My Friend, Terry

Christmas morning was an emotional roller coaster.  It’s the first Christmas since my mother passed and, at about 9:30, I received the news that my former radio partner had just passed away. Ironically, I received the call from Andy Taylor, half of the Barry & Andy Radio Program, who also tragically lost his former partner recently.

Terry Masters and I were a morning radio team in Palm Springs, California, in the early to mid-1980’s (his radio name was Bob Clark).  I was employed as the copy writer (of commercials) and Terry was the Production Director.  Basically, I wrote the commercials and Terry produced them (or assigned them to others to be produced).  So, very soon after I was hired, he and I began working together.  One of our early incarnations had us doing a parody of Bob and Doug MacKenzie (Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas from SCTV) from the Great White North.  They’d just released an album and we did the commercial for a place called The Record Shop Store.  We’d been mimicking them throughout the office for months and so the salesman asked us to act as them for the commercial.  We said we wouldn’t claim to be them but, instead, we became Bill & Bob McDougall.  We even made a few personal appearances at Brandy’s Nightclub.

An early “live” broadcast from the Balboa Beach Company in the Town Center

Soon our boss added a live morning person to the automated FM station.  Within weeks he got another job and left.  The boss made Terry the morning DJ, which he hated… never liked getting up early.  At one point soon after, I had only one working car and left that at home with one of my earlier wives and our kids. I took the bus into Palm Springs and arrived at 7:00am.  I wasn’t on the clock until 9:00 so I’d get a cup of coffee and sit in the production studio, which doubled as the on-air studio from 6:00 to 10:00 each morning.  After Bob would go to commercials or back to music, I’d comment on something he’d said and he’d laugh.  One day he said, “I’m going to turn on that microphone (next to me on the table) and you just chime in whenever you want.  That’s how the Bob & Bill Show began.

I suppose we did okay.  At one point the ratings book told us that four out of every ten people listening to the radio in morning were listening to us.  We did have a few glitches as we were getting off the ground.  I wrote about one of our craziest events in a chapter called What Color is the Old Gray Mare? in my book Ketchup on the Badge.  We eventually found our voice and there was a time when it felt like a weekend didn’t pass without us doing a live remote broadcast from some grand opening somewhere in the desert.

8th Anniversary of Zelda’s nightlcub

From the time I started working there, he and I could make each other laugh.  And that’s what we did each morning.  Once we played a sound effect of a helicopter, we adjusted our microphones to sound “tinny,” and we said we were flying over the desert.  Another time we added a lot of reverb and dripping water sound effects and told our listeners that the boss had said our show was going in the toilet so we were broadcasting from the sewer under Indian Avenue.  But 99% of the time we didn’t plan anything.  We went into the studio each morning and tried to make each other laugh.  And listeners laughed along with us.

Terry, Me, Robert Soto and Phil Wells.
The last time I saw Terry…

I saw Terry before the Covid shut us down.  We had a very fun lunch with two other radio friends.  As the four of us were saying goodbye, Terry and I met eyes.  There was a very long five seconds that passed between us; both saying with that glance the things we both felt—the friendship we still felt for each other over the decades—yet were never able to vocalize.  Each of us then nodded to the other and we went our ways.

A photo of a painting Terry did of/for me about ten years ago.

So many memories are flooding my mind right now.  Like all partnerships, ours had its difficult days.  But that morning show was some of the most fun I’ve had in my life.  When the famous Mark and Brian radio team broke up a few years ago, I felt bad for days.  It wasn’t so much that I listened to their show.  I’d only discovered them about a year before they split.  But it brought back all of the sadness I felt when Terry no longer wanted to do the show.

It was nothing compared to the sadness I feel right now.

The world came to know Terry Masters as an incredible artist.  I knew him as a very talented radio personality and friend.  Thanks for the great times and wonderful memories, Terry.  You will always be my friend.