Back in the day, where there ever any great record promo people based in Portland? Or, did they generally fly in from Seattle or elsewhere?

Late 70s the only promo person based in Portland was Keith Chambers of A&M. All of the rest were out of Seattle...legends like Stan Foreman (Capitol) and Larry Reyman (Columbia). When they came to town, folks like Mike Bailey (KINK), Jim Robinson (KGON), Bob Swanson (KEX) and I (KGW) put any slight competitive fever we had on hold, and dined and partied together on the record company's dime. Only Michael O'Brien consistantly refused to share a table.

cool story!

They used to have some great expense accounts. One of my favorite places was when I worked in New Orleans, home of some of the greatest restaurants in America. The promoters loved to come there and entertain. All the radio folks gathered early in the evening (almost every evening) at The Old Absinthe House (bar) for drinks. Always a bunch of record guys to pick up the tabs, then we'd pair off with the record guys so they could buy dinner.

I won't mention any names, but I had atleast a couple of promoters who knew my hometown was Seattle, and used my name as an "expense" when I was 250 miles away, claiming I was in town visiting family. There was a lot of shady stuff that went on, I could share many, many other stories, but that one really got to me.

Gawd Terry, I remember Larry and Stan from my earliest days in the biz. I was at a very small Southern Puget Sound station, but if I needed anything, they would get it to me. Especially Stan. And if you went to their office, They'd load you up. They always made sure we had record service. They rarely pushed a record on us either, perhaps because we were only a small Gavin reporter.

Of course, we got very little bling.

Slightly off topic, but anyone remember those Columbia/Epic promo 45s that were only good for one backcue? Eventually we learned to tell which ones were bad, and would cart those up right away.

Can small markets even get service anymore, or is it all downloads?

It's all changed. In the 90's all you had to be was an R&R reporter and you got all the goodies. It wasn't payola, but not far from it. Of course, some PD's took more "advantage" of the system than others...

WB had a promo guy in PDX, a big Chinese guy named Greg Lee. Naganuma would remember..

Speaking of great expense accounts, dont forget the Carriage Room, the only "account" of its type that took American Express!!

Oh yeah, Greg Lee! He went on to be the head promotions/marketing guy at Warner Bros. back around Madonna and Prince. He has his own co. down in LA I think. I think he still has family here.

ABC/Dunhill used to do some interesting things. Each year they would fly both the PD and MD, along with their wives, of the major stations to Los Angeles for "meetings". These were at the Century Plaza and consisted of side trips to Universal Studios, and other fun places. During the evenings we would visit clubs and other venues where their artists were performing. Our wives were provided with ABC limos for shopping trips. They sure got a lot of attention when they stepped out of one of those things to go in a store in Hollywood. Of course they couldn't afford to buy anything, just look.

I remember riding around in a limo late one night with a couple of the record company guys, the limo pulled into an alley and we went into a dark doorway and suddenly were in a recording studio. It took me a minute to realize we were watching the Mamas and Papas recording.

The trips were all pretty legal in that we did it openly, there was no concealment.

Portland's Tiger Tom Murphy talks about watching the Byrds record down in LA in the 60's. Things seemed to be BIGGER back then. I suppose they were!

Stan Forman was the only record guy to ever visit us in Coos Bay, I think you were then there too Ron... Great guy...

Stan and a bunch of the other Seattle radio and record people are members of the OFC... Old Farts Club... They have a web site.

I talked to Forman a few years ago, he lives somewhere around Olympia and plays golf a lot now.

Stan is retired and lives in the Palm Springs area. He's playing "live music" again (keyboards).

You're right, many Seattle radio & record people are in the OFC, including Ron Saul, Michael Alhadef, Danny Holiday.

Dan Packard e-mailed me that Lan Roberts was trying to reach me in the late 90's. It seems I had been drafted into the notorious OFC myself.

Deane:

I remember an ABC/Dunhill trip to San Francisco around '72. Performing at "The Boarding House"
...a real "up close intimate" venue, was: JIM CROCE, and RANDY NEWMAN.

This was followed by a weekend of frolicking in San Francisco. I was there with my KOL GM, Dick Curtis (also a member of the OFC).

A major honcho at ABC/DUNHILL was Seattle's DENNIS LAVINTHAL. His family had sold CDI, Consolidated Distributors, to ABC and Dennis got sent to the majors. After his 5 year no-compete expired, Dennis' dad, LOU, launched the rack jobber division for all the FRED MEYER stores.
They were experienced in "inventory control" from their years of running the CDI Rack for Weisfield's Jewelers, owners of VILLA MART & VALUE MART stores, which FRED MEYER acquired.

From my perspective as a Seattle PD, I saw many local promoters that worked out of CDI/ABC become National Promotion people and VP's:
RON SAUL (WB/REPRISE), JERRY MORRIS (BELL), LARRY SAUL (A&M, ABC, CAPRICORN), GIL BATEMAN (ELEKTRA), etc.

I played that card while programming KOL, calling them all for boxes of Top Albums for a ratings giveaway blitz. I'd tell one, that another was sending me some outrageous # for a giveaway, and each would up the ante...not wanting to be outdone by his old co-hort.

When I returned to Seattle to program KOL, the first person I called was RICH FITZGERALD at Seattle Record One-Stop. They racked many Mom & Pop stores. They were owned by Fidelity Record & Tape Sales (an RCA based distributor that Jerry Morris worked out of).

Since ABC had big chain stores, I wanted MOM & POP perspective. RICH gave me DAILY FEEDBACK.
I hosted a gathering of the MOM & POP's at the POLYNESIA RESTAURANT (a KOL trade), and got each MOM & POP to promise they would report sales ONLY to KOL. In return, KOL promoted: "The KOL Big 30" survey is available at better record stores everywhere...including HI-HO in Puyallup."

RICH became my room mate. He left the One-Stop to become a Sales Guy at WEA when their branch opened. He then left for San Francisco cuing up for a promotion job down there. I had DJ a opening on KOL-FM, and called RICH...making him KOL-FM MD and PMD. He was shy about airwork, being a soft-spoken rocker.

He became my birddog for emerging album hits. Mondays were NEW RELEASE night on KOL-FM. Tuesday was REQUEST NIGHT. Rich was quick to report a Zeppelin cut, STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN...its immediate reaction pointed to SMASH.

This system allowed TOP 40 KOL-AM to be on the leading edge musically, benefitting from KOL-FM's hip image.

When I left KOL for WRKO, Rich became the CAPITOL promoter out of Seattle for Al Khoury.
From there, he handled National for SRO during the Saturday Night Fever era. His quote at the time as the music industry rushed as lemmings toward Disco. "Robin, they don't get it. We have smashes that just happen to be dance records. They're making dance records that aren't necessarily hits."

Rich was VP Promotion for WB/Reprise for many years after SRO. What's he doing now? Not sure.

Robin, I was PD and GM of KDWB in Minneapolis at the time. My connection with ABC/Dunhill was Barry Gross, the national promotion manager. I left KDWB before the San Fransisco meeting.

ABC/Dunhill got a lot of air play out of those promotions simply because PDs and MDs became familiar with their artists and liked them.

The young people today have no clue as to how much fun top 40 radio was 40 years ago.

I remember going to a place called The Troubadour (sp?) in Los Angeles with Russ Reagen, the national promotion director of WB to hear a new act they were signing, or hoped to sign, I can't remember which. After his set on stage, he came and sat at our table with us. It was Elton John, a not so famous at the time. I remember thinking his striped bib overalls were a little weird for an entertainer in Hollywood. I grew up on an Iowa farm.

Rich Fitzgerald was such a great promo guy that we actually used him as a ringer one night when we were short-handed for a KGW No-Stars basketball game.

I saw Rich again later in San Francisco when he was working for WB but lost track of him a long time ago.

At KFRC it seemed like Les Garland's office was always overflowing with record guys. Lou Galliani and his brothers probably had a parking space all their own in the old White House Garage on Sutter.

Back then, if KFRC added a record, dozens of stations followed suit, so the perks were legendary.

The promoter I remember best from my time as music director at both KBZY in Salem and KITI in Chehalis is Stan Foreman. The best perk ever from Foreman was the VIP treatment northwest music directors got before, during and after the 1976 WINGS Over America concert at the KINGDOME. We dined at the Globe Celler Restaurant in Seattle and had the best seats in the house for the first rock concert in the KINGDOME. After the concert there were several stops at various Seattle night spots on the Capitol expense account. All in all a great night!

I remember Rich Fitzgerald at WB! Al Corey at Capitol also, he was a mad man! Russ Regan was one of the nicest people ever.

And someone above has it right. There was much fun had when the radio and record guys partied. That's when going to a Bobby Poe or R&R convention was just one big par-tay!

The rack jobber division of abc/Dunhill was called "abc Record & Tape Sales". Listeners outside the industry might remember their radio ads with the latest releases which were sponsored by abc Record & Tape Sales. They also issued a weekly music list which You could pick up with 80 ranked songs called "Top Pops of The Week".

Dean,

Barry Gross & Marty Cupps used to come up to Seattle in tandem working ABC/Dunhill product. I saw them both when programming WSAI in Cincinnati, too. By then they were working HAMILTON, JOE FRANK & REYNOLDS "Fallin' In Love," (&U by this time it was a different "REYNOLDS" as I recall.)

LOU GALLIANI flew to Seattle weekly from San Francisco in the early 70's.

And when the BEATLES had a new release, APPLE's TOM TAKIOSHI (later with Playboy) would call me with the flight # and shipment #...and I'd race to SEA-TAC to pick the record up...and begin pounding it on-air before KJR!!!

COMPETITION made us all better vs. the managed pseudo-competition that exists today. It was far easier to have one AM/FM and work to beat everyone else. The bottom-line bean counters today, let individual stations in a cluster be only as good as they decide.

That's why we see niched stations which don't overlap with others within each cluster.

Music needs to be consistent, potent, desirable, while employing a modicum of "expect the unexpected." Another powerful argument for a live staff 24 hours a day. Right now, I can think of 3 ways to pound every other music station in the market with a live staff.

Armchair PD's, please note, I do not encourage
"talk for the sake of talk." Every word must be chosen carefully for impact. The on-air person
is there for "sizzle" and to make people afraid not to listen...for fear they'll miss something!!!

Sorry, I got off topic.

Amen to your point on competition and a controlled "expect the unexpected" factor.

Nice side road, and the view was terrific... Thanks for sharing, Robin!

Hey Robin...what is up with you these days now that your no longer with Cumulus ?

Mid 70's and MUD FOOTBALL GAMES IN WEST SEATTLE ON SUNDAY!!!!
Then....a shower and a chicken dinner at the Homestead. Radio and Record folks chumming around together. Man, those were great times.
I was staying with Rich Fitzgerald in the Summer of '76, and we were hangin' outside the Kingdome just before the Wings show. A group of young girls were having a discussion as to whether or not Paul McCartney was with a band before Wings. One of the girls was pointing out that he WAS. "Come over to my house. My Dad has the albums to prove it". Sheeee-it, I felt old at 22. I too would love to know what Rich is up to.
And of course, a big "Hey" to Stan-The-Man. He crossed to the dark side early on.

Wow, what a great blog. I've enjoyed reading all the memories from everyone. One that sticks out like it happened yesterday was back in 1980 during a 'media' Christmas party with record reps, retailers and us radio folks. Live band, lots of booze 'n stuff, food everywhere and all on a Monday night! I had just left KING for KJR and was talking with Gary Lockwood when we all heard a terrible rumor that John Lennon was dead and joked what a great time for a Beatles weekend etc..., only to find out it was true! I'd never seen a party die so quickly, especially with all us professional party-goers! By 9:30 everyone was gone and the band was silent. I always wondered what happened to all that food? Anyway, the record reps were a fun group and I really miss that part of radio nowadays. Sue Brett, Stan, Larry, Greg Feldman & Kathy Monahan (Arista), Calvin Lou (Polygram), Mark Gorlick (Kenny G's cousin) and so many others. Thanks for the memories.

It was a true marrage of radio and records, working together to break major hits. I'm talkin' multi-platinum sales, remember those?

Now it's kind of like Sideshow Bob on a Simpson's episode!

I remember when a visit from an out of town record guy was like a visit from Santa Claus, and I'm not talking about anything like payola. They were the guys who helped you find your next gig, told you about a tune working in a situation like yours, because they loved the music just like you. Those record guys would hook you up with your next PD. My friends at the labels worked me, just like they'd work a record. They got me my first PD job. That was a great time.

Didn't Greg Dorfman with WB work out of his home in Beaverton in the 90's?

One name: Don Anti! He was THE man for me.

Charlie Minor from A&M Records/L-A was another pretty interesting promoter back in the day, larger than life. He stayed at the famed A&M beach house in Malibu. Radio guys would fly in and party.

One day we saw Charlie on the TV news being removed from the beach house in a body bag!!!!!! One of his jilted "girlfriends" pulled a gun on him!

Not all the stories from the old days are good ones!