Paper: HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Date: FRI 12/17/04
Section: STAR
Page: 1
Edition: 2 STAR

Paul Berlin says goodbye to loyal listeners / DJ leavingafter 54 years on Houston airwaves

By LOUIS B. PARKS
Staff

Getting fired brought Paul Berlin to Houston.

Berlin , who hosts the last edition of his show on KBME (790 AM) at 10:30 a.m. today, had been on Memphis radio for two years. He was 19.

"I fell asleep on the air," Berlin says.

He was an all-night disc jockey. One morning he went to a friend's graduation, and that threw his sleep cycle off. That night he got to work beat.

"I put on a (recording). Fourteen minutes, 30 seconds, this thing would play. I thought I'll knock out 14 minutes sleep. I put that on at 6 (a.m.) Sunday. At 7:50 a preacher would come in and preach. He woke me up. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. I look at the record going round and round, and I know I'm in a lot of trouble. From 6:14 to 8 a.m. it was dead air."

The station manager fired him but helped him get another job, which turned out to be at Houston's KNUZ. Fate must have had a hand in Berlin 's on-air nap because it was a boon to a lot of Houston radio listeners who made him a favorite choice for the next 54 years.

KBME becomes an all-sports station on Monday. The Scott Arthur Show, 6-10 a.m., and The Bob Elliott Show, 2-6 p.m., will also end, leaving no Houston station playing adult pop music.

On air this week, Berlin , 74, keeps up his well-polished, easygoing patter between songs, dropping in stories, often personal recollections, in the caramel-smooth voice that has soothed Houstonians for parts of six decades.

And man, oh man, he does have a million stories about the great singers he's played, known and booked into various Houston clubs.

Standing in front of the high-tech soundboard in the studio, he makes it look as easy as it sounds. He has no assistants or partners; he can see no one else from the booth. While one song plays, he's putting the last one away, then looking in standard metal office file drawers to pick the CD for his next selection, which is always ready to go on time.

"I have no playlist. I'm a mood guy. A lot of times I'm in the mood for something. Or I create my own mood. When you know the lyrics to songs, you can have some terrific segues. I'm pretty good at that, because I know the words. I know what's coming up.

"If I play Barbra Streisand, You Don't Bring Me Flowers, and I segue to Mickey Gilley's Room Full of Roses, I'll say, `If I sent a rose to you for every time you made me blue, you'd have a roomful of roses.' Now there's a segue that makes sense. Some kid out of radio school couldn't do that. He doesn't know the words."

In an era when most station formats and shows are prepackaged down to the ground, and the DJs must adhere to a narrow list, Berlin revels in his freedom.

"People ask, `What is your format?' I say AOR, All Over the Road. Something from every era, every kind of song. Heinz had 57 (varieties). He blushes at the variety we have here."

For the record, Berlin was planning to go to law school when he won a Memphis announcer contest, and a summer DJ job, in 1948. He was 17. When summer ended, the manager asked him to stay on, offering him the princely salary of $55 a week.

"I'm living at home. Gasoline was 17.9 cents a gallon. The movies were 40 cents. I thought I was rich. I was playing big-band - Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Doris Day - all the better pop artists of that period.

"I figured, I can always go to law school."

At Houston's KNUZ, he was soon doing a morning and afternoon show, ranked Nos. 1 and 2 in the ratings.

For the early show, "They called me Buzz Berlin . I played all the swing, Tex Williams and Red Foley and Eddie Arnold. I didn't play that whining country. It was more of a pop country. Then I had `Dinner Date' in the afternoon."

He also did live remotes from country-music clubs on weekends, dragging the heavy sound equipment across town by public bus. He got paid $1.25 a quarter-hour, boosting his monthly salary to about $300 in 1950.

His early Houston fans included a lot of students.

"When (high school) football games were over, the cheerleaders would come in, and I'd let them do a cheer for the school, and I'd play a song for Milby or San Jac (San Jacinto) or Lamar.

"We had a huge studio and a Coke machine. They would come in and dedicate songs to their boyfriends. A record (company) guy would come in and sit next to me and say, `I've got a new Nat Cole record, a new Kay Starr record,' and reach into his bag and give it to me. Or the (RCA) Victor guy, `I've got a new Elvis.'

"My show was an open house for young people. They grew up with me. I talked like they did."

He was building an audience of fans who would listen loyally for a lifetime.

"It never occurred to me," Berlin says. "I only knew there might be days I didn't want to go to work, but there were never days when I hated my job."

Later he was asked to book pop bands for Houston's Plantation Ballroom. In those days, music stars toured all over, all the time, not just when they needed to promote their latest recordings.

"I had Woody Herman, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Ray Anthony, Ray McKinley, Count Basie, Artie Shaw. This hand shook the hand of a lot of famous people, from the Dorseys to Duke Ellington to Elvis Presley to Doris Day to Peggy Lee. It's just amazing."

At one time Berlin was the highest-paid disc jockey in the Houston area. He was offered a job at New York station WABC at $50,000 a year, a $10,000 raise, with the chance of doing TV, but he turned it down.

"I said, `I've got three little boys. I'm making $40,000 right now, and I'm promoting rock 'n' roll shows. But most of all, I'm happy.' What price do you put on happiness?"

Berlin and Nezzie, his wife of 52 years, had five sons in all.

He's been a nominee for radio's Marconi Award. His face and voice are seen and heard in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. He's in the Texas Radio Hall of Fame. He's proud of the accolades, sure, but adds, "I can take a kick in the butt, too, for screwing up. I've done that."

He's most proud of the fans who call and send e-mails - dozens a day - since the format change was announced.

"Somebody they identify with is leaving and for a reason they don't think is justifiable," he says. "What they don't understand, it's all about big business, about the bottom line. Advertisers want the pizza and Pepsi crowd, because they can twist their minds."

Don't expect sad songs on KBME's last Paul Berlin Show today. The station may be leaving Berlin and fans stranded without a venue for his mix of adult pop standards, but Berlin is not mourning.

"I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm not going to be maudlin; it's not my bag," Berlin says. "I'm not sure Friday's going to be the last radio program I do in this town. Until George H. Lewis (funeral home) calls me, I might keep surprising everybody."