It's amazing how straight Cat Daddy has gone. Look at that website; all corporate. He was a lot more fun when he was nuts.
Back in 1993, I was programming KISS/Dallas, and Kidd Kraddick needed a morning show sidekick. We looked for months, but found no one we liked. One day, I got a package from Kelly Rasberry, who worked for Harold in Florence.
I put the tape in, and the aircheck was her doing a solo voicetrack of liner cards on an automated AC. I tuned it out after the second break, but kept it running in the background while I looked at her resume' and reminisced about home.
At the end of the voicetracking, though, there was one break of her on the air with The Breakfast Flakes on WJMX, and it was great! After it was done, I fast-forwarded the tape looking for more, but there wasn't any. I listened to that break over and over, and became more and more convinced that she was perfect for the job.
I called Kelly and asked for more tape of her with The Breakfast Flakes, but she had none. I talked to her on the phone for a good hour, though, and that call further convinced me that she had the perfect combination of smart/wacko/funny/attitude that we were looking for.
I qued her aircheck up to the Breakfast Flakes break and went and found Kraddick. All the way back to my office, I was raving about her. and he looked real interested as he listened to the break. When it ran out, though, the conversation got a little interesting.
He was a little perplexed that her aircheck consisted of only one break. I really didn't want him to hear the rest of the tape, but, he wasn't buying the one-break story, so I eventually played it for him, and his interest went away immediately.
Now, while I was the PD, early on I'd figured out that Kraddick knew what to do and where to go with that morning show. He is a serious anti-authoritarian, and any time previous program directors had tried to clamp down on him in the past, he'd compulsively resisted, even when he didn't disagree with what was being asked, so I dealt with him by pretty much leaving him alone, complimenting him on what I liked, and chasing him only on the things that REALLY mattered. I knew if I tried to ram Kelly down his throat, he was never going to buy in, and if he didn't, it would never work out, even if I did hire her against his wishes.
I kept that aircheck in a portable cassette player, cued up to that one break, and played it for him half a dozen times over the next several days. I finally convinced him to let me fly her in for an audition. When I called her at the radio station to set it up, though, Harold intercepted the call, demanding to know what the job paid, whether I was on the up and up, etc. When I told him I could only talk about the job to Kelly, or her agent, he began insisting he was her agent. I told him to have her fax me a letter saying as much, and ended the call.
A few minutes later, Kelly called and said Harold had tried to get her to write the letter, but she didn't want him as her agent, and was afraid all the drama with him would mess the deal up for her, or that Harold would get mad and fire her, leaving her with no job if she didn't get the one with Kraddick. I calmed her down, told her not to write the letter, but that I would talk to Harold and keep him occupied till she could get in and audition with Kraddick.
Over the next several days, she flew in for her audition, and I had some of the most bizarre conversations of my life with Harold. One minute he'd be insisting on limos and four star hotels for her, the next he'd give me a list of her shortcomings. It's clear he cared about her and wanted her to succeed, but also didn't want her to leave WJMX, and those emotions went like a coin flip, back and forth, back and forth.
Fortunately, she and Kraddick totally hit it off from their first meeting (the first thing she said to him was "Oh, I thought you were younger."), and we sat down after her first day on the air with him and cut a deal. She's still there today.
I'm just glad I've never played poker with Cat Daddy. He has to be the most unpredictable human being on earth.
Also, does WWBD cover Orangeburg? It didn't back in the days when it was broadcasting from the cemetary, and the "BD" in WWBD stood for "Bamberg/Denmark", not Bad Dawg"
