Beer - And An Education

By Frank Absher

It was a great gig for a college kid because there was always free beer.

But there was something more valuable that I wasn’t even aware of back then.

Around 1966, I had the good fortune of beginning my radio career at KFAL, a 1,000 watt clear-channel daytimer in Fulton, MO. Although most of the music on the station was country & western, my format was different. My show began right after the afternoon children’s show where Aunt Rhoda Rabbit (who also served as the station’s secretary and traffic manager) played story songs for children, and my format was MOR.

Once he got to know me, the morning guy took me under his wing, and it was a big wing. Ron Lutz weighed over 300 pounds back then, and he was a local celebrity, taking his hillbilly band out to all the local functions. He was a great singer and entertainer, and he used that to his advantage at the station.

Each Saturday morning, his band had a show,"The Rooster Creek Show." Because it was a Saturday morning show and Fridays were usually late nights for the band, the program would be recorded in the studios Wednesday evening after sign-off. That’s where the beer came in.

I was a punk kid of 19 or 20, and they’d often ask me if I’d like to stick around to engineer the taping.

This may be why it took me an extra semester to graduate, but I always agreed to.

I didn’t know it then, but the Rooster Creek Show was a true blast from the past. Today I listen to airchecks of the “Uncle Dick Slack" program from KMOX in the 1940s and I hear the same format – and many of the same jokes.

Every Wednesday the Rooster Creek boys would “rehearse” for about two hours, and by the time everyone was sufficiently plied with beer and Jack Daniels, the recording would begin.

The commercials were all live, and sponsors would usually get more than 60 seconds’ worth of airtime. My only job, other than keeping the audio levels within range, was to get the program wrapped up on time.

Ambrose Haley would often show up to sit in with the band. To me, back then, he was just another hillbilly. It was only when I began doing research on radio history that I found he was a huge star on KMOX in the ‘30s/’40s era when the station was a hillbilly powerhouse during the early morning and nighttime hours.

As the weeks passed I began to appreciate the music a lot more, and I realized what a talent Ron Lutz was. He made it all look so easy. A couple years ago I commented to him how much fun I had and was greeted with his usual expletive-filled deferential insults.

That came during a visit to Fulton when I got a chance to sit in on a Rooster Creek recording session. The show is still on the air Saturday mornings, even though Ron is retired. During rehearsal that night I took a minute to talk with the banjo player, a younger guy who, it turns out, is one of the program’s current sponsors. He owns a large number of Taco Bell restaurants in Central Missouri. I asked why he took time out of his busy schedule to play banjo on the program. “For $30 [sponsorship]”, he said, “it’s the most fun I have all week.”

It really was a thrill to be there for the taping and to travel way back in radio time, to an era when bean counters didn’t exist in the business, but fun did.

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