CAPRICORN PROMOTIONS MAN THE DICK WOOLEY INTERVIEW


by Michael Buffalo Smith He was a record promotions giant for


Atlantic Records, and in 1973, he joined Phil Walden and Frank Fenter on the staff of the Southern Rock record label Capricorn to help them rise to the top of the chgarts with his tireless efforts. We caught up with Dick Woo- ley for a candid conversation about his days at Atlantic and Capricorn.


was doing in a forth grade class and out of cu- riosity I must have starred at him too long, because when the teacher turned her back, Pow he slugged me... welcome to Georgia. I never heard of the civil war back in


Ohio but kids in Georgia were fighting it like it happened yesterday. They called me a Yan- kee… but I was for the Cincinnati Reds, not the Yankees! They didn’t understand the dif- ference, and from that day on I had to de- fended myself daily against inbreed rednecks one after the other. As a result, I got pretty good with my fists, but I was in nonstop trou- ble at school, safe at home I listened to radio to escape. In 1956, some of the black radio sta-


Frank Fenter, Wooley and Phil Walden. (Photo Courtesy Robin Duner-Fenter)


Tell me a little about growing up in Georgia and your first exposure to music, favorite artists-songs. In 1951 my family moved from coal-mining country in southeast Ohio when I was eight to a rural town near Atlanta. Back then Georgia had no special education for mentally chal- lenged kids and put them in with regular kids making a teacher’s job more like a referee. At the new school my first day in forth grade was real shock, sitting across the isle from me was a big teenager. I wondered what this big guy


tions in Atlanta began spinning new music I’d never heard and after hearing “Book of Love” by The Monotones the first time I literally couldn’t catch my breath, lightning struck me. More radio stations were soon spinning this new music; “Fever” by Little Willie John, “Tutti Frutti” by Little Richard, followed by Chuck Berry, Bo Diddly, Eddie Cochran, they all inspired me and they changed music for- ever.


When did you decide you wanted a ca- reer in music? I’d taught myself to play guitar in the Navy and dreamed that one day I’d be in a band. After service in 1963 and new in college I was able to form a band…we were terrible. But it didn’t matter because we were happy just to be making music, and it made us popular with girls. We managed somehow to make a little money on weekends and even had a re- gional radio hit, after that I was hooked.


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