A close encounter of the great kind

In the mid-1970s I met and befriended Bill Randle, one of America's most influential disc jockeys of the 1950s and a brilliant character whose life story was the stuff of movies.

July, 2004

NPR's "All Things Considered" was ready for the death of radio legend Bill Randle.

So was The Plain Dealer of Cleveland, which devoted most of its front page last Sunday to marking the passing of one of the country's "most influential, star-making disc jockeys of the 1950s and 1960s."

My brother Paul and I, however, were shocked to learn that our friend and teacher who had such a great influence on both of us had died in Cleveland on July 9 at 81 after a long illness.

Today Randle is most famous as the answer to a pop-culture trivia question: It was he, not Ed Sullivan, who first introduced Elvis Presley to a national TV audience in 1956 on CBS' "Stage Show."

But in 1956 Randle was a household name in rock 'n' roll-crazed America, with hip hit shows airing daily on Cleveland's WERE-AM and on Saturdays on New York's WCBS.

Famed industry-wide for spotting, producing and promoting new talent, Randle discovered or helped the careers of dozens of stars, including Tony Bennett, Bobby Darin and Fats Domino. In 1955, he brought Elvis up North -- for the first time -- for a high school concert in Cleveland headlined by Pat Boone.

Randle's life story is better suited for a movie than an obit.

At 19, as a member of the OSS (the precursor to the CIA), he parachuted into Yugoslavia and hooked up with Tito and his partisans to fight the Nazis.

In 1949, while running a jazz club for the Detroit mob, he hired the future Malcolm X as a bouncer.

In addition to producing hundreds of TV and radio shows and records, Randle wrote books about broadcasting and Amish cooking and taught at Princeton and the U.S. Army War College. His six academic degrees include a law degree he earned at age 64.

Dynamic teacher

I met Randle, who had befriended my brother Paul while teaching at Kent State, in August of 1976 when he came to start up the University of Cincinnati's new graduate school of broadcasting.

Randle needed warm bodies to fill up his classes, so he recruited me, a lowly bartender and weekly newspaper editor. In five days I was a registered grad student on full scholarship — and Randle's quasi-assistant and teaching aide.

Randle the teacher was dynamic. Randle the man was a mystery. He loved jazz, hated racial bigotry and had no definable politics.

I'm convinced he was connected in some way with the CIA, which is why he visited Yugoslavia each year, advised the Chinese government on setting up radio networks and went on nighttime maneuvers with U.S. soldiers at age 53.

He told many unbelievable stories — racing cars with James Dean, vacationing with John Houston, running guns to the Israelis during the Six-Day War -- that all have turned out to be true.

Unfortunately, Randle's rigorous, reality-based curriculum and b.s.-intolerant personality quickly earned him the hatred of UC's academic establishment, which undermined and tortured him in every possible way until he resigned in mid-semester.

When Randle quit, so did I. Within three weeks, with his blessing and his confident prediction of my successful future in journalism, I was headed for the great unknown of Los Angeles. I never got my degree, but my close encounter with one of the great characters of the last century was worth much more.