When you heard him on the air, it was a sign that a Michigan Winter was truly over. Open your window on a warm Summer evening, and you were likely to hear his voice echoing through the neighborhood, from the radios in countless convertibles, the kitchens in a hundred different fast food restaurants, from garages, living rooms, sailboats, and even during the glorious Summer sunsets on the Lake Michigan beaches.

His broadcast career in Detroit encompassed the era before Keener when WKMH had Tiger radio rights and Fred Knorr was part of the baseball management team. But we’ll always remember how he sounded with WJR’s 50,000 watt’s behind him.

Growing up in Ann Arbor, we little leaguers would envision Ernie calling our singles and doubles when Big George’s Home Appliance Mart played Coca Cola. He was our companion for Sunday trips to visit our grandparents. And in 1968, he even took over the PA system in David Mastie’s science class at Slauson Junior High when the Tigers were battling the cards in that historic pennant race.

Our unconditional love for Bo Schembechler evaporated when he let Ernie go for one disastrous year in the early 90s. And we all bought Little Caesar’s Pizzas when Mike Ilitch brought Ernie back the next year.

As an adolescent insomniac, Ernie was my closest friend when the Tigers made their West Coast swings and his comfortable Southern tones helped me drift off to sleep.

He was a class act from start to finish, and as he left us for what he called, “the next great adventure” this week, I pondered what we’ve learned from Ernie Harwell.

Introduce yourself first and remember names – He was, without a doubt, the most famous voice in Michigan. Yet when you met him, he would extend a hand, smile and say, “I’m Ernie Harwell.” For those of us who try to file a thousand faces in our mental Rolodex, there is nothing more gratifying then having someone you think you should already know shake your hand and gently remind you who they are. And there is nothing more personal than our own name. It always sounded more important when Ernie said it.

Live your passion – For as long as Ernie could remember, he wanted to be involved with baseball. He described himself as a “failed sports writer”, but through a career where a change in sponsor often meant losing your job, he never wavered from what he truly loved.

Be prepared – Ernie always made it look easy, but behind every carefully chosen sentence was a brain filled with a million facts. Ernie devoured baseball’s numbers and it felt like he could recount every key moment in every game.

Tell a story – I always loved it when the Tigers would change pitchers, because the warm-up period would invariably give Ernie the opportunity to dip into his personal history book, pulling out just the right memory for just the right context. This was especially true during a Tiger milestone, like the day Denny McLain won his 31st game. Ernie could talk about the last pitcher to do it, because he had watched Dizzy Dean in his heyday. His economy with words never failed to paint a vivid picture that always made those of us on the other end of the radio feel like we were there.

Remember the girl who brought you to the dance – Ernie and Lulu’s 68 years together sets the standard for the rest of us. And even during that uncomfortable year after Ernie was fired by the Monaghan administration, he never had a bad word to say about the management who sacked him.

Make the other guy look good – Whether it was George Kell, Ray Lane, Paul Carey, or the person who introduced him as a banquet speaker, Ernie always amplified your best. In his book, Tuned to Baseball, his first story isn’t about himself. It’s about Paul Carey, who Ernie called “the bravest man I know” as he carried on through an entire season while facing a family health issue.

Be Humble – Ernie could easily have nurtured an ego to go with his stratospheric talent. He never did. Ernie never took himself too seriously and always made everyone he was with feel better about themselves as a result of their time with him. He was one of the few media superstars who was just as nice and just as genuine off the air as he was when amplified by WJR’s gargantuan reach.

Have Faith – You would never know that Tiger baseball’s greatest broadcaster fought a speech impediment. Ernie called it “being tongue tied”. He was my personal hero when, early in my undistinguished radio career, many of the people I respected told me my speech would never be good enough for prime time. Ernie’s Christian faith was always at the forefront. It sustained him as a Marine during the Second World War, gave him courage during the few instances when he found himself between jobs, and made him fearless, even joyful as the inevitability of his death became clear.

Know when to leave – Ernie’s retirement was a poignant moment for us, but an affirming experience for him. He left still loving his job and had a long list of things he still wanted to accomplish outside of the game. He proved again and again that baseball was only one dimension of his extraordinary life. Author, songwriter, poet and inventor were all part of Ernie’s resume. Instead of retreating to the recliner, he continued to work out every day and was just as connected, engaged and busy until he was ready to shuck a tired body for a set of wings.

One of gifts of age is the gift of perspective. Time helps you realize the things that made life worth living.

How lucky were we who were able to live a life with Ernie Harwell in it.

In the end, it didn’t really matter whether the Tigers won or lost. Hearing Ernie Harwell’s voice on the radio brought a reassuring continuity to a world that won’t be the same without him.

Link: Some classic Ernie Harwell broadcasts

I was in Houston with MSU and was honored to be with my radio mentor. He took me through the city’s neighborhoods, remarking how the town is much more heterogeneous in both geography and demography than most realize. In what we boomers like to call “late middle age”, Bob looks great and is as sharp as ever.

We walked through the Galleria shopping center, along what is Houston’s equivalent of Woodward Avenue, to visit the Apple store. This is the epicenter of the devices that are forever changing the paradigm of how we consume audio entertainment.

It was the beginning of a conversation about what we would do if we were both 25 and wanted to spread the Keener magic today.

Bob told me a story from the height of WKNR’s popularity, when he would get request line calls from fans on the East Side, who had no way of hearing Keener’s deficient night time broadcast signal.

These were people who couldn’t even hear the Keener sound, but identified with the Keener brand.

I write often about the importance of a personal brand, how the brand we build for ourselves is something we lease, for a time, to the companies we associate with. I warn that what you say on Facebook, or write in a blog comment can come back to haunt you years later, and how it’s the nuances… the polish you put into your personal brand that will set you above the rest.

Bob’s favorite definition of Brand is: “a promise, wrapped up in an experience.”

I think that’s perfect.

Many of those Keener fans in Roseville, had learned about the promise about this great radio station from their friends. They may have never heard Keener, but they might have seen the Keener brand in action on remote at Cobo Hall, or when Bob and his fellow Key Men came to their high school for a record hop.

Those events were part and parcel of the Keener brand.

So what would Keener be like today?

It might or might not be expressed on a broadcast transmitter. But it would definitely have a website with an audio stream.

It would have a mobile app that went well beyond pressing a button to hear music. All the aural features that the jocks used to promote over the air… concert info, community announcements, contests and news would be part of the functionality on Blackberries, iPhones, Droids and iPads.

The record hops and personal appearances would still happen. Bob emphasizes that the human interaction was a crucial component of the Keener brand. But there might also be virtual appearances. Scott Regen’s Motown Monday would be something you could experience at your laptop, in real time or on demand, even if you couldn’t get tickets to the liver Roostertail event.

Instead of calling in requests, the Keener application would have realtime statistics on what the most popular tunes are, not just this week, but in the last hour. If you wanted to “testify what your love has done for you,” you would do it in the Keener chat room, or via Skype video message which would run over Parliament’s instrumental track. Bob still thinks that there should be request lines. He told me that the best part about broadcasting was getting instant feedback from the listener, that visceral sense for what was working and what wasn’t. The new Keener would have to have a similar mechanism, but in addition to hearing the nuances of the voice on the other end of the telephone line, the Jocks would have to decipher emotions in 140 character Twitter chunks.

Jock interviews with the artists wouldn’t require the star to be in Detroit and would be two way video, with a Twitter stream crawling below where Keener fans could ask real time questions.

The DJs would still be the key to the Keener brand, only in the new world, WKNR would aggregate their personal brands, not interfere with them. Bob Green’s concept of “intelligent flexibility” would still rule. You could link to Scott Regen’s personal site and talk with him directly about the Beatles and perhaps take a virtual yoga class there.

All Keener Key People (not just men anymore) would have iPhones with UStream capability to be able to go live in an instant from anywhere, anytime. They would also carry MP3 recorders that could capture high quality audio as they interact with Keenerfans, wherever they may be.

Advertising on today’s Keener Brand would be hip, interactive and meaningful. Listeners would have the opportunity to fill out a personal interest survey. Their total Keener experience, from the skin on the application to the advertisers delivered would be customized, as much as possible, to the micro tastes of the listener.

The database back end would facilitate instant purchases of products, including downloads of the tunes the new Keener plays. The servers would have a buffer capability so that if someone tuned into the stream in the middle of a song, they could rewind to hear the DJ’s intro and get the whole experience. And you could press a button to hear your favorite song, Keener style, anytime you wanted.

The new Keener would still be hyper local, but inevitably would draw an international following. During my stint at Real Oldies 1600 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, we had on line listeners from Australia, Japan, China and England. Technology allows the new Keener to serve up content and advertiser messages based on those listeners’ preferences (and IP address locations), too, necessitating a local, national and international sales force, and a merchandising manager to deal with the ringtones, t-shirts, mouse pads and branded iPods Keener would sell like hotcakes.

Bob Green and I pondered all of these things across a New York style deli lunch this Spring day in Houston. I asked him what his job might be like if he could rewind to his 20s and start all over today.

“There are so many avenues to promote and entertain today, ” he said. “But the concepts of audience engagement still work the same way.”

True, a musical artist might sell what we used to call 45s at a fraction of the coast of a CD single, but Bob says today’s performer’s personal brand is multi-dimensional.

I thought of Wolfman Jack, back in the day when he worked at Mexico’s XERB, blasting a 200 KW signal at LA. Listen closely to the sound track of American Graffiti and you’ll hear the Wolfman hawking T-shirt, baseball caps and bumper stickers.

Disney figured out long ago that more money is made off of the brand in the gift shops and restaurants than they earn from ticket sales.

And so it would be with the new WKNR, Bob Green believes.

Perhaps Marshall Mcluhan original postulation that “the medium is the massage” has turned upside down. In a world where content must be platform agnostic and where anything digital can be duplicated, it’s the message that is the medium. Disney has an incredible brand, and they express it everywhere and every way. That’s how we would consume the Keener brand, too.

The new Keener would still be agile and very listener focused. It would have all the techno bells and whistles. But it would also have the personality and the interactive engagement that touches what’s important in a Keenerfan’s life, just as it did four decades ago.

WKNR began it’s slow decline when the advertising became more important than the message. When revenues sagged Keener did what every other radio station in America has done: it cut costs and released the talent that had collaborated to take the operation to the top.

Radio today has forgotten what a brand is all about. But the tools are there for reinvention. At some point, broadcasters, podcasters, streamcasters and webcasters may rediscover that ever evolving alchemy of art and science that fuses true customer sensitivity and true talent into a promise wrapped up in an experience, where everybody wins.

Then as now, that is what profitable relationships are all about.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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,

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.