A stray mention in my Feb. 14 column of a classic-era KFWB disc jockey prompted a note from reader Bob Watson of Upland, who first off gently corrected my spelling. Or rather, as he said, my transcription of the spelling from a 1959 student newspaper article, which was wrong.
The DJ’s name was Elliot Field, not Fields. Sorry about that.
Regardless, Watson said seeing the name “brought back memories of countless hours after school” in the San Fernando Valley, listening with his best friend to Field, who was on the air from 3 to 6 p.m. Field not only played records, he created a cast of offbeat characters whom he voiced.
“One was Clara Voyant, a gypsy astrologer, whose readings came from ‘up in the clouds, above the smog,’” recalled Watson. “My favorite was Commander Blockhead, a British sea captain whose favorable maritime weather reports usually ended: ‘I say, chipp-ah sailing weath-ah from Point Conception to the Mexican bord-ah.’ Field’s traffic reports came from ‘high above the Boulevard of Broken Tail Lights.’”
Field was one of the Seven Swingin’ Gentlemen, a slate of KFWB personalities that included B. Mitchell Reed and Bill Ballance. He departed in 1964 to run a radio station in Detroit and then relocated to Palm Springs in 1969, where he founded KSPI and was its on-air personality through the 1970s. He was even elected to two terms on the City Council. (The five swingin’ gentlemen?)
“He’s depicted various voice roles on ‘The Flintstones,’ on ‘Hawaii Five-O,’ and ‘Dragnet.’ His voice has been used to sell everything from Hawaiian Punch to Western Airlines to Creomulsion cough syrup to Mobil Oil,” Allene Arthur wrote in a 2015 profile of Field for the Desert Sun.
Before our radio columnist, Richard Wagoner, starts clearing his throat, let me get to the local angle.
As I wrote, Field was the disc jockey who showed a small group of Pomona and Ontario student journalists around the KFWB station, where they got to meet and interview Ritchie Valens. This was on Jan. 9, 1959, a week before Valens’ concert in Pomona.
Here’s the crazy thing. I googled Elliot Field after Watson’s email. Among the first hits was an hour-long old show of Field’s, posted Jan. 9 to the L.A. history site pastdaily.com. The show’s air date: Jan. 9, 1959, the same date as the student visit. The written summary mentions that Field gives a plug to one of Valens’ last concerts.
So I scrolled through the audio. Sure enough, Field plays Valens’ “La Bamba,” the song sung in Spanish. And as the song fades out, Field says this, with nods to Valens’ just-concluded appearances in New York City and to his use of “arriba, arriba” in “La Bamba”:
“And from Ontario and Fontana and Cucamonga and Chino and Upland and Azusa and Pomona and El Monte and Irwindale, we’ll be arriba arriba-ing it, welcoming home Ritchie Valens from the East in person next Friday night, Rainbow Gardens, Pomona. Look for ya there.”
What were the odds? Chills, I tell you, I’m gettin’ chills. (Also, that’s an impressive list of cities.)
My thanks to Bob Watson for an unexpectedly timely email. And my best to Commander Blockhead.
Speaking of Valens…
A small correction to my Feb. 19 column on Bob Munson and his childhood friend Ritchie Valens. When Valens heard the test pressing of his first 45, “Come On, Let’s Go,” he heard it in his own bedroom in his mother’s house, and on his own record player, with Munson and other friends in attendance. I’d misunderstood the location as Munson’s house.
“That was one of the highlights of his life,” Munson tells me. “It was Ritchie’s house and bedroom, not mine.” He wants to be sure the record, so to speak, reflects the true story. Done.
Biddy Mason
The virtual talk last weekend about Biddy Mason was well-attended, even if the audience for the Ontario Museum of History and Art event couldn’t be seen, only counted. I posed the questions to Jackie Broxton, Sarah Barringer Gordon and Kevin Waite, all of them knowledgeable about the life and times of the freed slave from San Bernardino who went on to surprising success in L.A. as a businesswoman, leader and philanthropist.
But there’s still loads about her that isn’t known. Reader Nancy Cox, who watched the presentation, emailed me later to ask the origin of Biddy Mason’s name. It’s a good question.
First, many sources, even the National Park Service, refer to her as Bridget “Biddy” Mason, but her name was always Biddy, never Bridget, Gordon told me. She and Waite are researching Mason’s life with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
And why Biddy chose Mason as her surname isn’t clear. Slaves often took the last name of their slaveholder to help them identify each other if they were separated, Waite told me. While there was a slaveholder in her native Hancock County, Georgia, with the name Mason, Biddy’s connection to him, if any, is unclear.
Good thing Gordon and Waite’s three-year grant hasn’t run out. They’ve still got work ahead of them.
brIEfly
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet and bookstore owner in San Francisco who died Monday at age 101, gave a reading at Claremont McKenna College in October 2006, back when he was a youngster of 87. I felt privileged to be in the small audience at the Athenaeum and in my mind can still hear his dreamy cadence, every line ending on a slight up-note. His delivery made the event almost the quintessential poetry reading, minus the snapping fingers.
David Allen, the inessential newspaperman, writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, visit insidesocal.com/davidallen, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.