"It's a Treat to Beat Your Feet on the Mississippi Mud" 

One of  my last contributions to mankind before I hung up the earphones  was to do weekends in 2000 at KPOP,  a pop standard station with a limited signal, but with a lot of fanatical 60+  devotees.

Mike Glickenhaus, who was running all of the Clear Channel stations at that time approached me at a Roger Hedgecock lawn party and asked, “How would you like to help KPOP?”  I didn’t particularly want to work, and if I did go I did not want to go full time. I  shook his hand, and backed away with a vapid smile..

Actually, it is good to be wanted, so I did think about it. The downside: KPOP was running at 1250 watts sunset to sunrise, then pumped up for the rest of the day to its full 3750 watts, not the 5000 watts at which it was rated.

 As a part of my decision-making  process, I listened and  heard nothing grabbing about the music, mostly early and mid-50’s stuff but very little up-beat and exciting from that era. The result: a self-fulfilling grab at 65+ demos, unsellable in today’s market.

I knew that I would not be allowed to tweak the music Forget about bringing in  some of the melodic 60’s rock,  and compatible AC from the 70’s.and great standards featuring  Barry Manilow, Sting, Elton, and Nilsson, or the new artists, Norah Jones, Michael Buble, Bobby Caldwell…  and…well you get the idea.

What the hell! I told him “yes”  and went to work mid-days Saturdays and Sundays. It wasn’t a matter of going in and building more unsellable 65+ ratings, but to have fun, and see what I could do, despite the road blocks.

Besides, I was flattered. Mike wanted me.. 

One of  my happiest memories of the KPOP gig was to inspire 70 odd-and I do mean odd- otherwise sane folks to accompany me to the banks of the Mississippi outside of New Orleans so we could find a nice muddy  bank on the Ole “Missipp” and  beat our feet on it..  

These were all children of the 40’s and 50’s who had been imprinted with that grand old  song, “Mississippi Mud.” recorded by Ray Charles, but dating  back to Kid Ory and his Creole All Stars. Of course, many loved the song, but did not recall the words, so I assigned homework, learning the lyrics, as a prerequisite for going on the trip.

It goes like this: “When the sun goes down, the tide goes out, the people gather round and they all begin to shout, Hey! Hey! Uncle Dud, It's a treat to beat your feet on the Mississippi Mud. It's a treat to beat your feet on the Mississippi Mud..” I am sure that just hearing the lyrics, though you may never have heard the actual song, you are seized with the impetuous urge to go to New Orleans, and beat your feet on the Mississippi mud.  

I  hired a jazz quartet of veteran black musicians to lead us in the song and, of course to jam during the party. Man! Could they play!. The lead singer had just the right mix of raspy  voice and sweet melodic tones. He played trumpet with a delicate unforced tone, but got nasty when called upon.. The 40’s style guitar man played with  skittering fingers that seemed to have a life of their own, producing molten tones, in the style of Barney Kessel.The sax  was a perfect cushion, seldom venturing into the solo arena. The drummer provided a perfect back-up with subtle timely licks. These guys were into their 80’s, still pumping out solid jazz.

Propelled by the music and the ambience, the trippers all ate  and drank to the extent that some of them could barely beat their feet on the Mississippi mud. Others got up to fulfill the goal of the trip, and stumbled head first into it..

In fact, several good natured mud-wrestling matches broke out between some of the women, laughing uproariously and shoving each other down into the muck. I am certain that this was history’s first mud wrestling match.

Providentially, we had partied in a picnic area with a shower stall, and when a  dozen or so women emerged from the showers, they unwittingly morphed a mud wrestling match into probably the  world’s first wet T shirt event  We laughed it off, what else, threw some towels  around them, meanwhile shielding our eyes through split fingers. We were after all, in the Old  South and chivalry was not dead. Dead drunk, but not dead dead..

Despite memos from Programming that I was near the edge, I disregarded  the standard KPOP format which was to come out of the news at the top of the hours, go into 20 minutes of music without identifying myself. Back-announce the songs and segue into a four or five  spot cluster, come out of the cluster with no greeting . play 20 more minutes of music,  stop at the 40 mark, back-announce and run the 4 spots etc etc. That clock was not for me.

Besides, I didn’t  hear from Mike Glickenhaus ordering me to cease and desist. I took that for an okay, Harry, but don’t drag me into this.

I took more liberties. Mixing the music better than it came out of the  Prophet System which paid no attention to tempo or whether it was a man or woman singing. It was not unusual for The Prophet to spit out a call to play two or three men in a row, Mel Torme, Andy Williams, and John  Gary, all of whom sounded basically alike, or Jack Jones, and  Vic Damone  back-to-back

The KPOP generation had been imprinted by the great radio stations of their time to rotate music with the Boy, Girl, Group, Instrumental order of play, forgotten when rock came in, but very much alive in their collective memories. I snuck in broader more exciting music..

I also broke format after two songs into the hour and did a bit, which the Sales Department loved because they saw I was eager to morph it into an isolated commercial pitch, more money for them and a chance for me to shine.

Write that down. Ingratiate Sales, a sneaky way to operate.

Inspired by my success, I broke format more often to do a one-liner, and then history was made when I got on the phone with Senator John McCain and, with this help, launched a campaign to allow cruise ships to land here in San Diego instead of Ensenada, because of an archaic law forbidding ships to make more than two consecutive  stops in the U.S.

The result was that cruise lines, taking the hint that a major Senator was on their tail , reconfigured their trips, and cruising stopped  being such torture for our elderly travelers, no longer having to run the three hour Mexican gauntlet.

San Diego’s cruise industry  tripled in size, and the Port District paid tribute to me,  proclaiming Happy Hare Harbor Day. All of this accomplished within the parameters of an archaic music-driven format, and, if you are thinking that I  probably trashed what numbers KPOP had, well….

The 2000 Arbitron  4 book average ratings showed me winning #1  45+  AQH’s with  the top TSL in the market pitted against all of the market powerhouses who were sweeping music with all the produced elements that  proclaimed them to be hot stuff..

KPOP was not fated to be. The format was shifted to Air America a couple of years later. KPOP’s  call letters were changed to KLSD., and one began to hear a liberal  philosophy being espoused, in an attempt to balance the usual right wing talk of its powerhouse brother KOGO. This switch happened prior to the General Election when Al Gore was looming close to becoming our next president.

None of this posturing did Clear Channel any good. The FCC landed on them, anyway, forcing them to sell their five Mexican licensed stations. Clear Channel anticipated that those stations were going to be spun off, and  responded by stopping spending money on them with  the result that elegant stations like 91X  went into the dumper.

This story has a happy ending. Mike Glickenhaus slid out of his role as Clear Channel’s main man, and formed a syndicate that bought three of the five  stations being spun off:  Magic 92.5,  Z90.3 and the legendary 91X.

. He is already pouring money into them and staffing them with winners in Sales and Programming, pro’s with a history of making things happen.

And Bonus! Bonus!  Mike Glickenhaus asked me to come in and talk to his talented morning show hosts about doing winning morning shows.

He had known all along about my callous disregard for corporate policy. Programmers complained to him about me, but he diplomatically shined them on, and I didn’t put him in the position of having to defend me in a showdown..

I called my  ploy, “HUMMing……Hiding under Mike’s mantle.”