From:   "Dik de Heer" 
Date:  Fri Feb 14, 2003  1:19 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Murray the K
 
MURRAY THE K

Born Murray Kaufman, 14 February 1922, Richmond, Virginia
Died 21 February 1982, Los Angeles, California

Disc jockey.

Born in Virginia, but raised in New York, Murray Kaufman worked as a
child dancer in musical films and Broadway shows. After serving in WW II
(where he wound up organizing entertainment for the troops), he worked as
an entertainer in Catskills Mountain resorts, and then played minor-league
baseball. In the off-season, Murray left the mountains for Manhattan and 
held an assortment of jobs in advertising and music promotion. As a song 
plugger for Bob Merrill and, specifically, Merrill's early 50s hit (How Much
Is That Doggie In The Window), Murray seemed to have found his stride.
By 1953, he was producing late night interview programs from a club on 
Lexington Avenue, which led to a nightly show of his own at NYC's WMCA.
In 1958 he was hired by radio powerhouse WINS. As the overnight host of 
the "Swinging Soiree", Murray built a following that readily tuned in earlier 
when Murray assumed Alan Freed's primetime slot, following Freed's 
untimely fall during the payola scandals. From mid 1958 until the sale of 
WINS to Group W and its conversion to an all news format in 1965, Murray
the K was the king of the New York City airwaves.

Murray's antics on the air, on the streets, in the subways, and overhead
(broadcasting from Air Force jets), combined with his natural showmanship 
to earn him a virtual franchise in live events. As the host of personal
appearances by hot bands at local movie theatres or as the emcee of four-times-a-year 
rock-n-roll shows at the Brooklyn Fox Theatre, Murray developed the first 
truly multi-racial audience. Like Freed before him, Murray Kaufman believed
in the talents of black and Latin artists and preferred to play their records
rather than the cover versions recorded by white singers. 

Kaufman went live in other ways. He became the unofficial American spokesman 
for the Beatles, thanks to touring American groups who were the opening acts
at Beatle concerts in Great Britain (before the group arrived in America). When
Brian Epstein asked for advice, those performers advised Brian Epstein to get
in Kaufman's good graces if he wanted to Beatles to succeed in the States. 
New York was the market they had to own, and Kaufman owned New York in 
the ratings. Once the Beatles arrived, Murray and the group were inseparable
and he became known as the "Fifth Beatle". He broadcast from their hotel room, 
accompanied them to their first show in Washington, DC, co-hosted their second 
show at Carnegie Hall, and went with them to Miami for the third leg before
joining them in England and emceeing a Wembley Stadium concert.

It was that popularity that led the Federal government's Office of Economic 
Opportunity (OEO) to approach Murray about producing a national TV program
that would a) appeal to inner city youngsters and b) let them know about job 
opportunitiesthrough the New Chance program. The show, "It's What's Happening, 
Baby", which was arguably the first music video, attracted national headlines.
As the World was taking off (and quickly crashing), WINS was changing formats.
There was no more room for Murray the K and his cronies. Disgusted with the
tight playlists of Top 40 radio, Kaufman quit WINS to join WOR-FM. Within a year,
Murray was leading a group of disillusioned talent to a new frontier, FM rock.
On WOR-FM, Murray set the tone for the rest of the 60s. He played records
from albums, not singles, so that Bob Dylan's Positively Fourth Street and Janis
Ian's Society's Child were aired in full (one of the few places they could get
played at all, initially). At the same time, Kaufman was extending his OEO experience 
to produce local television specials that were combinations of on-location and 
in-concert performances punctuated by unexpected appearances by guests such
as football great Joe Namath and the undisputed king of variety shows, Ed
Sullivan.

Less than twelve months later, when Bill Drake came in to program WOR as an
oldies-format station, Murray and the others quickly left. Not, however, before
Murray told his listeners, as he had at WINS, just exactly what the executives
were planning to do... before the executives had alerted the press. It won him 
few friends in a town where everyone in the industry knows everyone else and 
where disloyalty is as ominous as a Mafia kiss.

Thanks to WINS' nightly 50,000 watt clear channeling, Murray's reputation
reached far beyond the boundaries of metro New York. For awhile he aired in
Toronto, then in Washington and Maryland before returning, in the early 1970s, 
to a national stint on NBC Monitor and, subsequently, to a regular program on
WNBC. That relatively low key show, which led into Wolfman Jack's late night 
program, declined along with Murray's health at the start of a long fight with 
cancer. His last New York gig was in 1975 on the extremely mellow WKTU, 
a station he willingly left to serve as a consultant on the production of 
Beatlemania. Following a national promotional tour, Murray left New York for 
the Coast to accompany his soon-to-be sixth wife, a soap opera star whose 
show relocated to L.A. It put him in an ideal position to host Watermark's
syndicated Soundtrack of the '60s, which carried Murray's name and reputation
to markets as far away as Australia.

Yet Kaufman's battle with cancer was a losing one. By the end of one season, 
he had to withdraw from Soundtrack, giving up his slot to Gary Owens. Within 
a year, at the age of 60, Murray Kaufman was dead. Yet his legacy lives on 
through the artists whose careers he advanced (from Bobby Darin and Wayne
Newton to Dionne and Little Anthony), the innovations he brought to music 
broadcasting, and the thundering call of the Submarine Race Watchers.

Websites:
http://www.murraythek.com/
http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj/column18.htm
http://www.tvclassics.com/mtk.htm