Houston's Morning Show: The True Story of Hudson & Harrigan

By Randy Hames

Randy Hames (as Irv Harrigan) co-hosted the last 30 years of the show’s run with his on-air partner and life-long friend Fred Olson (Mac Hudson), and together they forged a new format and broke new ground as an early-morning comedy team, with unprecedented tenure and ratings success.
Over the decades, much misinformation has been written and circulated about how the behind-the-microphone title characters changed and the format was modified, so Hames has meticulously researched the show’s history through endless conversations with its principal players. Houston’s Morning Show carefully chronicles the program’s wild and sometimes wacky twists and turns with wit and accuracy, and it pulls back the curtain so readers can experience for themselves the demands and rewards of anchoring a blockbuster, major-market team show.
From local Texas ownership to CBS, from the fictional Jim Bob Jumpback to Tyrone Tyrone Tyrone, from the original Hudson and Harrigan to the final duo, Hames painstakingly recounts the evolution of one of the most hilarious, iconic and award-winning morning team shows in broadcasting history. A must read for fans and industry insiders alike, Houston’s Morning Show is a one-of-a-kind, firsthand, fanciful romp through radio’s heyday.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Randy Hames
• Release date: Oct 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311467898

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Houston’s

Morning Show

The True Story of

Hudson & Harrigan

Randy Hames

First Edition

By Randy Hames

© 2015

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as indicated in the text.

This book is designed to provide information and motivation to our readers. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged to render any type of psychological, legal, or any other kind of professional advice. The content of each topic is the sole expression and opinion of its author, and not necessarily that of the publisher. No warranties or guarantees are expressed or implied by the publisher’s choice to include any of the content in this volume. Neither the publisher nor the individual author(s) shall be liable for any physical, psychological, emotional, financial, or commercial damages, including, but not limited to, special, incidental, consequential or other damages. Our views and rights are the same: You are responsible for your own choices, actions, and results.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

ISBN: 978-1518826764

Cover Design: Schuyler Hames

Editing: Tiffany Plunkett

Dedication

To all the dedicated men and women who have worked behind the microphones and scenes for long hours and no pay—short memories and no thanks—good times and bad bosses to create an entertaining medium that inspired me to a lifetime of laughter and fun. I loved being the man in the box, and I loved radio—may it rest in peace.

Prologue

The End

Radio, the eighth and perhaps greatest wonder of the world, is still today the most enveloping means of communication in the universe; it will remain so, probably, until the last recorded sound of time.

-Gordon McLendon, Public Address, Chicago, 1961

I always told my wife Cindy, It’s not a question of if; it’s a question of when.

There really wasn’t anything different about that morning in March 2010. I ate the same cereal and fruit for breakfast, and drank the same coffee in the pre-dawn darkness. I made the same almost-awake drive through Houston that was lucky to still be asleep, but when I arrived at the KILT studios at my usual 4:30 a.m., the email from my boss was waiting for me.

It was a simple, one-line message: Meeting tomorrow at 10:30 with Brian. Cya then. Matter-of-fact, totally benign—but it sent up more red flags than you could find in Tiananmen Square. I’d been Irv Harrigan of The Hudson & Harrigan Show in Houston for twenty-nine years and four months. The show was legendary—forty-three years on the air, with a string of awards and a groundbreaking list of shenanigans. It was part of the morning routine for generations of Houstonians, and it had become a huge part of my life, but the when day had finally arrived. I was about to be Randy Hames again.

Brian was Brian Purdy, an affable, fair-minded man who was our station general manager. Normally a meeting with him wouldn’t have made me nervous, but it was March, the month many of my friends were handed their walking papers and sometimes unceremoniously escorted out the door by Human Resources. I really enjoyed working for Brian, but when I saw that email, I knew I wouldn’t be working for him much longer.

In that moment, there was only one person to whom I felt comfortable talking—Fred Olson, my partner on the show, the Hudson to my Harrigan, my dearest friend in the radio business. Fred was rarely nervous about anything. When we were off-air, he’d dabble in skydiving, scuba diving, skiing, mountain climbing, weightlifting, cutting horses, whatever. Fred tried to reassure me, We won’t know until we talk to them, Pard, but I knew better.

At a certain age, you know how to read the tarot cards. I was sixty-one and my partner was fifty-seven, primed for the notorious layoff express, and I could clearly see its light at the end of the tunnel. We were ancient for on-air talent by radio standards, and the bean counters in New York knew they could get younger, less experienced personalities for a fraction of our salaries and a promise of the big time.

We spent that morning’s show trying to pretend nothing was wrong. Just like every day, thousands of people woke up to us poking fun at reality TV shows like Dancing with the Stars, joking about odd news or recent entertainment stories with our talented sidekick Erin Austin, and of course delivering those crucial live-endorsement commercials.

In radio, commercials mean money, and live endorsements are especially profitable—which gave us a false sense of security. We believed that the incredibly lucrative revenue stream the station garnered from our live endorsements made us fire-proof. We were about to discover we were wrong.

After the live show was over, we recorded two interviews. The first was with Tom Westman, who’d just been voted off the popular reality TV show Survivor. The second was with country music legend Alan Jackson, who was about to release his seventeenth studio album, Freight Train. I kept thinking that these two interviews could be our final acts as Hudson and Harrigan, and my heart was in my throat the entire time.

Finally, 10:30 arrived and I felt like a dead man walking—walking down that long hall to Brian’s office, for what I assumed would be the last time. I went to the men’s room one more time (as Winston Churchill once said, Never, ever, pass up the opportunity to pee).

When we entered his office, Brian was sitting at a round table away from the big desk. As we sat down, he closed the door. This is never a good sign.

Like a guillotine, the end came quickly and efficiently. Brian was as sympathetic and considerate as he could be, but direct and to the point. We’re going to make a change in mornings.

I’d always known that being fired was a theoretical possibility, but I’d fooled myself into believing Fred and I were somehow safe from the fireman’s axe, if you will, because we had given so much to KILT and made the owners so much money over the years. We had even won every major award the industry had to offer: Billboard Magazine’s Major Market Air Personalities of the Year, The American Women in Radio and Television’s Personalities of the Year, and the National Association of Broadcasters’ Marconi Award, the Oscar of radio. And most importantly, the show had a heritage and reputation that stretched back long before Fred and I had ever joined KILT.

But I’d forgotten the old saying, It’s not ‘What have you done for me?’ it’s ‘What have you done for me lately?’ Despite our success in generating advertising revenue, the ratings weren’t as dominant as they had been in recent years. Eliminating our salaries was the fastest and easiest way to make the bottom line more attractive.

Brian took no joy in giving us the bad news, and to be certain, we were none too happy to hear it. I tried to remain stoic, but inside my head I was screaming, I’ve dedicated almost half my life to this radio station, and this is how it’s going to end?! I never verbalized my thoughts because I desperately wanted to go out with class and grace, but in that instant I went from Irv Harrigan, one of the longest-tenured and most respected major market air personalities in America, to Randy Hames, nobody.

The meeting with Brian lasted less than fifteen minutes, then Fred, my partner of almost thirty years, and I had a last laugh lunch and went our own ways—off into the broadcasting sunset, just two more unemployed disc jockeys. Nobody was ever going to hear those two interviews we’d recorded that morning, and ironically, the first single off Alan Jackson’s new album fit the day perfectly: It’s Just That Way.

I said a silent goodbye to KILT, the radio station I had literally grown up with. For the first time, I was acutely aware of the distinct possibility that my forty-six-year broadcasting career was over, forever.

Chapter 1

Finding the Format

The music and news format we use is much like soap. We all can buy the same records, play them on the same type of turntable, and we can all hire someone to talk. The difference in radio is like the difference in soap—it depends on who puts on the best wrapper.

— Gordon McLendon, Business Week, September 9, 1961

Gordon McLendon, The Maverick of Radio, may not have been a tall man, but his ideas were huge.

To say that he was a radio visionary would be to say that Nolan Ryan had a pretty good arm or that Einstein had a head for numbers. McLendon had an instinct for capitalizing on current interests and knowing what the public wanted, but more importantly, he was an accurate predictor of what they would want in the future.

The Rise of a Radio Legend

McLendon started his radio career by broadcasting sports scores and local news over his high school PA system back in the 1930s. Then, after he served in the US military during World War II, he founded the enormously successful Liberty Radio Network, broadcasting Major League Baseball games daily. McLendon was the network’s play-by-play voice for a pennant-deciding game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants in 1951, and it was his famous call, GONE and the Giants win the pennant! followed by the equally famous, Well, I’ll be an egg-suck mule!

Always one step ahead of the trends, McLendon repeatedly transformed small ventures into giant success stories. Most broadcast historians acknowledge he perfected the Top 40 format that revolutionized, and most likely saved, the radio industry following the explosion in television viewing in the 1950s. He also invented the first all-news radio format, launched the first mobile news vehicles for radio, was the first to schedule regular traffic updates on the radio and even invented station ID jingles. In many ways, Gordon McLendon made radio what it is today.

But, even he could not have envisioned one of his programming innovations would survive well beyond his own lifetime and also shape the course of mine: The Hudson & Harrigan Show. This landmark program would remain on KILT in Houston, in one form or another, for an unprecedented forty-three years. However, the Hudson & Harrigan Show was not born in Houston, but in Dallas, as an offshoot of the Charlie & Harrigan Show on McLendon’s flagship station KLIF (named for the Oak Cliff Towers where its original studios were housed).

Inspired by a two-man DJ format he’d heard in New York, McLendon took advantage of two popular characters to launch the show and help bolster his radio station’s fun-loving image in the community. First, he boldly announced on the air, Charlie Brown is coming to KLIF! Since it wasn’t practical to put a comic strip character on the air, afternoon drive DJ Jack Woods took on the name Charlie Brown.

For his second trick, McLendon drew upon the new, wildly popular MAD Magazine for inspiration. Every St. Patrick’s Day, MAD’s publishers featured a cover with their signature character Alfred E. Newman dressed as a leprechaun. They thought it funny to label the picture Irving Harrigan because of the name’s Jewish-and-Irish mixed ethnicity. McLendon found the name so hilarious he proclaimed, The next disc jockey KLIF hires will be named Irving Harrigan. Soon thereafter, Dallas radio icon Ron Chapman was hired as the very first Irving Harrigan.

Chapman was a tall, lanky man with a carefully maintained image, who would go on to build a towering reputation. His role was extremely fluid at first, with air shifts that included noon to 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. to midnight. After a brief stint on the all-night show, he joined DJ Tom Murphy to launch The Murphy and Harrigan Show in KLIF’s morning drive slot. Murphy, however, had a chronic no-show problem and was soon fired. This gave birth to a broadcasting innovation that would turn Dallas radio on its ear.

In 1959, as Charlie Brown, Jack Woods moved over from the afternoon drive slot to establish The Charlie & Harrigan Show. Chapman described Woods as Funny and classy. He could say outrageous things so smoothly. A good-looking guy with a thick mop of hair and a sunny smile, Woods was a stark contrast to Chapman’s blue-eyed, boyish face. However, it was imminently obvious their personalities clicked. McLendon instantly recognized the incredible chemistry between the two and made the switch permanent.

Chapman is still revered as one of America’s most respected radio personalities, is a member of more than one broadcasting hall of fame, and has been called the most listened-to morning radio personality in the history of the Southwest. Together, he and Jack Woods brought a unique, refreshing and groundbreaking approach to morning drive radio in Dallas. Each contributed a host of character voices to the stable of fictitious cast members that constituted The Charlie & Harrigan Show.

Memorable Charlie and Harrigan Characters

Mack the Unemployed Joke Teller was a frequent, albeit uninvited, guest who would insist upon telling the worst joke possible, eliciting groans of displeasure from Woods and Chapman, and howls of laughter from their audience as the DJs peppered Mack with insults like silly, ninny, nincompoop.

Another popular guest was the French Mr. Deveroux, perhaps inspired by Peter Sellers’ bumbling Pink Panther movie persona, Inspector Clouseau. Yet another was Ronald Coleman, a haughty Englishman, whose contributions Chapman says he simply can’t recall.

It was a lot of fun doing different characters, Woods said in a February 2005 interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune. You never knew what was going to happen. By the end of the show, we’d have to massage our faces because we hurt from laughing so much. When you touch people with laughter, it makes you feel like you really did something.

Local Shenanigans

Even with two talented on-air personalities, it was McLendon’s influence that continued to drive the show’s success. Each show was recorded and the DJs evaluated their