By Scott Westerman – Curator, Keener13.com

I remember exactly where I was when I heard my first JAM Jingle package. I was program director for WATT in Cadillac, Michigan. Our last jingle package was “Shotgun Heaven” and we were only using one cut.

Like JAM founder, Jonathan Wolfert, I was a huge jingle nut. In 1971, I had the great fortune to work at the same station with Ken R. Deutsch, who would become the worlds greatest jingle collector. We swapped probably fifty pounds of Mylar on the seven inch reels that were state of the art for tape recording.

Jon and I both admired Bill Meeks and PAMS, his legendary jingle house at 4141 Office Parkway in Dallas. In college, Keener13.com co-founder Steve Schram and I had our PAMS faves, lead by “CLYDE”, a package named by Jon as an acronym for “Cool Logos You Don’t Expect”. We loved the great Tom Merriman, who’s TM productions knocked PAMS out of the box from time to time, like they did with the “All Hits All the Time” package for the nation’s premier AM rock station, WABC – New York.

PAMS had fallen on hard times by the time I made it to WATT and our minuscule promotions budget would never have funded a jingle session.

But I could dream.

And my imagination was fired to white-hot, when JAM’s first major package, “Priority One” was released. Jon had a sixth sense for how to sell to DJs, and put the demo together like a symphony, jingle cuts flowing seamlessly into the hits with a blinding intensity that held your attention until the tape literally ran of the capstan.

Fast forward two decades. I’m now a cable guy and Steve is running the Detroit broadcast cluster that includes our beloved Keener, now WNIC. He calls to tell me that we’re going to Dallas to hang with Gary Berkowitz, Jon and Mary Wolfert and Tom Merriman.. and help produce a new jingle package for the station that purveys “Detroit’s Nicest Rock”.

Berko was and is one of the greatest radio programmers in the business. And Tom, semi-retired, was still at the top of his game. And as we entered the custom JAM studios, I felt like I was truly in heaven.

“Tempus Consumit Res Creare“. That’s Latin for “It takes time to make things”. Jon is constantly reminding his clients that artistry cannot be cranked out like chocolate chip cookies. And we feel it as he and Tom pull magic out of the vocal chords of the professionals who have been singing ten second radio logos since the PAMS days. Berko reminds us that radio branding is a subtle thing. The theme is the brand and no matter how much brass or harmonization is mixed in, when the jingles hit the air, the listener must instantly identify the station’s unique sound.

This is the world that Jon and Mary Wolfert have lived for 35 years. Every station of note in the world has, at one time or another, been a JAM client. And when Sirius/XM Satellite Radio needed logos to identify their Decade channels, the first place they turned was to JAM.

You don’t hear jingles as often these days. The even tighter budgets that face group owners on the brink of bankruptcy can’t fund an annual trip to Dallas anymore. Jon and Mary have adapted. They now do some barter work, where before it was always cash on the barrel head. And they have competitors who daily demonstrate that imitating JAM is the sincerest form of flattery.

But they are still in the game, as passionate as ever about what they do, producing fresh product that is still the Stradivarius of their field.

And Jon keeps the PAMS legacy alive, too. He bought the rights to the PAMS masters when Bill Meeks went out of business. Some of those are what you hear on Sirius/XM’s 60s on 6 oldies channel.

So the 24 track Studer reels that were home to the great PAMS packages that helped brand WKNR still exist, waiting for fresh lyrics, new call letters, and a new life..

On the air.

LINK: Listen to some of JAM’s latest and greatest.
LINK: Visit Jingles.com.
AIR CHECK: Scott’s Jingle Extravaganza Keener 13 Podcast from 2005.

By Scott Westerman – Curator Keener13.com
He had the job we all wanted, the foot in the door at the greatest radio station in town. In the world that was radio back in the 1960s, the overnight shift was the proving ground, the place where the program director tested new talent, and the assignment from whence stars were often born.

Some loved the lifestyle and made overnights their brand. WJR’s Jay Roberts was one of the most famous, helping us drift off to sleep for over two decades as the captain of “Nightflight 760″.

Jim Jeffries had a different idea. When he came to Detroit from Keener’s Battle Creek sister station, Jim knew that even with WKNR’s highly directional nighttime signal, there were thousands of people out there who depended on the overnight guy to keep them awake and entertained.

These were the night owls who worked the third shift at Ford, patrolled Dearborn’s streets from behind the wheel of American made police cruisers, baked Silvercup Bread and brewed Stroh’s beer. These were the countless security guards who kept watch over Hudson’s, Federal’s, Cobo Hall and Olympia, and the union jacks who delivered Motown’s newspapers from the presses to the hundreds of street corners where young boys and girls piled them onto bicycles to prepare a slowly awakening Motor City for the new day.

This was Jim Jeffries domain. For the bulk of WKNR’s brief prime, he sat behind the controls, the solitary human presence at 15001 Michigan Avenue, and entertained his unique and demanding audience.

The show was, of course, different than what we heard during other day parts. The intensity was turned down a notch, and you’d hear a bit larger swath of music than was typically found on the tight 31 song WKNR Music Guide.

But all the rest of the Keener magic was there. The contests, the promos, and the personal relationship that still puts WKNR in a special place in our memory.

“Even though our shifts and schedules only allowed for minimal day to day contact (beyond regular DJ meetings) , Jim was one of a very tight fraternity,” remembers long time WKNR program director Bob Green, “And whether you happened to be a listener or an insider, there was no question that Jim enjoyed what he did. That element of ‘fun’, so much a part of what made Keener special, was highly evident… from the man and from his on air presence.”

Jim finally moved on, he was too good to stay on overnights in Detroit. He continued to polish his game at WQXI in Atlanta and then, like many others in the trade, became a promoter for the record companies that plied their product to music directors in a hundred different markets.

“He was head of Epic and Associated Labels Promotion in the mid 70’s,” recalls former CBS Records exec Mark Westcott. “He had hits with Dan Fogelberg ‘Part Of The Plan’, Minnie Riperton ‘Loving You’, Michael Murphey ‘Wildfire’, Lou Rawls ‘You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine’ and the Isley Brothers’ ‘Who’s That Lady’. Jim also contributed to the success of Philadelphia International artists like the O’Jays and Harold Melvin and The Bluenotes success.”

Keener’s Scott Regen remembers Jim as a kind heart. He wrote me recently saying, “I was just thinking, radio made each of us, the station staff and the audience, a family. It happened in a way that did not, could not exist before the electronic age. We were the players on that electronic stage. That, I think, was and still is what radio can do best: bring people together in a common purpose .”

To Jim Jeffries, family was the most important dimension of life. The itinerant broadcasting road game often made it hard to sustain a long term relationship. Not so for Jim Jeffries. He found true love with Debbie and together, they built a family over a 32 year marriage that ended only when he left us suddenly, at age 66, on November 17th.

Jim Jeffries will always be remembered, along with Dick Purtain, Mort Crowly, Swingin Sweeney, Ted Clark, Jerry Goodwin, Bob Green, Gary Stevens, Scott Regen and J. Michael Wilson as the greatest of the Keener Key Men of Music.

The guy all us aspiring DJs wanted to be.

Aircheck: Jim Jeffries 5/31/65

By Scott Westerman – Curator, Keener13.com
As many Keener fans know, 09/09/09 was the date when two big Beatle events took place. The Beatle iteration of the incredibly popular Rock Band video game was released. And the entire Parlophone Beatle catalog was re-released in digitally remastered form.

Those of us who saw the Beatles Love show in Vegas, and bought the associated CD, marveled at the magic that Fab Four producer George Martin, and son Giles Martin, worked. We’ve worked their re-mix of “Get Back” into the Scott Owens Show rotation.

The same attention to detail has been given to the Beatle catalog we all bought as 45s, LPs and CDs over the years.

The question many have been asking this week is, “Is it worth the money?” With the Beatle re-master box priced north of $200 bucks, is the quality really THAT much better to justify shelling out the bucks again?

It all depends on your ears. For some, your current Beatle CD collection will suffice. It sounds great and brings back all those memories just as vividly as it did when you listened on your HiFi. But for others, the additional nuances of each track will jump out to your trained ears. Paul’s bass lines are that much more precise, reminding us again that he’s an outstanding musician. The harmonies behind John’s lead are so crisp that if you put headphones on, you may feel like you’re in Abbey Road Studios back in the 60s when all this was happening for he first time.

We at Keener13.com got our hands on this stuff a tad before the rest of the world, courtesy of our radio friends. When I took a listen, I immediately wrote the kids telling them to throw in together to get Dad the Beatle Box for Christmas.

Keener’s “Beatle DJ”, Scott Regen writes, “The Beatles were the Monets, Renoirs and Van Goghs of their moment in time – and as it turned out, for all time. They however painted with music. I don’t believe in accidents. I think their historical contributions to all of our lives could be condensed into two fundamentals: The music itself, how it made us feel and think about life and so called others, and living, and sharing, and what it meant to live, why we live and all this expressed beyond words. The second fundamental: The Beatles helped bring Eastern spiritual thought to the Western world.”

If sales statistics mean anything, the Beatles are again one of the top selling rock acts. The box sets are flying off the shelves and a whole new generation of baby boomers are discovering the Rock Band game, Beatle style. If you’re a Beatle freak, you’ve probably already taken delivery of your digitally re-mastered collection. If not, find someone who has one and listen for yourself.

By Scott Westerman – Curator Keener13.com
Once upon a time, there was a place where poets and composers gathered to create true magic. If you stepped inside the Brill Building during the Keener era, you were likely to hear a half dozen pianos playing at once. If you were a time traveler from the future, you would instantly recognize artists who would later bloom into the most celebrated performers of the decade. Some, like Niel Sedaka, were already stars. Others, like Carole King, were still writing hit records for others. At it’s height, Brill was home to some of the greatest songwriting teams of the rock era: Hal David and Burt Bacharach, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.

In the early years of the decade, you might see Niel Diamond, recently a pre-med student, struggling to find his muse. This was raw talent that needed polish and mentors to model the behaviors and fire the imagination. It would become a creative process that record company excecs would simply label “The Brill Building Sound”.

Among the Brill brilliance, few touched as many lives as did Ellie Greenwich.

Born Oct. 23, 1940, in Brooklyn, Eleanor Louise Greenwich first placed her fingers on a keyboard at age 11. The accordion quickly evolved into a piano, and by the time she enrolled at Queens College she had already recorded a single featuring two songs she wrote.”Silly Isn’t It” and “Cha-Cha Charming.” She was 17.

When she transferred to Hofstra University, she met Jeff Barry, a kindred spirit with a sense for mixing melody and lyrics that caught attention. They married in 1962 and were soon writing as a team.

The Brill Building was the center of the universe for aspiring songwriters and Ellie found her way there. As the story goes, she was waiting to meet another writer and started absently playing one of her compositions on the piano. Jerry Leiber was walking down the hall. What he heard sounded a lot like one of his other stars, Carole King and when he discovered that the music came from Ellie’s brain, it wasn’t long before she was writing for Leiber and Stoller’s Trio Music.

Phil Spector was always on the lookout for fresh talent and he mined Greenwich and Barry’s collaboration, producing hits like “Da Doo Ron Ron,” “Chapel of Love” and “Be My Baby”.

Greenwich’s output during her brief prime was extraordinary and contributed to the success of dozens of artists. Examples include “Then He Kissed Me” (the Crystals), “Hanky Panky” (Tommy James & the Shondells), “Maybe I Know” (Lesley Gore), “River Deep, Mountain High” (Ike and Tina Turner), “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” (Manfred Mann) and “I Can Hear Music” (The Ronettes, Beach Boys).

Brian Wilson told the LA Times that Greenwich was “the greatest melody writer of all time.” But that was only one dimension. She was also one of the first high profile female record producers, crafting smash hits like, “Cherry Cherry,” “Solitary Man” and ” Kentucky Woman” for Niel Diamond.

Few outside of the business knew her name, but when Ellie Greenwich died this week at age 68 those of us who appreciate the alchemy of talent, timing and luck that give birth to timeless recordings, pulled our dusty 45s out of the attic to listen again to Ellie’s enduring legacy.

Links: Ellie Greenwich Interviewed
Link: Videos of Ellie’s hits

By Scott Westerman – Curator, Keener13.com
WKNR was lucky to get Philip Nye. In 1963, the Ohio native already had a strong journalistic track record in his home state. But the allure of the Motor City and Knorr Broadcasting’s commitment to build a first rate news team brought him to Detroit. His eye for talent and his rock solid professionalism made WKNR Contact News the training ground for a generation of broadcast journalists. John Maher, Erik Smith, George Hunter and Bill Bonds are just a few examples.

During his tenure, WKNR won just about every news award in the book. He voiced a series of annual news retrospective albums that were donated to local schools and championed WKNR’s weekly Project Detroit program which took an in-depth look at the plethora of issues facing the Motor City.

From Keener, Nye went on to a stellar broadcast career as a reporter and anchor in Los Angeles, and as News Director for WXYZ-TV. In 1979 he was named Vice President of News for ABC-TV in New York. From there he moved into broadcast management as GM at KGO-TV in San Francisco and later was a founding partner of Burnham Broadcasting which owned television stations in five markets. He retired as President and GM of WVUE-TV in 1995, returning to Detroit five years later.

Ever the visionary, Nye realized that television’s future was tied to hyper local programming and in 2001 he created a local cable news program for Shelby Township. “Shelby This Week” has aired weekly ever since with Nye serving as Executive Producer and Anchor.

Philip Nye joined Bob Green, Scott Regen, Michael Stevens and Pat St. John to help us recreate the WKNR sound during the 2003 Woodward Dream Cruise, providing Keener Contact News summaries of the key events of each year of the WKNR era during the weekend.

Keener fans in Shelby Township can still enjoy his extraordinary work on Comcast Cable Channel 10.

AIR CHECK: Hear Philip Nye on Keener in 1968.

Another sign that we in the Keener generation have put some significant mileage on our tires.

The famous photo shoot for the cover of Abbey Road, one of our favorite Beatle albums, turns 40.

The cover has been endlessly imitated and fans microscopic study of it’s supposed symbolism spurred more rumors of Paul McCartney’s death,

It was the winter of 1964 and an alchemy of music, talent and timing were coalescing in suburban Detroit to take a small 5000 watt station in Dearborn to the top of the Motor City radio ziggurat. WKNR had arrived. And Mrs. Knorr began to think about how Keener’s success might be duplicated across the Knorr Broadcasting portfolio.

Besides the obvious financial benefits, having Keener clones in the family could provide a built-in farm team, where talent could marinate until they might be ready to move up to the majors. The programming concept of “intelligent flexibility” could test new ideas in multiple markets, bubbling up best practices with the speed of a Beatle record climbing the WKNR Music Guide.

Across the state in Battle Creek, station WELL made the transformation. It became WKFR, Keener 14. PAMS cut jingles identical in nearly every way to those that were winning the battle in Motown, and a group of Battle Creek Keener Keymen emerged as the most popular personalities in West Michigan.

Knorr Broadcasting sold the station in 1967, but the Keener legend is still alive in Battle Creek. A local weblog helped initiate a recent reunion of WKFR personalities that was chronicled in the local paper, along with another story about Keener 14s glory days.

Read the list of WKNR personalities and you’ll recognize some very familiar Detroit radio names.

Thanks to Tom Ryan for sharing the links!

Hear the WBCK WKFR Tribute here.

Otis Williams talks with Susan Whitall about tonight’s Temps n Tops show at the DTE center.

In November of 1966, WKNR was still riding the wave as the dominant Top 40 radio station in the Motor City. It was a time when Keener bumper stickers were available at all Detroit area Sinclair stations, the film Endless Summer was playing at better theaters and listeners could win a 1967 Pontiac GTO. Stop sets on the weekends consisted of a single commercial unit, you were never more than 60 seconds away from the music.

Keenerfan Jim Feliciano shares this gem from November 26th, 1966. Paul Cannon spent most of his work week as Keener’s music director, but during the weekends, he got to exercise his on-air chops. Our 10 minute segment features deep tracks from Hermans Hermits and BJ Thomas, oldies from the Sherry’s and the Edsels, and WKNR Music Guide entries from Jackie Wilson, Nancy Sinatra, Jimmy Ruffin.

By Scott Westerman – Curator, Keener13.com
Michigan had its share of great garage bands. The Unrelated Segments, The Wanted, The Tidal Waves, ? and the Mysterians, the Frost and Silverhawk all come to mind. But none were better than the Rationals. For those of us who grew up with electric guitars in our hands in mid-60s Ann Arbor, Scott Morgan’s band was our role model.

They had a lean, tight sound that was a mixture of early Beatles and Stones with a Blues edge and attitude that Bob Seger was parallel processing across town, and Iggy Pop would further distill into what would become punk rock.

Their brief prime generated two singles that found their way onto the WKNR Music Guide. Otis Redding was first to market with “Respect” and many remember Aretha’s 1967 version as the biggest seller, but it was the Rationals who peaked at number 6 one year earlier on Keener with what many feel is the ultimate incarnation of the song.

“I Need You” was their second Keener hit. The plaintive tome became a slow dance favorite during the ice cold winter of 1968, reaching number 4 the same week that Paul Muriat’s “Love is Blue” was number 1.

When the band broke up in 1970, there were the usual hassles with the record company and it’s only now that a definitive collection of Rational gems is coming to market. “Think Rational” features 34 tracks, including pristine remasters of the hits and audio insight into the band’s influences and a look behind the scenes with rehearsal tracks and demos that never saw the light of day, until now.

Brian McCollum writes in detail about the new Rationals collection over at Freep.com.

LINK: The Official Rationals Website

If you stayed up late like we did this week to see Paul’s guest shot on Letterman, you know he serenaded the Big Apple from atop the marquee of the Ed Sullivan Theater. There was only time for two selections on the live show, but Paul treated the audience to a preview of his upcoming NYC concerts with an extended set after the network cameras were turned off. Here it is!

By Susan Whitall – From her Blog at DetNews.com

That’ll be Wednesday, July 15. Macca will sit down for an interview with Dave, and he’ll perform.

The former Beatle is launching a series of concerts in the U.S. starting July 17 at CitiField in New York City, and then heading to Washington, D.C., Boston, Atlanta, Tulsa and winding up in Dallas on Aug. 19.

Detroit? Please?