The Detroit Lions, and Tigers and Hare…Oh My! 2

            Taking it up several notches and going to compete in Detroit didn’t phase me.

I was raised by strong women.

My grandma was a young registered nurse in Buttermilk Gap (now Lancaster), a Dallas suburb, neither of them much in those days. She drove a buckboard around the countryside, delivering babies, and even animals, when the need arose.

It was commonplace  for her to perform buttonhole appendectomies. She would slice a hole over the angry appendix, hook her finger through the incision, pull that sucker out, cut it off, sew the ends together, stuff it back into the hole, and stitch her patient  up. That was when registered nurses in many rural areas were, basically, doctors,

One evening, having delivered both a colt and a baby in a long work day, she was driving her horse and buggy down a dirt road, when a man jumped out from behind a tree, onto her wagon, intent on having his way with her.

She fought him mano a mano, wrenched herself free, grabbed her pistol and shot him in the leg. The man collapsed, lucky to be in the company of a great nurse.

Granny dug the bullet out, tied a tourniquet around his leg, brought him to her farm and nursed him back to health. He worked as her humbled handyman for a year or so until she went to Dallas to pursue her education.

I inherited my grandma’s genetics, which I called upon during the occasions in my career when someone was trying to screw me, not that I shot them.

My mother lived to be a hundred. She woke up every morning of her life absolutely sure that something really good was going to happen that day, a vital trait for a morning man to inherit. It is like she transfused her body chemistry to me. Endorphins flow through my brain, rendering me oblivious to most bad things 

                            Martin and Howard in Detroit 

The New York-generated music list, dictated by the new ABC Radio President Ralph Beaudin, did not materialize. Specs and I played the same songs for six weeks on WXYZ. Then, when the lists began arriving, they generally lacked tempo, the soul of good morning shows.

To their credit, the ABC suits in New York realized that choosing our music from afar was not working. Chuck Fritz, the VP/GM at WXYZ brought in Joe Bacarrella to run Programming and, incidentally to use his considerable knowledge of MOR, to choose the music. Bacarrella left us alone, otherwise. We liked him. Okay, that’s fixed. Next?

Specs and I scored with the Salute to George Plimpton, described last week. He was happening in Detroit and it was psychological judo to use the momentum that he generated with his book, “The Paper Lion.”

While injecting as much class into our WXYZ show as we could, we knew that Detroit was also the Mecca of Rednecks from West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky. and other rural regions when the jobs ran out back home. Tens of thousands of them migrated to Detroit during WW11. Years before Jeff Foxworthy, a “Redneck” character often came bounding into our studio and plied us with Redneck shtick..  

(Door SFX, Our door had a loud open and shut sound, accompanied by a tinkling

        bell, like in the old time retail stores.) 

Redneck character. (indignant

What’s this I hear you ol’ boys don’t like Rednecks. It’s all over Willow (Willer) Run about you boys being uppity about Rednecks…why, I…..…

Specs  interrupts him)

Specs;              Now, that isn’t true. We love Rednecks. Where did you get the idea that we don’t like…uh…what’s a Redneck?

Redneck:          A Redneck is a feller who’s been married three times and still has the same in-laws

Specs:              I..uh…

Redneck           A Redneck is a feller who lets his 14 year old daughter smoke at the dinner table in front of her kids..    

Specs:              Yes, but…

Redneck:          A Redneck is a feller who thinks loading his dishwasher means getting his wife drunk.

Specs               Yes, but..

Redneck:          A Redneck needs just one more hole punched in his card to get a freebie at the House of Tattoos.

Both of us::       Okay that’ s it…Out!  Out!.

 

The Redneck fades off mike all the while spouting Redneck one-liners until the door slams, chopping off  a “Redneck is” line.

                      I borrowed (borried) these jokes, don’t remember the original ones 

                               Let’s see, now. What else was hot in town? 

Tony Bennett was performing at The Rooster Tail. We went to the show, and  were blown away. A voice that seemed to give vent to a soul full of joy, ranging from soaring brilliance to an intimate heart-wrenching near-whisper.

Tony had come a long way since 1950 when he sang with a rasping poorly vocalized tone. During that era, my chum, Paul Weston, who ran Artists and Repertoire on the west coast for Columbia Records, complained, “The guy can’t modulate. He shouts his songs, and he sounds like he needs to clear his throat all the time.”

I did not totally agree with Paul at the time, but witnessed over the years that Tony’s chops greatly improved. Earlier, he had pinched his tones, but now was singing with a lustrous open tone, enunciating each lyric like it was something precious, to be released only after he had polished it to a high sheen. Tony was a perfect choice.

Here’s the problem.

We lined him up for an interview through his Manager for Tony Bennett Day.  Then, a few days later, after our morning show, we arrived at his suite, with mic, tape machine and a lot of interesting material about his career.

We entered his living room and sat down waiting….but…he didn’t show.

At first, we thought he was just busy, but that gave way to “maybe he’s just  being  temperamental,” but….we were sitting on a couch, staring at the floor, and he was in his  bedroom, not even  sticking his head out the door and saying, “I’ve changed my mind fellas, goodbye.”

A full hour passed, then we called Joe Bacarrella, our PD, explaining the perplexing situation. This was embarrassing. We had conditioned all PD’s to stay at arm’s length, but we had learned to trust Joe. In short, we were flummoxed big time.

Joe arrived a half hour later and we again described the impasse with a lot of what-can-you-do shrugging .He walked to the bedroom door and said quietly, “Tony, this is Joe Bacarrella, the WYXY Program Director, Can we talk?”

 I think the paisan name got to Bennett  (Real name Benedetto). The door tentatively opened, just wide enough to allow Joe inside the bedroom, then closed before we got any ideas.

Five minutes passed, then the door opened and a somber Tony emerged, ready to get it over with. Joe left us to Tony. To this day, Joe doesn’t remember what he said that got us in, but it worked…almost.

We gave Tony a loose script to play off of, assuring him that anything he said was okay. He took us literally, because he soon started to be downright perverse. It didn’t seem to matter to him that we wanted to honor him. He tossed the script aside, and launched into us with a torrent of acid comments that were unusable on the show. That was when Specs and I thanked him, and retreated.

We could not suffer the embarrassment of telling our listeners that we had fallen short, so we soldiered on.  Thanks to meticulous tape editing, we salvaged a few useable bits and played them with a spirited salute on Tony Bennett Day.

What had come over this guy? It might have been that Dave Prince, our afternoon jock had made him angry by saying, “Tony, you have a big nose and so do I. Let’s have a ‘Who has the Biggest Nose’ contest”…nah.

It wasn’t until years later that I put things together that made sense.

At that precise time, Tony’s marriage was ending in divorce. Columbia Records forced him to tinker with his style to compete with the Beatles, which infuriated him. In ’66, his first film role in “The Oscar” was a dud.

He went through a period suffering from drug addiction. Out of moves, Tony called his son, Danny Bennett, who took over as his Manager.

With Danny, Tony Bennett soared higher than ever. He began singing again to packed houses, attracting a whole new audience. Danny put him on VH1 and the kids (rockers) made him an icon.

Under Danny’s guidance, he returned to Columbia Records, and was awarded a Grammy, his first since ’63.  

He has become a first class painter, with a successful art studio in New York.

He has sold over 50 million records worldwide and was the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honor in December of 2005.

Giving you the chronology of his life during and after Detroit, I ask you: Could we have chosen a worse time for a Tony Bennett Salute?.

Tony Bennett Day was just not his day. 

Next week:  Martin and Howard  design a spectacular baseball promotion to take place to a full house at  Tiger Stadium. You won’t believe what happened.