Transcript — The Don Rosen Show (Hour 2)

Every mother talks the same.

You ever notice they have these little momisms?

They just pass them down through generations?

You've heard them all.

We've all heard the same stuff growing up.

Stuff like, if I had to come up there,

we all heard that.

Unless you live in a mobile home, you heard that one.

Then I get those punishment momisms.

You all have those, right?

How would you like a beating?

Oh gee, I love a beating right now, man.

That or the ballgame, I can't decide.

And she get lazy.

Go get me something to beat you with.

Like, I'm going to come back with a 2x4 with nails in it.

A broader sponge.

Here you go.

My well away.

How have you heard it, mate?

I'm going to knock you into the middle of next week.

Make it Thursday.

I got a test on Wednesday.

Make it Thursday.

I got a test on Wednesday.

But it was love that I just made.

I know that it loves me anyway.

At 707 at WRJN.

Good morning, Anton Rosen.

This is WRJN Historical Marker number four.

And Paul Kern is going to be our historical marker today.

A little intro to why I'm even doing this is because I went to a funeral a couple of months ago

to a good friend of mine.

He was the program director of W.E.Z.W. in Milwaukee.

That was 103.7 in Milwaukee.

There for 20 years.

And before that, he worked at other stations around the state.

And he passed away.

And his wife said to me,

do you have any recordings of Bill?

Was Bill Moose?

Was his name?

Said, do you have any recordings of Bill?

And he said, no, I don't.

But I'll check the internet.

And there were some recordings of the station online at the internet.

But nothing of him.

I said, don't you have any?

She goes, no, I don't have any.

So here's a guy that was on the air for 30 years plus.

And there's no record of him ever being on the radio.

And I was sitting there at the funeral.

I had to talk at the funeral.

And I thought when I sat down,

I don't want that to happen here at this radio station because I was here for a number of years.

So I know a little bit about some of the people who work here.

And so I started a series called the WRJ and Historical Marker series.

These are going to be archived at the Racine Public Library.

And also put in the museum at the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association.

So years from now, when we're all gone and we're going to be gone,

people go and they leave and they pass away.

They'll be able to hear what some of the lives were of the people who work here.

And we've been a number of people so far.

And number four in the list is Paul Kern.

And thank you for doing it, Paul.

I do appreciate it, my friend.

Well, good morning to you.

How are you?

Fine. This used to be your seat.

Exactly.

Yeah, five thirty in the morning until nine.

Yeah, how long?

How long were you here for?

I was here for a little over six years.

I came there in 2005 in the summer of 2005 and retired.

In fact, I think when I turned it turned in my resignation,

I think I turned it in like somewhere right around Labor Day of 2011.

And you asked me when I won it my last day to be.

And I said the day before Thanksgiving.

So I gave you like three months to find somebody to fill in with you.

I think you found in about twenty minutes.

There's always somebody waiting in the wings.

Now, before we take a little bit of a history of you before WRJN,

this wasn't your first rodeo here.

No.

I'll tell you an interesting story how we hired Paul.

We met you at a diner.

I was there with our general manager.

And we met you at a diner.

And we were talking about having you come on board to WRJN.

You were, I think, at WLIP at the time, no?

Correct.

Okay.

What I didn't know was, and when you hire people in radio,

you don't want the staff to know about it immediately,

because they get nervous.

Uh-oh.

Somebody news coming in.

Uh-oh.

You know, watch your jobs.

A little did I know that one of our employees, Tom Kramer,

was sitting at a table.

And this was in Kenosha, we met you.

This, he was sitting at a table.

That two, three tables away.

Listening in.

Was it the dynasty over on later?

Oh, was it a dynasty?

I'm sorry.

It was.

Yeah, I think that's where we sat down to talk.

Well, Tom Kramer was sitting there.

And after we spoke to you, I got up.

And he said, are you hiring that guy?

And I said, maybe.

And so that's where I first met you.

But let's talk a little bit way before that.

Well, I just wanted to add something to what you were saying there

about the fact that when somebody knew it would come in,

people would say, what's happening?

Because when I first got into it, it was really, really cutthroat.

The top 40 stations were Virginia WRIT and WOKY and Milwaukee.

And they bring in a new guy in the morning.

The morning guy would get off the air and get fired.

Midday guy would get off the air and get fired.

Absolute guy would get off the air and get fired.

And the evening guy would get off the air.

And it was pretty much by that point.

It was, okay, it's your turn, you too.

You know, it was.

And then, you know, what they would all do is they go across the street

to the other station until that happened again.

Then they'd come back to the one that they worked at before.

So they were really never out of work or anything like that.

But I mean, it was just really kind of goofy the way they would.

And they did that in Chicago, too, too, with some degree at WLS

and WCFL back in those days.

This would be in the late 60s, early 70s when I first got into it.

Yeah.

I remember the firings, the whole staff would get fired.

Yeah.

And they'd wipe everything clean.

They'd bring someone in to do the dirty work.

And then, after the dirty work was on, they'd fire that person.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it was a horrible business back then.

It's a little not so bad now.

It's not quite like that now.

So, where are you from originally?

Where were you born?

I was born in Chicago, April, 1951.

Okay.

So you're older than I am.

Yeah.

My elder.

I've always been older that year.

But not by much, not by much.

So you were born in Chicago.

You went to school in Chicago.

When did you move to Wisconsin?

And when I was 10, my father's job got transferred from Chicago to Milwaukee.

And so we moved up to Wisconsin.

And it was a big culture shock for me because, you know, we lived in the city.

Maybe about two miles west of Wrigley Field.

You know, so I mean, it was a really city city.

And we moved to Oak Creek, which at that time was like pretty much farmland.

And there were six houses in our neighborhood and that was it.

We really was quite a culture shock for me to go to something like that.

Or you had a gold 10 miles to go to the store or anything like that.

So yeah, we moved when I was when I was 10.

And I grew up pretty much in Oak Creek then.

And went to the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

And there in one of my, because I knew what I wanted to do at the age of 16.

I was a pretty good baseball player, but I had trouble with the curve.

And, you know, I just wasn't that fast or runner as they needed back in those days.

So I had heard of this Jackie in Chicago by the name of Joel Sebastian.

You may remember him.

Yeah, I do.

I do remember that name, yeah.

The guy had the most incredible voice in the world to me.

And when I heard his program, I said, that's what I want to do.

So when I got out of high school, I went to University of Wisconsin to Milwaukee

and I loaded up on all the speech courses and things like that.

And in my second semester there, I met a guy in the class.

Argumentation and debate was the name of the class.

Gail Kloppoff, who now, or at least I don't know, perhaps he's retired now,

but he was last I knew heading up, we energies.

But he at that time was working his way through college,

doing news part time at W.O.K.Y.

And, you know, he got me started at the campus radio station on the university,

at the university.

And I worked my way there until I, summer of 1970, was really kind of neat for me

because there was like nobody at the campus radio station during the day.

And I could lock myself up in the studio and teach myself how to do things,

how to make echo, how to introduce a record, how to do this and that.

And finally, there was a program that WRIT did and their public service stuff

where they let the kids from UWM record a half hour program each Sunday morning at seven o'clock.

And I got to do that.

And that's where I met Bob Collins, who was the program director at that time, the late Bob Collins.

And just worked my way up until then they had the campus, you know,

protests and everything in the early seventies there.

And they hired me to be the campus reporter.

And it was kind of neat because I got two dollars per story.

They had no idea what they were in for.

I was sending them 15 to 20 stories a day, you know, they didn't all make it on the air,

but we're still doing that.

And finally, they had an opening for a part time newscaster.

And that's where I started.

And the rest was history from there.

I worked myself up to become a show host and 42 years later retired from WRJN.

So what we're going to get a little bit of that history.

The campus radio station was at over the arrow.

Is it one of those carrier currents?

No, it's over the air still is WUWM.

Oh, that's where you work.

OK, WUWM.

That's a biggie.

They broadcast now out of the building that used to be a big blue bank building on Wisconsin Avenue.

Yeah.

What was your first commercial job?

WRIT.

Oh, it was RIT, OK.

The original RIT.

Yeah, 1340 AM.

1340 AM.

Right.

That was a powerhouse between that and WOKY.

This is before AFM was really big.

People are saying, well, those are AM stations.

But AM really ruled the air waves back then in almost every city.

Yeah.

FMs were also, because a lot of people didn't have FMs in their cars back then.

A lot of big names, a lot of big names came through there.

Of course, Bob Collins, who went on to host the morning show at WGN for many years

before he passed away in that plane crash.

Oh, I can't think of his name.

Wouldn't you know it?

I can't think of his name.

That's what happened when you're born in the 50s.

He stopped thinking.

You can't think of any of that anymore.

I just had probably think of it at three o'clock in the morning tonight.

Well, give a call.

You got my phone number.

I had Bob Barry on the air with me two weeks ago.

Sure.

Any more?

Yeah.

And I still have two weeks to go.

Share.

And he worked, you worked it up here.

I followed Bob on the air.

He did mornings.

I did mid days at W. K. Y.

And Captain Cohen quite well.

So you worked at W. K. Y.

What years?

I was there in 1979, too.

I believe 84 maybe.

He was there for five years, I think, you know, just about everybody.

It was the only one who made the change from Rock and Roll to a big band music.

All the music of your life.

Yeah, exactly.

Steve York didn't last too long there, neither did Bob Barry.

You know, everybody I know in radio, including myself, worked at W. K. Y.

at one time or another.

Chris Marrow, who's the vice president of Civic Media.

He worked at W. K. Y.

I worked at W. K. Y.

Everybody know, worked at W. K. Y.

Hold on, Paul Paul Kern, my guest.

He is the fourth WRJ and Historical Barker, having some fun talking with Paul.

Former Morning Personality right here at WRJ and Radio.

So we are.

Well, I've been waiting.

Waiting.

Yes.

Oh.

I think nothing.

Nothing.

No.

No suck.

No.

That's it.

Yes.

I never thought that'd be a historical marker.

A historical marker, maybe.

But not historical.

Bob Pitman.

That was the name of the guy who, yeah, yeah, yeah, through there just a lot of guys.

Who went on to do more things.

He was the one who I believe invented MTV.

Yes.

What, yeah, he worked for NBC too, NBC radio for a long time.

Yeah.

So, where did he work, Bob Pitman?

He did summer swing in the summer of 1972.

That means he filled in for whoever went on vacation.

That was a motivation.

I would, I was a newscaster at that time and I would do the news on his program quite often.

You know, and you could, he was such a radio junkie.

He could tell you where every jock you've never heard of worked country somewhere, you know.

So, which station was it?

RIT or okay, why?

That was RIT.

That WRIT.

Okay.

And by the way, this is not the same WRIT.

It's in Milwaukee right now.

Exactly.

This was 1340 on the AM dial.

Yeah.

This is a different one.

They just took the call.

They just put it on an FM station now.

It was very smart for them to do.

Okay.

You went to, and they were playing oldies, you know.

Right.

They bring back the memories.

Okay.

So, you're at WRIT, you go to WOKY.

What happens then?

There was a couple of other things in between there.

There was, we went out to work in Wachishaw at WAU Cake.

Because they wanted to create an adult contemporary station out there.

And we stayed for about six months and then left.

Then I went to WRKR and received for three years.

And then I went to WLIP for the first time for about six months.

And then to WOKY in 1979.

You know, let me back up a little bit here.

So, you went to WAUK.

That's not the same WAUK today.

That WAUK was 1510 on the dial.

You went to, right?

1010 on the AM dial.

Yeah.

This one now is 540 and we own it.

Civic Media owns WAUK 540.

So, the call that has moved around a lot.

Yeah.

And sort of the disc jockey's obviously.

You know, you know, the radio is the only business

we're getting fired from a job is never held against you for some reason.

Not only that, if you don't get fired at least once,

it's like nobody cares about you, you know?

I mean, you got to have that to get any respect.

Well, this is interesting.

I want to share this with you.

I was only fired from one job in my entire life.

And it was here.

Dave Magnum fired me when he bought WRJN.

That was really tough.

I was fired from everything else I quit.

I didn't quit, you know, I only quit one station and anger in my entire life.

The rest, you know, I just, you know, left, you know,

better things came along and so forth.

Okay.

So, let's back up a little bit here.

So, you went to a bunch of stations in between.

I didn't know that 1510 was an adult contemporary station.

Is when I came...

I tried to make it that and we were there for three months.

And the owner...

Okay, let's put it this way.

You know, on the weekends I would be spinning records in clubs and things like that.

And I was in a club checking on the New Year's Eve gig.

And we got a call at the club.

There was the owner of the radio station, W-A-U-K, firing all of us.

There we go again.

This was like in 1975.

And I put...

It was the second time I got fired that year.

I also got fired at R-I-T.

And when they wanted to change formats.

And so, I put down the phone and I was in the manager's office.

And I said, dog, gone and I just got fired again.

He says, oh, he says you want to do five nights a week down here at the club.

And I said, how much?

Turned out I was going to make more money at the club than I was on the air anyway.

So it worked out quite well for me.

It was not a work for about five minutes.

There's an old joke in radio when I was first get started.

You better have a good U-Haul because you're going to need it.

Because now you need...

It was don't buy a house.

Well, you were lucky.

You stayed in the same area.

A lot of people, including myself, went from Long Island to Atlanta to Milwaukee.

I just moved around a lot.

Yeah, most of the guys do.

I was very fortunate in that I always was able to pick up a job around here.

One day I'm going to have Chris Morrow on with his historical marker.

You've got to hear his stories.

We worked together at RKR.

In fact, the night that his child was born, I happen to be in the station doing some extra stuff that I was working on.

And he came in because he was on like from I think maybe ten of the evening.

Oh no, he was on overnight at that time.

He comes in and he hadn't even sat down to start the show yet.

And he got a call that the birth was imminent.

So he took off and I did it show that night overnight.

I just sat down and did it.

Well, he was off.

He called me like six in the morning said,

I believe it was a girl, a little baby girl that they'd had.

And so Chris and I got to know each other quite well there.

And we worked together at the jazz station in Milwaukee.

Yes.

W.

These I can't think of.

You're all letters.

It was from Anomity Falls.

WJCI.

That's what it was.

Yeah.

And then we worked again when he came in as general manager there at our JN.

Like whenever I'd work with Chris, I wasn't there much longer.

You know, I left RKR.

I left easy JCI and left RJN there.

You know, I got different offers are in the case of RJN.

I retired.

But Chris is a great guy.

In fact, my wife and I and a friend, we went out to look at the Christmas lights

at that big facility that's out in Western Waukeshaw County there.

That's right off the eye.

Are you familiar with it?

They got a big water park there and everything?

No, no.

Okay.

I forget the name of the place.

But anyway, we went out there and when you go in,

don't drive through the lights and everything.

You put your radio on a certain station and you get your Christmas music.

So we had that on and all of a sudden, here comes this voice with a little commercial

telling you what you're seeing and everything.

And I said, hey, that's Chris Moral.

You know, so Chris, you know, he was doing a lot of different things.

When you do talk to him again, make sure you tell him I said, hi.

No, I will.

I will.

You know, he's got great stories to tell.

He had me in hysterics.

He worked out.

He's one of these people that traveled America in his early days.

And he worked out at stations in Nebraska and across the country.

I was hysterical listening to his stories.

Now, some of them he can't tell on the air.

No, nothing can tell.

But he's got, he has me in hysterics as some of these people he used to work with.

And I love hearing these stories.

I didn't realize you worked at WJCI and all these stations in Milwaukee.

This is brand new to me.

See, this is what this is why we've got to do these historical marker shows to find out about the people.

Because I didn't know any of this stuff about you.

I thought you just went from Kenosha LIP to WRJN and that was it.

We were all over the place.

You know, matter of fact, you guys, and I don't know if you still have this in the control room or not,

but you had a setup when I worked there where you could put a CD and a clean CD and set it, you know, play and record.

And every time you open the microphone, it's when it, you know, it would record.

And so I've got dozens and dozens of my programs, you know.

So I'm glad of that because otherwise, you know, everything else was on tape.

And after a while tape goes bad and you can't listen to it.

Hold on Paul, don't move.

Got a quick break here.

729 WRJN Radio.

It's 735 WRJN, it's our fourth historical marker in our series, the history of WRJN and Paul

Paul, I'm going to get to WRJN but how long will you at WLIP for?

I was there for a short period of time in 1979 and every time I went to WLIP, I came to work for you guys.

That was a long period of time that I was there.

Okay, so you did come to WRJN, what year was that?

2005.

All right, 2005 became to WRJN radio and you were a morning personality for, you said six years?

Yeah, yeah.

I should know because I was the program director but I shouldn't remember these things.

You guys hired me because you wanted a little bit more of a conservative voice on the air and I think

the first couple of weeks they just didn't, the audience didn't quite know how to take me because I came there in the summer of 2005

and it was just a couple of weeks later that Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.

And remember all the pictures of it, water was up to the rooftops and everything like that and all was so horrible.

And here I am on the air saying, I don't know if it was so horrible.

If I was in synchronator, I'd be licking my chops at this point because all these places have to be rebuilt

and they're all going to need garbage disposal and I don't think they quite knew how to take me quite at that point

because of the way I looked at things such as that.

Give us some of the highlights when you're here at WRJN.

Well, of course the big thing that I always remember was the snowstorm, the two-foot snowstorm that came on Groundhog Day at 2011.

And I think the Sunday before we had had the bridal fair that we used to do, I don't know if you guys still do that or not.

No, that's long gone.

Okay, but we did the bridal fair and I was sitting there talking with Pete Ferrand and he said, hey, do you hear about the big storm?

I said, no, why? He says, later this week, big storm coming.

I said, how many inches is it, inches? They're talking feet.

And so, you know, I mean, it started getting closer and all they were talking about on the news was this snowstorm

that could dump as much as two feet out in the Racine Canosa area.

So, I mean, if I'd have been smart and I've never been known as being the sharpest knife in the drawer, I would have as soon as I started snowing that night,

come into the radio station with a sleeping bag and just sacked out on the couch or the floor or whatever it would happen to be.

But no, I says, ah, they'll be plows out and everything.

And so, I waited and I just couldn't fall asleep that night and I think around midnight, I said, I'm going to go into the station and I told my wife,

this might be kind of slow traveling. I had no idea. There were no plows out that night.

And it took me from like midnight and I got to the station at 6.30 in the morning and it was normally a 20-minute drive.

That's how bad it was that night. In fact, I got to the corner of 16th and I forget the name of the street that runs on the west end of the radio station campus there.

Oh, hi, oh, no, no, no, there's a side street for that.

Okay, a laser, you know, no, no, on the west side.

Huh, I'm trying to think about it. It's 16th and a laser.

I couldn't find a way into the station, you know, because you're in the middle of a block there.

And I got myself on 16th and I got myself facing down this side street and I just floored it.

And I had a four-wheel drive and it just went all the way through all of that up into the parking lot and that's where it got stuck and that's where I left it.

And it's the best I could at that point.

You know, it was quite a, quite a storm. And that's the, in fact, it was almost after that point that I said, you know, the next time there's one of these,

I want to watch it from my front window. And that's when I kind of decided I was going to see when I could be able to retire.

Because that was already 60 years old at that point, you know.

You know, I, I really remember that day. It was, it was Roundhog gave February 2, 2011.

Yeah.

Because I lived 10 minutes from the radio station and I left about 4 a.m. from the house.

I was shoveling and plowing just to get out of my driveway.

Yeah.

And so I got out and I was following a police car over the bridge to, you know, the Main Street Bridge.

And all of a sudden the police car vanished. It just, I couldn't see it anymore in the blizzard.

And I was so petrified. I was going to go off the edge of the bridge. I didn't, I couldn't see it.

And I'm going, and I'm going down Highway 20. I took the biggest street I can find Highway 20.

And I couldn't see. I was petrified. You couldn't see it. If cars were parked there, you couldn't see anything.

And I finally got down to Ohio Street.

And I couldn't turn on the victory. It was way too deep. I couldn't even turn the car around.

And I said, I'm going to park in the parking lot at Kmart over there, whatever it was. Not that shop, shopco.

I'm going to park over there. And there are lots of words that wasn't plowed yet.

So I called the gas station on the corner of Ohio and Highway 20.

Super America, whatever it is over there. I figured what it's called.

And they would not let me park there. So I went over to Walgreens and I parked in the lot.

And I went to the manager and I kind of pleaded. I said, listen, I work at the radio station.

I can't get down the streets. Can I park my car here? He said, yeah, just move it over to this spot over here.

And you can leave your car there all day. Don't worry about it.

So my wife gave me a satchel full of food and clothing. I don't know how long she thought I was going to be here.

I'm grateful for the clothing because I had a walk nine tenths of a mile and a blizzard.

And the snow in some parts was up to my knees.

Well, yeah, it was even deeper than that. What I got there was up to my, up on my thighs.

You know, I mean, you're trying to plow through that. You know, it's, that's, that's not easy.

Well, anyway, so I get to the radio station and Tom Carco meets me at the door.

And he with a glass, he's getting here quick. He got me a thing of water to drink.

And I was exhausted. Now, little did I know on that day that my heart was failing because two months later, I had open heart surgery.

Yeah.

And when I talked to the surgeon, he said he was just beyond him.

How I didn't pass out and die of a heart attack in that blizzard because I got knocked down on Ohio Street once.

But I didn't know about it. And what you don't know can hurt you, but it didn't in my case.

So April of that year, right after the blizzard two months later, I had open heart surgery almost two months of the day.

So you got in there and I remember your car was just in the middle of the lot.

I do remember that when I was walking to the station, I said, well, he made it in.

I got there at 630. It took me two and a half hours to get in on that morning.

It took me six and a half, you know, for a little 20 minute drive.

But you know, radio people do that.

If it was any other business, you would have called in and said, I can't make it. Radio people did.

Well, who else was going to do it? You know, I know it's just radio people do that sort of stuff.

I say it might have been smart. I would have come in, you know, before this actually even before the snow started and just sacked out of the radio station.

Well, I learned a valuable lesson that day.

And I'm going to do the same thing you did if every here is snow's coming because I'm not going to deal with that ever again.

Where I've got to go through those streets like that.

And again, it takes me 10 minutes to get here in the morning now.

Same house, same route, same everything except never again will I do that.

Talk about some of the interesting people you've talked to.

You mean that a lot of guests on the air over the years.

Any interesting people you can remember?

Well, yeah, I had become good friends with with Rhine's previous who had it up the Republican National Committee.

And also was the first.

What do you call it?

Heads up the basically the White House. That's chief of staff.

Yeah, the White House.

Yeah, under Trump.

There were a lot of different people as far as music was concerned.

One of the interesting people that I met was how the most interesting people was Howard Cosell.

If you remember him, he was sportscaster for ABC.

And when I was at WRIT, we were the ABC affiliate.

And so when the Packers were going to place somebody on Monday night football in Milwaukee,

Cosell would come in the after the Sunday afternoon before,

would come to the radio station and record his speaking of sports programs.

Now, these were three minute radio programs.

He would do one for the morning, one for the afternoon on Monday,

and then one for the local program in New York.

And when I, you know, this is what amazed me.

I mean, back in those days, I had a script for everything I was going to do and write it and read it over before.

He sat down and I got to sit in the engineer's booth with the guy who engineered the whole thing.

And he just started talking.

And he had no notes.

He had no nothing.

And he just boom, boom, boom, boom, banged out three minute programs just like that.

And I was impressed, you know, and then I got to write in the car when we took him back to his hotel.

And he was talking about the fact that, well, and I found out your years later that he had a photographic memory,

which helped a whole lot as far as this stuff was concerned.

But we went past the stadium and this was Sunday, early Sunday evening.

And he's, you know, ABC had all the lights on.

They're setting up their camera angles and all this kind of stuff.

And he says, he called them amateurs.

And so I don't need to rehearse like that.

And he started going through the packers and the Detroit Lions rosters,

player by player, their number where they went to college.

You know, I was just impressed with the guy.

He was really something else.

Some of the other people that I met, and I was the only one who would have it.

He told me I was the only one who would have him on the air each year on the anniversary of Buddy Holly's plane crash.

And that was Bobby V.

Bobby V was 16 years old and had a garage band in Minnesota.

And the night after the plane crash, the show went on,

and they were looking for people to fill in for Buddy Holly, Big Bopper, and Richie Valens.

And they said, what about this guy?

Bobby Villan, over on the whatever side of town.

They went over to talk to him and he filled in.

And that was really where he got his start.

And he had quite a few hit records over the years.

And I would call him every year the anniversary of the plane crash.

And we do a little interview and everything.

And he talked about how people were crying in the audience.

And he said it was a very tough show to do.

And it was really his first professional show.

Some of them all, man, so many people over the years that you got a chance to meet

who either just came into the station or you got to interview.

Another one that I had a lot of fun with on the air was Buddy Rich, the jazz drummer.

Boy, I tell you, and just so many over the years that you had the opportunity to talk to.

I think one of the interviews that I did there at RJN was with one of the lead singers

of the guys who did the song, Louis Louis, the Kingsman.

Right, yeah.

And of course, naturally I had to ask them the question, what do they actually say in that song?

Because over the years there have been so many people who said they said this or that.

And it was filthy and it was dirty.

And that's why you couldn't understand it.

And he said, we never tell.

You know, let me tell you something funny about this song.

My brother had a band.

He played with some of the biggest groups of the 1960s.

And when that song came out, he wrote to the record company.

And they sent him a mini-graph copy of the lyrics to that song.

Really?

Yeah.

And by the way, you mentioned the plane crash with Buddy Holly, the day the music died.

By why didn't I went out to Clear Lake, Iowa?

We went to the surf ballroom.

And then we were two people talking.

And they said, yes, if you go to a hundred and fifteenth and gall, the street intersection,

it's a farmers field.

Go out there, walk about a quarter of a mile, and you'll be at the site.

And I went out there.

And they have some stainless steel records out on that side.

And the whole memorial set up.

But during the middle of this farmer's muddy field.

And that is the exact site of the plane crash.

At the stand on that site, knowing this is where music history changed forever.

It's really sobering to be out there.

Yeah.

I think one of the things to go to a lot of these different oldies, conventions,

you know, where they'd come in with pictures and memorabilia and all that kind of stuff.

One of the most horrible things I ever saw.

There was a guy who actually had the coroner's picture of the plane crashed in pieces

and the three of them laying there in the field.

I can't even look at that.

Man, that's horrible.

Well, when I was at the surf ballroom, you can buy a copy of the newspaper

and they show that picture on the cover of the newspaper with the bodies laying there in the field.

Yeah, I thought that was just really gross.

Yeah.

Hold on a second.

Paul Kern is here.

It's WRJN Historical Marker number four.

We're doing the history of WRJN and the people who worked here.

Paul Kern, a very important part, did mornings here for a number of years at WRJN Radio.

So we'll continue with Paul just a moment here.

WRJN Home Town Radio refreshed a civic media station in 749.

WRJN Home Town Radio

When this soul starts getting me down, and people are just too much for me to fail.

WRJN Home Town Radio

The Drefters with lead singer Ben E. King went on to have a bunch of hits on his own,

stand by me, Spanish Harlem.

And my brother used to play with Benny King, played in his band.

And I'm going to say they were at some thing up in South Fallsburg, New York.

And I went with my brother as a little kid at the time, and Benny King wanted to play some basketball

before the show started, and he pointed to me and said, here, you're with me.

And I played basketball with Benny King on a great memory, huh?

Yeah, yeah.

You know, one of the funny things about radio is where people go from radio and to something else.

And the guy who hired me at WRKR was named Jim K. Hill.

And he was a big, this was in the middle 70s.

And the time when Alice Cooper was a big name in the entertainment industry.

And he was a big fan of Alice Cooper.

In fact, he got Alice's permission to put together an Alice Cooper special.

He worked on it for like about three months.

And it went nationwide.

It played all over the country.

And Alice liked it so much that he hired Jim K. Hill to come to work for him.

Now, here's what his job was.

All right?

Alice Cooper liked to fly into town the day before his concert, and put on the TV,

and watch his plane on the news flying into town.

So Jim K. Hill's job was to go into town the day before that,

and make sure the news media was all out at the airport to catch the film of Alice Cooper's plane flying into town.

And I said, what kind of a job is that?

And he says, well, he says, it's a lot of fun.

You get to meet a lot of people.

He said, speaking of basketball that he got to play basketball with Alice,

and Harry Nielsen.

And, you know, his comment was, yeah, those English guys can't play basketball at all.

They're just no good.

Hey, Paul.

It's amazing the jobs that people get, you know?

Did people want you to go into politics?

Yeah.

Yeah, there was a time when they wanted me to run for state representatives.

In fact, even recently, our pastor at the church was interested in having me run for mayor.

And I said, no, I said, I said, I don't need the headaches, you know?

But you know what, though?

You've got such a great personality.

You could have pulled it off.

Yeah, but no, it's just, I kind of don't have the same interest that I did when I was on the air.

It was very interesting to me.

It was very interesting to have the newsmakers on the air with me.

And, like I said, I just don't have the interest in that.

I've gone in a whole different direction now.

I do a lot of stuff for our church and fights at Columbus.

And I enjoy that.

I get a lot of satisfaction out of that.

I remember I was at a fundraiser thing once, and you were sitting at the table.

There were Ryan's Previsors there, and a bunch of other politicos.

And I just, I said, this guy, he fits in naturally with all these people.

And I just really wondered why you didn't go into politics at all.

You would have been very good at it.

Well, perhaps, but like I say, it's just, again, at this point in time,

it's just something that doesn't interest me that much.

Okay, so when you left WRJM, you retired from radio and everything, right?

Yes, from everything.

Why didn't you, why did you retire? What did you give up on radio?

Well, after 42 years, it was just time.

I just felt like it was just time to move along and see what was going to happen

as far as I was concerned.

I wasn't going to tell this story, but I think I will.

Back in the going over Christmas of 2009 going on to 2010,

I was found to have cancer, and a little ductic goes between the cobladder and liver.

And I found out later that you never get any symptoms of this until it's so far gone

that you're not going to make it.

And they found it in me very early, and I had the surgery done,

and everything turned out fine.

I'm still going fine to this day.

And I had five weeks, because you may remember this.

You guys had me off the air for five weeks,

because they told me I was going to be so weak that you wouldn't believe it.

And I certainly was.

I mean, it was an effort to roll over under the covers in bed, you know.

And so five weeks I had time to sit there and think,

and I just said, there's got to be a reason why God wanted me to survive this,

when nobody else does.

And so when I retired, I just looked around for what was going to be the next face of my life,

and getting involved with our church, and then as I said before,

the things that I'm doing now, was what I found,

is that I think God wanted me to use my talents as far as that stuff was concerned.

And I hope I'm right as far as that's concerned.

You know what? I think you're right.

You can't go wrong doing what you're doing now.

Yeah.

I mean, you're doing God's work, and that's the best anybody can do in life.

So where do you live now?

You live in Kenosha?

Yeah.

Yeah, we had moved, we had left Kenosha for four years when our son-in-law

got a good job down in Bloomington, Indiana.

That's South West.

This may be 45 minutes from the Kentucky border.

The kids moved down there in the grandkids.

And about the time they bought a house, my wife said,

all right, it's time for us to move.

So we sold our house, moved down there for four years,

and right about the time, when COVID hits, you know,

it's tough to meet people in a new town to begin with,

especially when you're retired and not working.

And it was, again, like I say, tough to meet people at that point,

and we were sitting out in the yard one day.

I bought the time that they had the riots in Kenosha,

I thought of my wife.

What do you think about moving back?

And she said, I could do that.

So we decided to move back, beginning at 2021,

and so we're back in Kenosha again, and very happy.

Sounds like the Beverly Hillbillies.

We loaded up the truck and we moved back to Kenosha.

Hills that is, women pulls, movie stars.

Hey, Paul, I got to thank you very much.

You sound great.

Your personality is still there.

Your voice is still there.

Everything about you is still there from the day you left here.

Nothing's changed.

And I do appreciate you spending an hour with me

as our fourth historical marker this morning.

All right, well, I hope the listeners enjoyed it.

And say hi to everybody, you know, that we came in contact

with when I was there.

And have yourself a wonderful day.

Hold on a second.

Don't leave yet.

Just stay right where you are there, Paul.

Paul Kern, historical marker number four at WRJN radio.

I'm Don Rose and I get to tomorrow morning 6 a.m.,

dark and early.

The sun's still not up yet.

Tomorrow, today we're going to have,

it's going to be like a drop of 40 some odd degrees

by tomorrow morning.

So we'll make it, right?

It's 759 at WRJN radio.

Home camera radio refreshed a civic media station.

Stay where you are.