GARRETT ENTERPRISES AND THE PAT O’DAY PHENOMENON

CIRCA 1965

Pat O’Day was an anomaly on the radio in the Pacific NW.  He was young, gifted and very popular as the number one air personality on KJR AM Radio, the 50,000 watt powerhouse am station in Seattle.  He realized early on that he could organize and promote teen dances and with his popularity and power on the air, get the kids to show up. In no time he was renting large capacity ballrooms in Seattle (Parker’s), Olympia (Evergreen), Aberdeen, Ellensburg, Spokane and other towns.  About the same time he was doing that I was running my Seattle-based booking agency that was specializing in dance bands (dancing was still very popular at that time). I had a good list of bands that were working through my agency but soon that list included most of the emerging rock and roll bands as well. That’s because Pat came to me for management and we negotiated a contract where I would have the exclusive right and the responsibility to book all of his venues.  I soon had five people working for me and we were scheduling the Wailers, Don and the Good Times, Sonics, Viceroys, Bards, Bumps, Merilee and the Turnabouts, and a number of other groups, all at full commission. I recently discovered, in a box in my garage, the large spreadsheet we used to make that happen together with many publicity shots of the various bands. Hand in glove with booking the rock venues I was also managing and scheduling my own dance orchestra, Ken Cloud, the Gentlemen of Note and other commercial combos.  Garrett Enterprises’ downtown office was located at 314 Fairview Avenue North, across the street from the Seattle Times. A few years later, after we purchased NRC, my partner and I joint ventured two outdoor festival shows with O’ Day’s Company Concert’s West in Sick’s Stadium presenting Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, the Youngblood’s, Pacific Gas and Electric, and other acts. Yes, I knew and worked with Pat in those years. He was better known than I because of all his years on the air but, as owner- with my partner, Bill Owens - of the largest concert promotion company on the coast, Bill and I ultimately left Pat behind in the Northwest region.

RECENT LETTER FROM BURKE TO PAT O’DAY

Pat:    

Just finished your book and got a kick out of your wonderful tales of touring with so many great groups in the late 60s and on in to the ‘70s.

I mostly didn’t know what you were up to during that time because we were both running 24/7 in different Orbits.  Our basic activities in the concert business were mostly the same in those years, but I didn’t realize that at the time.

You may recall Bill Owens and I purchased  Northwest Releasing Corporation from Zollie Volchok and Jack Engerman in 1967 and I, too, was on the fast track managing tours in our Northwest Territory and across Canada.  Many of our NRC series attractions were  block booked to land in eight to ten cities in order to reduce downside risks in the small markets, expand the profits in our largest towns, cut better deals and cross-collateralize the risk.

Although we did tour a few rock acts - mostly when we were silently bank-rolling Boyd Grafmyre at the Eagles – I was focused on our Broadway show series and dance attractions such as Alvin Ailey, Joffrey ballet, National Dance Theatre of Harlem, Bolshoi Ballet, etc.  Bill was on point in L.A. and I handled the National Touring Companies of the Broadway shows and dance attractions that were touring out of New York.  We presented Fiddler on the roof, Mame, Jesus Christ Super Star, Cabaret, Godspell, Man of La Mancha and Hair (among others).  The Broadway musicals were doing eight performances a week in the theatres so it kept me busy.  I was on the road a lot and seemed to be living in theatres.

I noticed in your book that you were born in 1934. I was born in 1939 so it seems that I was running half a lap behind you in the race for fame and fortune. Besides that I believe that your Concerts West was the first management company to negotiate for exclusive nation-wide representation of emerging blockbuster acts such as Jimmi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones.  You set the high bar for all of that.  Bill and I got in to it with Neil Diamond and the Rock and Roll Revival, but you paved the way and did many more national tours.

After five rather grueling years at NRC my partner, Bill Owens, decided there was too much pressure.  He wanted to sell and, although I was resistant at first, there were other circumstances in my life that caused me to agree and we sold NRC to Jerry Lonn and Jerry Dennon in 1972.  I then moved back east to launch my next - and last - concert company, Garrett Attractions Corporation. 

So enter the Jerry’s:  Jerry Lonn and Jerry Dennen made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. It was pretty sweet to be 33 years old and sitting on all that cash in the bank.  Easy come, easy go, though, because my new venture was mounted in those conservative Midwest markets (Minneapolis, Milwaukee et al) just when the severe recession of 1973 became a reality.  I made a pile and lost most all of it in the next couple of years.

So, as far as I can tell we were both busier than a cat on a hot tin roof in the late 60s and 70s, and we were essentially performing the same tasks: buying and touring name artists and headline attractions in our respective territories.

I think we would probably enjoy getting together to reminisce about Pat O’Day and Associates, NRC, and sundry show business tales. Some of your activities, as explained in the book, were amazing:  driving through a chain-link fence at high speed on a go cart, for instance.  Boy that must’ve hurt.

I’m writing a history about my two decades in the music and concert business and you, of course, are in there.  You can see what I’ve come up with so far if you go to my new web site, burkegarrett.com. 

I would enjoy visiting with you, Pat.  I believe that just one ferry ride is separating us at this point  in time,  

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Pat O’Day, whose voice was well known for decades throughout Seattle as a disc jockey and an announcer at the Seafair races, has died at 85.He passed away at his home in the San Juan Islands, his son Jeff O’Day wrote in a Facebook post.“The Pacific Northwest will always seem a little empty without the legendary Pat O’Day,” Jeff O’Day wrote. “All we can do is focus on the incredible role he had in making the Emerald City a better place to live, and the difference he made in people’s lives. “At one time, Pat O’Day owned the afternoon airwaves, averaging 35% of the after-school and drive-time audience at a time when traffic was growing dramatically. Teenage car culture was in its heyday. Around the time the Lake City branch of the legendary Dick’s Drive-In opened in 1963, O’Day’s listenership peaked at 41%. And his company, Concerts West, was one of the major concert-booking agents in the nation.Radio personality Pat O’Day, in 1980, has died, his son says. (Greg Gilbert / The Seattle Times, file)“O’Day’s name became synonymous with KJR, the station he ran for a decade and built into an empire,” according to a 2001 entry on HistoryLink. “To understand his impact one has to consider the power of that station — it was not uncommon for KJR to boast of a 37 percent rating, an unheard of dominance by a radio station. Today [2001] that rating would be more than the market share of the top seven local stations (KMPS, KUBE, KVI, KIRO, KBSG, KRWM, and KWJZ) combined. O’Day was eventually promoted to program director and, by 1968, to general manager. He oversaw the production of each week’s Fab-50 playlist — inclusion was virtually the only way a record could become a hit in the Seattle area.The son of a coal miner turned preacher, O’Day was born Paul Wilburn Berg in Norfolk, Nebraska, in 1934.When he was 7, his father accepted the pastorate of a Tacoma church and soon landed a regular radio ministry show on Tacoma’s KMO 1360, one of the state’s pioneer stations. “He didn’t pound the pulpit, but he could move people emotionally,” O’Day remembered in a 2018 Seattle Times story. “I knew then that I wanted to be on the radio. Every night I’d go into the bathroom and practice announcing into the bathtub because it made my voice resonate.”O’Day graduated from Bremerton High School in 1953.When he enrolled in broadcasting school in Tacoma and began perfecting his delivery, he says, he realized the secret to his father’s success as a speaker was being “one-on-one” with his listeners. “Whenever I was on the air, I’d look at the microphone and envision one person and talk to her or him,” O’Day told The Seattle Times.When KJR-AM switched to a Top 40 format, O’Day landed his dream job and was later named the top program director in the nation in 1964 and 1965 and “Radioman of the Year” in 1966.After leaving KJR in the late 1960s, he became one of the biggest concert promoters in the country, presenting tours for Jimi Hendrix, Elvis, Led Zeppelin, Chicago, The Beach Boys, The Eagles, Neil Diamond, Paul McCartney, Frank Sinatra and many others.He recalled a pool party where Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey of The Who told their wild-man drummer, Keith Moon, to lighten up after a set-ending smashup because drum kits were more expensive to replace than guitars.He also became the announcer for hydroplane races on Lake Washington back when Seafair was synonymous with summer in Seattle.O’Day, who was a public figure in the region, was also open about his struggles.After a family intervention in 1986, O’Day went to Schick Shadel Hospital for rehab and became its voice in commercials.“Schick changed my life — maybe saved my life,” he said last year.When he was 77, he survived the removal of a meningioma, a benign tumor that was pressing against his brain. He was happy to talk about it after news about the tumor spread to his thousands of fans, who posted well-wishes on Jeff O’Day’s Facebook page.His son wrote that he could not have imagined a better father. “He will be in my thoughts every day for the rest of my life.”Pat O’Day’s advice near the end of his life was simple: “Stay busy! You only get one shot on this Earth. How can you waste one day of it?”

Information from The Seattle Times archives is included in this report.

MORE ON CONCERTS WEST

As I write I find myself creating the impression that NRC was the only game in town; and, although that was mostly true in our largest Northwest markets, I want to give Concert’s West – Pat O’Day, Terry Bassett, Les Smith, et al - kudos for being the first to negotiate exclusive agreements for management of national tours for major acts such as Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens, Chicago and many, many more.  Concert’s West was out in front of NRC when it came to presenting concert headliners nation-wide.  They were tight with many of the mangers and did bring a few attractions in to our territory.  Concert’s West’s claim to fame beginning in the late sixties was that they became “exclusive” presenters.  When they signed an act it often toured only with them.  We did that in the early seventies with Neil Diamond and the Rock and Roll Revival but we were mostly loaded with work presenting our expanded multiple choice series of shows in our long-standing primary Northwest markets.  We were touring fifty to sixty shows a year.