The Story So Far…

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I just ran across the playlist for the “Showcase” radio program, number 17. (I think that would make the date sometime in early June, 1968.) I want to share this and then make a point about how the program progressed over its 200 show run before the transition to “Celebration Rock.”

Reel One:

“Here Come the Judge”  (artist not in my notes; maybe just as well…);  “I Want to Live” — Glen Campbell; “Indian Lake” — The Cowsills;   “Me the Peaceful Heart” —    Lulu;  “Cowboys to Girls”  — The Intruders; “Happy Song” — Otis Redding ; “Jelly Jungle”  — Lemon Pipers;  “A Man without Love”  — Englebert Humperdinck;   “Mrs. Robinson”  — Simon and Garfunkel

Reel Two:

“The Horse”  — Cliff Nobles and Co. ;  “Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy”  — The Tams?;  “I Love You”  — People;  “Choo Choo Train” — Box Tops ;   “Birthday Morning”  — The Association;  “Holy Man”  — Scott MacKenzie;   “Eyes of a New York Woman”  — B. J. Thomas

It’s been almost 40 years since that program aired, and all I have is the handwritten playlist…so the only way to describe what I might have done with those songs is this educated guess. Keep in mind that this was an hour-long show produced by an ad hoc group of Presbyterian radio folk who found themselves on the top-rated rock station in town.  “Judge” opened the show that night, just a “novelty” type song, up beat, to draw the teen audience into the hour. “I Want to Live” probably prompted the first generally religious comment or spot. “Lake” was simply a hit to hold the audience, as was the Lulu record (although something  certainly might have been made of the peaceful heart imagery).

“Cowboys to Girls” was another hit that may have gone “un-processed.” Reddings’ “Happy Song” again sounds as if it might have prompted a brief meditation. “Jelly Jungle?” Good grief! And the Humperdinck hit reflected what an odd time it was during this pop music era. To go from the Pipers to Englebert? The first half of the program ended with that song from “The Graduate” and I no doubt exploited the phrase, “Jesus loves you more than you will know,” though I would have treated that more sincerely than cynically.

In the second half of the show, “Be Young…” and “Holy Man” would have been worth exploring. (By the way, the group which called itself People included Larry Norman whose contributions to contemporary Christian music were noted here previously.)

By the 2ooth “Showcase” program, the format had evolved into a more creative hour, less beholden to Top 40 lists and more likely to feature one artist for the hour, showcase one new album, or to follow a theme with a mix of hits and album cuts that helped explore that one topic. Taking into account the occasional rerun, 200 programs would put us around 1972-73. I don’t recall any particular reason the name of the program had to change, except that I was thinking a new title might better express what the program was about. (I think that there was also a weekly movie presentation on one of the local TV stations that used “Showcase” in its title, so I may have been negatively influenced by the generic nature of the word.)

There were a couple of songs on the air around that time that included the idea of celebration, a word that had (and still has) very positive appeal. (“I Just Want to Celebrate” by Rare Earth, and “Ring of Hands” by Argent: “Celebration, an invitation to all join in a ring of hands together…”) There were posters around that urged people to “celebrate life!” And traditionally, churches “celebrate” particular rites (we celebrate Communion, for example). Plus, people of faith celebrate seasons like Christmas and Easter, find that faith brings joy, hope, and freedom, and follow “the Lord of the Dance,” referencing a very popular folk hymn of the day.  So, that word seemed an attractive link to what the show offered.

And, yes, we featured rock music, so getting that word into the name of the show seemed a good idea. But there was also a book published around that time by a religious publishing house, Rock 2000. The author referred to the planet Earth as a magnificent rock, and he looked ahead to what life and faith would be like on that rock in the year 2000. I began to think about how the program might reflect how we human beings could live out our faith on this “Celebration Rock” called Earth, the planet called to new life.

Playing on the word rock even further, Christians know that the gospels tell of Jesus building his church on the rock-like faith of the apostle Peter. And in the Hebrew Scriptures, God is referred to as “my Shepherd, the Rock of Israel,” and “my Rock and my Redeemer.” Rock is the Bible’s way of expressing strength and stability.

So, one week we aired “Showcase” number 200, and the next week, with just a hint of fanfare, we debuted “Celebration Rock” number 1. I sampled lines from the Rare Earth and Argent celebration cuts as “jingles” throughout those first few weeks, and continued to use the line, “Celebrating our new life together on this Celebration Rock called Earth” for years to come. Frankly, at some point I lost count of the total number of programs I produced week after week over the long run of the Showcase/Celebration Rock series. I suppose it’s enough to note again that the series ran from 1968 to 1991.

And looking ahead to further entries in this memoir/journal, I’m happy to note that CR soon won a national Gabriel Award Citation for best youth-oriented radio show, went into syndication from Binghamton, NY to Salem, Oregon (that’s almost coast-to-coast), and was nominated for a Billboard Music Award for best nationally syndicated radio series. Most important, the program nurtured the Christian faith of countless young (and older) listeners, treated contemporary music and musicians respectfully, and added a creative spirit to the very personal medium of radio. Plus, I got to do what I felt God was calling me to do. Not too shabby.

…Godspell and the Cosmic Christ

Soon after “Jesus Christ, Superstar” came “Godspell.” It was a long-running off-Broadway show that began as a Carnegie Tech thesis in teaching techniques, using the Gospel According to Matthew as a way to show a variety of teaching methods. Since Jesus had used storytelling and parables to get his gospel across to his disciples, John Michael Tebelak took many of those stories and framed them in puppetry, skits, and, eventually, song. Stephen Schwartz added the music and lyrics that have made Godspell so popular to this day, especially for community theater and youth productions. When the album was released and “Day By Day” became a hit for Robin Lamont and the original cast of the show, I featured the music on one show and later used sections of Godspell in other “Showcase” and “Celebration Rock” programs especially around Easter. That Godspell used hippie-clowns to tell the story of Jesus relationship with his followers was hardly controversial. There was a sincerity of purpose in the show, a respectful treatment of the Lord’s teachings, and almost a devotional nature to the whole production. Since there was a deep history to the concept of Christ as Clown (his followers were very early on referred to as “fools for Christ”), only the most conservative of Christian fundamentalists took offense. The rest of us were glad to see something so creative and fresh come out of the age of the so-called “Jesus Movement.”

I did two sets of interviews with casts of Godspell. One was with the director and cast of a local Richmond dinner theater production. But the earlier interview took place at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. where the “Godspell” run was renewed over and over, breaking many attendance records, and receiving standing ovations at every performance. I interviewed cast member Maggie Hyatt and Dean Pitchford who played Jesus in the Washington production. At one point in the conversation I remarked about the standing ovations, the long run, and the tight-knit feeling of family among the cast, and I asked, “When this all comes to an end…what next for you guys?”

“We go back to New York and pound the pavement, go to cattle calls, back to auditions,” Pitchford told me. The life of the little known actor. But there was more in store for Pitchford. He would later write the score for the movie “Footloose,” collaborate on music from “Fame,” and generally find fame as a song writer (lots of certified hits), screenwriter, and director. Pounding the pavement worked! (No doubt his appearance on my radio show contributed greatly to his success. I’m smiling as I write, you know.)

“Jesus Christ, Superstar” and “Godspell” were the two most widely celebrated religious pop/rock musicals, but there were others. I played the previous Webber-Rice collaboration “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” plus cuts from a two-record set called “Truth of Truths,” and from another called “Moses and the Impossible Ten.” I’m sure there were more examples. In the old days, I’d suggest you might find them in the “cut-out” bin at your local record store. Today, Google ’em.

Looking back on those contemporary musical interpretations of Biblical stories, I admired musicians and composers who used their talents to re-tell the ancient tales, to reframe the gospel message, to keep our attention focused on the life changing narratives of human encounters with the Divine. I once wrote a meditation about a young kid sitting in his bedroom after school, trying to teach himself the guitar. He strums, experiments with some chords, and in his heart of hearts thanks God for the music he is hearing as he plays. His efforts become a prayer without words. Beatitudes and psalms spring forth in his music. And the Christ who cannot be captured in one song, one hymn, one show, one story, one prayer…the cosmic Christ smiles and Easter fills the room with light (even when a note is bent or a chord misses its mark).

Next time, I think we’re ready to reach the 200th “Showcase” program and convert the local WBBL Sunday night program into what would become an award-winning (and losing), long-running, syndicated “Celebration Rock” show.

Superstar, Godspell, and the Cosmic Christ

In October 1970 the double album rock opera “Jesus Christ, Superstar” was released amid the expected controversy. Even if the book (lyrics) had been reverent and theologically orthodox, the concept of telling the story of Jesus’ passion through rock music would have generated harsh criticism from church circles. But the story as told by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice was far from an orthodox Biblical account. The Jesus portrayed in the album (and the album did come first, with the movie and stage productions later) was tormented by his call, sometimes confused over his mission, and far more vulnerable than previous media incarnations. (Compare the “Superstar” with the Christ images in films such as “The Greatest Story Ever Told” or “King of Kings.”) This was a “fully human” Jesus, without the “fully God” theology.  Judas was merely a helpless and sympathetic pawn in the story, and there was the more-than-implied love story (way before the “Da Vinci Code”) between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. As if those issues were not enough for most Christians of any theological stripe, there was a significant component of the Jesus story that was missing. The rock opera ended with the crucifixion. There was no resurrection, no Easter morning. The last cut on the album was entitled “John Nineteen: Forty-One,” a verse that described Jesus’ burial.

With all the pre-release publicity that simmered in the media, I wanted to hear the album myself and see if I could play a few cuts on “Showcase.” After listening and carefully reading the libretto, I wanted to  broadcast the work in its entirety. But there was a serious problem: my radio show was limited to an hour, WBBL’s traditional Sunday night assignment. When I told Dick Reuss about my desire to premier Superstar on my program, he jumped at the chance for WLEE to be a partner. The plan was that WBBL would broadcast the first hour and then we would do a quick station ID for both stations at 9 p.m., and the program would continue for another half hour. To simplify the process, I would go to the WLEE studios to introduce the “Showcase” special presentation of “Jesus Christ, Superstar” and Dick (or was it Randy Scott?) would play the album. Since the show was “live” that night, there is no recording of how it went, but only I would be interested in hearing again how we interrupted the record at 9 p.m to say “This is WBBL, 1480 on your dial, Richmond, Virginia.” “And this is WLEE, 1480 Radio, Richmond, Virginia.” The legalities accomplished, we returned to the passion of the Christ.

Actually, I wasn’t taking this effort lightly. This was a highly controversial move, and if the church elders had complained about WBBL’s rock format in general and a few songs along the way in particular, there were sure to be some voices raised in protest this time. So, I used much of the previous week’s program to promote and interpret the rock opera, and I offered listeners a sheet that listed each scene, each song, and the name of the first character whose voice they would hear as the song opened. I wanted listeners to know what was going on, and short of violating copyright laws and copying the whole hefty libretto, I just sent everyone a perfectly legal summary.

And the week following the broadcast, I gathered several people in the WBBL studio to respond to what they had heard. I may still have a reel-to-reel copy of that “Showcase” program; I hope so, since I can’t remember right now who I invited to join in the discussion. We literally sat at a round table and played some cuts off the album and commented throughout the hour. It was a great show! The discussion deflected any church criticism of the radio show and/or Superstar, since we all agreed that there was merit to the musical work, obvious shortcomings theologically, and differences of opinion as to how much we appreciated the Webber-Rice album.

One thing I recall clearly from the night of the original 90 minute broadcast was the immediate phone response at the station. Since “Showcase” was always on tape, I never got phone response; just mail. But being at WLEE while the album played, I heard from callers. One man called to say that the program was so blasphemous that he wouldn’t be surprised if lightning hit the station tower! But another listener said, “That’s the best show Jeff Kellam has done yet! Really great!” Of course I didn’t take that as much of a compliment since I really had nothing to do with the content of the show that night. But the premier of Superstar and the open and honest dialogue it generated did create some really good radio, a far cry from just playing the hits over and over.

And then came Godspell. Some reflections in the next post.

Today’s News about Yesterday

I heard the news today…Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton played the Garden last night. And they have two more shows there, a kind of Blind Faith reunion. The USA Today article said this was the first time in 40 years they had played “In the Presence of the Lord” together. Nice that they got together to help me celebrate the 40th anniversary of “Celebration Rock,” huh?

The “Blind Faith” album is one I saved when I went through my collection a few months ago and sold scores of vinyl disks. Inside the jacket was a clipping: a “Time Magazine” review of the album and a concert Blind Faith did around the time “The Sound of Showcase” (as I called it on the air then) started. I don’t know how I happened on the album when it debuted, but I ran the whole thing one Sunday night on Showcase, thrilled that there was lyrical content that fit perfectly the intention of the program. There was “In the Presence of the Lord,” of course. Plus “Can’t Find My Way Home” and “Sea of Joy.” (The Clapton-Winwood-Grech-Baker collaboration was known as a “super group” as was any band made up of the stars of other bands, like Cream.)

Showcasing that album brought good mail. And toward the last years of “Celebration Rock” I dedicated an hour to Steve Winwood “Then and Now,” using newer material but also playing some Blind Faith cuts. That remains one of my favorite CR shows. Great lyrics and solid music. And my script was pretty good too!

I heard the news today…that Larry Norman died. 60 years old; heart failure. The CBS radio news report this morning correctly noted that Norman was a pioneer of Christian rock music. If memory serves (sometimes it does), I did play Larry Norman’s music within the “Showcase” era, that is, within the first 200 programs before it segued into “Celebration Rock.” As I’ve previously mentioned, I did look for some blatantly Christian music to mix in with the hit music I featured each week. The first several months, from February 1968 on, there wasn’t much at all to choose from. Some folk mass hymns, jazz mass tunes, and even bossa nova style liturgical music was as close as I could come to “contemporary Christian music” back then. As I looked through letters last week, I was surprised to find that one listener sent me a pamphlet promoting a Christian duo called “Jonathan and Charles.” But they didn’t rock.

Later I ran across an album by “The Crusaders,” not the Joe Zawinal jazz group, but a youthful-sounding band that played rock versions of both familiar and newly-written hymns. They fit the format better, but it was Larry Norman, who left the secular rock world, who echoed Martin Luther’s question, “Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?” Norman’s album “Only Visiting  This Planet” did find its way to my program, and soon there were other rockers who paved the way for everyone from Amy Grant to Stryper.

Frankly, I had three reservations about playing that music once I had discovered it. First, I was suspicious of its intent. Some of it wasn’t very good, though it did have a beat and you could dance to it(!). I wondered if some of these musicians just hadn’t been able to make it in the secular venues, so they fashioned some God-lyrics and found great success in church halls. (Yes, I guess the same could have been said of me!) Second, even if the groups were sincere about their dedication to the faith, very often their theology was decidedly fundamentalist, and their songs were often full of self-piety, pie-in-the-sky, or icky love songs to Jesus. I was finding more meat in the secular songs of the day, music that called for peace and justice, racial harmony, and truth-telling. Larry Norman’s weighty contributions to the contemporary Christian genre did give rise to many anthems sung by the Jesus People of the early 70’s, but Jesus also made the Top 40 thanks to some so-called secular artists: Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky,” Ocean’s “Put Your Hand in the Hand of the Man from Galilee,” and (someone’s) “Jesus Is a Soul Man.” (Oh, and the Doobie Brothers’ “Jesus is Just All Right with Me,” with the words “all right” having a more affirmative meaning back then, as in “all right!”)

My third issue with the early (and even later) contemporary Christian music had to do with my format. the point of the program was to use Top 40 or hit album cuts to draw and hold on to a youthful audience. While other Christian broadcasters began to play Christian rock almost exclusively, I tried to (pardon the word) exploit the hit music, interpret it in the light of faith, and make connections between Sunday’s show and Monday’s music. Many, many listeners gave me good feedback, affirming that they would be reminded of the faith connections I had made on Sunday’s program when they heard the hit songs played over and over on the radio through the week. While I did add some contemporary Christian artists to the Celebration Rock playlists over the years, I stayed true to the original intention of that Sunday night hour of WBBL/WLEE and “played the hits” and held the audience, and still managed to keep the faith!

[A sidebar is helpful here: I devoted two or three whole programs to John Michael Talbot, plus the earlier work of the Talbot Brothers, and also used Terry Talbot’s solo album cuts on Celebration Rock. They had “cred” (sorry) and so did I, so they did find a home on CR. For two or three years I played John Michael Talbot’s “The Lord’s Supper” on World Communion Sunday, and I also featured his gentle album of contemporary Psalm settings. Those were weeks there was a little less “rock” in the celebration.]

Next, it seems right to move toward the premier of “Jesus Christ, Superstar” on WBBL, and the more orthodox “Godspell.” 

When Things Go Terribly Right

After that post about glitches, most of which were quite minor and hardly worth noting I suppose, it’s probably a good thing to move on to the things that worked right, and that led to a very long run for the “Celebration Rock” program.

For one thing, people listened to the program, and responded. Over the past few days, I’ve been re-reading scores of letters I had saved, some for nearly 40 years! The letters came at first from teenagers who had found something helpful, dare I say “meaningful,” even inspirational on the radio. But letters also came from teachers and coaches, from church leaders and music therapists, from radio station folk and whole families. Many of the letters simply encouraged me to “keep up the good work.” In the early years especially, some young people sent me poetry, prayers, and song lyrics they had written. A few times, teens came into the studio to read their poetry for the show, and one guy named Sam even directed a short play which we aired. Some of the offerings were dark and filled with angst. I received some troubling mail from kids who had thought about suicide. As I read these over recently, I prayed that I had responded to the most important ones all those years ago, and that my responses had been helpful.

Many listeners wrote often, and now 25, 30, 35 years later, I still remembered their names. Sometimes I met them at retreats or conferences. One young woman who wrote several letters from a small town in Virginia eventually found herself in a nursing home in Richmond. She had cerebral palsy and the biggest smile I’ve ever seen. As I read through those letters, I wondered what became of those writers. Well, for one thing they’ve aged! I think of the teens who wrote in 1970. They may well have grandchildren now! What of the guys who wrote from jail or prison? And what became of the poets and aspiring musicians?

All these years later, it was just time to clean house, and finally let go of the mail. But I did read each letter again, somehow feeling that I had to honor the connection with so many listeners who cared about or affirmed what I was doing on the program.

Something else about the letters…I smiled as I got to the end of some of the longer epistles. The writers poured out their thoughts about their faith journeys, their questions and doubts, their credos, and then the last line would read something like, “Please play ‘Wichita Lineman’ by Glen Campbell.” (Maybe they thought that if I played the request, it was a sign that I had read their letter.)

One more thing: I certainly got a lot of help in choosing artists to “showcase.” In the first couple of years, writers asked to hear programs featuring the music of Crosby, Stills, & Nash, the Moody Blues, Diana Ross, and even the Electric Prunes! (I did play their entire “Mass in F-Minor” one night, and later I used their “Kol Nidre” along with an interview with Rabbi Jack Spiro about the Jewish High Holy Days. In fact, I re-ran that interview and the Prunes album many times.)

I chose the subject of this post quite deliberately. When things went right with this weekly hour-long radio program, there was something terrible about it. Not terror, really, but some genuine fear. The words I wrote and spoke, the music I chose and played, the topics we explored together …very often spoke to the deepest places of many listeners. More than one listener admitted that for them the radio program was as close to church or worship as they would get that week. That became a heavy responsibility, and sobering for me as the writer/producer/voice. Many people, young and older, heard what they needed to hear, or what they wanted to hear, or what God intended them to hear. Boldly I confess that the Spirit moved in my heart and theirs, and the love of Christ embraced us all.

Technical Glitches

WBBL went on the air in 1924, making it perhaps Virginia’s second licensed radio station. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, WBBL was never a full time station; it was on the air only limited hours to broadcast services and other programs from Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church to its surrounding neighborhood. Over the years, as the broadcast spectrum in Richmond filled up with other AM stations, it was prudent (for many reasons) to let another station use WBBL’s frequency during the hours Grace Covenant had no programming. Thus, by 1968 when I was asked to produce the youth-oriented program that was to become “Celebration Rock,” WLEE “played the hits” full time, except for 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. and 8 to 9 p.m. on Sundays. The worship service on Sunday mornings was carried live, but for many years the evening hour was taped, though there may have been live announcements (station ID’s, intros/outros, etc.) or live segments on occasion.

So, WBBL didn’t have a state of the art studio in 1968 when the station switched from pre-recorded sermons, discussions, and religious music to Top 40 rock and roll. There were two aging turntables, two old Ampex reel-to-reel tape recorders, a couple of “salt shaker” microphones, and a classic audio board that tied all the equipment together. The signal went from the church via phone lines to WLEE’s studio and transmitter for broadcast. Since my contribution to WBBL’s programming schedule was only experimental at first, there was no move to spend the considerable dollars it would have taken to update the studio for a relatively fast-paced rock show. (I’m not even sure the turntables had 45 rpm capability!)

For the first years of the show’s life, we borrowed several studios for production, and then I would deliver the tapes (two 30-minute reels) to the church for playback on Sunday nights. I first recorded (as mentioned earlier) at the seminary’s WRFK studio. At some point, I moved to WLEE’s studios, at the invitation of the ‘LEE program director. Then, in the mid to late 1970’s, I taped “Celebration Rock” in the basement studio of Guy Spiller, my one-time co-host of WRFK’s “Headset Jazz.” Guy had a well-equipped studio and enough old Ampex tape machines that I could record the show at his place and run off copies for syndication too. I think it was in the late 70’s that WBBL was transformed into a modern production facility and “Celebration Rock” had its own recording studio (though in ten years’ time, production shifted to yet another new facility in the Video Education Center of the Presbyterian School of Christian Education). Are you taking notes on all this?

Keeping in mind that my radio ministry was always under-funded and that I had no staff, it was inevitable that some glitches appeared (or made noises) during production and playback of the hour-long show. In the early days, while I was balancing radio with seminary studies, I didn’t have time to polish every rough spot. If a record started off at the wrong speed, if “the needle got stuck” (a archaic term akin to the phrase “dialing a phone number”), or I couldn’t quite get my words right…the audience heard it. It did make for a show that sounded “live” but it fell far short of professional broadcast standards. Some mistakes could be fixed with a wax pencil, razor blade, and splicing block. But other times…well, glitches happen.

There were times a WRFK turntable had a loose wire and only one channel of a stereo record would be heard. Sometimes the old WRFK Ampex machines just got tired toward the end of a reel and the tape speed slowed. In playback then the recording seemed to speed up, and there were times we didn’t know anything was wrong until the tape was broadcast, and by then it was too late and I sounded like Mickey Mouse.

I had to clearly mark the reels so that reel 1 would be played first, and then reel 2. But there were those rare occasions when operator error caused the show to start in the middle. There was a few times when either there was a problem with the phone line between WBBL and WLEE or when no one showed up at WBBL to play back the tapes. WBBL’s operator would always phone over to the WLEE engineer to check the lines a few minutes before airtime, and if that call never came, WLEE faced an hour’s worth of dead air, not being licensed to operate during that hour. Once the ‘LEE chief engineer Tom Kita called me at home to report that there was no WBBL signal for some reason. He wanted to fill the time somehow and asked if I had any ideas about how to save the hour. Was there anything the WLEE jock could read?  I think I just told them to sign on as WBBL and do their normal format, but the jock (Was it “Shane, Brother Shane?”) did try to play “meaningful hits” and may have waxed philosophical to be true to the WBBL intent!

Through the many years of “Celebration Rock,” I encountered other glitches. Tape had two sides, and the signal was recorded on the oxide side, but more than once an operator somehow twisted the tape and played the wrong side. The audio would be muffled to the point of inaudibility. Sometimes the operator would catch the error and stop the show, twist the tape around and make things right; sometimes he just let it go, assuming I had given him a poor copy.

The most embarrassing glitch came well into the “Celebration Rock” era, when the program was in syndication, being recorded in the Spiller studio. I got a call from the program director at WQDR in Raleigh, NC, asking me to listen to a segment of that week’s program which had been mailed to his station and aired the Sunday before. It wasn’t my show. In fact, while labeled “Celebration Rock,” the reel actually contained music from a Halloween party Guy Spiller’s brother had DJ’d for some friends. Mark had evidently picked up a recycled reel of tape and borrowed it for the party, and then returned it to his brother’s studio. Running a little late that week, I had neglected to check the contents of the reel before mailing it down to Raleigh. I was chagrined. Red-faced. And apologetic. The PD told me he really enjoyed CR, that the show drew positive response, but that if something like that ever happened again…

[At the time, I couldn’t believe the radio station personnel had let the whole hour-long tape play on the air. Surely he sensed something was wrong; shouldn’t the Sunday morning “air cadet” have stopped the show and played something else? But, of course, ultimately it had been my error. And for WQDR and me, far more than just a glitch.]

The thing about any glitch is that it detracts from the high purpose of the program. Here is a segment about God’s grace, really good news and the most important message a listener needed to hear that night…or here is what more than one listener told me was a time of worship on that Sunday…and twisted tape, a bad level, or the “Monster Mash” interrupted the spiritual journey. Thankfully, most weeks all was well, and those weeks when technology skipped a beat, the Spirit was still able to be heard in listening hearts.

Next, “Showcase” leads to “Celebration Rock” and national recognition.

A Walk with Procol Harum

One of the most popular programs in the “Showcase” series was a Simon and Garfunkel special. It was suggested by a listener whose letter from 1969 I discovered just yesterday. Radio itself was quite a bit more interactive in “the old days.” Today, with computers choosing the music, determining the playlist, and running the production equipment, it’s unlikely that listeners would find a human voice to answer the local station’s phone, much less a live D.J. to respond to a request for a song. One of the ways stations used to gauge the popularity of a song back in the late 60’s was listener requests. (Inviting listeners to call in also made a station sound listener-friendly, even if some callers were pests. “I’ll try to get that on for you,” was the way most jocks answered the request line. It was non-committal, and the jock knew that if the song was already in the Top 20, 30, or 40, the song would come up in the normal rotation and the listener would assume there were a lot of requests ahead of hers/his.)

Because my show was taped (or “prerecorded” as we said then), my listeners could only write in. And I was blessed with a lot of mail in those early years. Teens sent in postcards and letters asking for particular songs, suggesting topics we might develop through music and comments, and inviting me to speak at their schools or churches. One girl said she thought I should have an hour of nothing but Simon and Garfunkel’s music. That was easy. They had had several hits by then and their non-hit album cuts filled out the hour with no trouble. I could play two or three songs in a row and offer a comment or meditation based on one song in the set. Once the show aired, there came several “thank you notes.” I also discovered that “specials” were easy to rerun, thus giving me some weeks off.

[That first special, of course, became the routine format of the “Celebration Rock” series. Almost every week brought an hour devoted to one artist, one album, or one topic. And I’m sure that thanks to the continuing popularity of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, over the 22 years my show(s) ran, there must have been six or eight incarnations of that first special from 1969.]

Another very popular feature from 1969 was a meditation I wrote and combined with an instrumental “cover” of Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” That version was by Raymond Lefevre’s Orchestra, and was from the same album that contained the “Showcase” theme, “Soul Coaxing.” I called the meditation “A Walk Alone in the Darkness.” I have the original script somewhere, but where? It was an invitation for the listener to simply take a walk some night, alone, to think honestly about one’s identity as a person. By going alone in darkness, one could go without putting up a front or wearing a mask. The music was a good choice for the meditation’s prayerful question: Am I loved?  Beyond the social friendships and appearances, does anyone love me?

As I write this, the whole thing sounds less than profound (especially without the music!), but the meditation resonated with listeners, and I got an encouraging response, with many requests to repeat the segment over the next several months. One longtime friend says he can’t hear the Procol Harum piece without thinking about that “walk alone.”

Now as I prepare to move from one home to another, I’m finally going through boxes of old letters, clippings, and musty memorabilia, and discovering again the early, pardon the expression, “fan-base” of the first years of the program. While the show was originally created to serve the target audience of teen-aged fans of Top 40 music, I am reminded of other listeners who wrote, from medical and law students to music therapists and pastors; from church youth leaders to prisoners. The response to those sometimes awkward first two years was both surprising and gratifying.

Who would have known that we still had some 20 years to go?!

Being Gentle with People…

Just before Joan and I left Richmond for Vermont, I was asked to be a clergy panelist for an embarrassingly commercial “wedding fair” sponsored by a Richmond TV station. By this time, “Celebration Rock” had been on radio for maybe 20 years, and I was on the air with several other shows (B-103 “Jazz Brunch,” WRVA’s “Sunday Morning,” etc.), so I seemed a good bet for the TV station: clergy plus media exposure. I remember two things especially about that afternoon.

For one thing, I was on a panel that included an actor from a well known ABC soap opera, along with some representatives from the “wedding industry,” whose specialties included cosmetics, gowns, and ice sculptures. I was fascinated that the audience was most interested in asking questions of the actor whose character was about to get married on the soap. It was as if the brides-to-be were far more interested in the fictional soap wedding than the issues involved with their own.

The highlight of the day for me came at the very end as I was about to slink away from the whole mess. A woman approached me with a common question: Are you the one who does that radio show on Sundays, Celebration Rock? Yes. Well, I want to tell you something. I used to listen to it when I lived in Richmond, and now I can’t get it where I live, and I miss it. One thing you said at the end of every program has stayed with me though. Every once in awhile, when I’m stressed or something isn’t going well, I remember your saying, “Be gentle with people, and with yourself.” That really puts me at ease, and I just wanted you to know that.

That benediction ending every Celebration Rock program also served as a close for my other shows, and even for some church services I led. Like so many other things that fed my earliest radio efforts, that phrase was borrowed. I was careful to pay attention to copyright notices on material I used on air, and a religious record label warned that permission had to be given before the music could be used publicly. So, I wrote to the Catholic office that owned the label, and received permission to broadcast the album. The priest who signed the letter replaced the “Truly Yours” with “Be gentle with people, and with Jeff.” I liked that so much that I used it when I wrote to friends, placing their names in the phrase. The closing was warmly personal, and spoke to the need in our culture to honor the gentle and the humble, a kind of blessed are the meek thing.

So, do be gentle with people, and with yourself!

Next time: that walk alone in the darkness.

Some More Radio Ramblings

When it came to my first ventures in radio, I was mostly self-taught. While I had done campus radio in college, I never took a course in broadcasting. Little was offered and the subject didn’t fit well in my tri-major of Religion-Philosophy-Psychology. Later, at the seminary station, we announcers (who were all work scholarship students) received direction in two areas: how to pass the 3rd Class Radio Operators FCC license exam and how to pronounce the names of classical music composers, conductors, and soloists.

So when “Showcase” went on the air, I was depending on the informal mentors I had listened to on Binghamton area radio stations. The rest I made up. Fortunately, the program director at Richmond’s WLEE, Dick Reuss, offered advice and tips whenever I stopped by the station to borrow records. He had a vested interest in my progress, because if I sounded good on the air from 8 – 9 on Sunday nights, the audience would not only stay with me for my hour but would carry over into the Sunday night block. Not that that was prime time, of course, but as Dick taught me consistency was one of the keys of success in programming a radio station. Whenever listeners tuned in, they wanted the station they expected to hear to be there, not something that “fought the format,” not a talk show if they expected music, not a country song if they expected rock. That’s why Dick loved the idea that the Presbyterians replaced the “Presbyterian Radio Hour” with a Top 40-oriented show. It didn’t take long before WLEE scrapped its Sunday night 9 – midnight block of religious and talk programs with their normal Top 40 format.

OK, I’m not exactly proud of the fact that those well-meaning (mostly well-meaning) programs were bumped into very early Sunday morning “ghetto” time-slots, but I understand the financial implications for the radio station, and I also knew that instead of “Showcase” being on the fringe of dead Sunday night public affairs (dead to the youth audience, at least), our effort sounded more like an hour-long “special” in the midst of the station’s regular rock format.

Another hint from Dick Reuss, standard fare for seasoned jocks, but a revelation to me:  Keep personal baggage off-air. If you have a headache, don’t think your audience needs to hear about it. You have a cold? They’ll know it, and don’t need to hear you tell how miserable you are. Not feeling like being on the air? Too bad; be an actor and make your audience believe that you wouldn’t want to be anyway but with them! No matter how down you might be feeling, physically smile as you talk and you’ll sound happy.

Well, every rule has its exception. I doubt anyone was upset the night in November, 1970, that I announced my daughter’s birth on “Showcase.” I had to mark the event in a special way, so I took a cassette tape recorder into Wendy’s room the day we brought her home from the hospital and recorded her voice as she cried in her crib. Somehow I had stumbled on an album by Andy Williams that included a song entitled “First Born.” I don’t know who wrote the lyric, but one line sings, “This babe that’s held in her mother’s arms is our first born…” So that Sunday night, I allowed myself to get very personal and played back Wendy’s infant cries as a lead-in to the Williams song. It was a very moving audio birth announcement. Joan still tears up when we rediscover the tape or even just play the song.

Andy Williams wasn’t exactly Top 40, but maybe for me the “consistency factor” was for the audience to expect the unexpected: to hear a 15 children’s story called “Barrington Bunny” read by the author Martin Bell every Christmas, or to hear an occasional “contemporary Christian” song between two hits, or to hear an interview with a local musician who would never have a hit, but whose songs told stories well worth paying attention to. I was learning that once you have built up solid credibility with your audience, most folks (no, not all, but most) would bear with you as you explored some creative directions.

Next…”A Walk Alone in the Darkness” and the origin of my radio benediction: be gentle with people…

 

So Sue Me!

The first year of my professional ministry I almost got sued for not being very professional. Prophetic, maybe; but not very professional.

In the first couple of years of my radio program, I wanted to give youth a voice on the air, so I sought them out in churches, coffee houses, and on rare occasions, on the street. I went to the neighborhood near Virginia Commonwealth University and asked students about their thoughts about death. I interviewed some high school youth at the Crossroads Coffeehouse on Richmond’s north-side, and there was always a willing community at the Spanish Castle youth center in Bon Air, ready to offer opinions about politics (“Vote 18!”), the Viet Nam war, or why the Doors was the greatest band ever.

As I mentioned earlier, I had been hired as the part time director of the Castle. I think it’s safe to say that this old house attracted a “counter-culture” crowd of teens, hippies-in-waiting maybe, but for the most part an articulate, creative, fun group of kids. When the old house was turned over to the teens to renovate for their after school and evening use, the kids went out into the community looking for funding. Many local merchants kicked in small amounts and churches larger gifts. But some of the teenagers came back with the disappointing news that the local hardware store owners wouldn’t give anything because they had heard the youth center would be open to an interracial crowd. They wouldn’t support anything where “the races mixed.”

Actually, that was part of the excitement that surrounded the house. It was to be interfaith and interracial, and be guided by an intergenerational board. Having spent the past four years in the wonderfully progressive (not to say liberal) womb of the seminary community, there I was out in Chesterfield County assuming that everybody was getting on board the freedom train, “everybody gettin’ together tryin’ to love one another, right now.” (A lyric by Jesse Colin Young whom I would interview a couple of years later.)

My righteous indignation led me to speak out on my radio show against the injustice of racism. I probably played “Everyday People” by Sly and the Family Stone and then talked up the great ministry and witness of the Spanish Castle, and my disappointment that “a local hardware store in Bon Air has refused to contribute to our ministry because we are an interracial effort.” Unfortunately, I think I may have used the phrase, “Some small minded people… haven’t gotten the brotherhood message yet.” I also discovered when their lawyers got in touch that there was only one hardware store in Bon Air, and local listeners knew who I was talking about. Plus, the store’s owners thought I was trying to extort a contribution from them.

One of the people on the committee that sponsored “Showcase” told me that while the hardware people had called their lawyer, I might be able to diffuse the situation by meeting with the store owner face to face to assure him that we weren’t into extortion. Nervously I visited the store, and carried with me a copy of the script (rather than an actual air-check). To be perfectly honest, I may have edited the reference to “small-minded” but everything else was as it aired. I told the store owner that I didn’t care whether they gave the youth center any money, but that I stood by my opinion that racism was immoral. The guy shared his viewpoint with me, and then pulled that infamous inquiry: “Rev. Kellam, do you have a daughter?” I replied that I did. “How would you feel if she wanted to marry a Negro?”

I didn’t go back into that store for years to come, and by the time I did, ownership had changed. I did learn a couple of things. One was to be more careful of making what might be considered personal attacks on air. But I also learned that people really were listening, and that popular music and personal commentary could be effective tools in the fight for racial justice and the promotion of Dr. King’s dream. From Three Dog Night’s “Black and White” to the Stevie Wonder-Paul McCartney song “Ebony and Ivory” music would reflect what the Apostle Paul once wrote: “…you are all one in Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 3:28 )

Wait. I had a daughter? Yes, and I still have a copy of the program when I announced her birth with Andy Williams’ help. That’s in the next entry.