Promotion Man
By Kiki Lee

   
Forward  ~ Gambling on a career in Rock and Roll.
     
Chapter 1 ~ After developing scores of regional hits in 1967, Atlantic Records recruited Dick to head their Southeast and Midwest promotions. At Atlantic, Dick helped launch many legendary R & B and Rock artists, several who are now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
    
Chapter 2 ~ Dick takes an extended hiatus from music, traveling throughout Europe and North Africa.
    
Chapter 3 ~ In 1972, Capricorn Productions left Atlantic distribution to become Capricorn Records using Warner Brothers for distribution and signed Dick as VP of promotion. Dick began promoting the new label's artists and started a wave of hit records that established Capricorn Records and "Southern Rock".
     
Chapter 4 ~ While at Capricorn Dick launched and established four major artists in the top of the charts before leaving  to partner with Atlantic Records and start Dick Wooley Associates and Rabbit Record in 1976. Dick promoted several new artists into gold and platinum sales, then retired from the music business and moved to the beach in 1981.
    
Chapter 5 ~ At the beach Dick transfers his marketing skill into real estate development and launched several ocean front properties and with new partner Benchmark/Atlantic developed seven university student communities. In 2004, Dick was inspired by emerging blues artists to start Internet based King Mojo Records to showcase up and coming talent.

   
Forward

Gambling on a career in Rock and Roll.
      

In the fall of 1963, after serving four years in the Navy, Dick Wooley started college in the sleepy South Georgia community of Norman Park. Too far from any metro area to receive a clear TV signal, the only link to the outside world was listening to the radio at night and hearing John "R" and Gene Nobles broadcasting their Blues programs that covered rural America from Canada to the Keys from Nashville Tennessee over the clear channel 50,000 watt powerhouse station WLAC.

Isolated at school and with plenty of leisure time Dick assembled a rock band "The Fabulous Serpents" to play at local venues for extra money, and they recorded a single that became popular in the region. After being low-balled by area clubs, Dick decided to promote his own shows, so he rented a hall, sold tickets and kept 100% of the gate.

This combination worked great during the school year, but band members went back to their home town in summer. To keep his music connection alive Dick got a job at Southland Record Distributor in Atlanta in 1965, selling records to the mom and pop record stores throughout the South. On nights and weekends Dick managed a couple of local bands, he booked their gigs and promoted the bands shows.

In the summer in 1966 Dick's hard work paid off, one of his bands played a local Atlanta  DJ's high school shows, in return he played their record on WQXI and it became a local hit. The single attracted the attention of New York's Bang Records, but after a trip to the Big Apple for a disastrous meeting with the owner Burt Burns the deal went South.

At the Bang offices, Dick and the band's first meeting with Burt Burns soured quickly when members began demanding star-treatment, needless to say the deal was rejected, the band's single never made the national charts and soon they were back to square one. After paying all the expenses for the New York trip Dick was broke and discouraged, but he'd learned a valuable lesson and despite the temporary setback it proved to be a door opener for Dick in the music business.

Shortly after the failed introduction to the real record business world, John Towels, the manager of  F & F Arnold record distributors in Charlotte wanted Dick to promote their regionally distributed indy labels including; Atlantic Records, Monument Records and Warner Brothers Records. This was a breakthrough for Dick because in addition to getting paid for doing record promotion, he got to promote his rock and blues shows on weekends.

Dick worked with some very interesting music people promoting indy labels, including legendary mob music boss Morris Levy of Roulette Records, the "Sopranos" base the character "Herman Hesh' Rabkin" on Morris. Dick helped Kenny Rogers launch his first solo hit single and career, and he worked with Elvis's Memphis Mafia, Marty Lacker, and with the legendary Roy Orbison.

In the day to day promoting Dick broke several records while at F & F and he discovered a local "beach music" band called "The Okasions". The band had recorded and pressed a single costing all of $400 and brought it to Dick for promotion, he soon had it spinning on Carolina stations and it turned into the million selling hit single "Girlwatcher". And then...
  

Chapter 1

Atlantic Records: Making Music Legends.
     

Dickey Kline, Atlantic Records legendary Miami based promo man had known Dick from Atlanta and watched his progress in the Carolinas. At the annual Atlantic convention in the Bahamas, Kline introduced Dick to Atlantic's new Vice President of Promotion Jerry Greenberg. Jerry was in the process of building his new promotion team and recruited Dick on the spot to head-up Southeast and Midwest promotions.

Dick was ready and eager for the opportunity to work for a great company like Atlantic Records and with best wishes from F & F and John Towles he packed the car and moved to Cincinnati Ohio to open Atlantic's regional promotion office.

Record promotion was not an easy job back in the halcyon days of vinyl records in 1967. It was years before the Interstate highway system was finished and Dick routinely had to drive fifteen-hundred miles every week over two-lane black top roads promoting Atlantic Records to large and small market Top 40 and R & B radio stations alike throughout the Midwest and Southeast. Dick stated, "Anytime I saw a radio tower I'd pull in their parking lot and start promoting Atlantic records".

Building personal relations and many times starting lifelong friendships with radio programmers was Atlantic Records strength, these were great people and they were always professional in the way they conducted their business affairs. No company in the business was more respected or had more loyal employees.

Atlantic spared no expense in helping it's promotion men to make and keep alliances. It was the promotion mans responsibility to entertain, make friends and influence radio programmers. After all, they were the key to breaking Atlantic's new records and keeping Atlantic artists high on the national charts. 

Unlike many other record companies of the day Atlantic was not into pay for play, or as it was more commonly called by government investigators "Payola". Money wasn't exchanged for airplay, we offered something more valuable to music programmers, we gave them the career building courtesy of scouting job opportunities in other markets and we gave them the respect they deserved. In return, they showed us their appreciation when we needed them most by adding our records to their radio playlists when the chips were down.

Record promotion was hard and challenging work, because at the time Atlantic was still a small Indy label that could only afford six full-time promotion men and each of these men had the responsibility to make sure every radio station, show promoter and independent record distributor in America was doing their best for Atlantic Records. This fabled gang-of-six was headed by Jerry Greenberg, Dickey Kline, Leroy Little, Bob Greenberg, Vince Faracci and Dick Wooley.

These six guys could sometimes work promotion miracles by getting Atlantic records to the top of the charts, and the small group did it against all odds especially when competing against the more heavily financed major record companies. For example, back then song publishers had a great deal of power and it was not uncommon for two competing labels to release the same publishers song, but by different artists and sometimes even did it on the same day. "When this happened, Jerry Greenberg would put his assistant on a plane with boxes of DJ singles and they would fly around the country delivering these records by hand to each of us promotion men. We in turn would drive through our territory delivering the new record to radio stations by hand. We covered the entire country in forty-eight hours, and by the time the competition knew what happened our record was being played by so many radio stations the race was already over before they'd left the starting gate... they never had a chance. It was like we were competing in the record business Olympics and Atlantic never lost one of those head-to-head challenges".

Dick said, "It was a genuine honor and privilege being a member of that elite group of promo men and it was a once in a lifetime experience to work with the greatest music people ever, legendary music geniuses like Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler and Tom Dowd."

During the 1960's Atlantic Records established many great  R & B and Rock and Roll legends and several of them are in the "Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame" To name a few: Percy Sledge, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Joe Tex, The Young Rascals, King Curtis, Sam & Dave, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Buffalo Springfield, Cream, Eric Clapton, Delaney and Bonnie, Led Zeppelin, YES, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Derek And The Dominos.
      

Jerry Wexler legendary producer

Ahmet Ertegun Atlantic President

Tom Dowd legendary producer

Jerry Greenberg VP of promotion

ATLANTIC RECORDS 1960's-1970's

ATCO RECORDS 1960's-1970's

CAPRICORN PROD. 1969-1972

       
Editors Note: (a) After Dick left Atlantic Records, to explain how entrenched AM radio was in playing mindless songs like "Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies, the great promotion staff at Atlantic that now included Phillip Rauls and Mario Medious worked a whole year to get "Layla" on major AM radio playlists. Per Atlantic's VP Dickey Kline, WIXY in Cleveland was the first major station to play Layla. By the way, recently Layla was voted the "Number one Rock song in History"... (b) Atlantic Album Discography 

The Adventure: The hiatus... a very long one.
  

Two weeks after giving notice to his friends at Atlantic, Dick, his wife and young son Christian left Atlanta and flew to Paris. They had no agenda, any travel was done on the spur of the moment and every day was an unplanned adventure, after all, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

"The first day in Paris we regretted not reading the travel tips more carefully, we'd packed and planned for every contingency and had arrived with five huge bags of clothes that we now had to drag around town and by the time we crashed on the hotel sheets that night we were totally exhausted. The next morning we sorted and prioritized every item and anything that didn't fit snuggly into two backpacks was tossed in a box and shipped back home. With our first big problem resolved, bring it on, we were ready for anything." 

We visited nearly every Paris museum, took every walking tour, stuffed ourselves at every dining experience, but after a week we were satiated and ready to unwind and for a change of scenery, maybe at a beach. We looked over some brochures in the hotel lobby and decided to take a train south through France and regroup in sunny Portugal. We boarded the night train at the Gare Saint Lazare Paris's main train station and began our first train adventure. In the middle of the night we were unexpectedly awakened to change trains at the French boarder, we sleepily produced our passports to the officially dressed agents that passed through the compartments. This was the first boarder crossing we'd experienced, disconcerting the first time, but we got used to it before long and soon we were officially on our way down the beautiful rocky coastline of Portugal and on into it's capitol city of Lisbon.

Lisbon is an ancient and beautiful old city, a contrast of modern bridges and meandering cobblestone streets lined with whitewashed houses and red tile roofs. We took our time looking around and decided to take the local trolley car tour to all the more popular sight, finally exausted we decided to find a quiet place to unwind. Back at the Lisbon train station we climbed aboard an old wooden streetcar that rumbled up the coast and delivered us to the seaside village of Estoril. By asking locals townspeople around in the market square about lodging, we were directed up the hill to a rambling ivy covered villa overlooking the village, the market and harbor. The view was beautiful and the villa was staffed by a friendly Portuguese family that prepared wonderful home cooked meals for us everyday. For the rest of the month we just relaxed and forgot about the world outside. We took long walks around town, explored nearby historic castles, we enjoyed the warm hospitality and friendly people of Portugal.

I would love to return to Portugal, the people were great, the food was fantastic and we would have stayed longer, but after a month of being lazy it was either time to move on or put down roots. So we decided to visit Morocco and the next morning we set off from Lisbon by train to Algeciras, Spain where we boarded a large ferry and once underweigh we passed through the Straits of Gibraltar on our way to the small Spanish colony of Ceuta on the north coast of Africa.
  

A view of the Seine from a Paris bridge

Dick & Christian stroll through a Paris park

The villa overlooking Estoril, Portugal

The View from our Window in Estoril

   
We arrived at the colony of Ceuta in the tropical heat of midday, instantly we were surrounded by a mob of street kids, beggars and vendors that were hawking everything from straw hats to hashish. After lingering long enough to make a small purchase, we made a dash to the town's dusty central bus terminal that was crowded with traveler milling around the ticket booths, we arrived just in time to see our recent fellow ferry passengers leave the terminal in a fog of street dust, aboard what we found out was the last bus to Morocco until morning. A uniformed man standing nearby, overheard us griping about missing the bus, he'd obviously seen people in this same situation and for a price offered to drive us in his Mercedes limo into the city of Tetouan a few miles inside the Moroccan boarder.

We very were anxious to make it across the boarder before sundown so we would have time to look for a comfortable and affordable hotel. With no other alternatives, we haggled a few minutes with him over the price and then agreed to a price we thought was fair. We got in the back seat of the comfortable black Mercedes, a young traveler we recognized from the ferry passed by and asked if we had room for him. He was from the Netherlands and we quickly decided to take him with us, he threw his backpack into the open trunk and climbed in the front seat. We all settled in and the nose of the Mercedes edged through the crowd and the pothole filled city streets of Ceuta, out onto a thin strip of asphalt road and headed south through the barren rocky landscape toward the Kingdom of Morocco.

As we approached the checkpoint gates at the Moroccan boarder the driver slowed down, we saw the bus we'd missed earlier at the terminal was now stopped in front of us. All the passenger were milling around outside in single file by the bus and a half dozen of the armed boarder guards were searching through each piece of their luggage. Another guard standing in the middle of the road beckoned us with his hand to advance and stop, he leaned forward into the drivers window and deftly plucked some folded cash from the hand of our driver, the guard grimly nodded and waived us through the checkpoint. Wow... our limo driver and new very best friend had just saved our asses from a luggage search by the Moroccan boarder guards. We couldn't help ourselves, we started laughing and didn't stop until we drove into the city of Tetouan. ...Our adventure had definitely started.

We'd arrived in Tetouan at dusk, still light enough to see that it was an dirty adobe outpost with crumbling walls and failed streets who's main industry at the time apparently was drug trafficking, because everyone we passed on the street was trying to sell us hashish. The town as I would remember later, reminded me of the Star Wars "pirate city" on Tatooine and the bar scene, complete with hooded figures lurking in dark alleys.

Our limo driver and new best friend, went out of his way to find us a decent hotel for the night, we thanked him and dropped off our backpacks in our rooms. We hadn't eaten since morning and ventured into the dark streets to find something to eat. We found a small restaurant, no one spoke English but our passenger friend from the Netherlands also spoke French and we ordered a delicious local dish of "couscous and pigeon". Later, walking back to the hotel we saw a couple of our fellow ferry passengers that had finally made it through the boarder checkpoint and were now looking for a place for the night, we led them back to our hotel and told them our boarder guard story. They were not happy campers.

Under the circumstances, being alone in a foreign drug mecca was dicey at best and the idea of going native seemed like the best thing for us to do. We wanted to go deeper into Morocco to our destination city, Fez. Acting on a tip from a fellow traveler, we awoke at daybreak and began to search for a green school bus on a street not too far from the hotel. We finally found it parked on a side street, the creaky looking old bus had obviously seen better days, there was a rope cargo net on top that held passengers luggage and that pinned live chickens and small farm animals firmly onto its roof.

We gave the driver cash for a couple of tickets and got onboard, immediately we noticing that no one else from the ferry was onboard. We suddenly felt very alone, we waited in silent anticipation until the driver was satisfied his bus had enough passengers to make the trip. Apparently it was, so he slid into the worn out drivers seat and grinding the gearshift lever forward the bus lurched out of town through the early morning haze in a cloud of diesel smoke.

The bus climbed up narrow gravel roads that twisted and turned through steep mountain inclines past miles upon miles of cultivated poppy farms. Occasionally the bus would stop to pick up a Gypsy families waiting along the road by a tent city or motor caravan and by late afternoon we'd made it to the top of Morocco's rugged Atlas Mountains. After a day's jarring travel up through white-knuckle mountain roads, we began a slow decent down the mountain road as acrid smoke from overheating breaks wafted up through the floorboards. Descending into the foothills and late in the evening we finally reached the still raging hot desert flats, after a few hours through the heat we entered the ancient walled city of Fez through splendid arched Moorish gates.

Fez is an ancient city that sits straddling the banks of the Fez river and for a thousand years has been the center of trade along the silk road coming from the far east, a center for the spice trade, colorfully dyed fabric rugs and hand tooled leather and ivory. The city is isolated, cut off from the rest of the world and Morocco by the Atlas mountains on one side, endless desert on the other... So here we stood, engulfed by exotic smells of spice and pack animals, surrounded by an ancient old world and witnessing the sights that travelers to the city hundreds of years ago would recognize, we truly were in a different world.

We quickly adjusted to our new surroundings and toured the thousand year old medina and it's labyrinth of narrow passageways that accommodated the traffic of both people and pack animals, doing our best to avoid being stepped on by the heavily laden donkey caravans. We were approached by a small child guide who spoke seven languages fluently and offered to guide us through the maze of stalls filled with spice and colorful fabric goods. We located several out of the way merchants trading traditional Moroccan hand-woven rugs and wall hangings. We looked through the shops, haggled for bargains, lingering at turn of the century French sidewalk cafe's, ate croissants and sipped the traditional Moroccan sweet mint tea, acting like we'd been there forever. At the end a day of sightseeing we'd relax at the hotel after an exotic meal, puff on exotic herbs from a classic wood and ceramic hookah and watch the colorful sunset over the desert from our balcony. Life was good.

Christian on the Train (Note ABB Tee Shirt)

In old town Fez (Donkeys have the right of way in the Medina)

Innsbruck, Austria (Great food, great beer and great skiing)

Gondola ride, Venice (So many things to do)

    
Thankfully we'd flushed all contraband and quickly boarded the ferry and set out from Tangier Morocco to Tarifa Spain. Most of our credits remained on our Eurrail pass and we traveled by train to Rome for a few days where we toured the Vatican Museum several times, went through the Sistine Chapel and of course visited the Roman Coliseum.

Then by train it was up to Florence and touring the famous Piazza Duomo, Uffizi museum, Michelangelo's statue of David and other iconic works by Florentine artists. After a few days of sightseeing in Florence we were on our way again, this time to Venice for an extended layover. Once in Venice we did what all tourist do, rode in a gondola, took a trip to the island of Murano where we watched hand blown glass artists fashion intricate works and delicate art treasures for the crowds. Amazed by the fiery spectacle we bought an elaborate glass chandelier as a souvenir of our visit.

Fatigued from the constant touring we caught a sleeper train to Innsbruck Austria and rented a cozy room in a Tyrolian chalet at the foot of a mountain looming above the village. Our room overlooked the city and on the bed were stacked fluffy white foot-thick duck down comforters, a welcome touch at night for keeping the cold mountain air at bay.

We took a gondola cable car to the top of the mountain where we could almost see the entire range of sharp peaks that jutted skyward in the Tyrolean Alps. We bought a complete set of ski equipment and taught ourselves how to ski on soft icy spring snow at the most spectacular mountain range in Europe. In the evenings, after a day of skiing and we'd gather back at the chalet and take a steaming hot bath in a huge bathtub the size of a small car, then we'd a walk down through the village streets to a family owned beer tavern, relax by an blazing log fire and enjoy the freshly brewed local beer and dine on the best veal schnitzel in the world.

After skiing for a couple of weeks on various Tyrolian slopes, we were restless again for new sights and hopped on an overnight train through the Austrian and Swiss Alps into Zurich Switzerland. Zurich was a disappointment, it was a cold gray city where everything cost twice as much as anywhere else.

The next morning we made a hasty return to the train station, boarded the bullet-train to Amsterdam and sped north at 150 mph. The landscape was a blur of multi-colored tulip fields, farms and wooden windmills doting the very flat landscape most of which had been reclaimed from the sea, as is most land in the Netherlands.

We arrived at the stately gray stone train station in downtown Amsterdam and instantly fell in love with the city, it's beautiful architecture, the narrow multi-story homes lining cobblestone streets along the canals and the liberal lifestyle of Amsterdam citizens . "Amsterdam is the city I could live in forever, I never got tired of hearing about it's unique history, or looking at the collections of eclectic art in the many museums and envying the gracious lifestyle that evolved from centuries of free thinking, open minded people ... I loved it."

Only two short weeks in Amsterdam, damn. We felt bad leaving, but we'd planned on seeing the King Tut exhibition at the British Museum before it left London, it was the first time the collection had been on public display outside of Egypt. We caught the ferry across the English channel and took a five day layover in London to visit the Tut exhibition many times and of course to see all the more famous sights.

After our many museum and Tower Of London crown jewel tours, we left the city and went south by train to the seaside resort of Brighton. Our first night we lodged at a local family owned B & B enjoying the unique English breakfast, made from whatever was served at dinner the previous night, plus two eggs and a banger (sausage). After a few days of old school English seaside relaxing we were ready to move on and we rented a camper van and began a leisurely drive through the lush green countryside of Western England toward Wales.

"It took me a few miles to get used to driving on the wrong side of the road. However, I picked it up on it  quickly and drove into Wales where we toured the old gray stone B & B's and Pubs in every hamlet along the way, some of the pubs had been open and serving the public for several hundred years. We'd stop in quaint smoky pubs for warm beer and some pub-grub and listen to the locals chat in their native Welsh language. Although my father's family was of Welsh origin, I couldn't understand a word of the language, I was just thankful the road signs printed in Welsh were also printed in English."

Finally, after a few months the time our departure date approached, we backtracking over the channel by ferry, then by train we quickly passed through Belgium's industrial grime and arrived in the micro-country of Luxembourg with a day to spare before our return flight to America. Time enough to relax, gather our thoughts and reflect on our once in a lifetime travel adventure.

"After being  deeply involved in other cultures for months and outside your comfort zone, the mind opens up to new possibilities and new potential. This extended travel adventure was a life changing experience for me. I hadn't thought about the music business one time, my only thoughts were about the people I loved, my family and friends"

The months of travel seemed to go by in an instant and before we knew it we were inside of a plane flying over the dark waters of the Atlantic and back into Atlanta. After landing, we gathered our backpacks from the airport baggage carousel, hailed a cab and told the driver to get us to the nearest Krystal hamburger joint where we wolfed down about a dozen of their tasty little sliders, the first "real" burgers we'd had for months.

Life was good... and it was good to be home.

Capricorn Records: The start-up.
    

After months of travel Dick was finally back home and realized the hiatus could not have been timed any better, because the tide had turned in Rock radio back in the good old USA. The new independent FM stations were now playing progressive rock full time, the car manufactures began installing factory FM radios and it was driving the once too-big-to-fail AM stations out of the market. Hooray... finally never having to listen to bubblegum music again, progressive music was establishing a solid ratings presence on radio across the country. But, Dick sadly reflected that he no longer worked with the greatest record company ever, "My timing for the trip had been a great, but leaving Atlantic Records was like leaving my own family."
  
After talking with several record companies, Dick was full of new promotion ideas when Frank Fenter at Capricorn Productions called and everything went into high gear. Frank invited Dick to a meeting in Macon Georgia with he and his partner, artist manager Phil Walden. Dick knew Frank well from Atlantic Records, they'd shared information when Frank was running the European operation from Atlantic's London office.

Frank had been a rising star at Atlantic Records and was a highly respected record man who had surprised everyone at the company in 1969 by moving from London England to Macon Georgia to partner with the late Otis Redding's manager Phil Walden. Together they started a production company called Capricorn Production and Atlantic records distributed their artist's albums on Atlantic's pop label Atco.

Frank was the man behind the scene who'd put the production company deal together and it was financed by Atlantic. Jerry Wexler, Frank and Phil's mentor had helped to start up their company by giving them a sure Top10 Hit Single, "Sunshine" by "Jonathan Edwards."

It had been three years since then and Dick was anxious to hear in detail what the guys had in mind as he drove down to Macon for their meeting. The meeting, over lunch, with Phil and Frank was a real eye-opener for Dick, their lunch consisted of "Hoppin' John" (black-eyed peas, rice and deep-fried fatback) washed down with four double Vodka Martinis in big iced tea glasses. Dick said, "I wasn't much of a alcohol drinker and even if I had been, there is no way I could have keep pace with those two guys."

As one Vodka martini followed another Dick said, "the two partners tag-teamed me, a technique I later found out later they were known to use very effectively. They offered up one idea after another and how they wanted me to help them make the production company a stand-alone record company, my head was swimming with infinite possibilities, or was it the booze?"

"I nursed my drink for as long as I could to keep my head clear as they sold their plan for me to join them in Macon and help launch a real record company from their "yet to be profitable" production company".

"I wanted to leave the meeting on a positive note, but as the three hour lunch wound down I was by no means convinced it was in my best interest to help promote a new start-up label in the sleepy South Georgia backwater town of Macon and I was only being offered half the salary I'd been making at Atlantic Records!"

Back in Atlanta, Dick's friends were advising him not to move to Macon, mainly because he'd be gambling a hard earned music business reputation on an unknown start-up label. Also, industry wags maintained that the Allman Brothers Band would never recover from the death of their charismatic leader Duane Allman the previous October.

There was much truth in what they said, but that wasn't the real obstacle to overcome, the real obstacle was that the Allman Brothers were almost unknown outside the Southeastern market, but that was mainly due to their in-house booking agency Paragon, run by Alex Hodges who booked them where the money was. Also, the Allman Brothers had sold "zero singles" in what was still a singles-oriented business, and they'd only sold about thirty thousand albums. A paltry amount in those days even for a regional band.

That was the reality. Dick knew the real sales figures at Capricorn Productions from working for Atlantic and it was not an encouraging number. Dick reasoned that maybe the lack of sales for the ABB was that major AM radio wouldn't play progressive or regional artists at that time.

Phil's publicity proclaimed to the media that the company had sold ninety thousand albums, but Phil had a quirky formula of three's he always used, if a number helped, it was multiplied by three, and if it didn't it was divided by three.

Dick had to make a life changing and irreversible decision whether or not to sell his comfortable Morningside home in Atlanta and move to a small South Georgia town that was more often than not referred to as "the redneck capitol" of Georgia.

There was just no way to get around it, Macon was a lazy southern backwater who's architecture or attitude had changed little in since the Civil War, and it was led by a two-term white supremacists mayor called "Machine Gun" Ronnie Thompson. Thompson got his nickname and national media attention for his disgraceful actions during Macon's predominately black sanitation workers strike. Thompson stood atop a National Guard armored vehicle in a school playground waving around a Thompson submachine gun and giving Macon Police officers orders to shoot to kill any disorderly black citizens.

Thompson was a reflection of the local voting pool, the same kind of knuckle dragging rednecks that hassled Dick on many occasions while he promoted Atlantic R&B records to southern black owned radio stations and associated with black DJ's and artists. To say the least the Capricorn job being offered was severely handicapped by the reality of having to actually move to and live in Macon.

In addition to Macon's racist attitude and location Dick had reservations about Phil's well known diva temperament, but rationalized that thought after remembering their good times together at Atlantic's Otis Redding shows. And even the bad times they'd shared when Phil, Frank and Dick were together in the Atlantic suite at the Rivera hotel in Las Vegas attending a Billboard convention in December of 1967 and a phone call came with the tragic news of Otis Redding's plane crash.

Dick knew Frank and Phil needed help fast because they were not record promoters and they knew that Dick Wooley was the promotion man that would get them their much needed airplay. Frank and Phil had a new Allman Brothers album coming out soon and the rumors were flying that it would be a flop without Duane Allman. Frank and Phil new if they lost this album they'd lose everything and they were pressing hard for Dick's answer.

The deal closer came when Johnny Sandlin played Dick some of the raw studio tracks from the new Allman Brothers album and Dick was blown away. Soon after Johnny's preview, there was a meeting of the minds between Dick, Phil and Frank, they began clarify the responsibilities each would have in the new Warner Brothers distribution venture. Frank naturally would continue to manage the company's production and liaison with Burbank, Phil of course would continue to manage the artists, that left Dick the new job of getting the new artists airplay and getting their records on the national charts.

The timing for the new Capricorn label was sketchy, Frank Fenter had just finalized the deal with Warner Brothers that would separate Capricorn productions from their long-time mentors at Atlantic Records. We were jumping into an untested distribution pact with Warner Brothers, but Phil and Frank wanted a real record label, something they said Atlantic had resisted until 1971 and then only released their logo on a pink label. Phil and Frank felt slighted by this, while Warner Brothers had encouraged them all along to use the logo of Capricorn Records and promised a big roll out, and that they would increase the label's market profile. By doing this Mo Ostin and Joe Smith kept the new label within the WEA distribution family, the newly formed corporate entity that distributed all Warner Brothers, Electra and Atlantic Records product.

However, the street buzz in the record business was, "If Capricorn left the soulful Atlantic Records for Warner Brothers, who's biggest artist was still Frank Sinatra, it would be the kiss of death for the new label." Dick had heard this negative gossip, but said, "It didn't bother me. My experience with Atlantic had been that we were always the underdog, so you just put on blinders and soldier forward. It was a tough business, we knew the competition fought dirty. But I'd competed in karate tournaments, winning many, but had my ass handed to me too and I knew one damn thing, promoting records could never be more painful or humbling than that... so bring it on."

In a few weeks time, Dick had his family settled into a rambling but comfortable 1890's era home set on a red brick paved, tree lined street. It was near downtown, only a few blocks from the offices on Cotton Avenue where Dick, Frank and Phil would share what had been the office of the late Otis Redding.

The record company office consisted of two small rooms at street level in a building shared by the Paragon Agency who's offices filled the basement. A small reception area where Carolyn Brown, who'd been president of the Otis Redding fan club and Rose Lane White who was to assistant Frank and Dick.

The funky rooms had dark red theater-curtains hanging from every wall to hide the cracks and thread-bare carpets hid the drain covers that were once an important part of a chicken processing plant left behind by the former tenant. And, directly across the street was the Macon Police Station and the office of Macon's Mayor "Machine Gun" Ronnie Thompson.

Dick recalled, "The three of us were squeezed in together in this small space, but it didn't seem to matter, we were hard core music men, driven by a mutual goal. Frank and Dick got their record business education at Atlantic Records and knew how to keep Capricorn's new albums from getting lost in the shuffle of new releases that Warner Brothers would be sending out to radio each month. Frank, Phil and Dick knew they'd have to work 24/7 to make Capricorn a success, and we were committed to do whatever it took." Dick said. "We were on a mission."

It was not going to be a cake walk getting a hit record for the new label as Dick soon discovered after a few days of unproductive calls to radio stations around the country. When Dick called these stations soliciting airplay for the first Warner Brothers distributed release, the Allman's "Eat A Peach" album, radio station receptionists and music director alike would question him and ask "Capri' -what? Allman -who? Macon -where?" Dick quickly decided that instead of wasting time calling stations he didn't know, he'd target his old friends who were now in charge of many new FM stations and the old friends that were remaining in AM radio. He thought he'd be better off to badger old pals into playing the "Eat A Peach" album instead of cold calling the entire American radio world.

At that time, the raw fluid sounds of a Southern Jam Rock band was not the type of music radio was accustomed to playing, but several of Dick's pals programming Atlanta, Boston and Los Angeles stations listened, giving him the benefit of the doubt and soon were onboard. Luckily, after only a few days of airplay they were encouraged by listener response to what was to become known as "Southern Rock"... and the ride had begun.

When the "Eat A Peach" album started moving up friendly radio charts, Dick went to work on the harder to move conservative middle America radio stations. Each time a new station was added shouts of victory rang through the two room office, and gradually the ABB album began showing up on more radio playlists until a critical mass had been reached and the album broke through the lower regions of the national charts.

This success was enough incentive for the powerful Warner Brothers team to move into high gear and push the marketing button on the "Eat A Peach" album. Very soon it was on it's way up the charts to become the Allman Brothers Band's first Gold album and later became their first Multi-Platinum album. 
   

The Allman Brothers Band 1972	VP Frank Fenter, VP Dick Wooley, Pres. Phil Walden (Photos, Courtesy Rob Durner-Fenter) 1976	Dick Wooley and ABB's First Gold Album "Eat A Peach"
Phil Rauls & Dick Wooley at 1974 Capricorn Picnic	The Wonder Graphics Mushroom said it all	Berry Oakley and Duane Allman at the Atlanta Auditorium

     
The Allman Brothers album was moving up the charts near the end of summer in 1972 when Dick and his friend Bill Sherard, who programmed Atlanta's top radio station WQXI, were talking about what to do for the upcoming 1973 New Years. The ABB and Wet Willie were playing a venue called the Warehouse in New Orleans and Dick mentioned to Bill that the local station had asked permission to air the show live on their station. Immediately Bill said he wanted to air the show in Atlanta and they both began to plan a simulcast linking the two stations from New Orleans to Atlanta.

After a call to the telephone-company, Dick found that the only cost to simulcast a show from New Orleans to Atlanta was a long distance line charge. Dick decided he'd take the idea further and invited other stations in the southeast to plug into their live feed from New Orleans. Dick rented the AT&T long-distance lines for the night and began signing up as many AM and FM radio stations as he could, as he cobbled them together he had an idea to call it a radio network and with a little hype the idea took on a life of it's own.

It had only cost $700 to connect the two anchor stations for the show, so Dick gave the show free to his "Network" stations, with the understanding they'd play the ABB and Wet Willie albums in heavy rotation in the run-up to the broadcast and give Capricorn some commercial spots. It was an unproven idea for rock radio at the time, but only because no one had ever tried it. 

The New Year's broadcast called "Live from New Orleans" with the Allman Brothers Band and Wet Willie was broadcast from the cavernous Warehouse and the venue was "sold out". That night Dick's broadcast reached thirty stations in eight southeast states, but it received a surprising amount of national attention. The show was a success for the radio stations, the promoters and especially Capricorn Records. Johnny Sandlin recorded several great tracks from the mixing board that night and used them on future ABB projects and he also recorded the classic Wet Willie live album "Drippin Wet".

This was the artist launching vehicle Dick had been hoping for, "plan a concert event, simulcast it over multiple radio stations and syndicate the show to paying sponsors." Dick broadcast several more live concerts that year to test his new system, and they all proved successful. Dick knew this type promotion could go big-time.

In reality, it was already big-time for Dick, because as the only full-time record promoter for Capricorn he had to call radio programmers one-at-a-time and convince them to give his new album releases airplay. This was time consuming and arduous before the New Year Show, but after the successful broadcast, radio programmers began calling Dick from around the country asking for exclusive market rights on his next show. Using the New Years show as leverage Dick was in the "Catbird Seat" for promoting his developing bands... Eureka!
 
The success of the New Years show proved to Dick that without spending a lot of money, that Capricorn didn't have anyway, there was a better way to expose new artists and it was broadcasting concerts.

At the time Capricorn was in a money pinch and Phil decided to sell three of his management company artists to outside record companies and he picked the Marshall Tucker Band, Ned and Hydra to go to Polydor Records. But at the last minute Dick and Frank Fenter decided to "liberate" the Marshall Tucker Band tape from Phil's briefcase and they flew it to LA for a scheduled A & R meeting with Warner Brothers executives. They played "Can't You See" for the WB staff to a mixed but receptive reaction, and a date was set for the MTB album to be released on Capricorn. However, at the same time in New York, Phil was caught off guard when he got to his Polydor meeting only to discover there were just two tapes in his briefcase, Ned and Hydra. In testament to Phil's take no prisnors salesmanship he was able to pull off the deal with Polydor and subsequently Capricorn met the payroll.

Upon returning to Macon everyone was in a heated discussion regarding the competing objectives of Phil's management company, versus the objectives of Capricorn Records. The issue was soon resolved, Phill of course having the final say, but after both deals were fait accompli, so as they say the rest is history. Frank Fenter eloquently summed it up later with an all knowing smile, "sometimes it's easier to get forgiven than to get permission".

With national airplay peaking in 1973, Dick began to organize the next New Years broadcast featuring the Allman Brothers and opening the show this year would be the Marshall Tucker Band, because we had just released their debut album. Dick added (150) new stations to the Network he now called CapCom, added two national sponsors at $50k each (Landlubber and Pioneer) and viola... the music industry's first vertically integrated Rock & Roll promotion was created.

The 1974 New Years show would be broadcast from San Francisco's (15,000) seat "Cow Palace" and the legendary owner of Fillmore East & West Bill Graham was the promoter. Bill invited San Francisco's FM radio pioneer Tom Donahue to be the show's MC and Tom in turn recruited several of his San Francisco friends to come on the show, members of the Grateful Dead, Boz Scaggs and other great San Francisco artists to do interviews during the live radio program.

Dick didn't know Bill well, they'd only met at his shows but Dick knew Bill Graham was the ultimate showman. Bill proved that when at midnight during the sold-out event, Bill descended on a wire cable inside a huge wicker basket from the highest balcony down onto the stage dressed as "Old Father Time" sporting a long white beard. The Allman Brothers stopped briefly to hail the new year and soon picked back up on the jam just where they'd left... it was a magic New Year Eve.

The "first of its kind" national radio broadcast was a brilliant success, especially after Armed Forces Radio asked permission to air the show on their global network, Dick answered immediately... Yes! Armed Forces Radio plugged into Dick's live event and broadcast the show all over the world to an estimated (40) million listeners (as far as we know, is still the largest radio audience for a live Rock & Roll event). The Allman Brothers Band were heard across the world that night and their music touched forty million people! This fact was not lost on music retailers and show promoters around the globe. Their lasting appeal across the world is testament in part to that one event.

Foreign and domestic album sales sky-rocketed after the show, the new ABB's Warner Brothers distributed album and the Atlantic Records ABB catalog albums began selling through the roof. The show launched the career of "The Marshall Tucker Band" and a couple of months after the show their debut album had sold (250) thousand copies and it became their first gold, and later a multi-platinum album.

Dick's New Year's broadcast was a music industry landmark, a week after the show the story was splashed across the front page in every trade paper in the country, banner headlines in Billboard, Radio & Records, Cashbox. In July of 1975 even the prestigious business magazine Fortune came to Macon and did a major spread about the meteoric rise of Capricorn Records, the story recounted the unique trio of personalities Phil, Frank and Dick.  
         

Dick Wooley Fortune Magazine July 1975

Dick & ABB's First Gold Album "Eat A Peach"

Dick Wooley Headlines in R & R Jan, 1974 40 Mil. Listeners

Dicky Betts, Dick & Frank Fenter looking good

          
Editor's Note: (a) After Dick left Capricorn, the company was never able to launch another major artist and began it's decline into bankruptcy amid lawsuits for millions in unpaid Allman Brothers royalties and many other artists. Shortly after Capricorn's bankruptcy, the meteoric life of a great record man, Frank Fenter ended long before his time, at the age 47. Phil Walden eventually regained control over his life, his alcohol and cocaine addiction in AA. Phil passed in 2006. (b) Capricorn Album Diskography.
        

Rabbit Records & DWA: The start-up.
       

1976 was a wild and crazy year. Dick left Capricorn artists at the top of the charts and helped the Jimmy Carter presidential campaign by giving them band promotions and advertising. Then his friends at Atlantic Records asked him to return to the company with a promise to finance Dick's record company.
   

Dick vs Macon

Christian's Bentley

Jimmy Carter and Dick

   
In short order, Dick's music attorney Eric Kronfeld finalized the pre-determined deal with Atlantic and the doors opened at the new Dick Wooley Associates office along with its new label Rabbit Records. Flush with funding Dick recruited top Warner Brothers promotion man Al Moss to the new company and asked two great touring bands to sign on with him. Dru Lombar's Grinderswitch, managed by Alex Hodges, who today heads-up "Neiderlander" and the Winters Brothers Band, managed by Charlie Daniels' manager Joe Sullivan, who now is a key player in Branson Missouri mega complex.

After releasing the two band's new albums, Rabbit Records mid-charted both the Grinderswitch and Winters Brothers albums and that year continued to build their career by keeping the bands steadily on tour with the Charlie Daniels Band, The Allman Brothers Band, Marshall Tucker Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Dick's neighbor on Walnut Street in Macon was young attorney/band manager Pat Armstrong. Pat came to Dick one day in 1977 and asked Dick if he would help him launch a new band he managed and he said they were being looked at by a major record producer. Pat Armstrong had been Lynyrd Skynyrd's first manager, before Alan Walden and Pat had developed a huge roster of college circuit bands, but he felt left out because despite having been an early player in the Southern Rock explosion, Pat hadn't participated in it's success.

Pat drove Dick to see his new band at a dark basement club in a seedy downtown Macon flop-house called the Dempsy Hotel. It was the venue from Hell, with toilet water standing an inch deep on the floor, Dick said, "it was a miracle nobody was electrocuted." But, as bad the surroundings, Dick saw the band's potential and signed on to promote their album when released.

Dick got the heads-up from Pat a month before Molly Hatchet's album was released on Epic and went to work pre-promoting it to radio stations. Dick added so many stations the first week of release that Epic had to responded quickly, so they threw a pile of development cash at Pat to start the band on a national tour. Soon the whole country knew about Molly Hatchet, the self proclaimed new "Bad Boys" of Southern Rock.

Molly Hatchet's debut album and tour was a huge success, the album went gold, then later it went multi-platinum. There were big smiles on Walnut Street that year, Pat Armstrong was happy because his future was bright with a new hit album and his band was on a coast-to-coast tour of the country.

And, Dick was happy too, once again he's proved his ability to take an unknown band and promote them into a multi-million album selling success. Dick, against all odds, just had his first major artist breakout since leaving Capricorn the year before... and it felt great!
           

Dick, Becky Bondia, Al Moss	Rabbit Records Logo	Rabbit & DWA in Macon
Grinderswitch signs up	Molly Hatchet	Winters Brothers at Farm Aid

   
In 1981 a devastating music business tsunami called "Disco" swept over the landscape and sunk airplay for all other types of music including Southern Rock. Dick's marriage also hit the rocks that year and he decided to take time off from the music business, move to the beach and live a peaceful quiet life by the sea.

Dick moved to Tybee Island, a small island off the coast of Savannah Georgia, Tybee is connected to the mainland by a twenty mile sliver of causeway at the dead end of coast to coast highway 80. At the time, Tybee was a quiet little fishing village of 1500 people and it was the perfect spot to get lost, chill out, maybe write a few songs, buy a Hobie Cat and learn to sail, build a beach house and look at the record business in the rear-view mirror.
    

Chapter 5
  

2004 King Mojo Records: The start-up.
        

Fast-forward to 2002... Dick was enjoying life in the slow lane on Tybee Island, writing songs for Cotton States Music Publishing and had marketed ocean front and college communities with partner Arthur Schultz, President of Benchmark/Atlantic Property Development . Dick and Arthur became partners to develop Arthur's original idea of college student communities and together they opened offices in seven university towns in the Southeast and Midwest to market the new concept.

College student communities were an instant hit with investors and parents of students due to available tax strategies of the time. With a staff of thirty salespeople Art and Dick sold their college communities of 500 student condos and produced sixty-five million dollars in sales. The process of planning, getting bank financing, acquiring city, state and university approvals, then sales and construction had taken over two years, it had been both exhilarating and exhausting, so back at the beach Dick decided to try retirement again.

On a personal aside; the success of Benchmark/Atlantic's student communities proved to Dick that his sales and marketing skills applied equally well to other businesses and Dick was gratified to know that he wasn't just a one-trick-pony.

Family interests obliged Dick to return to his home town of Atlanta in 2004 and after a few months there doing odds and ends, he was restless and found that not having a full time project in the works was boring. Dick had always been hooked on some kind of development process, either promoting new music or new ideas, "it's what gets me out of bed in the mornings" ... so his search for a new project began in earnest.

Dick, with an open mind and always an interest in music, saw an opportunity developing when a new generation of music fans sold out several summer fusion-blues festivals that year. An idea began to form around serving the music niche that attracted thousands of young fans, but who's music was not being played by corporate radio!

The failure of radio to address a developing niche market was a stark reminder of the FM-AM takeover in the 1970's, a lesson that was not lost on Dick. Experience tells you when to look beyond what is the flavor of the week and when it's time start something new. That time is usually when entrenched corporations pick the low hanging fruit for an easy dollar today and take their eyes off the long term.

Dick's hobby was developing websites and he'd built dozens of them beginning in the early 1990's. He told friends in the music business about the advancements in online music delivery and advised them to adopt the technology in their business model. In the 90's the major record companies had a golden opportunity to incorporate the new technology and if they'd have taken advantage of the idea maybe they could have retained their distribution dominance in music.

But, at the crossroads of music and technology, record companies arrogantly believed it was a preposterous idea that someone working out of a dorm room would ever be in the position to challenge their power in the music industry... soon an idea who's time had come, by the name of Napster, proved them so very wrong!  Now the corporate music business is becoming more irrelevant by each passing day and is in financial free-fall, passed by an online world, much like when cars took over transporting families from the horse drawn carriage.

Today multi-national corporate record companies and land based radio stations slip into irrelevance, and as every day passes a new Internet application dismantles their business model piece by piece, they only echo past glory. If you need more evidence of their death rattle, listen to the mindless drivel they pass off as music today and play rentlessly on corporate media.

Music stagnation offers a new challenge, how to bring the best original talents and interested parties together to benefit people that love real music, blues based, rock and jam music that's been ignored by corporate radio. After talking it over with musician and internet savvy friends, the idea of opening an internet based Indy record label that specializes in contemporary Blues music began and King Mojo Records website was soon online.

Dick knew to be a successful provider of the music that he and so many others love, the label would have to be driven by original talent. Looking on the short list of original blues artists was his friend of thirty-years, guitar gunslinger and blues rock legend Dru Lombar. Dru was founder and leader of the great Southern Blues Rock band "Grinderswitch". Dick had worked with the band at Capricorn and Rabbit Records. Dru and Dick got together in Atlanta the next week for a meeting, Dru signed on with the new label and the King Mojo Record company start-up was official.

Several emerging blues-rock artists were identified within the few months that followed and each was asked if they were ready to take a chance on helping develop the new online idea. After agreements were signed, the first King Mojo artists were showcased in 2004 on the first virtual release from King Mojo Records, the All Star series.

The new virtual release gained traction immediately on Internet radio and the first album sampler was free to download and on request hard copies were sent to radio. King Mojo Records Allstars Vol. 1 got over 100,000 hits the first month and nearly 60,000 fan downloads.

The idea was simple and straightforward... offer great original blues and rock music by emerging artists, then use the website so fans and radio could sample or download the new artists music.

Our goal was "find the best new contemporary blues artists, roots rock or fusion and showcase them to the world."  We began promoting our artists on the first King Mojo series and now our business model has proven so successful that several King Mojo Records artists have made it onto the national charts.
  

King Mojo Allstars Vol. 1    -   King Mojo Allstars Vol. 2    -   King Mojo Allstars Vol. 3
       

"I always thought if I liked a song, at least million other people would too... so... there was your first gold record."

~~~o~~~

"Promotion Man"
By Kiki Lee

Copyright © 2004-2012 King Mojo Records & Entertainment, Copyright © 2004-2012 Cotton States Music, BMI, Dick Wooley Associates