Henry Mcclurg Oral History Interview SWGS 201 Elizabeth Van Itallie Kiara Aguirre Michael Paras 2012-03-17 00:15:09 Minutes
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Henry McClurg oral history interview SWGS 201 Elizabeth Van Itallie Kiara Aguirre Michael Paras 2012-03-17 00:15:09 minutes How did you first become involved in radio and journalism? Henry McClurg: I was going to high school in Jackson, Mississippi and we had a radio station that I liked WJXN and I went down there one night about 8:00, just walked in. The door was unlocked so I walked in and Roger Earl was DJing and he said, "Who are you? You can't just walk in here.” Well, I don't know. I'm Henry. Do you need somebody to answer the phone for you. He says, "Okay.” So I sat there and answered the phone. People phone in, I'd write them down and after doing that for few months then they started doing newscast, rip and read from the UPI wire at 5 minutes every hour and then one day, Roger who happened just fortunately to be the son of the owner of the radio station, said "Well Henry, you ready to go on the air.” I said, "Yeah, sure." That’s a rock and roll radio station. I said, "Sure.” He said, "You start Monday night, 8:00 p.m. You're going to work my shift, 8:00 to midnight.” I said, "Great. What are you doing.” He said, "Well they moved me up to the front office. I'm going to be a bookkeeper. But they need somebody to take over the 8:00 -midnight. You can do it." I said, "All right.” So I was going to be a rock and roll disc jockey. Well I got out of high school that Monday afternoon, turned the radio on to 1450 AM and there was Hank Williams playing. Well, I got the wrong station. Of course it wasn't digital back then. Elizabeth Van Itallie: You got a dial. HM: You had to turn the knob to make sure you had the right station and then some Patsy Cline or somebody came up and then somebody said, "This is the new WJXN. Your country music station." [No.] I said, "What.” But I wasn't going to call down there. I was told to show up at 8:00 so I told them I'd show up for my shift. That was how I got into radio, that’s how I got into news and then I was more talented toward being a newscaster than a disc jockey. They thought I wanted to be a disc jockey but they told me I was going to be a newscaster and then a Navy recruiter was also one of the fill-in DJs at the station and he told me one day that he got the list from the Army and he told me I was being drafted. I said, "What. They hadn't told me.” He said, "Well they will. I'm a recruiter so I get the list before anybody else does." I said, "What do I do.” He said, "Well join the Navy. If you don't want to go in the Army. The Vietnam war. You're going to be cannon fodder. Join the Navy. You'll be safe on a ship." Okay so I go in the Navy. I think our contact started in ‘72 or ‘73. I always get it confused but I had just moved to Houston. I was a radio newscaster but I hung around the gay bars. Gene Howell had the Farmhouse and that was the big mega bar and then there were other smaller clubs. Montrose had not yet become the gay neighborhood but there were. EVI: Was there another neighborhood that was? HM: No. Mainly in southwest Houston everything was just spread out in southwest Houston. There was a bar called The Round Table around Westheimer and Taft. That was probably the only gay bar in Montrose at the time. I knew all the bar owners. It didn't take me long to learn the bar owners and I said what if I started a paper. Would you advertise it and Gene Howell said, "Oh yeah Henry. Sure. We'll advertise it.” Everybody oh yeah, sure. So I took them up on it. I started a paper and as a salesman I twisted their arm and they bought in and that's how Contact started. It started originally I had moved here from New Orleans so it was a combination of the New Orleans and Houston paper. We had some New Orleans ads and Houston ads and then I decided to just let it grow. We added Dallas and I think we added San Antonio. We added Dallas for their ads. I went wherever I could get ads. EVI: Right. Right. Right. HM: Revenue were supporting the publication and it sold on the newsstands for $.75 a copy. After about the fourth issue I discovered a distribution company called Satellite News Corporation and they had adult book stores throughout the south and they had somehow just had a tiff with The Advocate and they threw all The Advocates out and they needed something to replace it and I said well I get it. So all of a sudden I had great distribution all over the south. From Atlanta to Florida, Louisiana. Every adult bookstore in the south had copies of my paper. So all of a sudden we had good distribution. So okay, we're selling ads, we started getting national ads, mainly bath houses and poppers which were big back in those days. It was revenue coming in so we kept growing and growing and growing. I put out a total of 17 issues of Contact. I named Montrose Montrose because after I sold Contact to David Goodstein and worked for him for a year and then I'm still in radio. I decided to start another paper because I just wanted to. I started the Montrose Star. I was looking for a name for the paper and I was living in what is today called Montrose. It wasn't called Montrose at the time. It was called lower Westheimer. I decided I started the paper and I named my paper Montrose Star after the street, boulevard, Montrose because I had lived in Spain and the main street in Spain reminded me of Montrose Boulevard. I like it. So I was just going to name my paper Montrose and we became popular. We became full of gay stuff and people started referring to the neighborhood, not just the street as Montrose because I named the paper Montrose Star. Well there was always prejudice in the early days. It was an idea of finding someone who would print the paper. That really wasn't a problem because we printed at Forward Times which is a historic black newspaper in town and that's where the Nuntius printed and I found out where they were printing and talked to Mrs. , she recently died, about 2 years ago. I can't remember her name now but I talked to her. I said I want to publish a paper, Y'all print it. She said sure and I said it's a homosexual newspaper and she said oh yeah. That's probably fine. I quit radio right after the last three issues of Contact. We did 17 issues all together. That's when I quit KULF and I said you know I'm having more fun and I'm making enough money with the paper and I'm just going to quit radio. Kiara Aguirre: What were the big places for the gay community in the South during the 70s? HM: Houston was up and coming. New Orleans was always a bit, being a liberal city. That's where I lived before I came here. It has always been a very gay-accepting city. I'm from Mississippi but I moved to New Orleans just to live where everything was out in the open. In New Orleans it's live and let live and they have gay bars. I arrived in New Orleans about the time that they allowed same-sex dancing. They had a bar called Pete's. It was called Pete's because it was Pete Fountain's old club at 801 Bourbon and they called it Pete's because on the sidewalk as you walked in there were tiles that spelled out Pete's for Pete Fountain but he moved further down Bourbon to be among the bigger crowd but he still owned the bar and he made it a gay bar. Pete Fountain named a gay bar and it was the bar where you go in and dance but it had to be opposite-sex couples dancing. I was there one night and everybody just got kind of pissed of and said the men are going to dance with the men and the girls are going to dance with the girls and they just did it and the management at the bar you can't do that, you can't do that. No. Screw you and from there on. They can't tell us who we can dance with. EVI: That's crazy that there was a law. That's wild. HM: One time we had three national gay papers in this country in the 70s. I was one of them. The Advocate out of Los Angeles which is was based at the time, a paper called Gay out of New York. That was the name of it. Gay. Michael Paras: Straight to the point.