Former Detroit Radio DJ Tom Clay Finds Home For Disk on West Coast Motown Label
LOS ANGELES — Tom Clay, veteran radio personality now freelancing in this area, this week turned over his produced master, “Tom Clay’s ‘What the World Needs Now‘,” to Motown Records (MoWest), with Dick Sherman, West Coast sales director for the firm, promising Clay free records so Clay could satisfy a previously-made deal with listeners, who wrote in for free copies. Clay said that he had 17 thousand written requests for freebies disks, when he withdrew the offer June 1.
Clay prepared for his two-week vacation-fill slot over KGBS, local radio station here, by doing an eight -minute production, which he felt expressed his philosophy on the contemporary world situation. The recorded production in- interwove music and news events in Clay’s narration with special emphasis on Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, and John F. Kennedy.
Clay played the record production once on his first day at KGBS on May 22. He was off Sunday but when he returned on May 24, disk jockeys who had been on KGBS over the weekend told him of repeated requests. The deal is one of the label’s rare master purchases.
Dave Bell, Motown West Coast A&R chief, went into the studio June 1 and re-cut the entire production, cutting the time from over 8 minutes to 6 minutes and 20 seconds. Motown is rushing the record for national release.
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Information credit and news source: Billboard; June 12, 1971
