Actually May 2, 1970: Ramblin' Lou

 

Spot the major typo (Hint: It's the date) 

This being Buffalo, there’s always a connection, sometimes an unlikely one. For instance, the city’s legendary jazz deejay, Joe Rico, who just died, and the city’s legendary country deejay, Ramblin’ Lou Schriver.

The connection, as retired Buffalo News columnist Jeff Simon noted in his Facebook tribute to Rico, came at a radio station in Niagara Falls, where Rico had a jazz program. Schriver was the engineer who ran the board.

In my first chat with Rico’s widow – there will be a full-fledged obit for him soon – she mentioned that they attended the same church as the Schrivers. After worship services, the jazzman and the country cat would hang out together at the back of the sanctuary, talking.

Further coincidence – while searching for the first column I wrote for the Pause section in TV Topics in the spring of 1970, I stumbled upon a story about Schriver. By then he had a radio station of his own.

 Mr. Country Music

Ramblin’ Lou Schriver Has Always Liked to Entertain

“Maybe I should have phoned ahead for reservations,” says the owner of Buffalo’s Top Sound in Modern Country Music as he hunts for Cadillac space in the parking lot of a fashionable Clarence restaurant.

We could have jostled for places in the city, but we didn’t and in a minute the reason is clear.

“This is one of my clients,” explains Ramblin’ Lou Schriver. “The owner is a great country music fan.”

We meet the owner inside and he doesn’t look a day over 26. That’s a surprise, even though Lou was saying on the way out that most of the country audience is in the 25 to 49 age group.

“Country music,” he had said, “has something of an association with rock, with its solid beat, and it appeals to younger people who stop liking their music so loud.”

* * *

THE MUSIC has changed a lot since Lou broke into radio in 1948 at the age of 18. The rough edges are gone, the instrumental work is polished, there are even electronic gimmicks. Check out “Tennessee Birdwalk.”

Modern country includes Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell, Elvis and even Bobby Goldsboro, although there are limits on how modern it can get.

“Roy Price went real modern a few years ago,” Lou notes, “and his record sales dropped to nothing. Now he’s gone back to steel guitars and he’s selling. You have to find a happy medium to please the younger people and the hard-core country music fans.”

Lou, at 40, is a country old-timer. He was booking Eddy Arnold into the Niagara Falls, Ont., Arena in 1948. For years, he says, his 6 to 9 a.m. program “was the only country show in this part of the country.”

What gave Lou, a native of Tonawanda, the country fever were the boyhood summers he spent in Lock Haven, Pa., with his grandfather Schriver, a country fiddler.

Saturday nights Lou would watch him and his band, the Twin Pine Mountaineers, play fire halls, church halls and Grange halls all over Central Pennsylvania.

“I got indoctrinated with it,” Lou says. “Then when I was 9, my dad bought me a guitar for $2.50. I started my own band when I was 13, the Twin Pine Mountaineers, and I’ve had it ever since.”

* * *

THE GROUP gave him a wife, too. She’s Joanie Marshall, a talented country singer and guitar player from Cheektowaga, who joined the Mountaineers in the early 1950s.

“She was the Optimist Girl of the Year,” Lou recalls, “and we were starting to work her into the show and all of a sudden I must’ve got hooked.”

Joanie and her double-necked electric guitar-banjo remain a prime Mountaineers feature. Occasionally, a concert will become a real family affair, with their oldest children – Linda Lou, 8, and Louis, 6 – joining in. Lori Ann, 1½, is still too young.

* * *

THE MOUNTAINEERS – Lou, Joanie, Bashful Eddie, Accordion Zeke and Don Juan – switched from tavern gigs in 1953 to their present schedule of fire halls, schools, churches, charity events, bank and store openings and Lou’s Country Spectaculars in Kleinhans Music Hall.

“When we put on a show, it’s a good, clean, family-type show. I get letters from people saying they’re glad they can come and thoroughly enjoy it and not be offended.

“There’s a little more variety to what we’re doing now,” he adds, “and you have more circulation with people. I think circulation is your most important thing.”

* * *

LOU CERTAINLY circulates.

First, there’s the radio show. Then the Mountaineers, which he manages and promotes. And the nine shows he brings to Kleinhans every year.

And his twice-yearly bus excursions to WWVA, the 50,000-watt country station in Wheeling, W. Va. And his annual bus excursions to Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, where the group makes a guest appearance.

He also calls on all his sponsors, he’s buying WMMJ, Lancaster, and he answers all his mail. And then there’s the Milk for Health Club.

“We’ve got about 12,000 members,” Lou explains. “They write when their birthdays are and each year we send a card with a picture of myself on it and it says: ‘Happy birthday from Milk for Health and Ramblin’ Lou.’

“It’s a real good thing,” he adds. “We usually tie it in with our shows.”

* * *

THE DAY before we talked, Lou started by calling on Buffalo ad agencies. Then he answered mail orders for the Tammy Wynette show he’s bringing to Kleinhans next Saturday.

Then he went to see sponsors in Grand Island, Buffalo and Clarence. He wound up in Holland, just in time for a weekly dinner with his friends in the Holland Kiwanis Club, of which he’s a member.

“I'm down there once a week anyway,” he says, “and the fellows kept saying, ‘Come on over for club.’”

All this pays off. Not long ago, Lou’s show was rated second among afternoon listeners. Sixty percent of his audience is in Buffalo or the nearest suburbs.

He says the demographics show his listeners are mostly married couples with young children. And, he adds, sponsors are quick to see this is a powerful market.

* * *

“I SHOULD go on a diet,” Lou muses as he finishes his roast beef. “But I’ve got so many dinners I don’t get a chance. I’ve got four next week.

“But all this ties in together. Somehow it’s all inter-related. And I tell you I love to meet people. I love to sell and I love to entertain people. Really, I don’t mind the pace. I never have.”

Someone once said the essence of country music is sincerity. The same goes for country radio announcers.

 

And then there was a little box on the side – a sidebar:

 An Early Rambler

How did he become Ramblin’ Lou?

“Well,” he says, “when I first started on the air on WJJL in Niagara Falls, the station manager, Bob Clement (now manager of WBLK-FM), gave me the ‘panhandle’ as he called it.

“He said, ‘If you’re going to be a country jock, you’ve gotta have a panhandle.’ I was happy to get on the air. I didn’t care what they called me.

* * *

“I WAS A SENIOR in high school then. I went up to the station with my guitar to audition. It had just been on the air six months and it was my great desire to be on radio. I played ‘Hair of Gold, Eyes of Blue’ and ‘You Call Everybody Darlin’.

“I was on from 6 to 6:15 a.m. for about a year. I worked in an auto supply store and I did the thing gratis. Then it started clicking, a few letters, and Clement said let’s go 6 to 6:30. Then it was 6 to 7 with me singing and playing records.

“I got more mail and he was really impressed, so I went 6 to 9. I maintained this morning spot all 16 years on WJJL and WHLD, also at the Falls.

* * *

“WHEN I CAME to WWOL in 1964, I had two hours a day, then three hours a day and then I became program director and we went full-time country-western.

“I resigned in October because I didn’t feel it was right, with me buying another station. Newstead Town Attorney Edward Mattioli and I are buying WMMJ. I’ve always wanted my own station.”