Gordon Lightfoot

With the death yesterday of the wonderful Canadian troubadour Gordon Lightfoot, I posted on my other blog a link to a “Celebration Rock” radio program featuring Lightfoot’s music. Not many words from my keyboard are necessary. Others are writing their obits and tributes. I simply posted one of maybe three Lightfoot CR specials I produced and hosted over the long run of the radio program.

{I’d post the link here, except this blog site is the freebee, and I pay for the upgrade which allows audio files at my more recent site called “Peace, Grace, and Jazz.” So, you’ll need to navigate to http://www.jeffkellam.wordpress.com to hear the show.

https://jeffkellam.wordpress.com/

Weird, I Know… I Still Dream of Radio

I’ve always been a dreamer.

My imagination is rich, and it has led me along some intriguing paths and along delightful roads. It is certainly not idling at night either. It’s grinding out dream after dream as I sleep.

Invariably the first words I speak to Joan upon waking are, “Well, that was some dream.” They say that if you wake up two or three times during the night, you’ll probably remember the dreams you were having as they were interrupted. (Don’t parse the grammar; just move on.)

Oddly, after all these years, I still have a dream about radio almost every night. Maybe it’s not so odd. I did spend much of my life dreaming up radio show themes or ideas. Then I produced the content by writing scripts, calling guests, choosing music, setting up the studio, recording the programs, editing tapes, and delivering the final products to the stations that gave me chunks of airtime so the dreams (fodder? debris? wonder?) would be broadcast.

Still, these almost nightly sojourns with radio are puzzling. Am I dreaming these fragments as something fed by memories? Or, are they left-over fears and frustrations that haunt me? Or, are these dreams a kind of prompt, perhaps the seeds of some call to actually act on what I am doing in my sleep world?

One night, I’ll be returning to the dark, ultra-cluttered closet of the church that housed the studio in which I created so many radio programs. I’ll be peering into the boxes I may have left behind, discovering old relics that ask for new life: old records that want to be played again…reels of tape that are ripe for “racking up” on the studio equipment. In one dream, I’m disappointed to find that perfectly good shows have been tossed aside, or erased. Another night, I’ll have dreamed that someone cleaned the place out and valuable things have been lost.

But on many mornings I awake from dreams where I’ve been producing anew. I have a program to get to a station within an hour of broadcast time. Or, I’ll be building a music list for a show, and finding that all my records are somewhere else, and maybe it means swimming some distance for them. Or, I’m working with a youth group on some theme, and we need visuals to go with the songs they’ve chosen.

Now, I dream about other things besides radio. Usually I’m at a conference of some sort, or in a meeting. I rarely dream of people I know or places I’ve been. Almost all my dreams take place in a parallel universe with little or no recognition of anything familiar. On rare occasions a member of my family makes a cameo appearance. But not often.

If there is a recurring theme, Dr. Freud or Dr. Jung, it is that of having an opportunity to create something new to get on the air. It might be frustrating or fulfilling, the sensation I’m having as I dream. But there it is. One way or another I am “back on the air.”

I suppose that I should admit this now, as I move toward a conclusion. The radio I once worked in (with, through, and for) no longer exists. Rare is the station that gives away “public service time.” And rare is the station that does creative local programming. The skills I had that brought spiritual meaning (I hope and pray) from vinyl records, magnetic tape, and thoughtfully-written scripts will find no home in today’s broadcast arena. That’s history, folks.

But, I am trainable, digitally-speaking. I can still imagine. I can still write. I can still speak, though, as I have previously written, my voice is changing…maturing, one might say. Aging.

I have this spiffy new contraption of a microphone that records pristine audio onto a memory card. I have a list of people in my community I imagine interviewing. The audio editing capability of my computer has already been put to good use. I dream of doing this show…but finding someone to listen in this day and age…well, that’s the catch isn’t it?

Weird, I know.

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.

The Early Interviews

We’re still in 1968, the first year of production (such as it was) for “Showcase,” the predecessor of “Celebration Rock.” When I returned from Florida to Richmond, it was back to seminary, taping at WRFK for WBBL/WLEE, and choosing music from the ‘LEE hop file.  I had found that the Tampa and Richmond markets had slightly different Top 40 records, so there was some catching up to do. I had finally begun to listen more closely to lyrics so I could tie in my written content to the music, rather than the earlier practice of just using the music to hold the audience’s attention while I slipped in religious spots and rather pious sounding commentary.

By this time, we had asked the “Silhouette” producers if we could use some of their segments on our show. They had produced a two record set of Silhouette spots and features, and we did receive permission to air them. We obtained some PSA’s from various denominational producers, and, of course, I wrote some original material. As I listen to the oldest tapes, I’m somewhat embarrassed: content was simplistic; my smiling deejay voice was beginning to sound a bit harsh, even stern, as I moved from trying to sound like a “Big ‘LEE Good Guy” to finger-wagging pontifications; and it’s obvious I was winging it show after show. After all, I was fitting the show into my senior year at seminary.

One real misstep: I saw an ad in “Broadcasting Magazine” for inexpensive jingles. Even though I knew the adage “You get what you pay for…” I figured maybe $50 would really buy something I could use to make the program sound more professional. I ordered the jingles, noting key information such as call letters, program title, my name, and a two or three word phrase that I used to describe the show. Within a few weeks, one of those little white miniature reels of tape (3″ reels?) arrived. With some excitement I put the tape on the old WRFK Ampex, and prepared to put the jingles on cart. Well, there was my jingle, some country singer strumming his guitar and crooning, “It’s the sound of Showcase, (a beat) with Jeff Kellam…” My fifty bucks bought no more than five notes and a few strums. That sorry jingle would never fit between Simon and Garfunkel and Diana Ross. It never aired. [Later, the story of a wonderful collaboration of Steve Bassett and Larry Bland, and the classy Celebration Rock jingle written by Ken Priddy and recorded at Alpha Audio.]

Very early on, I did record some good interviews that added some depth to the program. I have a clipping showing me recording one of my first interviews with some high school students at a local Methodist church. I probably asked them little more than what they did at youth group each week, but there may have been a special project they were involved with. As a sign of how primitive our equipment was, the photo shows me using a 4-Track stereo Concord deck (the Concord line was marketed by the seminary!).

I’m not sure about this, but I believe I taped my first celebrity interviews during that first year, thanks to WLEE’s concert promotions at the Mosque theater. I used a portable cassette recorder (another Concord) to interview Joe South who had a 1968 hit song called “The Games People Play.” I had little interview experience, and playing back the segment today is painfully embarrassing, probably as much for Joe South as for me. Of more significance was another interview, maybe at the same show at the Mosque. I had a wonderful conversation with the legendary Curtis Mayfield (with the Impressions standing nearby, but silent). Mayfield spoke of his music coming out of his church, gospel giving voice to the cry for civil rights. When I played 1965’s “People Get Ready” between interview segments, “Showcase” began to mature.

Next: “Showcase” leads to my ordination as “Minister of Electronic Media”