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"Johnny Holliday: From Rock to Jock" A Book Review by Claude Hall |
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Fascinating and also historically significant, this book "Johnny Holliday: From Rock to Jock" by Johnny and co-author Stephen Moore, Sports Publishing LLC.com or 877-424-2665 ($22.95), details Holliday's beginnings in radio as a youth on WBBN in Unadilla, GA, to his rock days at WHK in Cleveland, his job on WINS in Manhattan in its last days as a music station, his job at KYA in San Francisco to his days as a sportscaster in Washington, DC. Those journeys and those days are filled with the people he knew in music and in radio as well as in sports, all of the people who contributed to the genre of broadcasting in all of its myriad turmoils and glories and the wild and woolly intangibles of being a personality. When they write our epitaph, as one day they must, some wise soul may remark if they're kind that we lived our lives with a certain je ne sais quoi as well as with a consuming passion. The world of the disc jockey has always been a rather unique and often odd world. Perhaps that of Johnny Holliday has been more normal than most--wife, kids, grandkids. He would more than likely deny any viewpoint of himself as normal. Because his life has been extremely colorful and, as radio goes, very successful. However, success usually comes with a high price tag and Johnny's life is mostly devoid of the shadows that usually accompany the lives of most of the radio personalities that I've known, i.e., failed marriages, enemies, bitter experiences. I knew his WINS story, of course, since by then I'd joined the staff of Billboard magazine in New York City. And I was aware of the KYA tale because I knew Howard Kester. Lord, but I haven't heard the name Howard Kester in years! Like everyone who knew him, I knew Kester stories. I remember one afternoon on the ABC boat churning around the Hudson River when Kester insisted on telling us about oranges (he'd spent a few years managing a radio station in Florida). Me and Rick Sklar, program director of WABC, and recording artist David Cassidy, record promotion man Barry Fidel, and others listened to him for four hours on oranges! It was that or swim. Holliday worked for Kester at KYA. And I think it was during this period that Holliday began to definitively shift his career from music to sports although he'd announced the games of the Cleveland Browns much earlier. But sports had always been a heavy part of Holliday's life. I remember mentioning his radio station basketball teams in the Vox Jox column that I used to write for Billboard. Rick Barry, temporarily out of work, was a member of his team at KYA. And over the years Holliday came to know a lot of sports figures. In fact, this book is literally a who's who of the sports world; you'll find Paul Hornung, Ted Williams, Hank Aaron, Joe DiMaggio, Ben Scotti, Denny McLain, Sandy Koufax, Ernie Banks, Bob Feller, Whitey Ford, Ken Norton, Howard Cosell. But Holliday's early career was as a rock jock and he knew and worked with many good radio names. Ed Hider, Rocky G, George Michaels, Felix Grant, Arnie Schorr, Neil McIntyre, Harvey Glascock, Jack Thayer, Pete Myers, Scott Burton, Dick Jansen, etc. The list is extensive and fairly comprehensive. And historic, in my opinion. He was also a childhood friend of Sal Licata and Tom Sgro. And he knew many such as Don Graham, Eddie Rosenblatt, Marty Goldrod and Lou Galiani in the record business. I guarantee you that you will enjoy this book. As for myself, I found it fascinating because I, too, knew many of the people mentioned. This book brought back some very good memories of Murray the K, William B. Williams, Jack Thayer, Don Graham (who knew radio extremely well), those early Beatles concerts. Johnny only mentioned the name Tom Campbell (in connection with KYA) in passing, but I knew Tom fairly well and wonder to this day what happened to him and his wife. A good deal of the book focuses just on Johnny Holliday. And that's as it should be; it's his life and his career. And more than half revolves around sports and not too many will disagree with this. Johnny's involvement with the theater is also covered as well as his plane crash in 1974. Johnny and Steve have a very important book here. It should be in every college library and all of the major city libraries and, if you love radio as much as I do, in your own library. Just FYI, Johnny, I cried at the John Joyce tribute in the book. But I've got to throw in a little dig here. It's not new. I heard in when my own book "This Business of Radio Programming" came out in 1977. Someone said that if everyone mentioned in the book bought a copy, I'd have a runaway bestseller. Well, same goes for Johnny's book. And I hope that everyone mentioned DOES buy a copy. |