Radio Memories Vol. 14

April 4, 1968, was a typical Thursday, but the world changed that day. I had distributed the paper copies of the WCOS Top 40, no longer the “Top 60 in Dixie” to the record and drug stores where they were ready to be picked up. I spent a few extra minutes talking shop with the wife of our newsman Mike Rast and told her that I would be giving him a ride home later that night. I had gone to the station to pick up the teletype paper box that held all the stuff I needed that night. Included in that collection was a copy of the headline news because Mike was going to be busy at 8:30 recording one of George Buck’s Jazzology Shows. I listened to the Joe Pyne talk show as I drove out to Doug’s and got ready to do my show. 

Mike’s 7:55 PM Newscast sounded pretty normal; the usual news about Vietnam and Washington. There was no news from Memphis, YET. 

Around 8:15 I received a call from Mike on the emergency telephone line we had in the remote studio. Mike told me that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot in Memphis and that George was canceling the Jazzology show recording in the FM studio that Mike engineered so that he could read the latest on the 8:30 Newscast which would be a full five minutes instead of the usual 3 minute headline summary. We learned in that newscast that Dr. King had died at St. Joseph's Hospital at 7:05 PM, Memphis time, 8:05 our time. 

After the news, I noticed that the girls and young women were getting out of their cars and queuing up to use the pay phone on the outside wall of the restaurant. This was 30 years before cell phones, and they were calling home to share the news with their families. Most of them were told to come home immediately. 

By the time the 8:55 newscast was broadcast, most of the cars that were parked around Doug’s had left. Shortly after that, Arthur Broome came out to the booth with the $21 nightly broadcast fee in hand and told me that he was closing the restaurant at 10 and sending everyone home. I called Mike back at the station and told him what was happening and to ask George Buck what he wanted us to do. His decision was for me to stay out at Doug’s and finish the show at 1 AM because he had Mike doing news updates on both the AM and FM stations and could not DJ the station while I drove back downtown. They had been unable to reach Jimmy Jo-Jo to have him come in early. He could not find Jimmy. I found Arthur and told him what the station was doing and he told me that he would call the police and let them know I was going to be out there alone. 

Columbia was enjoying relatively good race relations at the time since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But this was unprecedented; no one knew what was going to happen next.  It felt like November 1963 to me all over again.  

I looked over to the A&W Root Beer joint next door and at the Burger King across the street and saw that they had turned off their lights including their neon marquee signs, just as what Doug’s was doing. By 10:15 all the storefronts along Two Notch and Beltline that I could see from the booth were dark. There was no light at all except the street lights and the traffic lights on the corner plinking aimlessly through their green, yellow, and red sequence. No light at all except for the bright fluorescent lights in the ceiling of my radio booth, the booth with those big 4’ x 8’ glass windows on three sides. I felt extremely exposed given the uncertainty as to how the city would react. I was as jumpy as Tennessee Williams’ “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof!”  

The next thing I did was grab a copy of the Top 40 and evaluate each song as to whether or not it was appropriate to play. I remember that after the Assassination of President Kennedy WUSC-AM suspended normal broadcasting in lieu of somber music and news. Thanks to Mike I had the news part but I had no somber music, there was none in the Top 40. I did have a few instrumentals like Paul Mauriat’s “Love Is Blue,” and some ballads like Otis Redding’s (Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay. But “Summertime Blues” by Blue Cheer and The First Edition’s Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) weren’t going to cut it. I whittled down the Top 40, the “Up and Comers” and the “Solid Gold Oldies” to a playlist that I could use to fill those three hours with a few repeats. 

I changed my delivery style from “Top 40 Jock” to “Standard Radio Announcer” and filled the space between records with information from the City Fathers that I hurriedly scribbled down when Mike announced them on the many breaking news inserts and scheduled newscasts. 

During that three hour period, I saw only a handful of cars pass by, and most of them were Columbia Police Cruisers, Richland County Sherriff Deputies, or State Highway Patrol. One of the City Police Officers came into the booth to ask if I was ok. I told him that I was nervous but OK and he made sure to check by about every 15 minutes on his patrol route to stop and check on me through the front window. He stood guard nearby when at last I threw it back to Mike and Jimmy, shut the station equipment and the lights off, and left the booth. I had the feeling that would be my last time inside that booth. And it was! 

The next day, the City, like many in the southeast declared a precautionary dusk-to-dawn curfew.  The only people allowed on the streets at night were those who had to be there because of their jobs. I went to Police Headquarters that day to obtain an identification card from the police that authorized me to be out at night. Doug Broome’s drive-ins were also authorized to be open until 1 AM. 

So, for the rest of my tenure at WCOS, I did the Nightbeat Show from the Master Control Studios on the second floor of the Cornell Arms Apartment Building nightly, then drove up to Doug’s on Main to collect the $21and back to the station where I stuffed the envelope under the accountant’s locked office door, picked Mike up, drove him to his South of Rosewood home and finally went back to my Pickens Street apartment. I had a set of magnetic WCOS signs that I stuck to my car doors and never once had a problem being out during the curfew. 

The curfew lasted only a few weeks but the Cruzin’ scene was never the same after that. The “hot rods, burgers, fries, and a shake” time faded into history.