God Squad

Every career has to start somewhere. For many of the people I've known in radio, that somewhere was on Sunday morning or Sunday evening taking care of the local preachers.

We called it the God Squad.

Nobody wanted to be on the radio or be anywhere near the radio when the preachers started preaching. No one was listening. We knew that by instinct. But we also knew that there was someone listening because the preachers kept coming back week after week begging for money and apparently getting it. For the small radio stations in Southern Ohio, the God Squad was a good cash business. Preacher came in with an envelope he would hand to the operator on duty, the operator on duty would take the envelope and slide it under the owner's door, then, get the preacher set up and on the air for his hour or half hour.

Preachers ranged anywhere from between being reasonable and being utterly absurd. At the radio station where I "apprenticed" (I hung out at WCHI in Chillicothe because I knew the fellow who had the God Squad shift) the reasonable and the utterly absurd usually had shows that were seperated by at least half an hour.

The reasonable in that case was John Kellough. John was what could be termed an old country preacher with a lot of miles on him. He had the 2-2:30 slot. John would come in at about a quarter till 2 and would engage the board operator and his apprentice with some light conversation about the previous week's events. Almost every week there would be a point in the conversation when John would, while looking straight at us, be thumbing through his well-used Bible, open it and point to a passage which related directly to the conversation at hand. The man knew the book by heart!! I rather looked forward to seeing John Kellough simply because of that fact. He was a solitary performer who needed nothing more than a Bible to teach simple lessons in life and living based on what had been written in that book. Old country preachers like John Kellough do exist, but they are few and far between. I did manage to encounter another such preacher during a "God Squad" stint I did for a radio station in West Virginia. Same modus operendi... the only reason he carried a Bible in his hand was to supplement the copy he had in his head.

In direct contrast to John Kellough was the fellow who had the 3-3:30 slot - Reverend Murphy. When Reverend Murphy arrived, it was as if the circus had pulled into town.

Picture a man standing at 6"3" who was a solid 300 pounds. Solid. No gut, solid. He usually had on a bowling shirt with the legend "Rev Murphy God's Crusaders" embroidered on the back of the shirt. He usually had a retinue with him, consisting of at least 5 people, average age 67 with no more than three dozen teeth between all of them. Before he was asked not to come back to do his show any more, the Reverend Murphy provided some of the more, ahem, "colorful" moments of any particular day.

For instance, there was the afternoon when the Reverend Murphy had in his retinue a woman who stood Five foot nothing who weighed all of 300 pounds of mostly flab. They went into the studio, he got wound up good and tight for about 5 minutes and came to a sudden stop. "Now I believe we'll have sister Evilyn come up to testify..." and at that point the 300 pound woman lunged up, grabbed the microphone from Reverend Murphy and started screaming directly into the thing. And there was the Reverend Murphy, Bible being held up in one hand, the other trying to wrest the microphone from sister Evilyn who was completely in control. There were 5 of us in the control room watching that circus, and not a one of us could control our laughter. And that laughter continued for a good 45 minutes... in another room, of course.

The Reverend Murphy opted himself out of that radio station's Sunday afternoon "God Squad" less than a year later. I was no longer an apprentice but I knew the new fellow in charge of the "God Squad". Seems that the Reverend Murphy and his retinue came in one Sunday carrying a box. The team goes into the studio, the box is put in the middle of the floor, Reverend Murphy gets wound up and 5 minutes into his show, stops and opens the box. RATTLESNAKES!!! The Reverend Murphy had brought a box of rattlesnakes into the radio station, pulled a few of them out and was preaching while waving the rattlesnakes in the studio! The board operator called the station manager who was living, at best, 20 minutes away from the station. The manager broke several speed limits, arrived in 1o minutes and at the conclusion of the Reverend Murphy's time slot told the preacher that he and his money were no longer welcomed.

Now, there were others on both ends of the spectrum with whom I have had contact by virtue of having a God Squad assignment of one sort or another. There were some who were very sincere about their beliefs and I visited their churches from time to time. There were others who were totally off base, like the former prostitute who seemingly had not quite given up the practice, or the proprieter of "The Little White Church" who used the money mailed by the gullible to pay for his expenses while he went door-to-door selling Kirby Vacuum cleaners the other 6 days of the week.

The experience created a bit of a loss of direction in relation to my moral compass. For much of the time I was in radio, I practiced no real religion. I had been taught by example of the many, mostly Pentacostal, preachers that some Churches were not worth the time. My most positive experiences eventually led me back to where I am today, but I still shudder at preachers who think themselves as or better than God.

Local Talent

At one point in the Summer/Fall of 1992 I got a call from the manager of WPAY in Portsmouth, Ohio. He had heard me on the air and invited me to come down and talk about a job possibility. I found the time and made an appointment to go down the road and talk.





WPAY had been around like forever. The station is on the very edge of the Huntington, West Virginia market and punched a strong FM signal literally from Huntington in the east to Columbus to the north from a tower across the Ohio River in Kentucky. The AM station was one of the first in the region and was still pulling a smaller, yet loyal audience. One personality on the AM side, Zeke Mullins, was as well known in Portsmouth as Portsmouth's famous native son, Roy Rogers.





I had visited WPAY in the mid '7os to visit with a friend who was working there at the time so the station was easily found. After the talk, some name-dropping and the like, came the nickle tour. Apart from the studios and the offices was a rather large storage room off to the side which was being used for a variety of older, obsolete equipment which no one had a heart to throw out yet. My host told me that at one time the room was used as a recording studio. Just about anyone could come in, pay whatever the fee, cut a record, then try to sell it by having it aired by the station which recorded it.





The situation at WPAY wasn't unique, either. At least that's the way I understand it. Putting a recording studio at a radio station became a win-win for both the radio station and the the artist using the studio. The station took in the money from people wanting their own shot at stardom and had material to fill in when they ran short of material. The (insert name of major recording artist here) wanna be would find ego fulfillment and could possibly make a few bucks on the side if his or her record started to sell.





As "Top 40" radio came into dominance and recording techniques became more sophisticated, the recording studio became just another room for the dwindling number of locally produced programs (mostly a parade of Pentacostal preachers damning everyone to hell and begging for money). Other studios became office space, or storage rooms. Take yer pick.





In the meantime, there were still a boatload of people who saw themselves as the next big thing and wanted to get their foot in the door. Some of them were really talented, too. Like Craig Fuller of Waverly, Ohio. Craig got together with some friends and did some recording under the name of Pure Prairie League and were moderately successful. Sure, there were lots of clunkers and the merely mediocre, but there were some standouts who deserved a shot at the big time. Without the radio stations making records, selling records, even locally, became a real challenge.





All of a sudden, the local announcers became important to the "little guys" who wanted their shot at fame and fortune.





At one point I was at a family gathering of a girl I was seeing when a second cousin twice removed (or something of that sort) got wind of the fact that I worked at one of the local stations. He disappeared for about 5 minutes then appeared with a fist full of records he had made and would I pleeeeeeeaaaaasssee play them on the air? Wasn't too bad. Could have been worse. Didn't have the heart to tell him that his "Country" record wouldn't go over too well with the "Formula" sound being played at the station I was working for.





Then there was this kid named Jerry Salley. Jerry managed to attract the attention of Mary Morris, the octogenarian who ran WBEX in the early to mid '70s. Jerry would come in on occasion to be on the air and talk about his singing and song writing. Not a bad fellow, actually. Eventually he grew up and moved to Nashville - even had a hand in some fairly decent songs done by fairly decent singers. Maybe I've understated just a bit. Jerry is a highly successful songwriter and singer and a mere paragraph wouldn't do him justice.