I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with several masters at the art of broadcasting. One of them was John McCormack, The Man Who Walks and Talks at Midnight.

 

He was the overnight host at KMOX and he actually played music…at times. I was hired as overnight news writer and was responsible for keeping The Man supplied with news and features.

 

John McCormack was a truly cool person. He was dapper and gentlemanly. He was slim and sported a mustache and often a cravat around his neck. He was tan. In a movie of his life, he could be played by David Niven. The Man could have been in a Pink Panther or James Bond movie when the scene required a distinguished man. He had been a pilot in WWII and he drove a Corvette customized by Andy Granatelli. He had done a television show in Chicago. He was friends with famous entertainers. 

At the beginning of his show, he would appear from his office upstairs carrying a shoe box with the stuff he needed for his show. He could have used the main studio but instead he chose the much smaller “announce booth”. This was a corner studio that was used during the day by the staff announcer or news reader.

 

He went into studio and started setting up for his show. He reached into his shoebox and got out a small hi-intensity desk lamp, plugged it in and turned it on. Then he turned the overhead light off. He had a black velvet piece of cloth about the size of a very large handkerchief and spread it out on the desk in front of him.  He smoked, I forget what brand, maybe Camels. He took them out of the pack and lined them up, side by side, in a neat row at the upper left hand side of his black cloth. He also had some reel-to-reel tapes of music that he might play that night. (There were union rules that required a union engineer to be present if records were played. They sidestepped this by taping whatever records that were played. The union rules allowed for the regular union board operator to play tapes but not records. In those days, there were a number of strange practices at KMOX that occurred as a result of union rules.)

At midnight we hit the network for the CBS news. Then at 5 minutes after, the engineer cracked the mic. And; “This is John McCormack, The man that walks and talks at midnight, the man, the broadcasting man. Coming to you over the 50, 000 red hot clear channel watts of KMOX, the Voice of St. Louis.” He would launch into the local news, sports, and weather that I just written for him.

His delivery was as smooth as the velvet cloth spread before him. In fact, he could often be seen caressing it as he spoke. He had a deep relaxing voice and delivery. It was a style with which I  was very familiar. As a child, my grandfather would take me out hunting very early in the morning and John McCormack would be on in the last hour of his show. Some of my earliest memories of going places with my grandfather are connected with the Man.

I sat in the newsroom, right outside the announce booth and I could see the Man doing his thing, illuminated by the glow of the hi-intensity light on his desk. He would smoke and listen to the music and then come on the air and tell some great story about Frank Sinatra or Marilyn Monroe. (By now some of you who remember John McCormack are beginning to realize, if you haven’t already, the great influence that he had on me. His was one of the biggest.)

In addition to the news, the wire services usually sent down longer features that the Man used to like to use on the air. After a while I got a feel for the kind of things that he liked and I kept an eye out for them.  I would be in the dentist office or something like that and read a short article about something and I would think; “the Man would like this.”  I would tear it out and bring it in with me.  After a while he could tell that I was doing this and he would read one of my features on the air and then give me the thumbs up through the studio window. It made me feel like a million bucks.  I would carefully re-write the news to suit his style.

One thing that he did every morning was temperatures around the world. He would always use descriptive phrases about the various cities. “In Rome, The Eternal City, it is clear and 70 degrees. Paris, the city of Lights, it is 50 and a light rain is falling on the Notre Dame Cathedral.”  Sometimes I would write some suggestions for him and was always thrilled when he used them.  He always finished with; “and at Lambert Field where the red hot Phantoms fly it is 67 and clear.”

Sometimes I would do things to amuse him.  When I gave him the World In Brief, I would draw a globe wearing a pair of underpants.  I would get the thumbs up through the window. I was also very young and not really right for KMOX in spite of all my efforts. One thing that I did was go barefoot in the newsroom. (only in the wee small hours.)  The Man was cool and would  say; “you might get your foot caught in the studio door. Maybe you should put your shoes on.”  I was pretty dense and would not pick up on the hint. Eventually Bob Hardy called me into his office and told me that Frank Stanton (the head of CBS) had been known to walk into our newsroom and that I should keep my shoes on!

The Man was also fond of White Castles and would send me out on a run most nights. I was glad to do this and would run over to 12th and Chouteau and pick up a bagful. (That Castle is long gone!)

Just before the 6AM CBS news, he would sign off with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing the Lord’s Prayer and he would put his stuff back into his shoebox and head back upstairs.

After a while there was another new guy in the newsroom and he was very good and actually wanted a career at KMOX. They let me go. This was OK with me because even though I was thrilled with being a KMOX employee, what I really wanted to do was play rock and roll on the radio and do my own show.

The next day I was thunderstruck when the phone rang at my home and it was the Man! It was as if I was getting a phone call from God. “You want your job back?” I told him thank you very much but what happened was the right thing.  He wished me luck with my radio future and as you know, I certainly got it!