Blues Before Sunrise: The Radio Interviews

Richard Stamz

Richard Stamz “Open the Door” richard Stamz was one of Chicago’s most popular black radio hosts in the years from 1951 to 1961, billing himself as the “Crown Prince of Soul. ” However, as a white kid who grew up in the suburbs listening totop 40 rock ’n’ roll radio, I had no idea who richard Stamz was. It was the production manager at our radio station, Claude Cunningham, who suggested that richard might be an interesting person to interview, and that he knew how to get in touch with richard if I was interested. Claude grew up richard Stamz, “the Crown Prince of Soul,” with Al Benson. Photo courtesy of robert Pruter. in the englewood District on Chicago’s South Side, where richard Stamz— twenty years retired from radio—was still very much a celebrity. I thought it was a great idea, so Claude went ahead and made the arrangements. richard came down to our station, wBeZ, one weekday afternoon. the first thing we did was to record richard hosting his own radio program , attempting to re-create his program as it was heard during the 1950s. we then sat down and did the one-on-one interview. I asked only two questions —“tell me your story” and “tell me about payola”—both of which were edited out for the sake of continuity.when it was broadcast we opened with richard doing his program, and then as the first record started to play we faded into his reminiscence, with richard speaking of his career in radio. the focus of this interview is strictly on richard’s career in broadcasting. In recent years a handful of researchers, including robert Pruter and Patrick roberts, have uncovered a more complete richard Stamz biography revealing the amazing stories of his early years.these stories remain unpublished. when I interviewed richard Stamz in 1982 he was seventy-five years old. Between the time I received richard’s permission to publish this interview and the manuscript actually went to press, richard passed away. He died on June 14, 2007, at the age of 101. ■ ■ ■ I started out working sound trucks, that’s how the whole thing started. You know what a sound truck is? A vehicle that you use, you put signs on it and you use it to sell people’s merchandise and whatnot and go up and down the street. Half the time you’re ducking the police, ’cause they wanna either shake you down or shut you up, one of the two things. But I was pretty successful with my sound truck business. It was in ’51 I was working my sound truck, and the people who own radio station WGES, it was a five-thousand-watt station, located at 2800 West Washington Boulevard—that’s where we broadcasted from. It was in nineteen and fifty-one when the radio station actually sent for me and asked me if I’d like to work. I told them no, I wasn’t interested in working in radio, ’cause I told them there wasn’t enough money in it. I was making a pretty good buck with my sound trucks. And they sent for me the second time and I still told them the same thing. So the third time they called me, a lady by the name of Mrs. Heinzman, she said, “Let’s talk about the finance.” So I said, “Okay, we’ll talk about the finance. You’ve called me three times and you tell me I can make more money than I’m making on the sound trucks. I want you to prove it to me.” She richard stamz 229 said, “Okay, this is the way we’ll do it.” She wanted to start me out on one hour. She says, “Each hour grosses”—it was 1951—“grosses fifteen hundred dollars, and you’ll get thirty-three percent of that.” That’s five hundred dollars—that’s a nice buck, you know. So (laughs) since I was doing a good buck on my sound truck, I said I’ll combine the two and make a nice buck! So I went to work for WGES. Mrs. Heinzman had told me, “Richard, talk to Herb Rudoff.” “We gonna put you on,” Herb Rudoff said. He was interviewing me, you know. “How many words can you say per minute and ra-ra-ra—” It was just a bunch of baloney—it...