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Rick Dees: The Veteran DJ Hits No. 1 at Last

[IMG:L]More than 70 million people around the world tune in each week to hear Rick Dees’ syndicated Top 40 radio show, but this week he’s the one taking the top spot. April 17, at a special Las Vegas luncheon, the legendary radio host will join the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame.

“I’m wearing an Elvis costume,” Dees jokes. “We are going to have a party and I’ve invited everyone that I can remember from different way points in my career … I have the guy who was sitting there with me the first week I was on the air. I have my best friend with whom I have shared so many wonderful radio and TV experiences with, Ken Lowe who is the founder of Home and Garden Television and also my roommate in college.”

Dees, who hosts the morning show on Los Angeles’ Movin’ 93.9, says the party is going to start in Vegas, but he doesn’t know “where it is going to end!”

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Hollywood.com sat down with Dees in his brand new state of the art Burbank studio to get his take …

On being inducted to the NAB Hall of Fame: “It means everything. I can’t believe that Michael Jordan is in there … no, no no, that’s the Basketball Hall of Fame, Mickey Mantle, oh, no, that’s the Baseball Hall of Fame. There are a lot of guys and ladies in this hall of fame and it is really a special honor. And to be alive and get it is even better.”

On where he’s going to display it: “I think it is a big plaque and also some kind of a trophy …I kind of scatter [my keepsakes] about. I have a farm in Kentucky and I put a few of the special things there. For example, at one of the barns in the farm, it used to be a milking barn, and we put a bowling alley in there and in [there] I have Shaquille O’Neal’s size 22 ½ shoe …I have different trophies in different places. It is probably going to end up on eBay. No, no, no just kidding! I absolutely love the fact that I have a few awards.”

On his first experience with broadcasting: “I was back in high school and a friend of mine named Paul Allen, not the guy who was one of the founders of Microsoft … he was in my history class and he had this giant Adams apple and he would get up and disappear from class and I heard this beautiful voice over the intercom of the school and this voice would be saying ‘Today, we are going to have a play in two hours coming up in the gym’ …when he came back to class I said ‘Where you going?’ he said ‘I do the announcements’ … he said ‘You ought to come by and see my little homemade radio station sometime.’ I was 16 years old and I went by there and just fell in love.”

On his first DJ card: “[Paul] said ‘If you love it so much like I do, why don’t you go and get your radio/telephone license with Broadcast Endorsements … from the FCC’ … I took the test and passed and got my little DJ card, well it wasn’t called that, I put it in my wallet and showed it to everybody. I was licensed to be a broadcaster.”

On his first morning show: “By the time I was 17 I was on the air. I auditioned to do a Sunday morning show on a country station, and it really wasn’t a Sunday morning show because all you really had to do was play the tapes of Billy Graham and everything, but from 11 to 12 I was allowed to go on the air and do a one hour radio show and it was so much fun. I would love to have a tape of that first time. I’m sure it was just awful.”

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On getting started: “I started out at WGBG … at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and then graduated with a degree of difficulty [laughs]. I moved from Chapel Hill to Raleigh, North Carolina to Birmingham, Ala. to do the morning radio show. So that is sort of where it kicked off. I was offered a job in Memphis, Tenn. at almost double my salary … I made $17,000 and thought I owned the world.”

On “Disco Duck”: “I’ve always written songs and little vignettes and I recorded one of them called ‘Disco Duck’ and I couldn’t believe it, it just exploded locally in Memphis and Robert Stigwood, who had the Bee Gees and all those artists, had heard about it [and] they offered me $3,500 for the master. They said we’ll give you $3,500 plus one penny for every copy sold. I didn’t know what that meant. I signed yes and they did a great job promoting it. It sold 6 million copies. So that really kind of kicked it off for me. It really afforded me the opportunity to perform it in California and Hollywood and all the big shows.”

On moving to L.A.: “RKO radio offered me a job doing mornings in L.A. in Hollywood at 93 KHJ. By that time I was married and had [my son] Kevin, a one month old baby, and my wife Julie who I met while doing some of my performances out here … it was incredible to go on KHJ, a radio station that I had taped for years … before I knew it they are going country and we’re gone. They switched formats and we were out. I thought immediately, well we’ve done so well I will just get another job. It took about a year. Luckily I did voiceovers for CBS so I was the voice that said “Tick, tick, tick Sunday it’s 60 Minutes” – that was me and some others. We were just barely able to make ends meet, but we stayed. Then I was offered a job doing mornings at KIIS FM and went on the air and in just a short while it just exploded.”

On his most memorable moment: “There have been so many. Bill Cosby, Ronald Reagan, Madonna, Oprah, the list goes on and on. Tim Allen has always been a great interview. One of my favorites has been Jonathan WintersJonathan Winters just came into the radio show and he was about 20 different people for the entire show and I interviewed all 20 and it was just a magical day.”

On advising his son Kevin: “I just gave it to him. I said ‘Look, if you want to do [broadcasting] that’s one thing, but doing it is another. Go ahead and do it, just start out somewhere. You may have to do it free to begin with, but you will get a job somewhere’ … He’s [now] in charge of creative development for our company. We are developing a TV show, two films …Kevin is helping to keep content going in the stable so to speak.”

On his current projects: “I co-founded a television network and it is doing incredibly well now, Fine Living … they have the Food Network, Home and Garden Television, Fine Living, DIY, Great American Country, Shopzilla … You Switch and newspapers … and I was the second big [Burn Lounge] investor to come along, so Burn Lounge has gone from 12 online retailers last year to 65,000 right now. It is pretty amazing. Now we are going to Burn Lounge 2.0, which you go online and have your own music store for free – it is like Myspace on steroids.”

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On his favorite music: “I’m very eclectic. I play music all day long so to go home and turn it on isn’t first on my list to do, because I’ve been playing it all day. It is like making donuts all day; if you went home the first thing you would think about wouldn’t be eating a donut. I like good thumpin’ dance music. I love R&B, dance music, anything with a beat that will make you move.”

On looking for the next big thing: “I’m always looking for the next hit. It is part of my viscera, part of what I’m made up to be … There was a group called Wild Orchid. Wild Orchid came in, really talented, three young female singers and I always thought the blonde … I could always tell she wanted to branch out on her own. She did for awhile and then she was smart enough to hang out at studios where hip hop artists were working and she changed herself to be hip hop and now she is Fergie. Stacie Ferguson was her name, she is just phenomenal.”

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