Photograph by Kevin A. Roberts
This year marks Ron Elz's 60th on air and more than 50 years broadcasting as Johnny Rabbitt, a character that he introduced at the now-defunct KXOK-AM in April 1962. List the call letters of the radio stations where Elz has worked—from San Antonio to Boston, San Francisco to Detroit—and you can probably assemble the entire alphabet. Years ago, as general manager of KSHE-FM, he created the “Real Rock Radio” format. At KADI-FM, he claims to have been the first to program a radio station via computer. He’s also worked in the record and concert-promotion industries, taught communications at Saint Louis University, written a column for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and penned several books about St. Louis trivia. In May 2008, he joined KMOX-AM as the host of Rte. 66, a show that plays rock ’n’ roll from the ’50s through the ’70s on Saturday nights. You can also catch him at the Missouri History Museum, where he recently hosted a sold-out program about Gaslight Square—and where we met, appropriately enough, to chat over coffee.
How did you break into radio?
My grandfather had a drugstore at Vandeventer and West Pine—it’s not there anymore, it’s part of Saint Louis U.—and these two brothers, Bob and Ray Hetherington, would come in. One was the manager, and one was the sales manager of WIL radio. I would talk to them every time they’d come in: “Boy, I’d sure like to get into radio.” [They’d reply] “Well, you know, gotta go to school; you gotta wait till you’re 21.” I finally said, “I don’t want to wait all that time.” So they said, “What you can do”—and people still do this today—“you buy your time.” … They suggested a station, WTMV-AM—the “MV” stood for Mississippi Valley—in the Broadview Hotel in East St. Louis… I bought midnight to 2 a.m., every night, Monday through Friday… East St. Louis wasn’t like it is today. It was a very nice community and a very nice hotel. We always had to say, “WTMV St. Louis: Broadcasting from the beautiful Broadview Hotel, home of the famous Sunday smorgasbord.” That’s how the whole thing started—I was doing a jazz show.
At the time, the jazz scene here was incredible, with Miles Davis and John Coltrane playing at Gaslight Square’s Peacock Alley when they were in town.
It was in the Midland Hotel, on Lawton. The club was owned by Spider Burks, the classiest of broadcasters. He had a little place named Spider’s Barbecue over on Delmar, just east of Euclid… Every musician would go [to Peacock Alley]. It was literally two nights ago, we were with a musician who played at that time and said it was a 24-hour party at that hotel—stuff going on all the time… Later on, [my wife and I] lived across the street from what had been the Midland, in a place called Laclede Town.
Right! That’s where Julius Hemphill recorded Dogon A.D., which is just now being recognized as one of the 20th century’s most important jazz records.
It was a magical place. I remember the first night we lived there. It was snowing. Everything was just covered with snow, and it was so peaceful, quiet, and tranquil. Yet you were right in the heart of the city… We had a two-story town home with a full basement, and I had a broadcasting school, the National Broadcasting Institute—we’d moved from the Continental Building to that building. Then, later on, when I closed that, we rented the downstairs space to Dot Records… The whole idea [with the neighborhood] was to create a utopian community. Dave Venn—probably the best jazz pianist in St. Louis—lived right across the street from us. There was a high-ranking policeman, judges, artists. For a while, [former Gaslight Square club owner] Jorge Martinez lived there.
Every generation seems to think it invented hip. Yet you’re describing these hip enclaves in St. Louis from the ’50s and ’60s.
Yeah. [He laughs.] There was the Beatnik Generation. There was what they called the Bohemian Generation, and they had their own areas and places. Little Bohemia was a great place, run by a Serbian guy, [Savo Radulovic]… There were a tremendous amount of bands. Some went on to bigger things and got established, like Michael McDonald. When I first met Michael, he was running the psychedelic light show at the Castaway Club, a teen-oriented nightclub…in the basement of a grocery store on Airport Road. And there were other groups, like The Aerovons…and The Montford Mission, which just became known as The Mission. And of course, Bob Kuban had the big hit “The Cheater.”
Why is it that certain songs hit it big?
There is no formula… There are so many factors that enter into it. The right A&R person to find the right artist to do a certain song. The right song for the artist. And then you have distribution, maybe being on a major label. But sometimes, being on a major label can be a bad thing, because they may say this group’s not going to go as far as that group, so we’re not going to put any of our efforts into them… The music business in St. Louis—and to an extent, every major city—was a big hub for wholesale distribution. If you go back to the late ’60s and early ’70s, there were more than 300 people who worked in wholesale business, either as a distributor—what they called a rack jobber or a one-stop—in the stores, as jukebox operators, or for record labels.
There were quite a few labels here, including Bobbin Records.
That was Bill Lyons. He had studios in the Wall Building at Vandeventer and Olive. He had Tina Turner recording some stuff. In the studio, the soundproofing was egg cartons… All the record companies—Columbia, Capitol, RCA—had full branches here… Now, there’s almost none. I know maybe two or three people. The same thing happened with the movie business. Years ago, Olive Street east of Grand was called Movie Row. The movie studios had distribution centers, offices down on Olive. There was one building on Compton that was the Universal International. Across from that is another building that still exists—now the Barnard Stamp Company. If you look at the sign, there’s a little border that sticks out that used to say “RKO Radio Pictures.”
You’ve described a number of these historic St. Louis places, particularly restaurants, in your articles for Antique Warehouse.
What I write is basically about St. Louis. It looks like it’s going to be a review of a restaurant, but it’s about the restaurant and the history—the neighborhood, where these people were before. Each article is about 3,000 words long. It’s very little about the food. We do list the hours and that kind of thing, but it’s basically about the history. The next one I’m doing is Cyrano’s.
As a history buff, are you frustrated that St. Louis sometimes erases its own past?
Well, not as much as a lot of other places. St. Louis is much more in tune with its past than many other cities, as far as how big it was and the growth. You don’t hear much, I’m told, in the Los Angeles or Houston areas. There’s not as much history. People are always asking me questions. I was just asked yesterday about Suburban Garden.
Suburban Garden? It was an amusement park, adjacent to the Wellston Loop, which is totally gone. That’s the same thing that would have happened to University City, were it not for Joe Edwards. It’s curious that Suburban Garden was built over a streetcar line… It was owned by the same guy who owned Delmar Gardens [amusement park], where the U. City Loop is today.
Nowadays, what’s your approach to hosting Rte. 66?
It’s all preprogrammed. Like last week, I was on for four hours, and I spent—much to my wife’s chagrin—six or seven hours preparing. That show was 100 percent scripted, word for word. Every song had a story and a connection to the artist and year—that type of thing. This week, I’m going to be on for a shorter time, after the Blues game, so it might be two hours or even one hour; it depends on how the game goes. That’s going to be all female singers, acts, or groups. The next week is going to be the top 25 Christmas songs and hits of the 1960s and ’70s. I was just working today on another show on the ’50s, and I’ll tie in some stuff about cars; I like to do stuff on cars and drive-ins that tie into the idea of Route 66… I’m trying to do things that other people wouldn’t do.
And you occasionally take requests?
Only by email. I bring in the music—it’s all on CD—so I can’t bring everything… I’d love to do it live, but I don’t have a producer or an engineer. I do the whole thing myself… By the time you introduce a song and get the next song ready, there’s no time for phone calls… Oldies [are often] 2 minutes and 20 seconds to 3 minutes. One of the reasons that [musicians] would try to hit 2 minutes, 20 seconds was the jukeboxes: A jukebox would play seven- or eight-minute songs, sure, but that meant less money for the operator or the people who owned the jukebox.
So that’s what “Hey Jude” was up against in the early ’60s... Speaking of, you were at San Fancisco's Cow Palace when The Beatles performed there in 1964?
The Cow Palace looked a lot like the Arena did—there were thousands of people… I would say 90 percent were female and under 20. [The screaming] built into a crescendo that was truly the loudest thing I have ever heard in my life—louder than a jet engine. You had people fainting and guards taking people out on stretchers. It was just like you see in the movies.
Note: This article has been updated from an earlier version.
