The Jack Gale Collection

[Description by Uncle Ricky] Here’s Jack Gale on Country-formatted Honey Radio (WHNE) in Norfolk, Virginia, where he worked for six months. He had agreed to a six-month contract, and didn’t stay because the manager, who was the owner’s son, was young and inexperienced. Jack had a difficult time dealing with him. First, you’ll hear Mr. Amazing, radio’s second greatest magician. Then, it’s the Jack Gale Immense Giant Jackpot, where a nickel was added each day he didn’t get a winner. Jack was assisted by Frank The Frog, who kept track of the money.

[Description by Uncle Ricky]

[Description by Jack Gale]An original Hound Dog Kingdom membership card from WTMA, Charleston, circa 1956
I started The Hound Dog Kingdom in 1956 at WTMA in Charleston, S.C.
I remembered the success Alan Freed had in Cleveland
with his Moon Dog Show. The Hound Dog was patterned after the Freed
show, but it was not a copy. Nobody was playing what was called “race” music
except Freed. I collected all the R&B records by Fats Domino,
Laverne Baker, etc. — and that’s what I played, keeping the
backbeat by slapping a ruler against the console and yelling along with
the singers throughout the records. I played a rhythm beat on a tape loop
between records, so there was no dead air. The key was the delivery.
I used a gruff, yet frantic gravel voice, and rhymed almost everything
I said. The Hound Dog was a howling wolf sound effect.

I opened “The Hound Dog Record Shop” and bought several thousand used
records from juke box operators, all Hound Dog music, and put them on
sale “5 for a dollar”. We sold out in a matter of days.

The show was such a success in Charleston that when I got to WITH
in Baltimore in 1957, I talked Sales Manager Jake Embry into
letting me put it on the air on Saturday nights. It caught on immediately
and became a regular feature. At drive-ins around Baltimore, every car
radio would be blaring with the squealing sounds of the dog. Leon
Golnick of the Golnick agency sold it to the Madera Bonded Wine
and Liquor Company, and they came up with special product exclusively

Mayor D’Alesandro (L) presents Jack Gale (R) with the keys to the city of Baltimore, 1957

for the show called White Tango Wine. 49 cents for half-a-fifth,
and 89 for the full fifth. After the first three months, we had over
4,000 card-carrying members. Golnick made arrangements for the tapes
to run on WLEE in Richmond and WUST in Washington. I would
tape every day after the morning show at WITH until we had about forty
hours of tape that we just kept rotating. After each taping, I would
come out of the studio exhausted, with about twelve broken rulers,
but it was a ball. I loved that show and savored every minute of it.

At the reunion in Baltimore in 1996, people approached me with their
original Hound Dog cards from the ’50’s, and wanted an autograph.
They had cherished those cards for forty years.

– from Same Time, Same Station

[Description by Uncle Ricky]When this aircheck was recorded on July 13, 1966, (yes, it was his birthday again) Jack Gale did not yet own the *one percent* of BIG WAYS (610, 5KW) that he bought from Stan and Sis Kaplan for $1000 in 1967. He had not yet premiered the long-running feature Life Can Be Miserable, this aircheck doesn’t include Lowell Pressure with the weather, and Ralph Smedley never gets to sing, not even with Chubby Checker and Hooka Tooka.

But we do get endorsements by Gene Pitney and Jackie DeShannon, and newsman C. Michael Blackwell is featured with BIG WAYS News Headlines and a complete BIG WAYS newscast. In Same Time… Same Station, Gale writes “one of my favorite newsmen was C. Michael Blackwell… he was a real fun guy”. And as proof, Jack’s “Tonto” dropins are named “C. Michael”. (C. Michael Blackwell left WAYS to become a Baptist preacher a couple of years later.)

Several classic and not-so-classic spots are included, (note that Jack joins right in), a couple of PAMS jings too, and music doesn’t dominate this half-hour of the #1 rated morning show in Charlotte, N.C. circa 1966. Gale had other things to do.

And in July of 1966, his audience (and fans) included the 15-year-old curator-to-be of an online, non-profit radio aircheck museum.