With Bill Graham promoting New
Years in San Francisco and with my new radio syndicate it couldn’t lose… or so I thought. The national sponsors held up fi- nancing until the last minute when I finally got WNEW onboard, Whew! The 1974 New Years show was broad-
cast from the "Cow Palace", Bill had San Francisco's legendary DJ Tom Donahue as MC for the show and Tom recruited several of his friends for interviews, members of the Grateful Dead, Boz Scaggs and other celebri- ties.
At the time I didn't know Bill Graham
well, we’d only met backstage at shows but I knew he was a superb showman and he proved that during the sold-out event when he descended on a cable from the highest bal- cony down onto the stage at midnight inside a huge basket dressed as "Old Father Time". It was like a magic show and the crowd went nuts, it was the most memorable New Years Eve show ever. The "first of its kind", an international
radio broadcast was a big success, Armed Forces Radio network asked me if they could air the show on their global network and I said... Hell Yes! Armed Forces Radio tapped into the network and broadcast it across the world, combined with the US stations an esti- mated (40) million listeners tuned into the show (as far as I know it’s still the largest radio audience for a live Rock & Roll broad- cast). The Allman Brothers Band and MTB were heard by forty million people! Let that sink in. This fact was not lost on show pro- moters and music retailers, the ABB and the MTB’s global sales appeal is testament to that one event. After the show foreign and domestic
sales sky-rocketed, the new ABB Warner Brothers distributed album and Atlantic Records ABB catalog both began selling through the roof. The show launched the ca- reer of "The Marshall Tucker Band" and in a couple of months their debut album sold
Wooley with Jimmy Carter. (Photo Courtesy Robin Duner-Fenter)
and did a major article about Capricorn Records recounting our rise to success and the personalities of Phil, Frank and myself.
Did you know Bill Graham? Thoughts on Bill? I’d only met Bill a few times before the New Years show and unfortunately we never got to be friends. But, when we were together one occasion stands out. We attended a Dickey Betts show at a New York club and people were milling around, some standing in the isle in front of the VIP tables blocking our view of the stage. Bill was one tough guy, he’d started out as a New York taxi driver and was used to handling weird situations. Bill jumped up from the table grabbed the first guy in front of us by the seat of the pants and his hair and threw him about twenty feet in
(250) thousand copies and was their first gold and later platinum album.
The New Year's broadcast was a music indus- try landmark, the story was headlines news across the front page of every trade paper in the country; Billboard, Radio & Records, Cashbox. In July of 1975 even the prestigious business magazine Fortune came to Macon
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