Dude Walker Interview

John W. "Dude" Walker came to WAKY in 1968 to do PM drive under PD Bill Crisp. During his nearly 6 year run at the Big 79, Dude also handled the early evenings and midday shifts before leaving for CHUM in Toronto. In early 2005 We had the pleasure of interviewing Dude from his home in Memphis. He talks about his WAKY contemporaries as well as his pre- and post-WAKY broadcasting career.

Dude, how did you get started in radio?

Sam Phillips' two sons, the owner of Sun record company, and their mother, Becky, she was a disc jockey at one of Sam's radio stations. So, I just went in there and tried it, I was interested in it, and this guy just happened to be walking by and he heard me, and he asked me how would I like a job, I said, doing what? He said a disc jockey. I said, where? He said Tupelo, Mississippi.

And I said, sure, why not? So, I left school, I went to Tupelo, I got into radio, and eventually got to Memphis at WMPS, which was the number one station here. I was on the air one day, and I got a call, and this guy said, I'd like to invite you to breakfast. I'm across the street from the Hotel Peabody, you know, I'd like to offer you a job.

I really wasn't interested in leaving because, you know, I had a young child who had just been born a year earlier, and I'd only been married for three years, so I went and had breakfast with him, he was a super guy, and he convinced me to take the job, and I did for almost twice what I was making here. Left on, I guess it was around Thanksgiving, the owner of Stacks Record Company, Jim Stewart, gave me a going away party the night before, which I didn't know anything about, and Booker T and the MGs, and Isaac Hayes, and all those people were there to wish me good luck. So, I left the next morning half asleep and half awake, and it was raining all the way, and the expressway wasn't completed yet between Nashville and Bowling Green, Kentucky.

It was like a two-lane road, and I was able to pick WAKY up, and I could hear Weird Beard on the air talking about the worst traffic jam in the history of Kentucky between Nashville and Bowling Green, and I was right in the middle of it. I'd never been away from my wife and my child, and I was really kind of depressed, you know.

So, I finally got to Louisville, and it took me a couple days to kind of get over the depression, but everybody was so great that I loved the station, you know, and stayed there for six years.

Okay, what year was this that you went to WAKY?

1968.

1968, and you started as the midday jock there?

No, I started as the afternoon drive jock.

Johnny Randolph was on at the time, a guy named Jim Fletcher, who was doing middays.

I was doing afternoon drive, and Weird Beard was doing seven to midnight, and I cannot remember the life of me who was doing morning drive at that time. Oh, Bill Crisp, who was the program director.

So tell us about the change of names, how that came about. You were Johnny Dark in Memphis, right?

Yeah, they already had a Johnny Dark in Louisville, so, you know, Johnny Randolph is a great guy, and I consider him a tremendous friend. You know, he and Bill Crisp decided I should come up with something else. I just happened to be looking at this huge bank that I put all my change in.

It was a Johnny Walker red whiskey thing, it was made out of plastic, it was about four feet tall, and I just dropped my change in there for my son, and I saw the name Walker on there, and I thought about, well, what about John Walker? And they said, well, that'll work. And when I was a young boy, I was born in Jackson, Tennessee, and everybody wore overalls, it was a small country town. And when my parents divorced, my mother moved to Memphis, and we went with her, and I was wearing bib overalls, and nobody else was, so they were wearing these cotton pants and everything.

So, my mother bought me some, and when I went back to Jackson to visit, everybody said, whoa, look at the dude, you know? So that's how that kind of stuck with me.

And there have been other Dude Walkers around, but you were the first, right?

I was the first, that's correct.

So, you were at WAKY six years?

Uh-huh.

Let's go through some of the folks that you worked with at the time, and just give me your impressions of these folks, maybe you've got some stories to tell.

Well, Bill Bailey, obviously, nobody could forget him, Chris Lundy, who was doing middays, Gary Burbank, who was doing afternoon drive, I was doing six to nine at night, Weird Beard was doing nine to midnight, Mason Dixon was doing midnight to six.

So, you moved from afternoons to nighttime when Burbank came?

Well, here's the thing.

When I was doing afternoon drive, they needed somebody else that they wanted to hire, and I suggested Gary Burbank, whose real name is Bill Purser. He was going by the name Johnny Apollo here in Memphis. So Bob Todd, who was the program director, he and I flew down to Memphis with a record promotion friend of mine in Memphis named Eddie Braddock, and we talked to him and convinced him he should come to Louisville, and I was willing to give up afternoon drive for him to come, because he's a very talented guy, and to be honest, I really preferred six to nine at night, because it gave me time to play golf during the daytime, and go to work at night, and I didn't have to stay out late, and it worked out real well for us.

We've all heard Gary Burbank at WAKY. What was his act like in Memphis? How similar was he?

Well, Memphis was much more restrictive than Louisville was, and as a result, I think he was tired of not being able to do the things that he would like to do. He did as much as he could do under the circumstances, but he had more freedom at Louisville.

Was he doing the voices and the jokes and stuff like at WAKY?

I think he was doing some of them, but not all of them.

Alright, and tell me about the Gary Burbank name and the persona, how that all came to be.

Well, we were trying to come up with a name when we were talking to him in Memphis at Hotel Peabody, and he wanted to do something along the lines of Gary Owens from Laugh-In.

So, we kept kicking names around, and we came up with Gary Burbank, and that's how that came about. Gary is an extremely unique individual. He's very intelligent, he's very savvy when it comes to politics, and he's funny.

He has a sophisticated sense of humor, as far as I'm concerned. Politics is not off-base for him when he's on the air.

So, Gary Burbank comes to do afternoons.

Right.

I guess Johnny Randolph was doing middays, maybe?

Right.

And you're doing nights. Now, when did you make the switch to middays, which is when I first heard you, in 1970?

When Johnny Randolph decided he was no longer going to be on the air, I agreed to do the 12 to 3 thing, which is fine with me, once again, because by this time, I was doing all the voice work for WLKY-TV, and I had to be there at 6 o'clock at night to record all the voiceovers, and so it gave me that opportunity.

I've been fortunate enough to work in Memphis, in Toronto, Canada, Chicago, and Louisville, and of all the places I've ever worked, I would not give up Louisville. It was tremendous. I mean, the people were great.

We actually had fun. Johnny Randolph made sure that it was the type of situation where everybody enjoyed themselves, and he was extremely bright as a program director. He knew each person individually, he knew their strengths and their weaknesses, and he played to their strengths.

He was just the ideal person at the ideal time to make WAKY the number one mid-market station several years in a row.

All right, what about Bill Bailey? What do you think about him?

Wonderful guy. Just a tremendous guy.

Very funny. Whereas I mentioned that Burbank was the funny guy, and was sophisticated, Bill was more or less on the common man's level. I will never forget, when I came to Louisville, I wanted to hear what the competition sounded like.

One morning, I was listening to Bill Bailey, who was at WKLO at the time, and this may not be funny to anybody else, but it was to me. I heard him say, well, this kid just called me on the phone, and he told me that some guy is picking on him at school, and he wanted to know what he should do. I told that kid, you tell that guy that you know Bill Bailey. If that doesn't scare him off, run, because he's probably crazy.

That's great.

I thought it was hilarious.

I thought, boy, it's going to be tough to beat this guy, and I don't think we did until we finally got him at WAKY. Sometimes, Bill would go out, and he would have a little bit too much to drink, and he would call me and ask me to sit in for him, which I didn't mind doing, because people bring him breakfast every morning, so I knew that I was going to be fed well if I did his show. One night, I was at home, and I got this call from Bill, and he said, Dude, this is Bill Bailey.

I said, yeah, Bill. What can I do for you? He said, would you believe I was in a car wreck, and I need you to work for me in the morning? I said, no, Bill. I wouldn't believe that.

He said, well, would you believe I had too much to drink, and I got in a fight with a guy who was six foot four, and he beat the hell out of me? I said, that I would believe. He said, well, that's exactly what happened. I said, well, in that case, I'll work for you.

You couldn't help but love Bill Bailey. He was just a super guy, but all the guys on the station were super guys. You know, I can't say enough about Johnny Randolph as a program director.

What a great guy to work for. And Gary Burbank, just a super guy, Weird Beard, as nice as any guy you'd ever want to meet. Very easy going, very laid back.

I would not want to be on the radio today, because it could never, ever be like it was with the people who worked at WAKY. It's the only place I've ever actually driven to work singing, because I was excited about going to work.

Did you work with Lee Masters?

Yes, I did.

What do you think about Lee?

Well, you know, when Lee first walked in, I didn't know what to think. He had on wooden shoes like the Dutch wear. His real name is Jarl Mohn, and I really didn't know how to take him when he first came in.

But after listening to him on the air for a few days, you know, I figured, hey, this guy's cool. We became good friends. He came to Memphis one time, and he called me.

We met at the club and talked over old times. Very, very smart guy, like Burbank. He and Burbank were very, very intelligent guys, especially when it came to what's going on in the world, what's going on in politics, and that type of thing.

But Lee's a super guy.

Coyote Calhoun?

Coyote is a great guy.

A little bit crazy, but he's a great guy. You know, I thought he was funny, especially on the air. I have nothing but great things to say about Coyote as well.

Let's talk about the WAKY News Department. The folks I remember are people like Reed Yaden and Woody Stiles and maybe some others that you could talk about.

Reed was a good guy, too. You know, he really was. He flew his own plane. Woody flew his own plane.

And I understand that he died flying a plane. It's really strange. I had gotten a call from him out of nowhere a week before he died, you know, in a plane crash.

And they didn't give me the message. And a week later, somebody finally said, oh, by the way. And when I called, you know, he had already died, so I had no idea what he was calling me about.

But Woody was a good guy. He really was. He cared about people, especially young people.

He did everything he could to help them. I just admired him. He was a good guy.

The first time I ever flew in an airplane was with Woody Stiles.

That's the first time I ever flew in a private airplane was with Woody. I'll tell you a quick story about Woody.

We were flying to Memphis one night. I needed to get down to Memphis, which, like I said, is my hometown. My family lived here and all that.

And he was giving me a ride. And he said, you want to try flying for a little while? And I said, well, yeah, you know. He kind of told me what to do and everything.

And told me how to work the foot pedals and all that. And told me how it goes down, how it goes up. And I'm flying along.

And all of a sudden, I'm flying. And all of a sudden, I look over, and he's sound asleep. And we hit an air pocket.

And the plane drops. And he wakes up. And I said, take back over, man.

I said, I'm going to get us killed. I thought I'd done something wrong. I think he said I was about a half mile off course.

That was it. But when I saw him asleep, it scared me to death.

I bet.

Johnny Randolph, the thing about him, he was so smart when it came to making you sound good on the air. I don't know all the technical terms and everything. But he was really good at that type of thing.

We sounded better on his station than it should sound on any other station, the way he had everything set up. Of all the stations I ever worked at, he was by far the greatest of all the cities I've ever lived in. Even though Memphis is my hometown, Louisville was the greatest place I've ever lived.

And the only reason I left was because I got an offer in Canada from CHUM, C-H-U-M. And it was for three times the amount of money I was making at WAKY. They invited my wife and I up.

We flew up. And they put us up at the Hyatt, took us to Niagara Falls, took us out to eat, the whole bit. And I still turned them down.

And they kept calling me and kept calling me. They thought I was trying to get more money. I wasn't.

I was happy where I was at. And finally, they got to a certain point, and my wife told me, she said, look, we've been married 14 years now. And my wife told me, she said, look, Johnny, she said, I have never asked you to do anything when it came to your career.

But she says, I'm going to ask you this time to take the job in Canada. And because we had another child on the way, I went ahead and took it. It was an enjoyable time in Canada.

But nothing ever compared to Louisville after that. It was just unreal.

Well, CHUM was a pretty happening radio station, so you could have gone a lot worse places than CHUM.

They had a great reputation as a top 40 station. It was a great station, no question about that. And they had some great disc jockeys.

But you just didn't have the same camaraderie you had at WAKY. It was just a combination of personalities that just meshed together. And everybody had the same goal.

And that was for the station to be number one the best it could be. I think all of us sounded better on WAKY than we have any other station we've ever worked at. After I left CHUM, I went to Chicago at WMAQ at NBC.

Bob Pittman, who helped found MTV, hired me. It was a country station, but he wanted a country station that had top 40 disc jockeys. And it became the biggest thing in Chicago at the time.

Now, were you Dude Walker at CHUM?

Uh-huh. And also in Chicago.

And where'd you go after WMAQ?

I came back home to Memphis.

My mother was not in good health, and I wanted to be around her. And I had a chance to come down here. And Sam Phillips told me if I would come down here and run his radio station for him, you know, that he would hire me.

So I thought, well, here's a chance to go back home. I won't be making as much money, obviously, as you make for NBC and a city that has a union. But, you know, it is home.

And my mother is not in the best of health. So, you know, I came back here. I'd been on radio just a few months when Sam and I kind of got into it a little bit.

And I left. I quit. And Walt Jackson, who had become the program director of WMPS after Johnny Randolph left, he called me up and asked me, would I come and do kind of a, I guess, a retrospect thing having worked at WMPS in the 60s.

And I said, sure, you know. So I went over there, and I worked a couple months. And one night he said, come on and go with me to Channel 3. And I said, why? Well, they're going to audition me to do weather on the weekend.

Now, you'd done TV in Louisville, didn't you?

Yeah, at WLKY.

On-screen stuff, right?

Yeah. I'm embarrassed to say what, but...

You were on some kid show, but you were the clown, right?

No, I was, what Janis Joplin says, Dialing for Dollars, looking for me.

Okay.

But anyway, he asked me to go with him. And, you know, he said, why don't you go first? I said, they didn't ask me here.

He said, yeah, I told them you were coming, so you go first. So, I did a weather forecast. And I said, now it's your turn.

He says, no, I'm not going to try. He said, you're going to get the job. The manager of the station called me the next day and said, look, man. He says, you've obviously done TV before. If you want the job, it's yours. And I said, well, you know, how much does it pay? And he told me.

And I said, I'll take it. So, I worked at Channel 3 until I had a heart attack and had to have heart surgery. And I had five bypasses and an artificial artery from my heart to my leg.

And to complicate that, I have diabetes. And I was on the air one morning. And we used to do the weather outside.

And it was like 28 degrees outside. And the director and the producer came running out during one of the commercials and said, you need to go to the hospital. And I said, for what? They said, it's 28 degrees out here, and you're sweating, and you're slurring your words.

So, I thought they just told me to go to the hospital. I didn't know they said, hold on, we're going to take you. So, I drove to the hospital.

And when I got to the hospital, I went to the emergency room. And they told me, they said, you're having a heart attack. I said, okay, where do we go from here? And they said, well, you're going to have to have open heart surgery.

And I said, well, what kind? They said, you're going to have to have a couple of bypasses. And I said, well, let's get it over with. You know, no sense in waiting around.

And then when I woke up, I'd had five bypasses. So that was pretty much the end of me being on the air.

Now, when exactly did this happen?

This happened in 94.

So. you've been on disability since then?

Yeah, New Year's Eve. And I'd go back tomorrow if I could. You know, I love TV.

It's a lot of fun. Like I say, radio is no longer like it used to be. So, I wouldn't care about getting back into radio.

You wouldn't think about getting on and doing like a weekend shift just for the heck of it or something?

No, no. But I'll tell you what. You know, if WAKY were still there, and they were going to have a reunion, and have everybody worked the shift they worked back then, I would do it in a second.

A few years ago, I went to visit Gary in Cincinnati. We spent the night there. A friend of mine and I did.

He was also a friend of Gary's. Next day, we went with him to the station. And he kind of talked to us that afternoon.

And that was a lot of fun being on the air with him again. And as we were driving toward Louisville, I flipped it over to listen to WAKY, which was still there at the time. And Gary's show was syndicated at WAKY.

So, we heard the interview on the air that we had just done with Gary.

Wow.

But like I say, I think the world of Bill Bailey. I think the world of Johnny Randolph.

I think the world of Lee Masters. Gary Burbank. Weird Beard, bless his heart.

Mason Dixon. Mason was a free spirit. You know, he wore a headband.

And he was kind of a hippie type of guy without the long hair. You know, it's something that nobody can ever explain to anybody unless they had the opportunity to actually be there and work with these people. And it was just such a wonderful time.

I would give anything if I could relive it, because it was that great.

I know why you like the radio station, but from the listener's perspective, why do people in Kentuckiana and Central Kentucky still remember the station fondly today? And the second part of that question is, why is it still such an important part of radio history?

You know, I think one thing was the music. I was music director, by the way.

And I hand it to Johnny Randolph. He was really great. He actually let me pick the music.

I think we only had a disagreement one time about a record, and that was Bonnie and Delaney's “Never-Ending Song Of Love.” But he let me play it anyway. Fortunately, it went on to be a hit.

But I think the music had a lot to do with it. But Johnny Randolph came up with so many unique things to put on the air. I think a lot of it has to do with that.

I mean, there was something happening all the time. There was never a dull moment. We had contests here, contests there.

Even, you know, call up and you name the record, you win the record. I mean, just something that simple. But there was always something constantly going on.

Jingles were always fresh. And, you know, Johnny, by example, made you be as good as you could be when you were on the air. The thing about it was, you wanted to be good to make Johnny look good.

Because he was such a unique person, such a great program director, that you wanted him to come out looking good. I think that's one of the reasons that the station was successful. When Bob Todd left as the program director, Don Myers came in as the new manager.

And we had a meeting. They had Johnny on the air while we were having the meeting. And I hate to say this because I don't drink very much, but the guys got me to start drinking early in the morning.

And when we got into the meeting, you know, I just brought up the fact that, look, you know, and Burbank backed me up. And that was more important than me saying it because Burbank was one of the stars. I mean, I was more or less the teeny bopper type guy on the air.

But he backed me up. And we just told Don Myers, look, you know, if Johnny Randolph is not going to... Because he'd been acting program director while Bob Todd was gone. So we just told him, you know, look, if Johnny Randolph's not going to be the program director, then, you know, we're gone.

And he said, well, if that's what you guys want, then, you know, he said, we'll give it a try. And it was the smartest decision that Don Myers ever made. And Don Myers, one thing I respect about him so much, not only is he a nice guy, but he never interfered with what Johnny wanted to do.

And to me, that was extremely important because a lot of times, managers try to interfere and try to, you know, help with the programming stuff when they're really not qualified for that. They're mainly qualified for the sales department. Johnny was totally in charge.

Do you remember how the Dude Walker act morphed over the years? Do you remember any of the stuff that you did as opposed to, you know, doing nights, afternoons, doing middays, any particular standout bits or things that would be benchmarks?

No, I was pretty straight on the air. You know, you had Bailey in the morning who was very funny, extremely funny. And you had Burbank in the afternoon who was very funny.

And, you know, Lee Masters had a good sense of humor, a sophisticated sense of humor. I was more or less playing to the teens who would be listening that time of the night from six to nine. And I just dropped the John W. and just started doing the Dude because that's what everybody was calling me.

You know, all the kids that I would go to different schools and speak at, they would be calling me Dude. So, I just stuck with Dude Walker.

Did the W stand for anything? Is that your real middle initial?

No. It's just something we came up with. I've got a nephew who still calls me Dude. He's 42 years old.

Well, John, you'll always be Dude to me.

Like I say, it's always great to be able to talk about these people. They were wonderful people, even though I made three times the amount of money when I went to CHUM in Toronto.

I wish I'd stayed in Louisville. The only thing I hate is the fact that the station is no longer there because it was so unique and so wonderful. And I loved living in Louisville.

We had fun together. I mean, we would get together and do things, you know? And it was so great. That was the unique thing about it.

It wasn't like, you know, where you saw each other at work and everything. I really don't have words to tell you, you know, how great it was and what a tremendous time it was in my life.