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 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 despite having only two bands 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 both deals were fait accompli so the rest is history. Frank Fenter 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 was featured in July 1975 Fortune Magazine	Dick Wooley & ABB's First Gold/Platinum Album "Eat A Peach"	Dick Wooley in R & R Headline Jan, 1974 40 Mil. Listeners	Dicky Betts, Dick Wooley & Frank Fenter
Check out some great photos of the Historic 70's Atlanta-Macon music scene by; Carter Tomassi click here - Phillip Rauls  click here

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