Journey of a Black man in advertising...Part Two

PART TWO: 3.25.09
Our television pilot was a snapshot of some of the most salient aspects of African American history. Music and narration rounded it out nicely. It was the first television show any of us had created and we were excited when the pilot ran. We were even more excited when the station decided to air the show monthly...even if it was 1:00 a.m. Sunday morning. But that would soon change.

The show was called, Livin’ Black. Ed Clay was the director. Before long it aired weekly and the station gave us a better time slot. There were only a few shows like ours in cities throughout the country. Tony Brown's Journal and Positively Black aired nationally. As did Director Stan Lathan's Say Brother, produced by WGBH in Boston. We were all pioneers.

Darlene Hayes was my co-host and a producer for The Phil Donahue Show, which had started in Dayton just two years earlier. Phil’s show was really one of the first talk show/audience participation programs and it quickly gained a national following. We didn't have a budget so he would bring noted African Americans to Dayton that worked for his show and ours. He did his show live, we taped Livin’Black afterwards and aired it weeks later to a different audience.

That’s how we were able to conduct interviews with educators, political activists and politicians: Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., just three months before his untimely death; Dr. Alvin Poussaint, world-renowned psychiatrist from Harvard Medical School; Reverend Jesse Jackson, then head of Operation Push; civil rights activists like Floyd McKissick, James Foreman, Amiri Baraka; and, of course, celebrities like Muhammad Ali.

I also conducted interviews with musicians like Herbie Hancock, shortly after his conversion to Buddhism; Jamaican-born pianist Monte Alexander and his Caribbean rhythms; George Benson, who was on tour to introduce the young, very talented Earl Klug; base player Eugene Wright, who played with the Dave Brubeck quartet in the‘50s and‘60s; saxophone legend Eddie Harris, who invented an electric sax and a reed mouthpiece for the trumpet that he said sounded like Halloween until he was able to master it; Dizzy Gillespie, who shared with the audience how he came to blow the trumpet with his cheeks puffed out , for which he was noted;Roy Ayers and Lionel Hampton dueling on the xylophones; the wonderfully mellow sounds of Grover Washington; and the poignant interview with Charlie Mingus as he sat, nodding in his chair, talking about his love of music and his unfortunate but longtime addiction to heroin.

It was quite a time in Dayton. Phil Donahue would soon have Marlo Thomas on his show, fall in love with and marry her. Len Berman, now of WNBC fame in NYC, was then the sportscaster at the station. And the weatherman was Dewey Hopper, who for a time reported the weather from outside the studio. Dewey would go on to a legendary career in Denver and Phoenix where he adopted a showbiz style of weather casting. Look for Part 3 soon...