Dec. 8, 1978 cover story: Radio and record promotions

A look behind the scenes at the height of the golden age of record company promotions. 

Dec. 8, 1978 

Promoters: They push what you hear, and a lot you don’t.

         Kevin Sutter checks his watch. Uh-oh, it’s almost 3 o’clock – time to end this leisurely Wednesday luncheon, throw on his Dragon jacket and get himself over to the main event. If he isn’t too late, he’ll land a good place on the waiting list.

         Sutter works for Epic, Portrait and associated labels, a division of Columbia Records. He’s a promotional representative – promo man, for short – and his territory includes the bulk of upstate New York, everything west of Utica and Binghamton. The major part of Sutter’s job is to get records played on the radio. Airplay generates record sales. It’s as simple as that.

         Sutter’s week comes to a peak Wednesday afternoon when he motors over to the new carriage-house headquarters of WKBW radio on Delaware Avenue. Wednesday is Music Day at WKBW – the one day when all the promo men get to make their pitches to music director Jon Summers. Sutter picks a few records out of the boxes in the trunk of his Camaro and goes to sign in with the receptionist.

         In the record promotion merry-go-round, landing a record on WKBW is like catching the brass ring. Currently the station carries only 37 records in its regular rotation, replacing maybe two or three or four a week. Sutter’s emphasis this time will be on Engelbert Humperdinck, whose record already is being played on several other local stations.

         While Sutter is signing in, Frankie Nestro, disco deejay and rep for Motown and several other companies, is singing the virtues of the new Wayne Newton single to Jon Summers.

         “Don’t let them force you on Humperdinck,” Nestro cautions. “You play this and I guarantee they’ll all follow you. After all, you’re number one, Jon. Here’s another couple things I just want you to be aware of. Rare Earth …”

         “Are they really going to get behind the group and push it this time?” Summers asks. That’s one of his criteria. No matter how good it sounds, if a record doesn’t have promotional and merchandising support, it’s unlikely to become a major hit. WKBW isn’t interested in records that don’t stand a chance of becoming major hits.

         “Thank you for Alice Cooper,” says the Warner Bros rep, Tom O’Connor, as he shakes hands with Summers. WKBW added the Cooper single the previous week. “Now,” O’Connor says, “with the album out, it’ll make a big difference.” He pulls the new Alice Cooper album out of his tooled leather company briefcase and gives it to Summers, then shows him the company’s retail and radio reports on Cooper. O’Connor confirms that the “Superman” movie soundtrack album is coming shortly and that the station will get movie tickets and 50 albums for giveaways.

         Next up is Sutter. “I want to start out on a positive note with Engelbert Humperdinck,” he says. “It went from 10 to 6 on WBEN, it debuted at 27 on Rock 102 and WGR added it. It looks like Buffalo’s coming home with it first. Meat Loaf’s doing it all over again. We’re coming in with TV spots on him. With all this momentum, we may be looking at double platinum. The John Palumbo’s out. On the 10th or 11th, we’re doing a live broadcast with him from Trackmaster, so here he is. And another records that’s still invisible at this point is the Boston single, so I hop you guys keep your binoculars on this one. I like the Burton Cummings record … wish the company would get behind it. Two more and I’m done. Here are the Motors and Ted Nugent. This is Texas chainsaw music. We were going to have Ted do some promotion on it, but we got the message yesterday that Ted’s now feeling quite emotionally drained because of the disappearance of his wife. She left him. Well, that’s it. Thank you for your support on Heart and Palumbo.”

         “Let’s not forget Dragon,” Summers says as Sutter exits. “This is where the professional judgment comes in – Palumbo versus Dragon. They’re two developing acts. I’m interested in one. Sandy (Beach, the program director) is interested in the other.”

         These five- to 10-minute exchanges take place in a small second-floor office which contains a phone, a record player, a counter, a couple chairs and a kitchen cupboard that runs the length of the room. That’s where all the promotional records go. Each deejay has a different cupboard door.

         Kevin Pugliano, an MCA Records rep from Rochester, brings a national rep with him. They say they’ll see if they can get Summers and Beach a full-sized cardboard cutout of Tanya Tucker. “Look out, Ronstadt,” Pugliano says. “We’ve got Tanya scheduled for the Bottom Line. If you want to come to New York and see her, Jon, you’re welcome to come in for the night.”

         On the heels of that offer comes Barry Lyons from Elektra with a box of 20 black Queen jackets for a station giveaway, with extras for Summers and Beach. Beach’s prize promotional items are colored vinyl records and picture discs. His office features a wall of them and he says there’s duplicates at home.

         “We have like an engagement with the record industry,” Beach says. “We have the same interests, but our goals are different. Theirs is to sell records. Ours is to get an audience. There’s an integrity of sound we want to achieve. Anything we do promotionally, giveaways and ads, has nothing to do with what we play or don’t play. The understanding is that all promotions come with no strings attached.”

         What’s so important about WKBW is that when WKBW starts playing a record, the impact is felt everywhere. Locally, people start buying the record. Around the nation, meanwhile, other radio programmers are constantly taking note of who plays what. Among Top 40 and AM contemporary stations, WKBW counts for a lot.

         Furthermore, there’s that 50,000-watt signal, covering 17 states and at least two nations, as the deejays used to say. One New Hampshire station follows WKBW religiously, playing all the records that KB plays. As a result, virtually every company has someone in WKBW’s waiting room on Music Day.

         After Lyons come Paul Bapst and Phil Chordas, who work via Transcontinent record warehouse for Arista, ABC, Fantasy and several smaller labels. With them is Chuck Reichenbach, a regional rep for Janus from Chicago. Finally, there are Bruce Moser and Doug Dombrowski, freelance pluggers for Could Be Wild Promotions. They bring in a new single by Renaissance on Sire and make one more pitch for Ian Matthews on Mushroom.

         Summers sees the successful promo man fulfilling three functions. One is to supply the records. The second is to provide inside information on sales, airplay and company intentions. “Third and most important,” Summers adds, “is his enthusiasm for the record.”

         “The most successful promo man around here,” Beach puts in, “is Jerry Meyers. He’s been doing it for 20 years. Jerry takes care of business. He knows not to get excited about a record that’s not for us. He was on Anne Murray – we broke the Anne Murray single here. Another one of his was Dr. Hook’s ‘Sharing the Night Together.’”

         Different program directors have different responses. Jeff Appleton at WBUF-FM singles out Phil Corderero of A&M Records. “We talk about his records. We talk about records from other companies, we joke, he gives me material,” Appleton says. “He’ll tell me if he thinks something of his isn’t real good. He’s very honest with me.

         “One problem Buffalo has,” Appleton notes, “is that though it’s considered a major market, not all the companies have people here. Polydor works out of Cleveland. So does Capitol. RCA and Mercury work out of Pittsburgh. You see them once every two or three weeks, while you see somebody like Sutter twice a week. The natural thing is to add something from the guy you know you’re going to see from day to day.”

         WKBW is the only Buffalo station which follows the major-market custom of bringing in all the promo men on the same day. Other stations in town see promo people by appointment. Sometimes the presentations can get bizarre. For Seals and Crofts’ “Takin’ It Easy,” Tom O’Connor set up a hammock outside Harv Moore’s door at WYSL and presented the disc just as Moore arrived to take the air at 6 a.m.

         As radio playlists have gotten tighter and tighter through the ‘70s, record companies have thrown more promo men into the field than ever before. Sometimes the regular rep will be supplemented by a freelancer like Jerry Meyers or Bruce Moser whenever the company wants to give a record an extra push.

         Strategies for launching hit records have gotten more high-powered as well. Companies will arm their reps with a vast arsenal of goodies – videotapes, special pressings, trinkets, tickets for shows. A big item this fall is the limousine ride to a concert in a nearby city. Just how far will the record companies go? Consider the following item from the Nov. 24 issue of Billboard:

         “NASHVILLE – RCA has launched a promotion of the new Charley Pride single and LP – ‘Burgers and Fries’ – involving fast food outlets …

         “Posters, display boards and advertising buys are an integral part of the promotion. A nationwide series of contests pegged to the ‘Burgers and Fries and Charley Pride’ theme have been instituted with the cooperation of radio stations and such fast food outlets as McDonalds, Burger King, What-A-Burger, Jerry’s, Wendy’s and Hardee’s.

         “Prizes ranged from specially printed T-shirts depicting a hamburger and an order of fries on the front, Charley Pride LPs and Oster burger makers from RCA Records to gift certificates from the restaurants.

         “Competition took the former of burger-eating contests, name the Charley Pride tune contests, drawings at the restaurants and stations, and radio call-in contests with the winner receiving a Pride LP, T-shirt, burger maker or gift certificate.

         “In many locations, the station call letters and restaurant name were printed on the backs of the T-shirts …

         “Some 60 stations in significant markets are taking part in the RCA promotion with some of the contests still being set up.

         “Though RCA is keeping the wraps on the cost of the program, the massive scope and depth of the promotion will make it one of the strongest in the history of RCA Nashville. The order of burger makers alone totaled 1,200 units.”

         In advance of their turn at WKBW, the record met usually can be found having lunch together. In recent years, the favored location is Sebastian’s on Main Street. The late Carroll Hardy of Atlantic, dean of promotion people in Western New York, touted the place and its marvelous chicken wings. It wasn’t long before Wednesday noons featured a different record label at every table.

         Sutter and his counterparts from Columbia Records – Jack Perry from Rochester and Buffalo-based retail rep Ted Marche – opt for a different setting this particular Wednesday. It’s another music business favorite. Manny’s on Delaware Avenue.

         “When I started,” says Perry, a former record store owner who’s been with Columbia since 1959, “many a program director said, ‘We’re not in the record business,’ and a lot of other things we don’t hear any more today. In the old days, promotion was done through friendship very often. It became a personality contest. Since then, it’s become a very scientific business. But you’ve still got to build up support. You’ve got to have credibility. After that, the main prerequisite for a promotion man is enthusiasm.”

         Sutter, who started his first assignment here in August, began working for CBS as a mail clerk, then advanced to inventory and sales in New York City and Long Island. For him and other younger music men, Buffalo is a stepping stone to bigger things.

         Sutton’s predecessor, fresh-from-college John Sykes, spent a year here and moved up to Chicago. Sutter’s apartment on Norwood Avenue used to belong to Richard Wolod of Warner Bros., who has been promoted to Detroit. The job involves a lot of time on the road and a lot of time on the phone. Sutter remarks that he worked all through the Thanksgiving weekend.

         “The toughest thing about promotion is the politics,” Sutter says. “It’s one of those things you just have to take into consideration. The bottom line is that it hurts business. One thing, though, if the top stations don’t swing it, sometimes you can take it to the secondaries. Nobody in Rochester would play ‘Substitute’ by the Clout. Finally, I took it to WSAY and they played it. One of the other stations gets four requests for it the next day and pretty soon all the stations in town are playing it. That’s the problem, though. Radio can’t convey the growth of music as fast as it happens.”

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IN THE PHOTO: Kevin Sutter, left, pitches a record to WKBW music director Jon Summers. Buffalo News photo by Gail McGee.

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FOOTNOTE: Kevin Sutter was still living on Norwood Avenue in the summer of 1981 when he married Glynis Englisch. Postings in a music biz blog called the Lefsetz Letter give the best summary of his career after that. He went on to work for Chrysalis, RCA and IRS Records. About the time of his divorce, around 1990 when the promotion scene was dying down, he moved to Seattle to work with an independent record promoter. 

There were many tributes to Kevin Sutter's passion for music and his above-and-beyond helpfulness when he passed away in 2022 in Seattle. Everybody loved him. One of his colleagues noted: "There was something special about Kevin – his passion, his drive, his caring and, yes, his absolutely endearing geekdom."

Jon Summers and Sandy Beach had long careers here in Buffalo. Jon did TV and theater as well. Sandy was longtime host of a conservative talk radio show on WBEN. The two of them have retired during the past couple years and are still with us.