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Hattie Holmes, KCOH, Little Betty, KATL-KYOK

H

hrhwebmaster

Over on the Classic Radio board there's a discussion going on concerning the first female DJ (http://www.radio-info.com/smf/index.php/topic,66178.0.html). So far it seems to be a woman in NYC in the early 50s.

So who was the earliest in Houston? There had been females on the air in Houston since the early 20s but this is about the first female DJ.

When Robert Meeker and some other Black businessmen bought KCOH in 1953, the schedule showed a Hattie Holmes. I'm assuming Hattie was a woman's name but that was before my time and I don't know if she was a dj. Within a year, KATL flipped to KYOK and there was a Little Betty on the schedule -- but a DJ?

So far those are the earliest ones I can think of or know of from my research. Does anyone know anything of either of these and if not, who was the first female DJ in Houston and when?
 
Hey HRH,

I haven't a clue, but I'll tell you who might....Skipper Lee Frazier. He runs a funeral home over on the South Loop and he does a gospel show on an AM station of which I have forgotten the calls. Somebody on this board will know. The first female I remember hearing was Grandma GeeGee on KCOH, but that was in the mid 60s. Now I can tell you that the first female jock on KILT was Sally Adams aka Sunny Ray, but they were way behind the African American stations when it came to hiring women. One of the first female Program Directors was at KLOL. Her name was Jackie McCauley, I think. One's mind is the second thing to go. Good luck with your search. This is a great topic! I'll be reading with interest.
 
Skipper is at KWWJ. Another person you could ask is Wash Allen at KCOH. He's been in this market for quite some time as well.
 
Thanks for the tips. I had thought of Wash but didn't know where Skipper Lee Frazier was. I'll try to contact them.

I knew both Jackie and Sally (but not well); Jackie went off to a station in SF I think. Was she ever on the air?

Don't know what happened to Sally; I liked listening to her.

Those were both mid-70s, right? Before that there was Jewel McGowan on KAUM.
 
About ten years ago, I interviewed the woman who used the pen name Hattie Holmes and wrote that story for the Galveston paper. She was a black woman with no black accent.

When I interviewed her, she was in charge of one of the federal programs on the Island. She has since passed away from cancer. For the life of me, at the moment I can't think of her real name. I can tell you that I liked her a lot, and that she was a true asset to the Island.

She was from Washington, D.C. and had been in the service. When she was discharged, she decided that as a black woman, she would have the best chance of making something of herself if she went to California. One of her friends lived in Houston, so she decided she'd stop off there on the way to California. When she arrived she heard that KCOH was looking for a black woman DJ who had no Negro accent, so she applied for the job, got it, and aborted her trip to California.

The station gave her the name of Hattie Holmes. She played "white" music in the afternoons, read poetry and so forth. One day the station manager came in and told her that KTRH had called and told them that the Supreme Court's ruling on integration was going to come down about noon via their CBS affiliation, and if KCOH wanted to simulcast it, they could send someone down to their Rice Hotel studios and send it to KCOH listeners over the telephone lines.

"Hattie" and the station's newsman arrived at the Rice Hotel and started to board the guests' elevator to go to the KTRH studios. The bellman stopped them and told them that since the were "colored" they would have to use the service elevator. So they went around back to the service elevator and rode up to KTRH>

When they had finished broadcasting the Supreme Court decision, "Hattie" and the newsman left and started toward the service elevator.

"Hattie" said, "Wait a minute. The Supreme Court has just said we no longer have to ride the service elevator." So they got on the guests' elevator and rode to the first floor of the Rice Hotel. The first blacks to ever do that.

Shortly thereafter, and paradoxically, she was fired from the station for "sounding too white." (The owner/station manager was a white Jewish man.) That's when she moved to Galveston.
 
I still can't think of Hattie Holmes' full real name, but her first name was June.
 
Thanks for that information Bill. It seems to me from your description that Hattie Holmes qualifies as a dj and the earliest female dj in Houston we have identified. If she was only there a year it explains why I never heard her.

I am confused about the assertion the manager was white. I understood the purchasers were a group of Black businessmen and they brought in Vernon Chambers, a Black dj from Chicago as I recall, to be program director.

The owners of KYOK, which flipped from KATL within less than a year, were white, I think.

P.S. I've communicated with Bill Mccaskill - he's got some great stories and history to share.
 
Bill "Rascal" McCaskill worked at KCOH, and he worked for that Jewish fellow. He'll know his name. If I'm not mistaken it was Walter Rubins.

Ask Bill his story about being voted the top DJ on KCOH by the black newspaper, only to get quickly bumped out of #1 when the paper came to take his photo and found he was WHITE.

In fact, that's when he left and went to KREL in Baytown and took what he had learned at KCOH with him.
 
Bill, that reminds me of the story about my exwife, Lacey Fortune (Vonceile Tiller). She went by the name LaJuan Kirks on KNUZ in the early 1980s. A lot of folks never knew she was black. An elderly white woman, named Thelma used to call her and tell her the latest 'racist' joke. My ex never told her. She laughed at her dumb jokes and got off the phone. She would look at me and say "po thang." She shocked quite a few people when she was on location.

A lot of people thought that Zoe Bonet, when she was Zoe Hayes on KIKK, was the 1st black lady to play country music in this town. My ex was the 1st.
 
Chuck, I love stuff like that. Thanks for passing on that story. And I remember your ex, via her radio voice, well.

Now I have to pass on a story to you. There was a black DJ at the teeny sundown KTLW in Texas City in the 50s named Leon Giles. His air name was Lonesome Leon. I tried to emulate his delivery as I was practicing my DJ skills. (I was about 15)

I finally got in my old '47 Willis Jeepster (hoping it would make it from Galveston to Texas CIty and back) and drove over to Texas City to meet him. I asked the traffic lady were Lonesome Leon was. She said, "There he is there."

Behind the window was a tall, skinny black man. I couldn't believe my eyes. By his voice I would have never dreamed he was black, especially since he didn't "talk" jive and he played "white" music.

Lonesome and I became friends. And I worked there at the station for a brief period while I was in high school then moved on to the old Channel 11 when it was in Galveston as a booth announcer and contemporaneously to KGBC as a DJ. What great days!

About five years ago Lonesome died, and his obit said he was a contractor and a minister. I was appalled that it left out telling the world that he was the famous Lonesome Leon, so I wrote a story about that part of his history for the paper. And I had an old photo of him behind the mike with his headphones on, so that accompanied the story.

It brought a huge number of comments and a thank you note from his mom. Sure did please me. Lonseome's story is written and down in history.

And I've also written about the Magnificant Montigue, in my mind one of the most important black men who ever lived. Period. But then that's another story.
 
Thank you, Bill. Vonceile is now disabled and no longer able to work. KTLW 920 will always be special to me. That is that is the place where I went on the air for the 1st time. My shift was Sunday 6AM-1PM. I played religious tapes and transcriptions for most of the shift. My air time was 6AM-6:30AM, 8:45AM-9AM and Noon til 1PM. I made that drive from Houston to Texas City every weekend for minimum wage, $1.65 an hour. I didn't care; I was on the air.
 
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