THE "DRUG STORE TRUCK-DRIVING MAN"
From Tape Op issue #2! Here's a true story from an engineer that was there:
On the condition of anonymity, here's what happened, as best as I remember it... keep in mind, this was the late sixties and I was there so accuracy is optional. I was a staff engineer at one of the bigger commercial/industrial studios in NYC and had contact with lots of record company folk, producers, musicians, writers, other engineers...some famous, some wannabes. Apparently the Byrds were recording somewhere, and one of my studio rat friends told me about a song he was working on with them about this red neck DJ on the Grand Ole Opry radio station in Nashville. It was just one of those quick little stories that fly through a recording session. Some years later, I was free-lancing at a company that produced syndicated radio programming for various formats. This day for me it was "The Ralph Emery Show", playing C/W music. Ralph would fly in from Nashville, do a four hour session of voice intros and outros, and then some underpaid assembler/mixer (in this case me) would playback his voice track and roll the tunes. I cued up this track by the Byrds and rolled it after his intro. I cued up his out and waited til the end of the song, just after they say, "This one's for you, Ralph". I rolled his voice track and howled with laughter...I missed my next several cues. I laughed and stomped and caused such a commotion in the little production studio that people came in and wanted to know, "What's the happs". I asked if Ralph, who was long gone back to Nashville until next week, if good ol' Ralph Emery knew the Byrds song about this red neck all night DJ, was about him? Within hours, I heard that Ralph was suing the Byrds. I don't know the outcome of that but it's great song though! "He's a Drug Store Truck driving man, he's head of the Ku Klux Klan, when summer rolls around, you'll be lucky if he's not in town. He don't like the young folks I know. He told me one night on his radio show. He's the only DJ you can hear after three!" Probably never got played on Ralph's show again.
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