The Strange Case of Dr. Rock
Joe Taylor
Finding a guy or gal who goes along with a “crazy idea” that you come up with is the dream of every radio station programmer or manager. When the idea clicks and the listeners buy it, you’re P.T. Barnum running the circus. But, those aren’t “suckers,” those are listeners, and when it works, they’re loving it.
There are small market announcers who spend a lifetime bouncing from one station to another, often just on the fringe of a major market. They drive junker cars, need food stamps, a new sport coat, and in Ron’s case, a better hair piece. Ron did afternoons for me at WRRO in Warren, Ohio, an hour south of Cleveland. Ron also did everything I asked him to do, willingly, happy to still be working in the business he loved.
The station, an AM in the beginning of the ascendancy of FM in the early nineties, was dying on the vine when the company that hired me to run it, bought it from the local newspaper. My immediate goals were to get business on the books and to get people to listen to it again.
I’ve always subscribed to the idea that each radio station has a “point of entry,” a program or an event that draws people, who haven’t been listening, to start tuning in. For many stations in the nineties it was taking what had become a southern rage, NASCAR, and broadcasting it up north. Radio is credited with giving the sport its first national recognition. The “entry” might be a station adding play by play sports, or a city’s first live local call in talk show. Each of these “points” add new listeners. New listeners equal new prospective consumers and a station call sell to its clients through the commercials it airs.
Warren is an old industrial town. As the industrial belt was rusting it still had a fair share of plants paying folks good union salaries. Those workers liked to spend their money weekends in bars and restaurants, especially those on “the strip”, a section of US Route 422 rumored to be Mafia controlled. People there still went “clubbing”. It was an old town. It was a fun town. It hit me…my “point of entry” would be oldies. Not having an announcer just playing and announcing them, but a character “spinning the tunes and talking the talk.” My man Ron knew the oldies. He had played them when they were new. And, if you listened carefully to him you could hear that his voice had a slight raspy quality. Maybe just a suggestion of “Wolfman Jack.”
Thus was born Dr. Rock. I coached Ron in the kind of guttural delivery that I wanted from him. Announcers are taught to speak from their diaphragm. I told Ron to push it out from his throat. I also instructed him never to use his real name when he was doing his Saturday 7 to Midnight oldies show. Ron did weekday afternoons. Dr. Rock did Saturday nights. They were two different people. I was amazed when, within weeks, clients of ours were asking “who is this Dr. Rock guy?” They had bought it, and started buying ads on his show.
To make some side money, like many announcers, Ron had a portable dee jay unit he could take out to play at weddings and parties. What had been his cottage industry became a major industry. He upped his fee, bought a wig and shades, a new hipper sport coat and started doing gigs as Dr. Rock on Fridays, Sundays, and even Saturdays before coming on the air. In twenty years in the business he had never made as much money, most of it under the table, as he was making then. He was spinnin’ those “platters what matters” and spieling out the chatter live and on the air in his distinct Dr. Rock throaty delivery.
I left the station and moved south a couple of hours to Springfield, Ohio. Although my station was doing well, I thought we could also use a Saturday night oldies show. I tried it with an announcer on staff. But, the kid was no Ron. He did a lackluster performance, couldn’t or wouldn’t give me the guttural delivery I wanted. I called Ron in Warren, but he and his alter ego, Dr. Rock, were still happily bopping along.
Twenty years later I was consulting a station in north central Pennsylvania. Its owner had a financial interest in my old Warren station. One day driving through Warren I decided to drop by the station. No one that I knew worked there anymore. I asked about some of my old employees. Ron’s name came up. He hadn’t worked there in some time, and didn’t work in radio anymore. He had pretty much lost his voice. The strain on his throat and vocal chords of doing the Dr. Rock delivery had stripped his voice down to a whisper.
I feel a sense of responsibility for getting him into something that eventually damaged him. But, his years as Dr. Rock gave him what most people on the air live for, recognition. I had “a crazy idea,” he was willing, and for a time that he’ll remember forever, he was a star.