©1967 & 2018 Pat Appleson Studios, Inc. All Rights Reserved, Used By Permission.
WTRX The
Home of the Jones Boys®
Flint, Michigan -
09-01-1967
Pictured L to R: Mike Gaylord, Pat Appleson, Dick Crowley & Dan Clemons
The guy that owned the station was
a wonderful promoter and creator of the worlds greatest
radio rep firm,
Robert E. Eastman & Company of New York City. But sometimes you don't win
'em all.
Case in point, "The Home of the Jones Boys". Bob Sr. decided that
everyone on the air would be named Jones.
The Mills Brothers had a song in
the early fifties called 'The whole towns talking about the Jones Boy',
in
alot of our jingles you'd hear that sung before the announcer would give the
call letters.
So you had "John Paul Jones, Captain of the Morning Fleet";
"Tom Jones, The Ladies Man"; "Davey Jones
& Music From Davey Jones'
Locker"; "Casey Jones & A Train Load of Music"; "Lonesome Jones" (the all
night man)
& "Sherlock Jones" (weekends). It didn't take long for the
listeners to catch on and start calling the station asking
for us by our
real names. I guess they thought it was way cool to know the true identity of
their favorite jock.
The Jones thing went on for a good three years before
the management finally gave up and everyone
used their real names. Or at
least an Air Name that didn't end with Jones".
Pat Appleson, aka Casey Jones & A Train Load of Music,
WTRX-AM -- Fall, 1967
The Bear facts about Radio Promotion
"Sometimes you'll do almost
anything for ratings, so when a guy with a trained bear came thru
Flint,
Michigan, I was elected. All I remember about it was they both had bad breath
and the bear was hard as a rock.
You couldn't move him unless he decided he
wanted to be moved. Mr. Bear (I forget his name)
went 'three for three' and
got a bottle of soda pop. I got a few pulled muscles and booed by the
crowd!"
Pat Appleson, Boss Jock, WTRX-AM -- 1968
WTRX-AM Master Control
View of Newsroom from Master Control with WTRX Afternoon Newsman Pat Appleson.
"This was a full union shop, so you
couldn't touch the board or records etc. The engineers would
run this beat
up RCA BC-7 mono console and you, as Talent, would have a Mic button, a
intercom button and
a old door bell button, that when pushed would light up
a 150 Watt Flood in the engineers eyes &
a buzzer went off under the
console. This was his cue signal. When you wanted him to start the next
record,
so you could talk over it, just hit the button. The problem was, if
the guy had a hang over or just didn't like you,
he'd be a little slow.
That of course would make you sound stupid on the air. I loved it. I used it as
a tool
to better my ad-libbing. I'd just lay on the button and calmly chat
away. It didn't matter to me if the record
started three seconds from when
I pushed the button or three minutes, I'd just keep going until I could talk it
up.
After a while they gave up. It was great fun! Yes we all wore ties and
white shirts.
After all it was RADIO BROADCASTING."
Pat Appleson, WTRX-AM -- Fall, 1967
Three Former Jones Boys
"On the left is Mike Ryan, what
ever happened to him? He was a great guy!
On the right is the late Nick
Arama who did middays. Nick moved on to the Motor City
and WOMC-FM Radio
and did quite well. At the time this photo was taken Nick's other
claim to
fame was his brother was the bass guitar player with
rock recording artist
Ted Nugent & The Amboy Dukes. I don't remember what the occasion
was
for this picture. But I do wonder what I was thinking when I bought that
coat".
Pat Appleson, Air Personality WTRX-AM --Winter, 1968