Lore has it that when the first settlers arrived in the region now known as Detroit, , the countryside was swarming with Indians who were constantly on the warpath, killing off the new arrivals by the hundreds. Typical among these stories: an Indian raid wiped out a family, leaving only a young woman survivor. She lay among the smoking ruins of their crude prairie home when a cowboy rode up, surveyed the horrific scene, and looked down on her bloodied body. “Oh thank God, you have come, sir,” She cried. “My family has all been killed. My horses and cattle stolen. My husband is dead. They burned all our crops and our home,” He listened to her plaintive wail, then dismounted, and slowly began to unbuckle his belt, and lower his pants.. “Lady,” he said softly,” This jist ain’t yore day.” This is one of countless tales about the perils of trying to make it in Detroit.

Martin and Howard‘s Detroit Snow Job, Part 2

The environment at WXYZ was quiet, too quiet if you ask me. I told Specs that I had strolled through the Sales Department that morning, and three salesmen were standing around the water cooler discussing what they had done over the weekend. One actually said, “I painted the fence Saturday.” This was followed by similar folksy tales from the others, nothing about actually going out and selling something.

A year and a half had passed. There had been an initial rush of excitement when we arrived, but the sudden death of our champion, Hal Neal, the ABC Radio president had put a damper on things. Apparently, Neal had a vision of us that he had not shared with his successor, Ralph Beaudin, leaving a palpable void in the wake of his death.

Beaudin, descended on us at our initial meeting in New York, and proclaimed that we were not going to rock as had been our agreement with Neal, but instead would play soft standards, elevator music…….. and the elevator was going down.

Specs and I decided then and there that if there was to be excitement we would have to create it ourselves. We took stock of our resources. The show was terrific, but there had been no way to get the buzz outside of the building and Sales was preoccupied with fence painting.

To get the ball rolling, we decided that the show’s lack of progress was our fault. This is the best motivator I know of, blame yourself and then you have to do something about it.

On the narrow plus side, our only asset was us. We got that out of the way first. Now, what obstacles did we have to overcome? The most glaring liability obstructing us was WXYZ’s lack of signal. We barely covered the county.

WJR radiated over the entire Midwest. No one had mentioned signal when we signed on. Lack of signal alone could kill us, but we soldiered on in our merciless self-analysis.

The inevitable question arose, were we as good as our arch rival, J.P. McCarthy? He was amazingly good, but. it was not in our collective psyches to let a little thing like an imposing competitor stand in our way. I had listened to him and admired his elegant presence, but that was about it. Nothing impeded our success, except the ratings.

Then I was hit by a flashing insight. I would do some research on JP, his background, how he had arrived at this point that enabled him to slide so effortlessly into his slot at WJR and dominate the market.

I knew that J.P. had done a stint at San Francisco and competed unsuccessfully against the legendary Don Sherwood. Competing against Sherwood in San Francisco had broken many a man He was probably the greatest jock who ever lived.

I called my chum, Jack Carney, an all-time great, who had worked with Sherwood at KSFO and who might have an insight or two about JP.

I had known Carney since a brief encounter in Galveston at KGBC where he had followed me on the air after I went to KLAC. Since then, he had become a towering presence in St Louis at KMOX. Jack was amused at my call. He had followed my successes in San Diego and Cleveland and probably thought it was about time for me to stumble, but he played it straight.

“You want to know about J.P.?” he asked, echoing my question. “He was a solid jock who came to San Francisco like a lot of others who thought they could take Don Sherwood, but he fell short..”

Carney was enjoying this. I had received calls from him during difficult times in his career. Now, he was the master and I was the pupil.

“Don never considered J.P. much competition. In fact, J.P wound up copying Sherwood, then going back to Detroit and applying a lot of those lessons. I understand that he is doing a lot of interviews and charity and community involvement Stuff Don does so well..

I told him that J.P. was not a naturally funny man like Sherwood, but agreed that he apparently had gone to school on him.

Carney grew serious. “Take the money, buddy I hear you and Howard are being paid big time. If ABC wants to keep you, they will hang in there with you. It will take a new show like yours at least two years to get going, but you are better than he is and I would keep hammering away..”

He suddenly turned grim. “I have to hang up Harry. I had a freak accident.”

“ Oh yeah?” I said, suddenly concerned. “Yeah, he said, “A freak fell on me.” He hung up laughing. Damn! He gotcha’d me with one of my own jokes.

Carney also had taken what he had learned at KSFO working with Sherwood and applied those techniques in St Louis where he achieved a legendary status. This brilliant man died young of a heart attack.

Sherwood, a great admirer of Carney, always broke up when they were struggling to get through a two man routine. Carney was a bright student of Sherwood. (Google Sherwood at KSFO and you will find him and Carney)

I didn’t tell Specs about my phone call. Instead, I went to him and shouted, “ We have to get outside and do some shtick. Chuck Fritz thinks that promoting us means taking us to New York and prancing us around in front of the buyers, but that ain’t us. Hell! Let’s get rolling.”

The ideas began to explode. This was when we came up with the promotion I described earlier in the episode titled, “Detroit Lions and Tigers and Hare #3” in which we rounded up the Detroit Carrier Pigeon Club and invaded J.P.’s turf at Tiger Stadium.

There, we oversaw the launching of several hundred carrier pigeons to all the major league cities to spread the word that the Tigers were going to win the pennant. 60,000 spectators (Mostly WJR listeners) cheered us lustily when we pulled off that caper. Next!

This kind of tumulturing was our strength, going out of our immediate realm, and engaging the competition in their own turf. It was Imminent Domain applied to radio.

No matter how good our show was, we weren’t going to connect unless the public got energized by our unique brand of creative ass kicking.

You would never guess what happened next. It happened to us and we barely can conceive of it to this day.

One morning after our show, as we returned to our office to plot the next day’s high jinx, four men appeared at our door and asked if they could see us for a minute. Ordinarily, this was no time to intrude on our set routine, but their grim demeanor prompted us to make room for them. They were dressed in outdoorsman’s clothes. Khaki shirt and pants, heavy duty boots. A few day’s stubble on their weathered faces.

They had barely sat down when one of the said, “We have been listening to you guys and we really enjoy your show. We decided to come to you with an idea for a promotion.

Specs nodded. We were up for anything.

Their leader spoke in a firm confident tone. “We’re internationally known outdoorsmen. We’ve been all over the world trekking the wildest country there is.” He handed us several Outdoorsman type magazines with their picture on the covers, describing their “daring exploits.”

Breaching our silence, he continued, “We want to walk across Northern Canada in the winter near the North Pole,.. If you will underwrite us, we’ll do it in your name. We’ll call it ‘The Martin and Howard Expedition.”.

Walk across northern Canada? In blinding blizzards? Were these guys nuts? Did we care?

Next week: Mush, you huskies!


PS: Not that I know where Northern Canada is. I once spent two weeks in the Southeast looking for the Northwest Mounted Police.. (Drum beat)