On a multitude of levels, there’s considerable distance between Jackson, TN and Los Angeles.
But those passionate enough to attain nothing less than the pinnacle in their chosen field somehow find a way to conquer any and all obstacles in their path to achieve their goal.
Winston Martindale is a perfect example.
This on and off-air Southern gentleman possesses unequalled tenacity and an abundance of God-given talent.
His drive, commitment and fierce determination to excel in broadcasting have made him one of the industry’s true legends.
A headliner of nearly 20 television game shows (most notably “Tic–Tac-Dough,” “Gambit” and “High Rollers”), the Jackson, TN native could easily rest on his laurels and enjoy retirement with his lovely wife Sandy.
Instead, however, he oversees Wink Martindale Enterprises, a thriving cottage industry that capitalizes on one of the most recognizable faces and voices in radio and television.
Perhaps everything one would want to know about Martindale is capsulated in the title of his 2000 CD “God, Country, Mom And Apple Pie.”
Maintaining a connection to the medium he loves, the always-dapper Martindale hosts a daily 12Noon-3pm (ET) Adult Standards show which is distributed to some 250 “Music Of Your Life” affiliates.
Winking At Life
A very proud parent of four, Martindale decided several years ago to write a manuscript about his life for his daughters.
The nearly 300-page “Winking At Life” was the end result, but as Martindale explains, “I never thought about writing a book. They always asked me what it was like growing up in a small town.”
That inquisitiveness prompted the affable Martindale to recall his memories of growing up about 85 miles from Memphis. “It sort of just kept going; I guess I could’ve written about 600 pages,” he comments. “I took the phone off the hook, closed the door and sat down at the word processor and started writing from scratch. What you see is what I came up with -- there was no real plan or process.”
Memories Keep Coming
The book recaps a 17-year-old’s desire to be a radio announcer and chronicles the incredible career that ensued.
The project took about two years to complete and liberally mentions Martindale’s association and friendship with another well-known Tennessean – Elvis Presley. “The amazing thing is what you remember,” remarks Martindale, who picked up the “Wink” nickname from a childhood friend. “It’s unbelievable how much is stored in your brain. The memories just came flowing back. I’ve had a great career and can’t complain about it.”
But if Wink’s mother had her way, it’s a calling that might not have eventuated. It was her contention that Wink be a preacher. “She felt that way, because God gave me such a wonderful voice,” Martindale says. “She thought that I should think seriously about going to seminary to become a preacher, but what she didn’t understand was that preachers had to be called to the ministry. You just don’t wake up one day and become a preacher.”
Volumes can be written about Martindale’s ties with Elvis. Nothing, though, says it better than his three-track, 1999 CD “That Was Elvis To Me.”
In addition to a spoken word tribute done shortly after Presley’s 1977 death, a 1956 WHBQ-TV/Memphis and 1959 KHJ-TV/Los Angeles interview with the entertainment superstar are featured on that disc. “Elvis remained a friend until the day he died,” a somber Martindale remarks.
Wink’s Really Big Show
Contrary to popular belief, “appointment television” existed long before “Must See TV.”
For an absolutely mind-boggling 22 years (1949-1971), Sunday nights from 8-9pm were reserved for CBS-TV’s “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
Countless game show episodes and thousands of radio shows are included on Martindale’s vast resume. But he says a 1959 “Ed Sullivan Show” appearance, where he performed the spoken word smash hit “Deck Of Cards,” is perhaps the single biggest thrill of his career. “That’s something that can never be duplicated; it was just unbelievable to me that I was on the show,” Martindale recalls still somewhat in disbelief 44 years after the fact. “I was just so nervous. Like everyone else, I’d sit in Memphis and watch `The Ed Sullivan Show.’ When I got the call to [perform `Deck Of Cards’] on Ed’s show, it was like an out-of-body experience.”
Not In The Cards?
A hitch developed, however, when Martindale indicated that his delivery would require the use of cue cards. “They usually didn’t have them on that show,” he explains. “When we did the rehearsal in the afternoon, I told [the production people] that I’d never committed the record to memory. Here I am this redneck from Tennessee, who didn’t want to cause any trouble. They got some cue cards and it all came out fine, but I was a bit nervous for a while. I’d flown from Los Angeles to New York and everybody I knew [was aware that] I was going to be on the show. I didn’t have cue cards, didn’t know the words and [feared] I was going to be cancelled.”
Quite the opposite happened. He did a rousing performance and Sullivan surprised Martindale by calling him over to shake hands.
That gesture, like Johnny Carson’s high sign to first-time comics who “killed” on “The Tonight Show,” meant that the guest had registered a ten and gained the host’s respect.
Icon Encounter
The following day, Martindale made promotional rounds at several New York radio stations. “People were happy for me that this talking record was No. 4 in the country,” he recounts. “It had already passed one million copies [in sales].”
During a visit to one station, Martindale received yet another surprise when Tony Bennett was suddenly standing in front of him. “I’d been playing his records since I was 17 years old,” Martindale says in awe. “This icon comes over to me, shakes my hand and tells me how happy he was for me. He said he saw me the previous night on `The Ed Sullivan Show’ and loved my record; that was really something.”
Taking Advantage Of A Weak Moment
All of this is pretty heady stuff for Martindale who opines, “It’s so true that life is what happens when you’re making plans. Wanting to be a radio announcer was a dream that I really didn’t expect to come true.”
As alluded-to at the outset, a stellar radio and television career is a far cry for someone with such humble roots and a $25 a week job at WPLI-AM/Jackson, TN.
The mayor owned WPLI and Martindale’s Sunday-School teacher was the station’s GM. “I’d been bugging him to death and caught him in a weak moment one Sunday night,” Martindale notes. “I was sitting on the railing of the bank building with my football buddies when he pulled up in his little Henry J [automobile] to do some work on the fourth floor of the First National Bank building. I asked my usual question, `When are you going to give me a job?’ He finally gave in and had me read some copy he ripped off the newswire. I wasn’t a bit nervous. I pretty much shocked him and got the job.”
Good News/Almost Devastating News
But the successful cold reading audition wasn’t a fluke. Martindale had been practicing incessantly by reading the newspaper as if he were on the radio. “I’d read Life Magazine in the back bedroom and pretended I was on the air,” he says. “In addition, I’d adlib commercials around the full-page advertisements. I would’ve paid them to work at the station.”
The enterprising youngster was simultaneously working as a soda jerk at Baker’s Drug Store, making $12 a week and carrying a Jackson Sun paper route with his cousin that added another $4.80 a week. “But soon after I started working in radio,” Martindale says, “I quit [the other two jobs] and just did radio, because that’s where my real interests were.”
Like so many others who’ve sat behind a microphone, Martindale has a classic blooper story. His happened the first year he was in radio and involved uttering the “s” word into what he thought was a dead microphone. “In those days, the FCC was like God,” he says with considerable respect in his voice. “If you said anything that was the least bit off-color, you could lose your job and be blackballed from radio forever. After wanting to be radio all my life as a kid and then getting into it, I just figured it was all over for me.”
He dodged a bullet.
Big Break
When Martindale broke into radio in 1951, he had no idea that a superlative television career would soon follow. “We didn’t have a TV station in Jackson,” he points out. “We got a picture from WMC-TV/Memphis that was actually more snow than picture. We didn’t have a TV set in our house until 1952, so television didn’t enter my mind until I went to Memphis.”
Having been in the medium for only two years, Martindale had already ascended to a plum job of doing morning drive in Memphis. “All of a sudden, the boss came to me and asked if I wanted to be on television,” he recalls. “I got into television [doing a daily kids show] strictly on a lark. I never considered television, because I was too enamored with radio and still am to this day. I’ve always told people that, if I had to give up one for the other, I’d probably give up television. Radio is so immediate and has always been in my blood. When you tape a television show, you don’t know exactly when they’re going to air it. For the most part, radio is this very minute and that’s what I like about it.”
Two or three game shows stand out in his mind, but he admits that “Tic-Tac-Dough” is probably his favorite. “I tell people that any [TV show that lasts] over 13 weeks is a pretty good gig in this town,” he says with a chuckle. “That one lasted eight years. I really liked it, as well as `High Rollers’ and `Gambit.’”
His first network game show was 1965’s “What’s This Song?,” leading him to comment, “That also has to be a high mark. I feel lucky, very blessed and never take any of it for granted.”
Match The Show & Host
Certain people will always be linked to particular shows.
In the world of reality television, for example, it’s inconceivable to watch “Survivor” and see someone other than Jeff Probst leading the Tribal Council and Immunity Challenges.
Mention “The Dating Game” and “The Newlywed Game” and you automatically think of Jim Lange (www.InsideRadio.com, 01/12/2004) and Bob Eubanks, respectively.
Regarding the latter, Martindale notes, “When I was doing mornings [6-9am at KRLA/Los Angeles], Bob did 12midnight-6am. He came to Los Angeles from – of all places - Oxnard-Ventura. I was doing a huge thing in the early-1960s called the `Teenage Dance Party’ from Pacific Ocean Park. When I wanted to leave to do TV game shows, I recommended that Bob take over that show. That helped kickoff his incredible career.”
In that same vein was “Match Game” host and hall-of-fame type-broadcaster Gene Rayburn.
Like so many other great game show hosts, the late Rayburn possessed extensive radio experience and came to prominence as Steve Allen’s announcer on “The Tonight Show” (pre-dating the Johnny Carson and late Jack Paar eras). “They tried doing `The Match Game’ with other people and [it didn’t work],” Martindale comments. “Gene had that `pixie-ish,’ dirty little mind that brought out all that double entendre stuff. You [associate him] with `The Match Game’ as you do Monty Hall with `Let’s Make A Deal.’ If I may include myself with that group, they’ve tried bringing back `Tic-Tac-Dough’ many times and it’s failed.”
For the most part, if a game show doesn’t have a sound concept, no host can save it. “On the other hand,” the veteran host of nearly 20 game shows states, “if you have a good show, a great host can make it even better. A good host can help a good show, but a good host can’t save a weak show.”
“I’ll Freeze, Bill”
Contemporary viewers know Bob Barker (“Truth Or Consequences”) as the ageless and long-running host of CBS-TV’s daytime juggernaut “The Price Is Right.”
But when it was a late-1950s/early-1960s primetime series on NBC (and later ABC), Bill Cullen served ably as host.
Today’s glitzy, big money hour-long affair bears little resemblance to its 30-minute predecessor. “I was fortunate to have the pleasure of sharing a dressing room with [Bill Cullen] when the two of us were doing shows for [Barry & Enright Productions],” Martindale recalls. “I was doing Tic-Tac-Dough’ and he was filling in for Jack Barry on `Joker’s Wild.’ We got to talk between breaks of shows. It’s really one of the most memorable periods of my game show hosting life. Sadly, one of the things I remember most is that he smoked about three packs of unfiltered Camel cigarettes a day. That’s what took his life.”
Who Wants To Host “Millionaire?”
A huge success in the mid-morning TV talk format, Regis Philbin turned in the most impressive performance by a game show host in recent memory.
An ongoing foil for David Letterman, Philbin practically single-handedly rescued ABC-TV with his impeccable job of fronting “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.?” But as Martindale points out, “He wasn’t even on their short list. Unfortunately, neither was I.”
According to a story that Martindale confirms as being true, Michael Eisner insisted on having Phil Donahue host “Millionaire.” But when the Disney honcho explained the show, Donahue said he’d pass. “He dismissed it just like that,” recounts Martindale. “Money wasn’t an issue with Phil. He just didn’t have any interest in doing a game show.”
Even with the power that he wielded at ABC by hosting “Regis & Kathie Lee” (now “Regis & Kelly”), Philbin had to practically get on his knees and beg for the “Millionaire” job. ABC-TV is bringing back a $10 million version later this month. “What made him so good in that show is the same thing that made [Cullen] so good,” explains Martindale. “He had a fast wit, charm, an ability to communicate and interview people and could keep the game moving.”
Uneasy Position
Syndication and voicetracking have their upsides, but, as Martindale realizes, they also eliminate many jobs for many would-be broadcasters. “Radio is a great proving ground to learn how to adlib, be yourself and build on a personality,” he comments. “I do a show that’s carried by 250 stations, but that cuts out a lot of jobs for many local kids in small towns. There are several of us [on the `MOYL’ on-air staff] who do this 24-hour a day network.”
But business is business, so he either continues with what he’s doing, or he won’t be in radio. “Even in Los Angeles, there aren’t that many places to go,” Martindale says matter-of-factly. “I know the `Music Of Your Life’ format and can offer something to listeners. It’s hard for me to say that I’m going to protect 250 jobs around America by not doing this job. That wouldn’t make much sense and is very sad.”
Still Razor Sharp
Capable of staying a week or two ahead with his “MOYL” shows, Martindale can hear shows he’s taped. “I spend a lot of time putting together some show elements like sound bites that take time,” he explains. “I don’t just [front-sell and back-sell] records. There are times I want to hear how certain [produced segments actually sound] on the air. I have one of those big satellite dishes in the back yard. I don’t know how telephones and fax machines work, but I have a satellite dish that [can receive signals] 35,000 miles up and 35,000 miles back in a split second. I’m just amazed by it.”
Depending on how much content he puts into each show, it usually takes Martindale at least two hours to tape a three-hour program.
It’s also taken as much as four hours, simply because this multi award-winning broadcaster still does all his own editing. Moreover, he does things the old-fashioned way.
Although equipped with a Dell broadcast computer, Martindale labors over his work with a splicing block and razor blade. “It’s like your mother making bread,” he reasons. “She’d do it the old-fashioned way, because she was used to it. I can edit digitally, but it’s not as fast for me as with a razor blade.”
After he’s done, the tapes are sent via FedEx to Jones Radio/Englewood, CO. “They assemble there what I don’t [put together] here.”
Station Of The Stars
Noteworthy call letters like WHBQ/Memphis and Los Angeles outlets KHJ, KFWB and KRLA can all claim a Martindale tie-in, but his strongest identification is with KMPC/Los Angeles.
The existence of a place like Gene Autry’s “Station of the Stars,” Martindale claims, isn’t likely to ever happen again. “It was just great radio,” he asserts. “Of course, that was when AM was still the thing. We had a wonderful lineup of people, including Dick Whittinghill, Geoff Edwards, Gary Owens, Clark Race, Roger Carroll, Johnny Magnus and Jim Lange, who left to make room for me to do 12noon-3pm every day.”
The term is much too often abused, but this truly was “personality radio” and, as Martindale reveals, “There weren’t any music lists. No one said that you had to play this or you couldn’t play that. It was just a great time. Geoff could do his thing; I picked up the idea of doing `Audio Biographies’ and would spend my life putting shows together; and Gary is one-of-a-kind. Looking back, I wish I could’ve soaked up more of what was happening, but was lucky to live through a fabulous time in the industry. I arrived at the very tail end of big bands, followed by rock and roll and Beatlemania. It goes right on through all eras of music.”
In addition to Martindale, “Music Of Your Life” has its own remarkable on-air staff, but he states, “Things will never be like KMPC. We have a preponderance of AM stations in our network and some successful FMs. But with music the way it is today, I don’t think there will ever be the opportunity to create something as big and important as a KMPC-type station; it’s just not going to happen.”
A Unique Sell
On in Top 15 markets like Atlanta and Houston, Martindale opines, “Those stations have sophisticated sales staffs that know how to sell to a 50+ audience. If a station doesn’t know how to sell [this format], they’ll change [to something else] overnight. When people 50+ find a `Music Of Your Life’ station, they love it, because this is their music. Unless a sales staff knows how to sell it, though, it can sometimes be tough to have stations stay with us.”
In his limited amount of spare time, Martindale finds himself listening to Los Angeles Adult Contemporary KOST-FM and many AM stations. “I’m a huge Talk radio fan,” he says. “I’m eclectic with my tastes – I listen to a lot of AM and a lot of FM.”
Win Some – Lose Some
Among TV shows Martindale has hosted include “Boggle,” “Can You Top This,?” “Debt,” “Dream Girl Of 67,” “Everybody’s Talking,” “Gambit,” “The Great Getaway Game,” “Headline Chasers,” “High Rollers,” “How’s Your Mother-In-Law?,” “Jumble,” “The Last Word,” “Las Vegas Gambit,” “Shuffle,” “Tic-Tac-Dough,” “Trivial Pursuit,” “What’s This Song?” and “Words And Music.”
That incredible track record notwithstanding, he observes, “I think I have another TV show – as a host - in me. Fortunately, I don’t have to, but if the right thing comes along, I’ll do it. I would love to have hosted `Millionaire.’ You just sit there and have fun. I won’t beg, but I’ll let people know that I’m available.”
Eerily ironic of the game shows he’s presided over, he comments, “Sometimes you win - sometimes you lose.”
WHO: Wink Martindale
WHAT: “The Wink Martindale Show”
WHERE: Music Of Your Life
WHEN: Monday – Friday, 12Noon – 3pm (ET)
HOW MANY AFFILIATES: Approximately 250