RADIO
Since starting in radio in the mid-60s, I've been heard on thousands of commercials ranging from local market to national network campaigns in the US, Europe, Asia, and Africa. I have also been featured as the promotional voice of dozens of TV and radio stations as well as syndicated radio programs in the US and Europe. My roots are in radio, having started as an on-air "personality" (aka Disk Jockey):
I got into radio for job security! While in graduate school I made money to live on as a troubadour, pickin' and singin' at "The Rubaiyat" coffee house in Dallas, Texas. I never knew, from one day to the next, if I'd make any money. Until a local radio program director, who hung out at the coffee house, decided that I was pretty good with an ad lib and had a good speaking voice. He convinced me to get my FCC 3rd Class license and set me up with a part time job at KIXL-FM, the Dallas elevator-music source at the time.
After a few months of album segues and hourly "rip 'n reads" off the AP wire, my mentor (the now legendary Charlie Van Dyke) took me on as a newsman at his station at the time, KVIL. They soon recognized that I was not serious enough for news, so I was given my own air shift. Midnight to 6am... the graveyard! I was jocking on a 119,000 watt FM station at a time when almost nobody owned an FM radio! A few QSL cards, from Panama to Chicago, helped me imagine that I had an audience
I dropped out of graduate school (a move that caused my college-professor father to gnash his molars flat!) and settled into radio. I loved it! And in the production room, I began to discover the "theater of the mind" that kicks in when you start to play with sound. Charlie left KVIL to go back to KLIF.. The #1 station in Big-D... And, under new management, KVIL went bankrupt in '67, leaving me without a job! Time to go back East.
OK, so I was married, had a kid in diapers, was a graduate school dropout, and was out of work. Solution? Move in with the wife's parents! This meant wedging the cat under the brake pedal of an ancient Volvo wagon and leaving a trail of blue smoke and rusty car parts from Dallas to DC.
Somebody forgot to tell me that you needed lots of experience to get a job in major-market radio, so I didn't think it was unusual that I landed the swing shift at WWDC in Silver Spring, MD, just outside of the nation's capital. Of course, I was in way over my head! This was the era of "Tiger" Bob Raleigh, Johnny Holliday, CJ & Company, and other WWDC radio legends.
It didn't take management long to figure out that I was too green for the big time and send me packing. But, before they did, I got jacked up even higher on what quality audio production could be with a little imagination. I took that with me as I sank into the minor market radio training ground.
I guess you learn the ropes by finding yourself on them every so often. After the heady atmosphere of the major markets, the bedroom communities South of Richmond, VA, seemed like professional purgatory. But there were good people to help me along, and small radio stations where every talent you possess... and some you never knew you had... get put to the test. I repaired equipment that I'd never seen before, fixed the toilets when they broke, made sales calls, did live "remotes," wrote copy, and did lots and lots of creative production on equipment that should have been in a museum, even then! And I kept getting kicked upstairs, toward management.
WHAP ("Happy Radio", for God's sake!) gave me the title of Program Director and all the responsibility that went with it, in lieu of a raise. But one of our sponsors, Dan Weis of Richmond Dragway, liked the commercial I wrote and produced for him and decided to pay me to do all of his commercials... even to run on the big stations in Richmond! When he went with an advertising agency, he insisted that they use my voice.
This ushered me through the door of my first professional recording studio... Richmond's legendary Alpha Audio, the place that introduced Sonex acoustic foam to the industry! I loved the professional environment of Alpha, and they liked my voice. I started getting paying voice work for the first time outside of the radio station!
Free lance work began to increase, and I moved a couple of miles to another of Richmond's bedroom communities, Petersburg, VA, where I became the Operations Manager of WSSV/WPLZ, as well as their morning drive-time personality. Operations Management meant that I got to do most of the dirty work at license renewal time and got a sampling of more of the pungent flavors of middle management (like firing people and taking crap from advertisers.) But it was a great learning process.
I did a lot of live interviews on the morning show and actually started to show up in the Richmond ratings in spite of the fact that the signal was nearly dead by the time it reached the Capital of the Confederacy. Free lance work was tough because I worked long hours at the station in Petersburg, and it was a long drive to Alpha Audio in Richmond. But I became the voice of Sears' steel belted radial tire for a while, did national campaigns for Stihl chain saws, Mail Pouch Chewing Tobacco, public service announcements for American Forest Industries, and started to realize that I was pretty good at this voice stuff.
Hearing a rumor that WBT radio, in Charlotte, NC, was looking for a production manager, I decided it was time to move back to the major markets. if I could. Besides... Production was what I really liked best about radio. I didn't care about being a "personality." So I sent a blind to-whom-it-may-concern letter, with enclosed tapes of my work, to the Jefferson Pilot powerhouse. ...And put it out of my mind.
The call was completely unexpected! It had been many weeks since, on a whim, I had sent my little packet off to WBT radio, and I had completely forgotten about it. But I suddenly found myself on a plane to Charlotte, where I discovered that this PD's idea of a job interview was to spend the afternoon in a topless bar drinking beer, shooting pool, and playing pinball machines! They had already decided I had the professional talents and abilities they wanted, based on my tapes. They just wanted to know whether I was a relatively normal person or a lunatic. I managed to fake sanity and got the job.
For the first time in my professional life, I started to get some really intense direction. I was forced to stop relying on natural instincts and abilities: To stretch to become even better. To be more! It was frustrating and exhilarating at the same time. But I noticed my freelance voice work kept increasing as I grew in my craft.
I worked like a red-headed stepchild, but thrived under the challenges and became pretty successful as a freelance talent. When I realized that I was making more money in the few hours spent in voice work than in my entire radio station salary, it was time to let go of the corporate "security" and try my wings! I walked out of WBT in 1981 with no job, no regular paycheck, no company benefits, and no guarantees of any kind. It was time to fly or flop.
...And I haven't drawn an honest salary since.
TELEVISION
I
think the first time 
my
ugly mug was framed in a picture tube was in September of 1964 when
I made my network debut on Rudee Valee's "On Broadway Tonight"
variety show as a member of the folk music trio, "The City Folk".
After watching the reruns a couple of times, I was convinced that my
future did not lie in my good looks.
As
I began to do more and more radio commercials in the 60s, it was inevitable
that my talents were sought for TV commercial soundtracks as well. In
the decades of babbling that make up the body of my career, there are
countless voice-overs for commercials from Coca Cola to Las Vegas
Tourism, as well as dozens of broadcast documentary narrations including
the popular A&E network series "America's Castles," The History Channel's
"America's Most Endangered," Public Broadcasting's "Swissrail Travel,"
a Discovery Channel series on American Presidential politics called
"November Warriors," and many more. I have also been the off-camera
promotional voice for several TV stations such as:
- WSOC - Charlotte, NC
- WKRG - Mobile, AL
- KMBC - Kansas City, MO
- WCSC - Charleston, SC
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But
you have about as much chance of seeing my visage on the tube as you
do of hearing the Pope do a guest appearance on Howard Stern! I've popped
up occasionally to beg 
for
bucks on the local public broadcasting station, and there are a couple
of industrial videos and one or two TV commercials that I did on camera
in a moment of weakness. But, as a rule, I am strictly a voice for hire.
The rest of me is not ready for prime time.