About this time, Rabbitt finally had the time to put together a band of his own, and while he worked days at KBBQ he started bringing into L.A. all those Texas musicians his granddaddy had turned him on to many years ago. A band began to form around Rabbitt's songwriting with the best pickers he could find, including Rex Ludwick ( The Willie Nelson Family Band ) on drums, a long time Rabbitt song writing partner. Ludwick had already played on several dozen hit records by that time, including Jon and Robin and the In Crowd's 1967 hit "Do It Again A Little Bit Slower." Rex brought along Robert Hardy, a legendary Texas guitar picker, friend of Doug Sahm and future Bob Dylan collaborator Atwood Allan joined the band, all from Texas. Heavy metal guitarist B.J. Jones and Hollywood studio bass player, DJ, and singer Dave Johnson from the rock band Sweathog joined, and finally "roots New Orleans keyboard" genius James Carroll Booker III came on board to round out the lineup.

Tom Dowd of Atco records reported to his label that the band "had a Rolling Stones at a Texas roadhouse" feel, so naturally when he signed with rock legend Jerry Wexler, to produce his first Atlantic album, the band became known as "Texas." While they were recording their first album at a studio in Hollywood, Rabbitt was still doing his regular shift at KBBQ and editing his "Progressive Country Report" for Bob Hamilton, he kept in touch with the "Progressive Country " or "Outlaw Country" movements growing around the world. What the Rabbitt was doing on the air in L.A. was a far cry from what was going on elsewhere, but it was a start, and it was working on all levels.

FIRST, L.A., THEN THE WORLD?

Then as they say, "the fit hit the chan", and KBBQ was sold, soon to become KROQ, "the Roq of Los Angeles." L.A. country radio would be down to one station and Rabbitt would be out of work - radio work, that is. So back to breaking horses in Topanga and playing music at the Palomino! Still, Rabbitt had his agents searching everywhere for a station where he could continue get the ratings, and prove that "Progressive Country" was a viable international format. All those little guys, at all those stations were counting on him to prove them right about the lack of creativity and variety in the big city country formats.

Luck was still with our hero. The fact that he already had a large following on the station (remember it was K-Bar-B-Que when the last ratings were taken), still prompted management (most of whom were fans) to try and keep him. And let him "do his own thing!" As his lengthy contract with the station's new ownership read, "whatever he thinks is right at night!"

DO YOUR THING AND GET PAID FOR IT!

"Do your own thing was something folks liked to say, but rarely meant in those days!", Rabbitt remembers. "The rare thing was, they meant it and the station was great, except for the original AM signal. The music was the best. I mean, check out the playlists! Formatting was free form, but we held meetings, and voted on everything we played - more or less. The good thing was that the jocks all had their own style, of course, but they all had their own musical tastes as well, and they shared them with the KROQ audience. The deejays were, quite literally, the best that money could buy.

"In the beginning, six figures minimum jock pay," says Rabbitt. "Most of us did much better than that, thanks to all those lawyers that were always roaming the halls of Burbank, and even more so later in Pasadena! Listen to those tapes (now CDs and cassettes) that California Airchecks and the others are selling on their web pages. We played whatever we thought was right. It was radio at it's best, and it's worst, light years ahead, and yet stone ages, or maybe "stoned ages" behind, all at the same time. It was evolving! Remember, I stayed around longer, and came back more often than anyone in the history of both KROQ AM and KROQ FM. I got to work with all kinds of other people who have made a difference L.A. radio over the years. People like Frazier Smith, Rodney Bingenheimer, Jed the Fish, "Insane" Darrell Wayne, Bob Gowa, Dr. Demento and other famous Kroqers!"

ALWAYS READ THE FINE PRINT

Rabbitt was a natural for the personality heavy line-up at KROQ AM, late in 1972, and KROQ FM through his many years of association with the "Roq," right on into the late Seventies. He was a rock jock of great repute, an expert, who played his own music, both on and off the air, a proven rating getter in L.A. And, after all was said and done, it was "their own" (owners and management ) free form format. Rabbitt was the only thing they couldn't control! Among the documents shown in Rabbitt's new book is a copy of his contract with KROQ that contained a clause that kept everyone in programming and management at least 30 feet away from him and his posse at all times while he was on the air, no exceptions, ever! And another clause that allowed him to park his Harley inside the studio during bad weather! No dress code for him, and no morals clause whatsoever, in all those pages of legal documents! Wonder why Rabbitt always has holes in his Levis in those old KROQ pictures? He obviously spent most of those mid six figure paychecks, the ones that didn't bounce, on lawyers! Yes, but that's for later in our story!

Rabbitt still needed a radio outlet to keep his name before the L.A. audience, and keep his band "Texas" packing the clubs, so he ignored the jokes from the other jocks, and even wore his "K-Bar-B-Que" shirt in early publicity photos! When KROQ's owners offered to pay him what he wanted, he couldn't refuse, and he didn't. He joined "the Roq Revolution" with other highly paid old friends like Steve Lundy, Jim Wood, Shadoe Stevens, Sam Riddle, Charlie Tuna , "China" Smith and Johnny "Mr. Infomercial" Darrin. The station eventually bought "underground" pioneer station KPPC FM in Pasadena, and changed the calls to KROQ FM and quite literally exploded, just like the volcano in their early logos.

SO MUCH OF A GOOD THING . .

The station has always sounded great, and as a listener who was around in the beginning, I fondly remember that they were rockin', and Rabbitt was right when he says, "Kickin' butt, and takin' names."

"Hell, people were sending us all the names we needed, if you know what I mean. What a concept, what a team, just no sales people to match the on-the-air talent!" Rabbitt recounts.

The initial cost of just buying an AM/FM combo in Los Angeles, then all those highly paid announcers signaled the first round of red ink beginning to flow. All the jocks were given the cars of their dreams. Rabbitt scored a racing model Mercedes 450 SLR that had to be modified for street use in California; Steve Lundy a custom Lincoln Continental; Jim Woods a red Rolls, and on and on!

Take an extra large team of "six figure-plus newsmen and women," complete with staff of reporters with a fleet of Datsun 280 Zs ( with the exploding volcano logos ) as mobile news cruisers, add the expense of "The KROQ Ultimate Roq Concert/ Festival," held in the L.A. Coliseum, featuring virtually ever rock act on the charts at the time, including Stevie Wonder, The Raspberries, Sly & The Family Stone, Chuck Berry, The Bee Gees, The Eagles, and John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band and others including Rabbitt and his band "Texas" and any accountant in his right mind would be reeling.

The three dollar promotional tickets for the Coliseum show, even with the large crowds, couldn't have hoped to pay for even just the backstage food and drink, let alone the multi-million dollar promotional campaign that included more radio station billboards than had ever been seen at one time in any radio market (hundreds of which read "The Rabbitt" has joined the "Roq Revolution")!

OH WHERE, OH WHERE DID MY PORSCHE GO?

The list of extraordinary expenses is well known, and radio history has shown that when cash flow is slow, it won't be long until the paychecks go! One day the paychecks began to bounce. Then the jocks began to lose their company cars. One by one they began to vanish off the air, obviously replaced by talented newcomers eager to break into the LA radio market. When program director Shadoe Stevens lost his Porsche Targa, he resigned with a letter of protest, (see Rabbitt's book for text ) leaving "The Rabbitt," "China" Smith and Lee Baby Simms as the last of the original "Roq Revolutionaries" still on the air!

Over the next year or so, Rabbitt and longtime girlfriend, Hollywood model and TV star Jennifer Ashley, and her two children, maintained a 4-bedroom suite, with private dining room, kitchen, patio and pool, at the plush "Bel-Air Sands Hotel." The property was owned by the "KROQ Corporation" which used the free rent and Limo Service, from another company they owned, to keep Rabbitt around, in spite of a mounting pile of useless checks. When all of the money the lawyers thought was owed to him ran out, Rabbitt was presented with giant bill for his accommodations. He and Jennifer, and the kids packed up and returned to his Hollywood Hills home. Rabbitt returned to the air three or four times over the next few Roq incarnations, for almost no money. Well, at least he had a lot of credit at the "KROQ Company store." The owners felt they owed him, whoever they were.

LET'S PLAY SPIN THE RECORD DEAL

During this time Rabbitt continued editing his Bob Hamilton "Progressive Country" Report, and working on his Atlantic recording project, which was running way behind schedule. In fact, the original band had already broken up, and Rabbitt had lost the name "Texas" in a court fight with another group - from Seattle! When the first single, now considered a collectors item, "Everybody Need's Somebody That They Can Talk To!" was finally released, it was on Atco records, by Jimmy Rabbitt. Jerry Wexler was now listed as the executive producer. Both the single and the album that it came from will finally be available soon, after all these years, at: www.jimmyrabbitt.com.

Rabbitt was then rehired by Metromedia, to fill in for Mary Turner, after she fell in love with a rock star, and took off for an extended vacation in England. By the time she finally returned he had brought the ratings up, so shifts were shortened, and "The Rabbitt" was placed between "the obscene" Steven Clean, and "the burner" Mary Turner, on the last of the real "rock and roll" L.A. radio stations, KMET. The classic rock and roll movie "FM" is based on KMET at the time, with Alex Karris playing a cowboy-like-Rabbitt-like d.j.

Note: Rabbitt is one of the 100 all-time rock radio deejays featured at the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame's radio exhibit in Cleveland, Ohio. At this interactive display, you can see Rabbitt on the screen wearing his signature cowboy hat and hear an air check of him on KMET from this period.

The staff at KMET during that time was impressive, to say the least. In addition to the already mentioned radio legends, they were joined by "morning wake up head" B. Mitchell Reed, mid-day diva and protest leader Barbara Birdfeather, Dr. Demento, and "The Phlorescent Leech & Eddie Show" featuring the radio antics of real-life rock stars, Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan of The Turtles on the weekends. Eventually, old friend Shadoe Stevens came aboard as Program Director, which was a daring move on his part because it was rumored at the time that nobody in the industry wanted the job of dealing with all of those highly paid "egos"!

RABBITT, THE ORIGINAL (sub)URBAN COWBOY DOES IT AGAIN

It was while Rabbitt was playing in his new country band Renegade, featuring many of the same players from the old "Texas" band line up, that he really began to notice the audience that blended country and rock were once again lining up for a merger. So he began playing more and more country music, mixed with hard rock and roll on his six to nine shift, and the ratings went through the roof! Rabbitt told Billboard Magazine's Claude Hall at the time, "I was like a gunfighter, they didn't really like me, or agree with my politics, but as long as I got the job done, they just looked the other way and gave me more money! Hell if the ratings hadn't been there, I would have been back to playing hippy music and selling waterbeds on the air, at the very least!"

But the ratings were there, and Rabbitt became number one in his time slot playing Waylon Jennings, Bobby Bare, Willie Nelson, Emmy Lou Harris, Lefty Frizell, Hank Snow, Tompall Glazier, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Doug Sahm, The Charlie Daniel's Band, Jesse Colter, Elvin Bishop and Dolly Parton along with The Eagles, The Rolling Stones, Billy Joel, The Beatles, The Grateful Dead, Freddy Fender, Bonnie Raitt, Bob Dylan, Lynard Skynard, and Linda Ronstadt!

RECORDS, RADIO, AND THAT GOOD OL' RENEGADE MUSIC

Rabbitt's band, "Renegade," really began to take off during this time. They were selling out record numbers of shows, not only at The Palomino and other country music venues in California, but the Roxy, The Whiskey, Club Central other rock spots on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood soon became home to "sold-out, near-riot" conditions whenever Rabbitt and Renegade played there! Capitol records took note, and signed Jimmy Rabbitt and Renegade to a contract that called for Waylon Jennings to produce their albums, and management whiz Peter Rachtman to handle his career.

Rachtman first looked around for a better place for Rabbitt to do his radio show, and soon found him a well-paying, high-profile country radio job at KGBS AM/FM in Hollywood. Then known as "Gentle Country," as in "not hillbilly," the station had recently been granted a power increase, and gone "Progressive Country"! Once again Rabbitt was hired to extend the parameters of an existing "Country Format", by this time mixing "Progressive Country" with the new "Country Rock" and more "Traditional Country." It worked, and with his boots firmly in place at KGBS, Rabbitt finished his first album for Capitol Records "Jimmy Rabbitt and Renegade."

The album received airplay at a lot of the "Progressive Country" stations, as well as many of the more "Traditional Country" stations around the world, and is still considered one of the best albums of the time! The airplay spawned two hits for the band, "Ladies Love Outlaws", and "I Wish I Had Me Someone To Miss." Meanwhile, a song that Rabbitt had written called "Tonk," was re-written and recorded by David Alan Coe. The song now called "Long Haired Redneck" became a number one hit. Coe mentioned Rabbitt on the record, along with Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Johnny Rodriquez, Bill Anderson and others. Jimmy Rabbitt and Renegade continued to sell out show after show, not only club dates, but now large concerts, fairs and rodeos.

THE RENEGADE RIDES AGAIN

One night, in a classic Jimmy Rabbitt stunt gone wrong, our wayward jock left KGBS Program Director Ron Martin on the air by phone from his home - with no one at the studio! The audience was treated to hearing Rabbitt's Harley, which he had parked on the second floor in the control room, start up and roar off down the hallway!" Texas" by the Charlie Daniels Band played over and over, more than a dozen times by the time somebody got to the station to set things right! Rabbitt, by that time, had ridden off into the night (and off the air for a long, long time) with an attractive lady engineer perched on back of his Harley.

Rabbitt returned to KROQ many times over the next few years, many times for free, but he never worked full time at any other L.A. radio station again. He continued working with his band and tried his hand at writing for television with old friend Howard Campbell from "The Smothers Brother's Comedy Hour. Sometime later, he moved to Redondo Beach, California to write songs and work on a new album project.

The new Renegade featured a new sound, and line-up! Rabbitt, with guitar players and singers, Jerry Zeremba, Rolo Smith and Janis Oliver (soon to be Mrs. Vince Gill!), keyboard players John Barlow Jarvis and Bobby Burns, drummers "Frosty" Smith, ( Lee Michaels and Sweathog ) and Richie Heywood ( little Feat), guitar strangler Don Preston ( Mad Dogs and Englishmen ) and singer/songwriters Daniel Moore ( "My Maria", and "Shambala" ) and Matt Moore ( "Space Captain" ) for additional background vocals. Not a bad line up for a cow punk band from Hollywood. They sounded great. So great that they started setting new attendance records around the country!

It was decided that what was needed to showcase this band was a live album, just before the studio album was released. Many different live club shows were recorded with live versions of songs from the album that was never finished. One was recorded at the world famous "Palomino" nightclub in North Hollywood, California, where Jimmy Rabbitt and Renegade got their start, one at "The Golden Bear" in Huntington Beach, and another at the "Sweetwater Cafe" in Redondo Beach, where The Sweethearts Of The Rodeo were the opening act whenever Renegade rolled into town. Sweetheart sister, Janis Oliver, joined the Renegade band. (CDs featuring all of the mentioned players, and some special guests like Doug Sahm, Tanya Tucker, Doug Kershaw, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and various members of "the Family Band", will soon be available at: www.jimmyrabbitt.com.)

. . AND AGAIN

During this time, old friend and long time Renegade fan, Gary Busey, landed the role of a lifetime, and needed a real "rock-a-billy" band for "The Buddy Holly Story." The band all had roles in the movie, played all of the music on the sound track, and guitarist Jerry Zeremba landed the speaking, singing role of Eddie Cochran. Rabbitt missed his big chance in the movie because he was in the hospital recovering from a motorcycle wreck. While he was still recovering from the operation, a riot broke out at a "Jimmy Rabbitt and Renegade" concert in Thousand Oaks California, and some band members including Rabbitt and Zeremba were injured. Then not long after that, a new horse he had just bought wrecked Rabbitt, then Rabbitt wrecked another Harley, and the band just started drifting apart.

Janis Oliver had met Vince Gill when he opened for Rabbitt at the "Whiskey-a-go-go" in Hollywood. Janis and Vince eventually got married. The same night, it was Renegade's steel guitar player, Leonard Arnold's birthday, and he met Janis' sister, Kristine. They got married, too. Well, the newlyweds all headed to Nashville, leaving Renegade with an unfinished album, and the prospect of putting a new band together.

RABBITT HEADS FOR SNO COUNTRY

Rabbitt said, "One day I just realized that I was tired of biker bars and Hollywood bullshit, and was really, really, really lucky to be alive after all that "Outlaw" living, so I just packed up my saddlebags, and pointed my Hog in the direction of the only place in the world more beautiful than Texas, or Northern California - Aspen Colorado!"

Rabbitt spent the next few years, as he put it, "living in paradise, and working in radio heaven!" He and former Renegade bass player and long-time friend, Dave Johnson started out with KSNO AM, and later they started KSNO FM in nearby Snowmass Village. Rabbitt did the morning show with his radio partner, Alan Scott, and played in various bands over the years, including "Rico and the Violators", "Radio Starr", "the no problem band", and various reunions as "Jimmy Rabbitt and Renegade."

BACK TO TEXAS

Then "The Fall of '87," a Rabbitt song became a reality when, in October of 1987, the stock market's "Black Monday" sent Rabbitt looking for a solid radio job to support his failing ventures. He landed back in Dallas, hired by "The Satellite Music Network," to be a "full time/part time" man on various radio formats. He cut liners and station ID's for hundreds of stations around the world, and worked weekends on several formats before they decided to use him full time on the "Pure Gold" format. He did afternoon drive, and was made music director when the legendary "Doc" Morgan moved over to the "Zoo" FM in Dallas.

"It was great!" Rabbitt says, "Suddenly, there I was broadcasting live over a New Orleans station, WTIX where I had applied years before and was turned down! Through the miracle of satellites, I was back "live" on the air at stations where I worked when I was a kid, like KDOK in Tyler Texas, and KOLE in Port Arthur Texas!"

When the U.S. economy began to falter in 1989, the network ax fell on Rabbitt's expensive red neck. Instead of looking for a job in Dallas, where the SMN studios were located, he headed back home to work with his old friends. He wanted to relax and write some new kind of rock and roll songs with long time writing partners, Bobby Ray Rambo, June Engle and her sister, Sandra Dockery, and record with old friend Robin Hood Brians, who still owned a recording studio in Tyler,Texas.

BACK TO SCHOOL

Rabbitt also returned to college, which had been so rudely (and profitably!) interrupted by his radio and recording careers. He studied Music Theory, Computer Science, and even English Composition ( he said he's got at least two more books to write! ) and work on his Master's Degree in Mass Communications, which he started years ago, at The American University School of Radio and Television in Washington D.C. Rabbitt virtually lived in the recording studio when he was not in class. There, he learned how to play all the band instruments on a computer. He wrote and recorded songs solo for the first time in his life. During this time, he wrote many new songs, which he plans to release on CD featuring his computer band, "degrees of random." Look for the CDs soon on Rabbitt's web site: www.jimmyrabbitt.com)

While back at college, he added to his growing lifetime list of station call letters by working at KVIL FM with his mentor, the original Irving Harrigan.  He worked with Ron Chapman, KNUE FM and with old time country programmer "Hoss" Huggins, KMTJ FM and KKUS FM, and with rock and roll radio pioneer Rick Reynolds, KTYL FM, where he was reunited with Dallas radio legend Dave Moreland. Finally he returned to KDOK FM, this time to filling in for his long time friend and radio "hero" Art Roberts (WLS Chicago) who also just happened to start radio career in Texas. Art was doing a "music of your life" type show at the time.

BACK TO THE HIGHER ELEVATIONS

A few years ago, Rabbitt returned to his old stompin' grounds, the Rocky Mountains to consult at "Kiss Country," a series of stations and translators that, linked together, covers everything from the Utah border, right along I-70 into the Colorado resort cities of Aspen and Vail.

"Great area for Country Music!" Rabbitt told Rolling Stone writer, B. Leary, in an interview. "I'm working not only with old pros like Jefferson Stone, Roger Allen, and "Kissey R." Fromm, but with a dynamic young radio programmer from the University of Florida, named Scott K. Uhl, "The Mojo" who is into a whole new kind of country programming."

Rabbitt's bird was almost cooked last Thanksgiving. An ad for his radio show featured a family offering grace at their Thanksgiving table, heads bowed, with faces painted like the rock band KISS, and the caption which read, "The Rabbitt ... on KISS Country... It Ain't Yo Mama's Country!"

It caused some wings to flap. Rabbitt says maybe everybody took it a little too seriously. Anyway, all he was trying to say, in his own Rabbitt way, is that Shania Twain, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill DO belong on a "country" station with Steve Earle, the Grateful Dead, the Byrds, and The Bare Naked Ladies.

RABBITT HOPS INTO THE NEW MILLENNIUM

Material for a new Renegade double CD set was recorded in the fall of 2000 and titled, "Radio Free Texas Volume One." It features Rabbitt and a lengthy list of original band members, plus many old friends who influenced Rabbitt's musical style over the years: Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Jimmy Vaughn, Ray Benson and Asleep At The Wheel, David Allan Coe, Bugs Henderson, Mouse and The Traps, Augie Meyers, Freddie Fender and others. The concept is a tribute to Texas radio, featuring new songs written by Rabbitt just for the project, and also containing songs by some of the new "young guns" of rock and roll music.

Rabbitt describes the CD set as "a reprise of some of the old Texas music that we all grew up playing. Songs like "Linda Lu" from Ray Sharpe, "Honkey Tonk" from Bill Doggett, "She's About A " Mover" from The Sir Douglas Quintet, "Treat Her Right" from Roy Head, and "La Grange" from ZZ Top to mention just a few titles."

RABBITT DVD

He has also been recording new songs for a DVD/CDR to be titled "Radio Poems, or Fast Times At The El Palomino," featuring many photos and video clips from his career along with a complete file of selected Rabbitt radio shows, (music and commercials intact!). This is a real bonus for aficionados who aren't satisfied with the edited "airchecks" for sale on the Internet.

Rabbitt says, "When people start reading about my ratings, and then listen to my airchecks, they can't believe I really was that good! Maybe I wasn't, but I was always surrounded by the best music I could find, and to this day, whenever I'm in band, I always surround myself with the best musicians and singers, that will play with me, if you know what I mean? It's worked so far, and it always makes me seem whole lot better than I really am!" The DVD/CDR set will also feature video clips from his movies and live performances, television appearances and home movies featuring Rabbitt at home with many of his Hollywood and Nashville friends.

ROCKIN' AND REELING, WRITIN' AND RHYTHM - CURRENT PROJECTS

Rabbitt and Dave Johnson are planning to put together a band for a Tom Ayres, Doug Sahm, Dale Hawkins "Tribute" recording and video. The new band will be hitting the road for some shows/live recordings dates, including L.A. , Dallas, Nashville, Colorado's Red Rocks, and Austin, for his new label "Carnivore Records"

Rabbitts yet-to-be released book "Joke' em" (if they can't take a fool!), about his years in the business, or as Rabbitt says "years of getting the business!" is being turned into a screenplay.

Rabbitt is currently working with five-time "Webby" winner, and good friend, Rod Thonen of Rod Co Design Company, on some new internet projects, and www.jimmyrabbitt.com) where Rabbitt's radio show will be broadcast live, whenever possible, from a ranch in Colorado over the "Radio Free Texas" network.

In true Rabbitt-style, old friends from over the years will be working with him on the websites, and in the bands, joined by many new names and young faces, that once again will be breaking new ground, not just doing the same old things!

"In a race", Rabbitt says, " you can be so far ahead, that you begin to look like the loser! But it all comes around sooner or later!" And he reminds me that his old motto still works, "It's not what you play, it's what you don't play that counts!"

After reading his book, I've got to agree with Rabbitt, possibly for the first time since we started this project, and I will bet money that their "audio/video" adventures are going to help "Radio Free Texas" to once again ride "rough-shod" over the competition for a long time to come!

His show has already reached millions, over 500 stations around the world by satellite, but now with the Rabbitt cruisin' "the super highway" in his new super-charged hot rod, the World Wide Web, Rabbitt's shows will reach millions more than ever possible before, and his new songs, will change both "country" and "rock" music for decades to come! Stay tuned! We will!