The Infamous Martin and Howard Snow Job

Howard and I could not have asked for more sincere support from ABC than we received when we embarked upon our WXYZ morning radio quest in Detroit. It was 1967 and Detroit was in the thrall of J.P. McCarthy, the morning giant at WJR. We had been briefed on J.P., before arriving.

There is no way that he would have referred to John the Baptist as “Jack” the way some contemporary jocks would do.

He had a silken baritone one-on-one delivery, that one woman buyer told me was very sexy, and intimate, like he had just finished making love to her and then was paying her the ultimate respect of propping himself up on one elbow and asking her opinion on things. I came near to saying, “Wait a minute. I’m a good listener,” but I dropped it. It has since occurred to me to bring references under such circumstances, but then again, I may have been remiss a few times, so the list might have backfired.

J.P. McCarthy was one of those rare communicators who only had to utter a simple declaration. and it would be clutched to the collective bosoms of his many thousands like he was foretelling The Second Coming. ” J.P would go on to explain wind chill factor in his mellifluous tones but the effect was as if he had just explained infinity. “Did you hear what J.P. said this morning? He said that the reading on your thermometer is not the true way to determine the actual temperature. There is this thing called wind chill factor.” I could not then fathom why he was so popular. I mean wind chill factor is interesting, but…

More sorehead data: He sported a 40 Hooper his first 6a-7a hour, during baseball season., a hangover from Tiger Baseball the night before.. Detroit loved their Tigers and filled the stadium with boisterous fans. The ones who could not go to the game tuned in by the tens of thousands and left their dial on WJR to make J.P look good the next day. From 7a till 10a, he settled into mid-20’s, a doable target for us.

Finally, the coup de grace. He played golf with agency principals and was a near scratch golfer at that. I played tournament level ping pong, but didn’t expect any takers.

Hal Neal had envisioned our playing “rock”, to fill the creneau then open in the market. But, Neal abruptly died, and things changed. Ralph Beaudin, Neal’s; successor as President of ABC radio suffered us to go through a get-acquainted reception at the New York ABC penthouse of Leonard Goldenson, the network Board Chairman. There, we met all the Blair reps who had been flown in to meet the new conquerors. Then, as we went back down the elevator, we were startled to see Beaudin riding down with us.

He asked us to follow him into a dark little café where he dropped it on us that we were not going to rock but would butt heads with J.P. playing his Middle of the Road music. It was like he had dropped a cherry bomb into our laps. Beaudin spoke in crisp tones. The way he said it, it was the most logical thing in the world that we would meet J..P. on his own turf. Beaudin was the president. We were not about to buck him on this, but talk about sucking the air out of the room…

Smiling vapidly, we rose, and proffered limp hands to him and he gave us what felt like a bowl of custard for a handshake. Great! Either the man hated us, or had boundless confidence in us. I have never figured out which.

Specs and I spent the flight back to Detroit in a vain attempt to console each other. “That’s okay,” I said. “We both know the music, There is a lot of grabbing stuff we can throw in that he isn’t playing.” It was true, J.P. wasn’t rattling any cages. We had spent time listening to him and he wasn’t ready for Bufferin. Everything he played was vanilla..

Stoked by black coffee served by a stew who treated us like she knew great things were happening, we began to plot our music-. Whatever happened to those really hip stews?- We’ll play a lot of upbeat Sinatra, and the Artie Shaw Grammercy Five, and Basie, and Johnny Keating., Peggy Lee, Buddy Greco, even Dorsey’s Well Git.It” We outlined a couple of dozen artists and their songs so that we knew we were both on the same track, and I actually said, “Specs, we are going to kill every bear in the forest.”

Our arrival at the station later the following morning was filled with resolve, that the Martin and Howard Show was going to swing. There, we met our new Program Director. Lee Allen was a pleasant fellow who had obviously been directed to keep a loose tether on us, nothing we would notice. We liked him, but that was going to be our last meeting. The next day, we received a copy of a letter of resignation from him, directed to the Area VP Chuck Fritz.

Lee sent us a side letter in which he regretted not being able to work with us, but that he could not work under such circumstances. To this day, we do not know what those circumstances were, but we realized shortly after that things were falling apart with the death of our champion, Hal Neal.

Lee may have thought, like us, that we were going to rock. Another blow: New York, not he, was going to program our music.

Shortly after Allen’s departure, we began receiving the music lists from New York. They were a disaster. Let me put it this way. Ralph Flanagan was in heavy rotation. Who was programming us? Lawrence Walk? Then worse, our music sheet didn’t change with each day. In fact, Specs and I were presented with basically the same music list every day for six weeks. It couldn’t have been Welk. He would have done better by us.

Chuck Fritz must have realized that we were not being well served. He walked in one day at the end of a show, smiling, “I have a great idea, he exulted. .”We’re going to New York and put on a get acquainted show at Julius Monk’s room beneath the Plaza Hotel. I am going to invite all of the national buyers. It’ll be a big lunch. We’re going to let them know about you guys.” We yelped with delight. Imagine! Martin and Howard play the Plaza.

A couple of weeks later, Specs and I had learned several songs which we were to sing, backed up by a professional couple who were gifted with the ability to blend their voices with us to give us the lift that the tough New York buyer crowd had the right to expect. The guy wrote the material, played a mean piano, sang beautifully and performed big time. His gorgeous wife had a full Broadway quality voice..

A week of rehearsal with this couple who obviously were going to carry the show, and we were pronounced ready to take on The Apple.

The premise of the Plot, if I can call it that: Martin and Howard had come to Detroit much the way that the French explorer Rene-Robert Cavalier Sieur de LaSalle, (or was it Nathan Detroit?) had several hundred years before and brought happiness and enlightenment., unless you were an Indian. But we weren’t playing to them.

Specs and I got genuine laughs. but ABC had taken no chances,. They hired professional laughers and sprinkled them into the crowd,. Even the slightest moue on my or Specs’ part resulted in an avalanche of laughter., The buyers laughed real laughs. Why Not?. It was a free lunch in a grand venue. The show was a hit. No Tony Award but, now, we were on track

Read the previous adventure titled “Lions and Tigers and Hare Oh My 2 and you will find a more complete description of our shtick as we grooved into the market and the show itself.

There are strange things done in the Midnight Sun by the men who moil for gold

The Arctic Trails have their secret tales

That would make your blood run cold

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

But the queerest they ever did see

Was the Martin and Howard Expedition

on WXYZ.

Apologies to Robert W Service

Next week, possibly the most bizarre promotion ever foisted on the Detroit radio public. It was decked in despair, trapped in near tragedy and sated with satire.

Stay tooned.