radio station. Dempsey went on to work at stations in Jackson, Houston, Dallas, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Tupelo and then dropped out of sight, his career the typical bell-shaped curve of radio success.
When it became clear to Jimmy that he would not have a chance to make his case, he finally ordered Detroit to meet him in the doughnut shop a half block away when he got off his engineering shift at seven. He promised he would lay out the program for him then. Swore that once he heard the whole story, that he would be as enthusiastic as Jimmy was. Somehow, Jimmy would have to transfer his confidence to Detroit, a man who was naturally slow and calculating when it came to making big decisions.
Dee Simmons was a major cog in the machine. Dee was the conservative one, more interested in tinkering in the shop than in building empires. He would be a tough sell. Jimmy knew his friend would only be the first of many. But without him, the dream was dead before it even got started.
“Jimmy, you know I got to get to my other job by eight. I can’t live on what folks in radio pay me.”
“Dee, listen to me. It will be worth your while. Trust me!”
“It damn well better be. If I burn a sick day to hear you talk some wild...”
Jimmy grinned as he tripped a switch that sent yet another record spinning, the volume in the studio all the way up. He opened the mike and screamed the artist’s name and the song’s title and some inanity that almost made him sick just speaking it.
Detroit was almost seven-thirty arriving at the doughnut shop, but he had a unique pair of excuses. Any other business and they would have been too far-fetched to believe. Not in radio, though.
It seems Miss Nude America had shown up to appear on the morning show and had stripped to her birthday suit in the middle of the control room while Doug and Wacky Jack breathlessly described the whole thing to their audience. Dee had suddenly found some transmitter logs that needed checking or some trumped-up chore to keep him there until the buxom young woman had put her clothes back on.
Then, three members of Paul Revere and the Raiders were in the bank lobby downstairs with an entourage of groupies, trying to convince the guard they should let them all on the elevator up to the radio station. Dee waded through the riot to get out of the building and found Jimmy rehearsing the sales pitch to his cup of coffee and jelly doughnut.
The two men ignored the bird-e
yed stares of the denim-clad rednecks, double-breasted lawyers, and jabbering store clerks perched all around them in the Krispy Kreme as they gawked at the skinny, long-haired white guy in his Allman Brothers tee-shirt, wearing an earring, talking to his food and the muscular young black man with the pronounced Afro who joined him in the booth. Detroit and Jimmy were used to it. They knew what an odd couple they made and had long since stopped caring what people thought.
As Jimmy explained the plan, he munched lemon-filled doughnuts and gulped scalding coffee. Detroit kept his head down and listened quietly, forming tall pyramids with sugar packs and grunting occasionally.
"The FM license in Nashville is up for grabs, Dee. There's only one other applicant who is going to try for it. He’s some old guy who owns a store where he sells radios and stereos. He wants to use the station to sell records and hi-fi systems, sort of like a live demonstration thing. He thinks people will buy equipment to hear what he’s going to put on the air. You ought to see the programming plan he’s filed, Dee. He's just planning on playing jazz and classical music all day and run ten minutes of news every hour from the network and sign the son of a bitch off at five o’clock every afternoon. It won’t even be on the air on weekends at all! He's not even applying for full power or antenna height!”
Detroit was busily building the largest existing sugar-packet tower in the free world. He had not looked up since Jimmy had begun his pitch. There was no indication he had heard a word so far except for the way he chewed on the coffee stir stick between his lips.
“Nobody thinks FM is going to do anything, Dee. They all think it’s a wasted hunk of frequency spectrum, just for audiophiles and the like. But by God, it will! Think of all the great music that's out there and how fantastic it would sound in stereo, as crystal clear as any record or tape player! No static at all, not even in the summer-time! Not even in the middle of a damn thunderstorm!"