SMDJB STORY
THE
Story
I started with my first DJ business Happy Feet & Company while working in Radio of the 1980s in Midland-Odessa Texas at KQIP 96.9 GM. Started necessity as a sideline to my on air radio career. Necessity because in Oil Boom Towns the cost of living was exceptionally expensive for out-of-towners like me from El Paso.
1980 KQIP 96.9 FM Odessa Texas – Gates Admiral 1960s Board. Radio Shack Headset.
John Roman who was my Program Director Morning Man encouraged all of us to find sidelines for additional income. He opened Recoding Studio for Advertising Agency business and even delivered furniture for a church friend of His. I had moonlighted in nightclubs. I worked for the Graham and Associates Nightclubs over five states and over 40 cities. By 1980 I worked the flagship home club Graham Central Station that was the largest club with its 5000 capacity crowds on weeknights and over 7000 on the weekends.
Ray (Photogrpher) Herb Graham (owner) Two Bartenders —– and Myself at the right.
The format I introduced to the Nightclub was similar to what we used in radio. It was an hour clock cut like a Pizza or Pie with a set of slow to fast Country Hits at the top of the hour to 20 minutes after the hour, into a 1980s Dance Hits set for 20 minutes mixed with Rock Hits for 10 Minutes and into a slow song of Top 40, Contemporary then Country to the top of the hour. Then the clock repeated with different songs in the same categories every hour. Its patronage was the Young upward Mobile 18-50 set, Businesspeople, Oilfield workers, Cowboys and a plethora beautiful women. We rotated crowds, It made for good bar salesm and was an extremely popular nightclub format throughout the 1980s.
When I opened my mobile DJ company I followed the same format options for Wedding Receptions, Charity Fundraisers, Private, Corporate and Holiday Parties. Happy Feet and Company was in business from 1981-1990 throughout 250 miles of West Teas and in 1990 to 2000 in El Paso and throughout the states of Texas and Southern New Mexico.
Humble Beginnings at 15
I got my start in music of radio and nightclubs as a teenager in El Paso in the early to mid 1970s. I interned for popular local DJ Steve Crosno at a variety of radio and television stations in addition to nightclubs and mobile DJ dances at malls, schools, amusement parks and nightclubs. He was the Dick Clark of El Paso from the 1950s to the 1990s. One of the radio stations he programed was X-Rock 80 on the AM dial, NORTH AMERICA’S MOST POWERFUL RADIO STATION. It was in the 1970s. 500,000 watts by day and 250,000 watts at night in Juarez Mexico when the most powerful in the USA were at just 10% of 50,000 watts. The station could be heard from Australia to Canada and halfway around the world with AM bouncing off the curvature of the earth.
Steve Crosno
Steve Crosno who was program director of XEROK with a huge following as the afternoon drive show just with top ratings in El Paso. He was my mentor as was Chris ‘Music’ Michaels from 7-midnight at the station. My internship was at the studios of a two-story bank building 2 miles from my home and block south of Burges High School across from Ponder Park. It was there that I learned the craft of personality radio from 1974 to 1977. Chris was a few years older than I and Steve by twenty years. Great teachers of the business. Crosno got his start as a pre-teen son his hometown station in Las Cruces of KGRT just 45 miles north of El Paso. At his pinnacle he was on the air in San Diego California on the way to LA but it could never match what his hometown was to him. So after a brief time in California he returned to a heroes welcome in the Sun City.
I interned for Crosno in the early 1970s not only at XEROK 800 AM and XEJPV 1560 AM Top 40 formats but also as a studio Cameraman and later Technical Director with his Friday Night Talk Show on Cable Channel 3. Then on Saturdays for the Noon Dance show on CBS KDBC Channel 4. Exciting years and on the job opportunities meeting other station personnel in management, production, news, weather, promotions and public relations. In the summer after I turned 16 I mentored weekends nights as a Nightclub DJs in private and public clubs. A hairstylist dyed my blonde sideburns darker and with an early mustache. I was part of the team of Crosno-Disco-Tech-0 DJs at the Bahama Mama and the mobile system that played department stores, community rooms, malls, and the Western Playland Amusement Park. It was a great education that led me into as an adult into a 25 year media career.
WKRP IN CINCINNATI ON CBS IN FICTION
TO KQIP FM 96.9 IN ODESSA TEXAS
1977 to the 1980s
After graduating from Burges High School in 1977 El Paso my broadcasting career was similar to the fictional WKRP on CBS. About a Radio Station in the Midwest that switched from Elevator Music to Rock and Roll with its eclectic cast of characters from morning drive to the the evening shifts. I has similar experiences on 8 different stations and formats of the AM & FM dial in Odessa to 1978 and then El Paso 1978-1980. I was “paying dues” working weekends, overnights midnight and other shifts from mornings to evening.
In 1977 I started at Odessa Junior College at KOCV 91.3 THE ROCK to that fall working for THE RIG 14 KRIG 1410 AM on the edge of the sides south side. In 1978 I returned to the University of Texas El Paso as my career progressed on Album Orientated Rock KPAS FM 94, KSET Disco 95 with Steve Crosno by then the Program Director at KSET AM 1340 Disco Oldies. In January of 1979 I moved to KISO Christian Radio as a Morning Man and a month later to its sister FM station as THE MIDNIGHT MARSHALL on K102 KLOZ FM. We actually took requests via a CB Radio and by telephone. By the fall as a Morning Man engineer assist of the Charlie and Harrigan syndicated taped morning show on KROD AM 600 in the Adult Contemporary Format. But I grew tired of the format changes due to low ratings and the lack of longevity.
From January through July of 1980 I became an Orderly at the small old Southwestern General Hospital developing Film in the Radiology Department and briefly went to college to become a Radiology Technologist. Even moved back to Odessa to attend OC once again. But the lure of the TV department across the hall of the medical training and unable to maintain a steady income in rotating hospital schedules meant a move back to Nightclubs at Graham Central Station and some nights sitting on friends shifts at KUFO 98 FM. It was there on the night of December 8th, 1980 when John Lennon was murdered in New York that I gathered with several friends at KUFO on the 3rd floor of the bank building to just be with music lovers with the trickle of news coming from New York. Steve Driscoll was on the air and going to an all tribute show of Lemon and Beatles hits over the decades we all grew up listening to and influenced my Lennon’s music.
It was the midnight man for KUFO Kim Bangs who came in early and mentioned to me about an opening he learned about at cross town competitor KQIP FM. He suggested I should apply for it. And I did. The REST is RADIO HISTORY.
THE BIG BREAK
BACK INTO RADIO
IN 1980
KQIP FM 96.9 ODESSA TEXAS 1980 – 1986
John Roman Top Right – Steve Myers Top Left
WKRP IN CINCINNATI MAIN THEME SONG
by Steve Carlisle
“Baby, if you’ve ever wondered…
Wondered whatever became of me
I’m living on the air in Cincinnati, Cincinnati, WKRP
Got kind of tired packing and unpacking
Town to town and up and down the dial
Maybe you and me were never meant to be
But baby think of me once in awhile
I interviewed with John Roman on Thanksgiving in 1980. He was in a quandary with an evening show host not happy with her shift but not sure about moving to become a news woman. He liked my demo tapes and list of experience but would make a decision by Christmas. Meanwhile I had given notice at my expensive apartment even sublet to two barracks from the nightclub and their girlfriends all sleeping on sleeping bags in my small one bedroom apartment. I had moved four loads of things back to El Paso in December still working at the nightclub as a doorman and relief DJ. Every time I called John at KQIP he had no news to share.
After four years from 18 to 21 I had literally been town-to-town up and down the dials of 4 AM Stations and 4 FM Stations. KQIP was no prize either. One of the lowest rated stations in town it was a low power 1000-watt FM station on the 5th floor of the ABC Bank Building that prior to 1980’s switch to Adult Contemporary had played Big Band, Instrumentals and Singer Standards in 1979 back to 1958 a year before I was born. It wasn’t taken seriously by my colleagues and radio friends at Odessa College then but John Roman was an honorable program director from Detroit trying to change it into a fully operational broadcast station in 1980.
KQIP was literally the real-life version of WKRP on CBS. Owned by a Jewish husband and wife team of Roy and Essie Elsner it was their grown children in high school and college that lobbied them for years to drop the old EZ listening format and just play Rock and Roll. John convinced them it could make a lot more profit. And it did under John Roman and myself with an eclectic mix of personalities it began to make money in 1981..
John was responsible for the Adult Contemporary Format and both a studio and transmitter upgrade in 1981. That first picture about these was the night we went from 1,000 watts on top of the bank building to 100,000 watts with a 500 foot tall tower between the two cities of Odessa and Midland. John has bought a used FM transmitter and the part time Engineer worked on it north of the Midland Air Terminal in the former KMID NBC Big 2 Transmitter building. At 500 feet high it radiated a signal across Midland and Odessa and other 150 to 200 miles in a radius of the Permian Basin. Eric, seated between us was our new Midnight to 6 am host as we went from 18 hour a day broadcasting to 24. It was a major miracle.
That was March of 1981. I was promoted from the 7-12 pm Evening Shift to Mid Days from 10 am to 2 pm and worked a 9 to 5 schedule on the air and as the Music Director. I spent 5.5 years with KQIP advancing my career.
By 1984 I had not only my DJ Company but was a freelance writer, staff announcer and on-camera talent for KTPX NBC 9 that traded networks with KMID a year earlier. KMID gave up NBC for the hot ABC network only to a year later watch NBC radically change its schedule and became the #1 Network in the Nation. Cosby, Family Ties, Cheers, Night Court, Miami Vice, Saturday Night Live, Tom Brokow and a plethora of sports, news and great programming. Alf! LOL. All part it it then.
In the summer of 1986 I took an offer to to join KTPX NBC 9 Midland as a Copyrwriter, Staff Liaison with Sales, Promotions and Clients, in addition to writing, producing and overseeing editing of commercials, public service announcements and the voice of the station in Promotions with Creative Services. Severed there for 2.5 years.
Through no fault of management and staff the owners of the station in San Francisco who had grossly overpaid for the station in 1984 let the operation go into Bank Receivership. On a cold January day bankers speaking french from the Toronto Bank of Canada took receivership of the station firing all top management and over 50% of our staff. I was retained but it was a wakeup call how bad television could be operated and run by people with chips on their shoulders from another station and now cruel they could be to people who had nothing to do with the failure.
After ten months of the worst in the business I resigned and took a similar job for TV Cable of Midland half days in the morning then followed by the coveted afternoon drive radio shift of the number one FM radio station in the market. Country 92.3 FM KNFM. It was a breath of fresh air and a welcome of its staff, management and ownership. Stayed there for 2 years until its financial difficulties in the Oil Bust years of Midland Odessa. Then landed on my feet with upstart light FM KIOL-KLITE 101.1 FM in Midland from January through Memorial Day.
Then in July of 1990 I move all of it back to El Paso where I restarted at the University of Texas at El Paso to complete a postponed BA in Journalism and Theater Arts earned in 1994 and a Masters of Communications in 2001.
KTPX NBC 9 Midland Texas 1986-1988
HAPPY FEET & CO.
MOBILE DJ SYSTEM
1981-1995
I have to credit John Roman twice for getting me into the mobile DJ business. The first time In 1981 and then again in 2020.
John Roman did the best he could providing top wages to us at KQIP. Top as much as he could wrestled the General Manager to pay a decent wage.
But that was the boom of the Odessa Midland Oil Market. He had convinced the owner to give up EZ Listening Music for Rock and Roll and it took time to build on FM what had been very successful on AM.
But our staff was encouraged to find moonlighting work to support their day jobs. He had negotiated the top salaries with the General Manager of the Radio Station and encouraged us all to find something to supplement our incomes.
John worked from his apartment later home with an audio production studio making commercials for a variety of local clients and others with Advertising Agencies in Odessa, Midland and Lubbock. He also delivered furniture from Freight Sales in Odessa for a church friend with the store. I had worked for the Graham and Associates nightclubs in West Texas. Long days but did well. Up at day at 8 each morning, to KQIP at 9 something. On air from 10 am to 2 pm. Writing and producing commercials to 5 pm. Dinner on the run to the nightclub and working anywhere from 7 to 8 pm to 2 am. If lucky I’d get 8 hours sleep to the next day. And that for a year was my routine.
However, in 1981 I took on a silent partner and a bank loan to start Happy Feet and Company. John suggested I could equal my salary of the station for a month in one night of a wedding reception or Holiday Oil Party. And he was right.
Instead of working two jobs in radio and nightclubs I was able to grow Happy Feet and Company into one of the top DJ companies for weddings, receptions and holiday parties. My company grew enough to work live remotes broadcasts at the nightclub where I had been the DJ and help them format their music formats. They gladly kept me on staff to be an emcee for converts and late night contests on the weekends. So I was earning three times what I had done years before for two employers.
I worked for the Graham and Associates local nightclubs, with five clubs in Odessa and two in Midland. We were young and it was survival living in an Oil Boom Town of expensive cost of living.
There were a lot of sideline perks to those years: One such as when I took a collect call from the David James in the middle of the sticks of West Texas over 150 miles from the neareat gas station.
David, a former band musician, had stopped along I10 to I20 to help a group of musicians stranded in a broken-down tour bus. He stumbled on a young rising star by the name of Huey Lewis.
He called my station on late afternoon from a pay phone at a Truck Stop in the middle of nowhere. He asked if I knew of a Huey Lewis and the news. That was 1982.
I relayed they had 2 songs on the top 40 charts and were a breakout new band.
That was enough for David. He thanked me for the information and had me cut on a Monday a concert for Thursday.
I later learned He agreed to get the tour bus towed to Odessa, to be serviced and put the band up in a hotel with a food expense account IF they would play a concert at the club on Thursday. Rescued from the middle of nowhere they gladly took the help. That’s how I came to meet and spend time with a young Huey Lewis and the News. Introduced them at Graham Central Station to a packed audience and a great intimate concert.
TRIBUTE TO A GREAT FRIEND:
CLIFF DAVIS
When I had the opportunity to start my DJ Business in 1981 my silent partner with Happy Feet and Company was James “Cliff” Davis. He was the first person I met in my apartment complex of Oakwood Square when I accepted the job at KQIP in 1980. f
Cliff as into music with his own Sony system of television, VCR, Stereo, and Reel to Reel Audio Tape Recorder. He was about my same age graudating from Permian High School and whose father was a legacy law man for the Sheriff’s of Odessa in Ector County. Cliff at the time had worked for the Ector County Sheriff’s Department and was receiving from being shot in the line of duty. He was just coming home from the hospital for several months= when I met him in my move to the Oakwood Square.
A year later working for KQIP and he joining the Odessa Police Department he leaped at the opportunity to be a part of a mobile DJ Company. Through friends we took a loan at the Western National Bank and Happy Feet was born. Two Technics SL 1200MK II turntables, Audio Technical Cartridges and Needles, a Radio Shack Mixer, into a Shure Pro Series 250 watt two channel amplifier with two EQ bands for Left and Right speakers. And those 250 pound speakers. I had the record collection and duplicate copies of 45s and LPs from the Radio Station. What we didn’t have I purchased over years of operating the system.
What I didn’t have was enough money to buy a DJ coffin for the turntables or Mixer. I wired up at each event with RCA, 1/4″ plugs and XLR cables. From my Graham Central Station owners and colleagues I purchased Twelve Rain lights putting four each on a three channeld chasing controller, that also ws sound activated, and pointed at a mirror ball on a motorized motor.
Crates and Crates of LP records, 12″ long playing dance mixes and tons of 45 rpm records.
When not in use, Cliff loved music. We kept the equipment there in his new house where he later married with a wife and adopted children. He got such a kick of playing records on the DJ system we shared. He especially loved the mirror ball and rain lights we owned then as I repaid the $7,000 loan with the profits from the DJ company. .
I played my share of nonprofit organizations in benefits and fund raisers at the time in both cities that brought clients in other ways of marketing. But weddings and receptions in addition to Oil Company semi annual parties kept us in tall cotton. Allowed me to eat and not work myself to death. It was both a love of community and a way to grow my name in West Texas that brought me fame, fortune and great contacts with the city, county and region.
MIDLAND TALL CITY SKYLINE
ODESSA ABC/TEXAS COMMERCE BANK
SUITE 506 KQIP FM
I picked up most of the major Oil Companies headquarters of Midland for Christmas and Summer Picnic Parties and played for blue collar parties of drilling and service companies in Odessa. I also grew into Weddings and Receptions with the Holiday Inn Convention Centers in each city of Odessa and Midland with their sales department representing my DJ company. That expanded into the Hilton Inns of both cities and then the top Country Clubs.
I had a good solid name from radio, references from nightclub work, and each Holiday Inn had sales staff’s that put my business on their preferred vendor lists. I was their top DJ to recommend to bridal parties and other functions seeking venue service. I provided fair rates to the hotel chain when it sponsored special events such as rotary club meetings and guest speakers for fundraiser dinners.
I met former Governor John Connally who talked to a group of 2000 paying guest of that fateful day in Dallas in President Kennedy’s motorcade. I met others as well. Senators, Celebrities, Stars, Bands, on the way up or the slow slides down. Bob Denver, Forrest Tucker, Doug McClure, Jo Jo Starbuck, even Tiny Tim. Provided sound for the country group Alabama signing autographs at a Wall Mart on a cold January snowy day from the flatbed of a commercial truck. Sound for a Water Park and Polo Matches on Sundays in Midland.
I worked on advertising trade outs with KQIP to providing sound for live remotes and fund raiser promotional events. The advertising reach produced new client calls from all over West Texas from the Big Bend to Marfa, Pecos, into Southeastern New Mexico; as far north as Lubbock, East to Abilene and south to the towns that dotted the Texas map to Sanderson, Fort Stockton, McCamey, Big Lake, San Angelo to Big Spring and even Abilene.
My client list grew to the grand ballrooms of both an Odessa and Midland Hilton Inns; the Petroleum Clubs of both cities, and to the country clubs of five in Midland and one in Odessa. Those were where couples booked for wedding receptions and corporations for holiday parties.
I once played from the hood of my 1981 Yellow Camaro in a Bank Building Parking Garage to its atrium gardens of BANKERS in the region. That between two twenty story bank towers.
Played the Halloween Costume parties in the old 1910 Yucca Theater and in private clubs, restaurants and homes throughout the area.
Then by the mid 1980s came out of town clients in Austin, Dallas Fort Worth, Plano, and Brenham near Houston. They were some of the best years of my life.
35TH KQIP REUNION 2015
This new incarnation of DJ bandstand resurrected as company during the pandemic in 2020. I stated talking to old radio friends in 2015 in a DFW Reunion about the possibility. Radio friends and DJ’s are special people. Happiest times in our lives though were were as poor as church mice. I have John Roman to thank for our many calls during hate pandemic about resurrecting a mobile DJ company into the last decades of my life. John is pictured about me (seated) far right. It was a great idea to plan for during the pandemic and now a reality launching once again to serve in Weddings, Receptions and several other areas.
Working the past 18 years for Costco in Security I set back invent funds for equipment purchases and have digitized vinyl records in my extensive collection since my radio decades. I have since contracted as a mobile sound engineer and AV consulting for business meetings serving Costco’s in the DFW Region. That all began in 2022.
Less Superman I’m more Clark Kent.
But its time to Party
AMERICAN CHRISTIAN FICTION WRTERS CONFERENCE 2012
Media Man and Novelist
NOVELIST AMERICAN CHRISTIAN FICTION WRITERS ORGANIZATION 2012- NOW
Like Clark Kent and Superman I have some superpowers of my own working as a Novelist since 2012. That’s gone on hold relaunching The DJ Bandstand. But it’s still a part of my life. Part Novelist, Former Radio and Television Careers and back to being the DJ. Its a wild store on its own.
As for novels, I’ve written about two dozen learning the craft, how and and why. Have the interest of two publishers, if I ever decide to submit. At some point I might.
But I am so glad to get back to being a Dj and in my world of Nightclub and Mobile DJ Entertainment. That’s how The DJ Bandstand cooks or works. And the fun has only just begun!
Steve Myers
March 31, 2024
