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I went to the Tulsa Tiki website and was astounded to see that the author of the page wanted to talk to me - Lorrie Akins. I guess you found my question on the Tiki News web site. I was so excited to see the Tulsa Tiki site. I was born and raised in Tulsa, Ok. I lived there until about 1982 when I went off to college in Texas and later to Illinois. Eventually, I settled down in California for about 7 years and am now residing in Chicago, Illinois. I got into Tiki while living in California. By that time all of the Tiki stuff that I was never aware of while living in Tulsa was all gone. Boo-Hoo!!!!! I stepped into the Jade East once with my brother to pick up some food and was very curious at what I saw, but didn't know what to think. Later I tried to go back when I realized what I had found and it was gone, gone, gone! I am very happy to now live in a town that hasn't destroyed all of its Tiki stuff. I even have a Tiki bar in my basement and run with a crowd of Tiki maniacs who also have Tiki bars in their house (there are about 6 couples in the group). I know the Trade Winds had some fantastic Tiki mugs, but what about the Jade East? Do you know of any Tiki places left anywhere in the surrounding areas of Tulsa?
Hurrah, my message-in-a-bottle found you. I sure don't know of any surviving Tiki places in Tulsa (except the Tiki Lounge out east; I'm not sure how Tiki they are at this point). We hope to have more about Tulsa Tiki soon. Thanks for writing, Lorrie!
Rodney Lay (Rodney and the Blazers)
Great to hear from you, Rodney. I'll get your note onto the Dance Party page.
You missed more than a night of the Olympics! Jim McKay, in a highly unusual
dispensation by ABC, joined the NBC team at the Olympics these past two weeks
at the invitation of the NBC sports chief--in tribute to McKay's great work.
Tonight (Sunday) he announced he's "coming back home" to ABC.
Twilley owned the local franchise for The Athlete's Foot chain, not
Footlocker.
In the pre-Good Morning America days of the early 1970's - that was "Bewitched" lighting up ABC. Cy Tuma (master ad libber) - if running early - would do a time check ad libbed on the i.d. With much faith as a projectionist could have THAT ABC would be there - you just took the net at 10:30:00am and up popped Bewitched's open.... With the great Olympic games ending (I worked thru all and NEVER saw a night of coverage and I HATE that), I will forever recall being on duty at 8 on the morning of the Israeli team hostage/murder tragedy at the Munich Summer Olympics of '92. ABC Sports' Jim McKay did some of the best coverage of a horrific news story that an announcer and non-newsman has ever done.
Last heard Jim McKay was still alive in MD - raising race horses...
He was an efficiency expert at one time in his career for Western Electric in the 50's and 60's - but prefered running camera shops in the Chicago suburbs to running stopwatches on workers' performance to do timed tasks. I can still joke that while in high school and later on breaks from college, that he paid me up to $6.50 an hour as a camera store geeky saleskid. Not bad for 1970/71. My first job at 8 paid a lot less and even when I had made director at 8 in 1974 - Mr. Gorton's retail pay rates eclipsed my $2.50 an hour at KTUL for punching the news.
By the way - the radio in his camera store in the Chicago suburbs was ALWAYS
set on WAIT-AM to hear John Doremus or other similar voices. Heaven help
us clerk geeks if someone switched it to rocker WLS or jazz voice WSDM and
did not re-tune the "store music" WAIT after Mr. G had gone for the day...Mr.
& Mrs. G also passed thru Tulsey a couple of times on cross country road
trips in their later years and always said "what a neat town..".
In the pre-Good Morning America days of the early 1970's - that was "Bewitched" lighting up ABC. Cy Tuma (master ad libber) - if running early - would do a time check ad libbed on the i.d. With much faith as a projectionist could have THAT ABC would be there - you just took the net at 10:30:00am and up popped Bewitched's open.... With the great Olympic games ending (I worked thru all and NEVER saw a night of coverage and I HATE that), I will forever recall being on duty at 8 on the morning of the Israeli team hostage/murder tragedy at the Munich Summer Olympics of '92. ABC Sports' Jim McKay did some of the best coverage of a horrific news story that an announcer and non-newsman has ever done.
Last heard Jim was still alive in MD - raising race horses... have ever done.
Sorry the USA hockey team lost to Canada, but watching the (gold medal) winning coach, I recalled watching Pat Quinn play for the Tulsa Ice Oilers. Pat Quinn played for the Oilers from 67-69 and two games during the 69-70 season. Hockey historian Paul O’Neill has an old photo of Pat Quinn, who had an illustrious NHL career as a player and coach.
http://pages.prodigy.net/oldchl/patquinn.jpg
When I was at KOTV in the late ‘60s, Twilley was catching passes at TU. At one point, each time he caught a pass, he set a new NCAA record. This was the angle Pat O’Dell, Ron Hagler and I used to shoot weekly features on the wide receiver and feed them to CBS Sports. We’d isolate three different cameras on Twilley during the game and I’d interview him afterwards.
In those days, we looked for creative ways to pad the paycheck. A more frequent
way was the standard offer: $10 bucks to put you on the air. Twenty dollars
to keep you off.
Didn't he do his local spots in the early days at KJRH? Who recalls?
That's the tag line for Dave Attell's TV show "Insomniac" on Comedy Central. He visits a different city every week and checks in with graveyard shift workers and drunks in the wee hours. I sent him a note a couple of months ago and an even better one just now, trying to persuade him to do Tulsa. If he can do Boise, why not Tulsa?
Rich in OK-lahoma
Here is artist Monte Toon, who worked with Carl "Uncle Zeb" Bartholomew on many of the "8's The Place promos.
http://www.nbc33.com/logos.htm
I guess the ringing of the WBAP cowbell is the only other special, radio station break phenomenon I can think of.
Lee Woodward has rung that WBAP cowbell (read near the bottom of the page). There are a number of mentions of WBAP on this site; try "WBAP" in the TTM Search Engine.
Lowell later found three pages on the NBC chimes: The NBC Chimes Machine, NBC Chimes, and The NBC Network Chimes...everything you conceivably might want to know...and you can hear them, too.
There was a promo with Don Woods, probably around 1966-70, in a diner. He was at a table as the owner went on and on in an Italian accent about "alla this good weather you bring us, Mr. Don-a Woods," and Woods is nodding and smiling politely. Next we hear thunder and see Don Woods lowering his umbrella with a sheepish look on his face. He's come into the same diner out of the rain. The owner says to him, "You got a reservation? I dunno if I got-a room-a for you. Maybe I can-a find you a table. Lemme see what I got. If I can-a squeeze you in here." He puts Woods into a chair, pushes it in tight to the table, and pours water into a glass on the table so that it splashes on Woods's hand. The voiceover comes on with something like, "Don Woods. At six and ten." Does anyone else remember this, or was this a figment of my imagination? I also think of the "raft of movies, by George" promo whenever I hear "The In Crowd." Fun site!
I remember that Don Woods commercial like it was yesterday, after your description. In case you missed it, Uncle Zeb talks about the making of the "Raft of movies, by George" promo in the TTM Gift Shop.
It reminded me, even at home, of my master. Of course, RCA, then the parent company, had Nipper, the dog, listening to his master's voice. I heard his bell. My favorite logo was the "N" that NBC came up with, only to discover that the public broadcasters in Nebraska had already adopted the same symbol. Litigation threatened and the Peacock reappeared. As a result of this fiasco, just one of many perpetrated by the geniuses, stacks of "N" memo pads, letterheads, and personal business cards were there for the taking.
I still have some.
NBC Television began moving away from the chimes as a visual and audio id in the late 50's, first with the color tv peacock, and also with the NB over the C, animation that network hands called "the snake" because of its movement to form the logo. A number of broadcasters claim to have used the chimes and been the inspiration for NBC's adopting them. One of them, in whose employ I once toiled, was WSB in Atlanta, which said they used the first three notes of "Over There," as an identifier. Old hands claimed that NBC transposed them to the G-E-C notes. I tend to doubt this, but guess it could be. Obviously, the most elegant network logo is the CBS Eye, virtually unchanged since it was introduced 50 years ago. Maybe the best logo ever, anywhere.
The book would probably be interesting to someone who grew up in Oklahoma City--but I didn't.
Undeniably OKC-centric, but still enlightening for me, at least.
Clever theory (like the one that HAL in "2001: A Space Odyssey" was named by taking the letters one ahead of IBM), but it is disputed in one of Lowell's links above.
I remember that for many years the chimes were played rather slowly, about three seconds worth---not more than five---starting at five seconds before the local announcer was to begin his call letters. Later, just about the time TV started up, they started speeding up the notes, so that it took about half the time as the original notes. I also have a vague recollection of KVOO having a set of chimes in the announcers' booth to be used when necessary.
Because I never worked at an NBC affiliate, and also never paid close attention
to early TV, some of these observations might be inexact. Maybe someone else
can provide more precise and accurate information.
The store at 45th and Peoria (just north of the former Holmes Elementary, now Tulsa Ballet Theatre) was called RedBud. Both funny names for grocery stores, if you think about it. There was also the Safeway (now Homeland) at 41st and Peoria. Three major grocery stores within a mile of each other: people must have been hungrier then.....
Casey's latest "crime" is being chief author of this year's Tulsa Press Club Gridiron. This annual show is getting back to its politically incorrect roots under her guidance. See the web site: http://www.geocities.com/tulsagridiron.
Yes, Waylon did have a Tulsa connection. Rance Wasson used to play with Waylon
back in the late seventies, maybe the very early eighties. Rance used to
play a lot at the Nine of Cups; I can't remember his band's name, but he
used to do a killer version of Silver Tongued Devil.
Thank you, James. I wish we had the footage of Don Woods falling off the horse; maybe some day. I'll check it out
Jitney Jungle, a grocery store chain seen in Tulsa in the 50s/early 60s, was just discussed, along with other businesses in the King and Sheridan area. We learned more about France Laux, a well-known baseball broadcaster of the 30s and 40s who started in Tulsa. Found an excellent online book entitled Oklahoma Music and The Broadcast Frontier by Kelly Raines. We were reminded of Bo Velvet and the Desert Snakes by a new reader. She also gave us some background on the Dance Party dancers. Lee Woodward contributed a talent rate sheet from 1963. Chris Kelly (aka Chris Shannon) remembered the transition from KAKC-AM to KCFO. In fact, he was the DJ who actually signed off KAKC for the last time, then signed the station back on as Inspiration Media's KCFO! Speaking of sign-offs, you can see a couple of daily TV sign-offs of the past on the "8's The Place" page...another to come later today. Speaking of KAKC, Scooter B. Segraves is recovering nicely from bypass surgery...follow the link to see his Get Well card. We also heard more about Miss Ronan of Central High, a teacher who inspired many radio/TV careers, and John Doremus, originally of Sapulpa, who became a nationally-heard radio announcer.
Read Guestbook 101 here. This is Guestbook
102.
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