An Interview With Brad Kyle, Part 1: The Early Years
If MusicStack (Substack’s loose-but-tight scene of musicians, curators, music tech writers, and legacy artists) were a town, Brad Kyle would be its mayor. Brad’s knack for finding newly transplanted music people and shepherding them to the MusicStack space has made him a fixture here, as has his episodic Tune Tag series which even boasts its own merch. If you’ve been around the music side of Substack for any length of time, you’ve seen his work and probably interacted with him (he’s one of the friendliest people here!) But the man behind that work has led an incredibly interesting life that’s seen him rubbing elbows with some very famous names; working in the music and movie industries; and in one case which you’ll read about here, staring down his own mortality one night in an LA record store. He’s written quite a bit about his life in his publication Front Row & Backstage, among whose readership you’ll find Grammy winners and other household names in the music world. But there were a few questions I wanted to ask him and he graciously accepted the invitation to be interviewed.
AJDeiboldt: Your family has a history in the entertainment business; tell us a bit about that as well as your background.
Brad Kyle: Born and raised in Houston, TX, I was born the same year as Disneyland and rock’n’roll (1955)! My older brother, Clint, was born just 10 1/2 months before. Dad was in radio, likely starting on-air through the ‘50s, and by the time I was aware of what he did for a living (early-’60s), he had risen to advertising sales exec (selling commercial air time) at Houston’s KTRH-AM news/talk radio.
Dad also did a lot of voice-overs for local radio and TV ads, so it wasn’t unusual for Clint and I to suddenly bellow at the TV or car radio, “Hey! Isn’t that Dad?”. In the ‘60s, he was also “The Voice of NASA” for a time, having done voice-overs for informational videos and audio for Projects Apollo and Gemini.
Visitors to Houston’s NASA Johnson Space Center (formerly Manned Spacecraft Center) would see and hear these videos during the tour. Dad’s narration can be heard on this Gemini XII Mission video:
Dad, a drummer in the Army during WWII, had a practice pad my brother and I would paradiddle around on. Dad’s was wooden, all black, and had a more vertically rectangular, thick pad on top. I can remember occasionally taking the sticks to it when Dad had some jazz playing on the “Vic” (from the old RCA Victrola phonograph…his nickname for his stereo)!
From his massive collection of 20,000 mostly-jazz LPs and 78s, I grew to love the music of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald as well as jazz/pop singers like Peggy Lee, Nancy Wilson, June Christy, and of course, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett. There were also a couple of groups that helped me get an early understanding of the eventual original influences of early Bette Midler, Manhattan Transfer, early Pointer Sisters, and other evocative “throw-back” sounds like Lambert, Hendricks & Ross and The Andrews Sisters. I also loved landmark jazz players like Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck as well as bossa nova.
AJD: What about your mom?
BK: Mom was working at Houston’s storied high-rise, Shamrock Hilton Hotel, in the early-1960s where the 1930s bandleader Shep Fields had recently moved to start his own entertainment booking agency. Mom soon started HER own booking agency, Artists Corporation of Texas, and worked out of our house in southwest Houston so she could be home when Clint and I came home from school each afternoon.
We had an autographed copy of this album, as well as a promotional, orange, plastic “Shep Fields and His Rippling Rhythm Orchestra” bowl like the one in the photo! Shep and his wife, Evy (short “e” for Evelyn) visited from time to time for dinner’n’drinks, and an occasional game of pinochle with the folks, and that would be the time Clint and I would be sent to our separate bedrooms. We’d each drift off to sleep with the faint smell of cigarette smoke wafting through the house and the sound of jazz records accompanying our dozing.
In the 1970s, Mom took on personal management, adding that gig to her still-happening booking agency. Following my parents’ divorce, Mom moved from Houston to Austin in about 1973 which was the year I graduated high school. A close friend invited her to a Dale McBride show at Club Caravan in Austin’s Villa Capri Hotel and Resort, and, in need of management, the country-western singer/songwriter soon asked Mom to be his manager.
Dale was actually discovered doing a club date in the mid-’60s that happened to have Dean Martin in attendance. Impressed, Dino got Dale signed to a singles deal with the label he was with, Frank Sinatra’s Warner Bros. affiliate, Reprise Records:
AJD: How long were you in the retail music business and how did you land your first job at a record store?
BK: I was in retail records for about 6 years, roughly 3 years each at Cactus Records & Tapes at their two Houston locations (S. Post Oak and Shepherd), 1977-1980, and Music Plus Records & Tapes, (Glendale and Pasadena, CA, 1980-1983). I had no “master plan” career-wise, I just went from one thing to another rather easily. I knew I wanted something involved in music but couldn’t/didn’t really narrow it down. So, I tried a few things!
I got a year under my belt in radio, doing weeknights, 7-midnight at Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s commercial rock station, WFMF-FM 102. At 21 in 1976, I was making $800 a month and was able to comfortably rent a 2-bedroom, 2-story townhouse in the ‘burbs!
In 1977 I went back home to Houston kinda feeling like I’d done the radio bit and was looking for new challenges somewhere in music/records. I interviewed at Cactus Records & Tapes (their Post Oak location) as that was the store I frequented when I needed to buy records. Moving on from radio’s promo albums, I now was entering another venue that would provide me with promos of virtually every album release from the major labels.
AJD: Did your father’s career in radio influence your decision to leave your radio gig and go out and try to do your own thing or did it just work out that way?
BK: Leave my radio gig? No. But all during my teen years I’d have various well-meaning people ask me, “Are you following in your dad’s footsteps and going into radio?” Not knowingly, but I guess that’s what I did! With no other plan of any substance, I figured I’d give this “radio thing” a try.
After a couple years in college radio to “learn the ropes,” I found it easy to land my first commercial gig with KLOL, Houston’s top FM rock station at the time. And getting the “prime-time” 7-midnight gig at the commercial FM rocker in Baton Rouge, Louisiana (WFMF-FM102) handed to me by the station’s GM just hearing me on KLOL driving through Houston? Story-book stuff! I figured if it was gonna be this easy, I’m not about to say “no”!
I don’t recall what led me back to Houston. I had gained some popularity and earned top ARB numbers at WFMF for my time slot/day part to the point where I was doing public appearances at mall department store junior departments! I think I missed Houston and felt I had “mastered” radio to some degree, and wanted to see what might be next, but still quite close to vinyl! Next stop: Record stores!
AJD: Right. Tell me more about your record store days!
I worked for about two years at that first location, but got transferred to Cactus’s closer-to-downtown-Houston location on N. Shepherd (pictured above) where I stayed for about a year-and-a-half. Besides some in-store appearances by Cheap Trick and The Police, memorable celeb drop-in visits included Kenny Rogers’ manager Ken Kragen and The Beach Boys’ Al Jardine, both just shopping for records!
I made a really good friend at that store, Doug, and he and I both saw and recognized Jardine on his entrance (The Beach Boys must’ve been in town that day for a show). We were both anxious to wait on him, but thankfully we quickly decided to “gently” approach and inquire of him together if he was looking for anything special though I have no memory of what he may have said or what he bought!
In January 1980, I quit Cactus, and with a friend of Mom’s, drove a U-Haul truck, with my car attached, to L.A. I moved into the same N. Hollywood apartment complex my brother and his fiancé were living. Clint had moved to L.A. to pursue his comedy and acting career around 1978.
After not much happening in both arenas (and tiring of the endless auditions), he decided to create his own vehicle, and in 1981, he wrote a one-man, two-act stage play, ‘An Evening with John Wilkes Booth.’ Brady Bunch producer, Lloyd Schwartz, saw the script, and impressed, agreed to help Clint tweak some scenes and produced the play as we toured it, mostly to colleges in Southern California for about two years. I devised some interstitial music to play in certain parts, and ran the lights and sound for him at his shows!
Thanks to my 4 years at Cactus, I was quickly able to land at SoCal’s popular retail record chain, Music Plus Records & Tapes, working at both their Glendale and Pasadena locations as assistant manager. At the Glendale store, there were a couple notable customers who wandered in at various times: ‘The Bob Newhart Show’s,’ Peter Bonerz, and Rick Springfield, mere weeks before his ‘General Hospital’ TV debut and breakthrough hit, ‘Jessie’s Girl.’
It was also at the Glendale location where I was held up at gunpoint while the store was robbed! I was working the register one night, when a guy came in with a lady’s stocking pulled over his head and a small pistol pointed at me. I gave him what was in the till and then he had me get down on my stomach in the display pyramid just behind the register (that's where we kept our drop safe). On the outside of the pyramid, we'd staple album jackets or promo dummy-cover "flats" of new releases. Thankfully, he didn’t take it personally when I told him I didn’t have the key to the safe. All during this time, my trusty employee had quietly slipped into our workroom in the back of the store and had already called the police. The police showed up with guns drawn, but only after the crook had been gone for about a minute! They were creeping slowly along our large front window toward the door, and I motioned to them, “Get in here (under my breath, smart-alecky-like: He’s already gone)!” They took our statements, and a couple weeks later, in separate viewings, the other employee and I ended up picking the same guy out of their suspect-mug-shot binder! To this day, I have no idea if he was ever caught!
AJD: What influenced your decision to quit at Cactus and move to LA?
BK: I think a similar feeling came over me in early-‘80 as what I felt moving from radio in Baton Rouge back to Houston. Clearly, I was following my heart! Had I been thinking, I would’ve made some phone calls to, say, some established record stores before moving! At the very least, I could’ve/should’ve made some calls to some labels…I had come to know some names in the offices of most of the major labels. I thought if I could move to the home of the record biz, I’d have a good shot of landing a label gig! I fell into working at Music Plus and I just rode that wave for more than a couple years.
I only made one appointment to a record label, around 1981. I think I was a tad intimidated and likely not quite ready. That was proven in my failed interview with a bigwig at the small Scotti Bros. Records, which was distributed at the time by Atlantic Records. I was at least savvy enough to start small, instead of trundling into Columbia or Warner Bros., however much I may have fantasized (and I did!). Scotti Bros. was very pop-leaning in their rock-forward roster and that was attractive to me: Ian Lloyd, Leif Garrett, and Scott Baio were but three.
AJD: Was there a moment when you saw the writing on the wall for record stores and if so, what was it?
BK: There was a moment when I could see the “writing on the wall” for me, face down in the pyramid, but for vinyl emporiums? No. In 1983, when I left “the biz” entirely to re-matriculate for a radical career change, there was no hint that record stores were changing or in danger of extinction. MTV was 2 years into their existence and as an emerging leader in song and artist promotion, the horizon looked nothing but bright for radio, retail, and artists, with their publishing and licensing.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this interview, coming next week!
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Thanks, AJ! Very well done....it's fun to trek down memory lane again!
Very interesting, AJ and Brad! Not only Brad’s history but really a history of the business. Looking forward to part 2.