What was Los Angeles like in the middle of the last century? Given our "tear it down next week" culture, it's amazing that anyone knows. Well, actually I've found that unless they were personally there, they don't know what it was like at all. So I asked Maddin:

         "There were thousands of people coming out to L.A. on buses - it was a mass migration like you've never seen - soldiers getting out of the war." They all needed something to do in the madhouse of L.A.'s postwar humanity - clubs and radio were some of the tools used for unwinding the emotions of war and the excitement of new beginnings. Later, television would lend a hand at distracting the ever expanding population, but live entertainment, "DJ radio" and film set the standard. For a musician in 1949 that meant simultaneously performing at club dates, recording dates and radio broadcasts.

           Radio worked like this: convince the station owner to sell you the time, produce a program along with the advertisements to pay for the airtime that you've contracted - and you're on the air.

           Walsh's Restaurant in Pasadena was one of those great weekly jobs for Maddin that killed two birds with one stone - a paycheck and a radio vehicle to further his notoriety. A bar serving food, as all bars did then by regulation, liquor as all bars do for revenue, and a live weekly radio broadcast adding a nice front end. You could visit and "dine" and it is reputed that individuals in the know might participate in gaming offered via Mr. Cohen's graces.

           "The world's tallest DJ" was the famous claim of Carl Bailey, who provided the ceremony and color commentary from Walsh's. "And now, 'the boy with the golden horn' - Jimmie Maddin..." he would intone. Young Maddin's smooth nod to mentor and friend Benny Carter follows, and off Maddin launches into Carter's tune "Key Largo". Later in the broadcast, Bailey urged the girls..."and the boys too, of course" to send a postcard with a dedication or a song request "to Jimmie". "Or come on down for the talent contest..." Maddin ran the contest and would give the win to a young Chuck Higgins every week, like Jake Porter had done for Jimmie at the Onyx Club on San Pedro Street, downtown. Of course, like Maddin at the Onyx, Higgins had earned it.

           If you were living outside of L.A. County, driving to Pasadena could mean a long trip - the only freeway didn't run north-south past the scattered farms and small towns down through to Orange County's El Toro Air Station and the Laguna Beach Colony. But an entertainer could build an audience everywhere with radio. No available entertainment in outlying areas meant radio was king. KWKW, small by today's standards, provided a priceless tool for Maddin. To get on the air, he sold an auto dealer on radio advertising along with other sponsors like Hollywood Ranch Market, and paid for the airtime.

           None of that was on the young man's mind when he was hanging out over at Benny Carter's house one day and met up with Ben Webster. Not for the first time either, as Jimmie and Webster had met previously back in the Sheboygan Theater days. "That was where I first met Ben Webster, so when I saw him at Benny's, I went up to him and started a conversation. " The elder tenor man had come west and was living in Los Angeles. Carter asked his young friend to get Webster a chair on the Walsh's job. From then on each Sunday afternoon Maddin would drive his old junker over to Ben Webster's mother's home, pick him up and drive out to downtown Pasadena and Walsh's. Maddin would give Webster his own paycheck - because he couldn't get any more money shaken out of the deal - but he wanted to hear Webster play. They went on like that for the next six months. There were celebrities in the audience too. "Gregory Peck told me I was the greatest thing he'd ever seen. I was a white guy doing blues in 1948 on the West Coast - way before Elvis."

           Maddin learned from the Walsh's experience how to sell radio air time. Bill Beaton was the station owner at radio KWKW in Maddin's 1949-1952 period. Maddin went in to see Mr. Beaton: "and I convinced him that if he gave me a 3 hour show, I'd sell the air time and I did it. 12am - 3am every night." By today's standards, airtime was very cheap in a block. Around $100 per week - but you had to sell enough ads to cover all of the time and it could be tough to do that. "But I had Mark C. Bloom and Midway Ford" says Maddin, "I took those advertisers with me when I went to work at the Mighty 690 for Dean Simmons."

           Working on radio meant Maddin had access to the studio facilities. "I recorded 'Jeannie, Jeannie, Jeannie" there in Dean Simmons' studio. His operation was so huge it was like its own network through to Mexico and back. Like the internet of today. When KWKW became KBLA I started spinning records on the air. Before then radio was a live performance for me. I kept doing my deals and started playing Central Avenue, Western Avenue, the strip joints - the York, the Starlight, the Last Word, Jack's Basket and the Oasis. I picked up Lita Grey Chaplin as my manager then too - I met her doing shows at the Wadsworth VA Center, entertaining the vets."

           "Later on, in 1955-1957 I was on TV at KCOP from 10:30-11:00, five nights a week for Cal Worthington Dodge. It was 'The Jimmie Maddin Show'. Then I did the Larry Findley Show for 2 or 3 years. We had Sammy Davis, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis - I was the bandleader - we all went to breakfast every night. Jayne Mansfield...her husband was the body builder Mickey Hargitay...we would go to 'M.O.P.' (My Own Place)...Larry Findley owned it. Dino had his restaurant there later. I was running the Sanbah, doin' TV and making records!"

           This is how the landscape that we now think of as simply "L.A." was formed. When people arrive here for the first time they view it through a simple lens, as if the city, community and industry has always been, acted, looked and felt as it does today. In future columns we'll see that "Entertainment L.A." of the late '40s early '50s was far more open. Rather than looking anything like the major label, established record industry of today, it was a wide-open landscape. Any idea was worth listening to once and a young alto player with energy, moxie and imagination could have it all in the palm of his hand.
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