Norman Davis

KGEM gave Norman his first radio job. It paid a dollar an hour, and it lasted three months. It took three more months for him to get paid. The job had come about through a radio broadcasting class at Boise Junior College.

Norman signed up eagerly for the class and as the school did not have a broadcast facility, he requested an assignment from the instructor to try to find a local radio station that would donate an hour of time for a college show. One of the stations Norman and his friend Ernie Taylor contacted was KGEM, the most powerful station in the state with 10,000 watts.

Idaho Statesman
1955

The Program Director, Jim Kelly, was open to the idea and agreed to give the two budding broadcasters an hour on Saturday afternoon. They learned later that he had ulterior motives, but the BJC Hour was on the air. Norman and Ernie read campus news, told bad jokes and played their favorite records.

There was fairly high staff turnover at KGEM (like most radio stations) and within a few weeks, the program director told Norman he would pay him to do a Sunday board shift. The shift was ten hours straight with no breaks. It was a 'total-immersion' introduction to the radio biz.

The station played 45 rpm records most of the time, except for five-minutes of news from ABC on the hour. They were loaded with spots and as they did not have a transcription recorder, the commercials were produced on five-inch reels of tape. On the wall behind the announcer were two Magnecord tape decks. The routine went like this; the news played on the hour, then came two commercials, one from each machine. Then a record, while the DJ hurriedly rewound the commercial tapes and cued up two more. This took up most of the three minutes or so of the record. After each record came two more commercials. This went on until the top of the next hour, when another news from the network gave a 5-minute break.

Norman went on working Sundays at KGEM until he had put in three months and was owed a big $120. Then, suddenly, he and the rest of the staff learned that the manager, who had been putting on various other promotions around town, had absconded in the middle of the night owing lots of people money.

The company sent a man to see what was going on. Eventually he got around to Norman and told him that there was no record at the company office of him working for KGEM. Nonetheless, after hearing his story, he promised to pay him the amount due, but he said unfortunately he could not keep Norman on at the station. So ended Norman's first radio job. A wiser man might have decided on another career. Norman had been invited to do summer stock theater and he was also thinking about becoming a professional jazz pianist. But the magic box had him hooked and he never seriously considered another profession.

After his time at KGEM, and a six-week vacation relief job at KVRN in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, Norman found an announcer job at KSEI "The Voice of Eastern Idaho" in Pocatello in 1955. The job included making station breaks and reading commercials, editing the news wire and reporting the news, recording network feeds and replaying them at scheduled times, and acting as host for live-in-studio programs with live musicians.

At KHQ c.1958.

After a year, Davis got tired of the Pocatello scene. It was pretty drab, centered around the railroad, and on his vacation he drove up to Spokane - the nearest big town - and landed a job at KHQ-AM/TV.

Davis took over the afternoon record show and also pulled a board shift now and then in the TV announcer's booth. KHQ-AM was an adult formatted station with many CBS Network commitments, and they were competing with KREM, an independent station that played popular music all day. KREM was number one in the ratings when Norman arrived but he cut into their numbers and beat them in the ratings now and then.

Norman met Rosetta Dolajak while working at KHQ. They were married in 1958. Norman also attended Eastern Washington College of Education (now EWU) in Cheney, about 20 miles from Spokane. He enrolled quickly when he got a draft notice that made military service look imminent without a college deferment. While at EWCE, Norman interviewed his first celebrity, Dave Brubeck, who performed at the college. Norman and wife Rosetta left Spokane in the summer of 1959, and they headed to San Francisco.

KOBY was San Francisco's first "Top 40" rock 'n roll station. It was a struggling independent, until the owners decided to emulate Todd Storz' big success with the first top 40 station in Omaha, Nebraska.

KOBY was a union shop and was saddled with a bunch of older radio announcers, who nonetheless, tried gamely to do the rock 'n roll thing. Bobby Beers became their big morning gun along with Sunny Jim Wayne, Ted Randal and others. Norman landed a job in the fall of 1959 and was given the moniker "Al Knight" for some unknown reason. He signed on the station at 5 a.m. Sunday morning and spun the mishmosh of pop tunes that prevailed in the late 1950's.

Bob Mitchell, Les Crane, Peter Tripp, Norman Davis, and Jim Stag

It wasn't long when Norman checked in at KYA. Owners there crammed the air with commercials, contests, jingles, promos, spot-separator features along with echo chambers, buzzers, beeps, gongs, horns and sirens, they had it all.

Les Crane was hired to be P.D. in 1961. Crane was given carte blanche to do anything with programming that would get the stations some rating points. KEWB had started up in Oakland, and was taking away listeners. Crane dumped ALL the garbage, brought in east coast payola refugees Peter Tripp, Bobby Mitchell and Tom Donahue and in a few months regained the lost audience and quite a lot more.

“Macumba Love” with June Wilkinson

“Shape up Lucky!”

In 1960, Norman was working under the clever tag of Lucky Logan, when he went against station policy and welcomed June Wilkinson and Douglas Fowley, the star and producer-director, of the new motion picture “Macumba Love” into the KYA studio. This impromptu visit landed Lucky in hot water with his boss, KYA program director Chris Lane, who reprimanded him with a stern memo (above right), which was nothing new for Mister Logan!

Norman as Lucky Logan, conducting the movie “Macumba Love” interview with June Wilkinson and Douglas Fowley, on KYA May 23, 1960. This segment includes the title cut from the movie soundtrack. [ LISTEN ] (11:07) ...and after his guests leave the studio, Lucky continues to feel the glow from June Wilkinson’s visit as he spins more records. [ LISTEN ] (17:41)

December, 1961

January, 1962

Davis spent more than five years at #1 Nob Hill Circle, having one of the five union-guaranteed announcer jobs so he could not be fired except for misconduct. The station was sold twice during his tenure and succeeding management teams tried to give him the boot for various reasons, but were unable to do so because of his union status.

Bill Drake, P.D. under then owner Clint Churchhill who disliked Davis for some reason, was told by Churchill to issue memos to Davis chopping away at features that made his show popular. As time passed, and as he couldn't fire Davis, Drake took him off the air as a DJ, and assigned him to the news department on the late shift and waited for him to quit - which in due time - Norman did.

Norman left the Bay Area in 1965, fed up with top-40 radio and interested in returning to what was then called MOR (middle of the road) music. He got a job with the CBS affiliate in Denver, KLZ-AM/FM/TV. At KLZ, he held down the afternoons, playing pop music between news along with regular features.

The KLZ job lasted two years and would have been longer except for a long planned trip to the Montreal World's Fair in 1967...

KLZ

KLZ Manager Lee Fondren, noticing that morning man Don Roberts was also taking a vacation then, told Norman to cancel his trip, and fill in on the morning show until Roberts returned. Norman insisted on going ahead with his World's Fair plans. When he got back from the trip, he was fired.

KCMO

Next up was KCMO, a dull gray station in Kansas City with "adult" programming, which Norman attempted to lighten up while he was there, with mixed results. He started doing the mid-day shift, but soon, for the first time in his career, he became the early morning man, working from 5-9 a.m. for almost two years.

In 1970, between full-time jobs, Norman Davis worked weekends for KSFO in San Francisco, located in the prestigious Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill. KSFO was every DJ's dream station with real red carpet on the floor, and high-profile, high-salaried DJs like Don Sherwood, Jack Carney and Al "Jazzbeau" Collins. Norman produced a Saturday night series titled "Norman's Organic Mind Garden". The show used comedy, music, sound effects and drop-ins to create an unusual four hours. It was the first time Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin were played on KSFO.

Norman also produced a Sunday night show called "Those Unforgettable Years." Each show was four hours in length and focused on the popular music, news, and trivia of one year between 1929 and 1969. [ LISTEN ] to a show looking back at the year 1969. (32:08)

The KZEL staff in June of 1971.

KZEL was Norman's first "underground" station. He left a weekend job at KSFO to do afternoons at a little hippie station, located in an old Laundromat, in Eugene, Oregon. Creative freedom was the incentive, certainly not the salary, which was $50 a week plus rent and utilities. KZEL was eclectic and fun to listen to, but lack of funds (frequently there was no money on pay day) and management problems caused most of its staff to move on. Program Director Thom O'Hair left for greener pastures at KSAN, and he got Norman a job there a year later.

Goodbye Norman

KSAN was, without a doubt, the best radio station a DJ could ever work for. Norman spent almost six years there and left only when management demanded compliance with a pre-selected music format - unthinkable under Tom Donahue. Norman refused to comply and was fired.

The KSJO gig came right on the heels of Norman's departure from KSAN in 1978. When he refused to go along with a more restrictive format, he was fired. Don Wright, the PD of KSJO, San Jose made him an offer right away. Wright talked GM, Steve Rosetta, into hiring Norman as "Director of Special Promotions". The gig lasted for a year. Norman produced numerous weekend promotions and specials including the notorious "Rock & Roll Circus". He also did some production for KSJO and hosted "The Outcastes" on Sunday night for several months.

In 1980, Norman was hired as "Creative Director"--a euphemism for Production Director, by a group who brought "KISSIN'" back on the air in Portland, Oregon, after its original license had been revoked for shady practices. The original call letters, KISN, had been taken by another station and so the new call became KKSN. The station started out ambitiously with a live, 90-minute morning news magazine and many other specials and features. Staff included Sully Roddy, Michael Knight, Steve O'Shea, David Smith, Todd Tolces and Michael Jack Kirby. Bob Simmons was P.D. Bill Failing was the manager. Lesson learned: Never work for a man named "Failing."

KTIM AM & FM in San Rafael, California, produced some outstanding programming for several years in the '70s & '80s. The FM had a free-form, progressive rock format (much like KSAN) which was simulcast on the AM until 1981, when the AM changed to a big-band swing format designed by Norman, a topic he was eager to gain more knowledge about. Several former KSAN DJs worked at KTIM, including Dusty Street, Bobby Dale and Bob McClay. Norman did some fill-in shows and produced a few specials for the stations in the early '80s, and became Operations Manager of KTIM-AM when it became "The Big Band Blend".

KAFE was a cable FM station in Santa Rosa that produced an eclectic mix of music, comedy and variety shows for a few years, available only to cable customers. Between jobs in the City, Norman produced a weekly show at KAFE for six months or so, and eventually got Jim Watt, (a walking encyclopedia of early jazz who had hosted the morning show at KMPX and KTIM) a job there.

Norman worked for only a few months at KMPX, but not when it was Tom Donahue's pioneering proving ground in the late sixties. His short stint came years later in 1985, after KMPX had gone through several formats post-Donahue and had settled into a fairly comfortable dial position, broadcasting big band swing and hot jazz.

KKCY "The City" was an ambitious effort to recreate the sound and the magic of KSAN. Former KSAN program directors Tom Yates and Kate Hayes were in charge of programming. They put together a great crew which included; Norman Davis, Dave McQueen, Rosemary Greyshock, Dick Conte, Michael Knight, Dan Carlisle, Lorraine Meyer, Alan Burton, Brook Jones, Marshall Phillips, Andy Lee, Susie Davis, "Al Dente", Mimi Chen and New York Vinnie. Although highly rated in San Francisco, out of town ratings were poor because of the station's weak signal. Financial problems forced the owners to sell the station in 1989 to James Gabbert, who changed the call letters to KOFY and set about destroying the station's eclectic format post haste.

From 1989 to 1997 Norman spent time at KOFY in San Francisco, KLON in Long Beach, and KBOO in Portland hosting a midnight blues show the "Midnight Flyer".

At this writing Davis is the host of "The Juke Joint" Mondays at 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on KRBX. The program is streamed and also available for listening in a podcast.

WHERE DID NORMAN WORK? Here is the list: KGEM, KSEI, KHQ, KOBY, KYA, KLZ, KCMO, KSFO, KZEL, KSAN, KSJO, KKSN, KTIM, KAFE, KMPX, KKCY, KOFY, KLON, KBOO KKIT KRBX.

UPDATE (2020): Norman can be heard as host of "Swing State" at KRBX Radio 89.9 / 93.5 in Boise, Idaho.