city heat and the public ate it up. Something like 70 percent of Greensboro’s morning radio audience tuned to “Poole’s Paradise” from 6–9:30 a.m. Gloria remembers, “Major Edney Ridge was a colorful character. He had a girlfriend — though he was married — and her name was Maggie. He and Bob would have knock-down, drag-out arguments where the Major would say, ‘You’re fired, get out,’ and Bob would say, ‘Fine’ and walk out, and the next day they’d start all over again. One time the Major said to him, ‘You’re fired, get out, take what you want with you.’ And Bob told him, ‘I’ll take Maggie!’” Bill Maudlin (not the famous cartoonist) was an intern for WBIG at the O.Henry in the ’50s and remembers, “When you came through the big front doors, you took the steps down one level. Management offices were on the right as you entered, studios were next, behind that was the control room where Willie worked the board. Next in line was the large room where Bob would be. When I was there, Dick McAdoo was on afternoons, Bill Neal was the staff announcer; Add Penfield did the evening news and sports at 6 p.m.” An inveterate partier, Bob outfitted his own nightclub on wheels, one he shared with my parents and Alan Wannamaker, WBIG’s station manager. Gloria recalls, “Bill [Ingram of Ingram Motors] got us an old school bus. We painted it turquoise and orange and I decorated it. We had all the seats taken out and banquet chairs and a bar put in. We’d go to football games or drive around to people’s houses, park in their driveway and throw a little cocktail party. At that time you could do all sorts of things you wouldn’t dare do today.” When I was a tyke, my father brought me along to the WBIG studios. As Bob launched into his theme song I began whistling along with him, causing him to burst out laughing. Not uncommon today but this was back when broadcasters took great pride in never losing control while on the air. “She was only an optician’s daughter — but two glasses and she made a spectacle of herself.” — Bob Poole In 1957 WBIG moved to an Edward Loewenstein-designed modernist one-story brick-and-glass structure erected on the outskirts of town. A miniature pool table was mounted on the outer door to the “Poole Roome,” Bob’s private studio. The program was so hot he could pick and choose advertisers. Even though the station’s meager 5,000 watt signal wasn’t heard much outside city limits, a 1962 Twist contest he hosted attracted nearly 3,000 participants. Thousands more turned out for “Bob Poole Day” that same year. Greensboro radio personality Dusty Dunn was whirling stacks of wax in the afternoons at upstart WCOG in 1966. “For Greensboro and Guilford County, WBIG was everyone’s main source of information. The whole thing was Bob Poole,” Dunn recalls. “He was just as important in Greensboro as the mayor or anybody else. I mean he was the man.” Dunn remembers running into Poole at the Carolina Theatre emceeing some sort of promotional event for kids. “He was really phenomenal. He really had a sharp wit about him. I realized then that [the reason] he was so good on the radio and popular for so many years was because he was so funny.” Changing musical styles and FM radio began encroaching on AM’s dominance in the early-1970s, but the popularity of “Poole’s Paradise” continued unabated. In 1970 a 45-rpm single was released of Bob cheerfully whistling his theme song with “White Azaleas” on the flip side. Asked about it, Gloria laughs. “Would you believe I still get asked where to find a copy of ‘White Azaleas?’ After all these years.” “Nobody else had the power he had,” Dusty Dunn says. “The guy who manThe Art & Soul of Greensboro
aged Sears when it was on Lawndale told me Bob Poole was there doing a remote and mentioned they had copies of ‘White Azaleas’ they were going to give away, first-come first-served. That store just erupted, everybody was running for the record display. People were knocking over stuff. It was just pandemonium. It was as if Elvis had walked into the building.” WBIG had an exclusive lock on the GGO tournament, now known as the Wyndham Championship, until the late 1960s when the CBS network signed on with avid golfer Bob Poole providing the play-by-play. Andy Durham of GreensboroSports.com was a listener in the 1970s: “They were the flagship station for Carolina Cougars games with the ‘Mouth of the South’ Bill Curry and Bob Lamey, who now does the Indiana Pacers games on 1070 [AM] out of Indianapolis. WBIG had the first sports call-in show in the area. It started as a Carolina Cougars show with Bones McKinney. After the Cougars fired Bones as coach, he stayed around to do ‘Let’s Talk Sports’ Monday nights at 7 p.m. They carried high school football and other games over the years with announcers like Henry Boggan, Jim Pritchett, Larry Dunlap and Bob Licht.” “He said slip on anything and come on down. So she slipped on the top stair.” — Bob Poole In fall of 1973 Bob Poole suffered a series of heart attacks at age 57, hovering between life and death for eight months with family at his bedside. When he returned to the microphone in the summer of ’74 it was kept secret that, far too often, “Poole’s Paradise” emanated from a room at Cone Hospital. While in high school I occasionally provided Bob with trivia books and jokes to use on his show, which he greatly appreciated. When “The Manhattan Transfer” LP was released in 1975 I brought him a copy, thinking their jazzy vocalese would be a great fit for his program. He loved the album but confessed he could no longer play the tunes he wanted. Management controlled the music. It obviously stung but I had no way of knowing how much a blow that must have been to the guy who could make or break a record on a national scale earlier in his career. When Manhattan Transfer scored a Top 40 hit a few weeks later, he called me on the phone crowing, “They’re gonna let me play that record you gave me now!” The creative visionary whose smoky baritone voice brightened Greensboro’s early hours for a quarter century passed away at age 61 on January 24, 1978, a month after his last broadcast. It’s not an exaggeration to say the city was in shock. It was front page news, the service carried live from First Presbyterian Church. Inscribed on his stone in Forest Lawn Cemetery are the words Bob Poole left listeners with each morning. “Take care of you, for me.” OH To hear excerpts from Bob Poole’s New York shows (the only ones that exist) go to: tvparty.com/bob-poole.html A former Hollywood movie poster designer, Billy Ingram has written for and appeared on series for VH1 and Bravo. His five books on pop culture touch on subjects like classic TV, comics, the Rat Pack, and punk rock and are available at his website TVparty.com, in bookstores and Amazon. December 2014
O.Henry 77