Thursday, November 18, 1999
Carrying On Tradition
Legendary radio showman inspired new
station owner
By Bill Whitaker
Radio has come a long way since the days when country-western
genius Slim Willet dominated local airwaves, but Bruce Campbell
seldom enters a radio station without thinking of him.
That’s kind of odd, considering trends in radio these
days. For instance, KATX, the “Real Country” station
Bruce and partner Homer Hillis Jr. formally open today with a
ribbon-cutting, boasts no colorful disc jockeys. Instead it relies
primarily on far-off ABC Radio for its country music programming.
Yet, Bruce concedes, hefty, charismatic, song-writing Winston
Lee Moore — alias Slim Willet — awakened the magic of
the airwaves within him while working under the radio showman
at KCAD. Willet, who gained national fame writing the hit “Don’t
Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes” and who bought KCAD in 1964,
was once a near-legendary figure among fellow West Texans.
“He was as much a local radio personality as anyone you
can imagine,” Bruce told me. “He was a brilliant guy
and way ahead of his time in country music programming. I think
he was the first one in Texas with an organized music rotation
system — a new fast song, a new slow song, then an old hit
song … and finally, maybe an album cut.
“Slim had everything mapped out. He didn’t leave
it up to the disc jockey what was played. And that’s really
the way a lot of radio stations do it now. Of course, full-time
country music was just coming of age in those days. Only in recent
times has it gained this mass appeal.”
Through thick and thin, Bruce, 53, has devoted much of his
own life to radio, culminating with his decision to purchase,
with his partner, KATX in his old hometown of Abilene. It brings
full-circle the faith Bruce’s dad, Dr. Norris Campbell, a
retired professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University,
showed in local radio years ago.
“My dad in his earlier life worked in radio,” Bruce
said. “He was at KGKL in San Angelo back in 1939. And because
of his interest, one of his friends at ACU was Lowell Perry, who
was teaching radio and TV there. He put on Abilene’s first
FM station in 1961. I helped my dad get Lowell on the air at the
top of the Alexander Building.”
‘Little ole Slim’
Bruce’s radio career has included some interesting stints,
including doing news reports on soldier boys for their hometown
radio stations during his Army stint in Vietnam. More recently
he has branched out in the Southwest, going from just being an
employee to buying stations. However, his efforts to buy a station
in his hometown were frustrated time and again — till now.
While KATX, 96.1 FM, mounts its official opening at 10 a.m.
today, the station has been on the air a couple of months now.
The programming is identical to that on 160 other stations nationwide,
sticking faithfully to the traditional sound in country and thus
capitalizing “on one of the most-used formats that radio
has today.”
Meanwhile, starting up KATX has revived memories of Bruce’s
days at KCAD when Slim — who routinely billed himself “Little
ole Slim” — owned the station. Bruce got to see the
musician, showman and songwriter in action during Slim’s
last couple of years on earth. Slim died the summer of 1966 at
age 46.
But what an example he set for the time.
“You know, he really did have the IQ of a genius and he
even had a master’s degree in English literature from Hardin-Simmons
University,” Bruce said, recalling his days as a teen working
for Willet. “You know, Slim was going to HSU at the same
time Dan Blocker and Fess Parker were and, in a sense, he was
as much a personality as they were, maybe more so.
“And he was an expert in words on the radio. All the commercials
he did on the air were ad-libbed. Like when he did a commercial
for Gibson’s Discount Center, a big client of his, he’d
take a tear sheet from the newspaper and just improvise this 60-second
spot. And it wouldn’t just be prices, there’d be real
humor there, too.
Show business
“I remember he did a funny one on deodorant pads and how
he never could understand how you kept those deodorant pads in
place under your arm all day,” Bruce said. “Of course,
people off the street thought he was just a hick hillbilly, but
if you listened to him closely, you realized Slim was a college-educated
hillbilly.
“When it came to Slim, you listened to him without telling
your friends you listened!”
Radio has evolved in technically sophisticated ways since the
days when Slim Willet not only hosted his famous country music
show but oversaw much else local folks heard on the airwaves.
But Bruce says he feels that, to a certain degree, radio today
still boasts some of the same excitement of the old times.
“The overall idea of putting it all together and putting
something on the airwaves that listeners are attracted to still
fascinates me,” he confessed. “It’s show business
really. You build something in the air and you see if people will
come.”
Bill Whitaker can be reached at 676-6732 or whitakerb@abinews.com.
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