We want to talk to Jack Fox here in just a second. But first the man right here, Tony Cruz, is out here. Come on by, come on by eleven o'clock. We're gonna start serving up in a big way. Check this out, man. We're talking competition style ribs from the Hog, fire free Lunch, pork sliders, brisket, the baked beans, Coast Lawn Moore. It's hitting a hitting the floor around eleven o'clock. Come on by, Real Master Supply, Shelbyville Road.
Tony Cruz, how are you, migo?
Well, I'm great. I mean I get to see all the people that we got. We got to work with the legends Jack Fox, of course, and uh today we had Van Vance and Paul Rodgers and Dwight Wright Mitchell, who's a great guy.
Love him. Is he better than me? Dwight Mitchell.
He's prettier than you look.
So can you stick around with us? Home on? I'm here, all right, Jack Fox? If you say something.
Jack Well on the moving sidebook.
Jacko, Jack Fox, I've had him. I've had about enough of your loading his own crap, all right. So if you recognize Jack Fox every single airport, that's what you hear the luggage, the whole bit over the airport. How did you fall into that voice war?
Interesting story. I was doing videos. I was narrating videos for a studio called Alan Martin and Jay Time. You remember them. Yeah, they had an electronic designed by Ied Electronic Internet Innovative Electronic Design, and they're the ones who created the computerized paging system. So they put an airport so announcements wouldn't walk on each other. Our friend Carolyn
Davidson er Carolyn Hopkins was worked for them. She did all the female voices, and about nineteen ninety one, when the Gulf War came along, they wanted a male voice. They said friendly and authoritative. Evidently I fit.
That, Roy, That's what they said.
I'm going to kill you on.
The jury still out on the friendly apartment.
Here's an interesting thing, though. We did a lot of things like while on the moving sidewalk, please stand on the right. Lovers wishing to walk to pass safely on the left. But they looked to the future and and just have something ready in case they needed as an emergency.
And they saw this was the nineteen ninety one. They saw that this young punked white Witten, all these days and so, just to be safe, they had me record one that said, while on the moving sidewalk, please stand to the right too, lover, I was wishing to walk to pass safely on the left unless you're the white witt and get the hell off the movie. I don't think they've used that yet, but it's that I just wanted to warbody.
It's in the record.
I got it right.
Yeah, what job?
What? What did you do? What did you show up.
At HAS the first time? Nineteen seventy three.
Seventy How did you get it from the tornado? Yeah?
Oh yeah, yeah, right there for it?
Yeah, but how did that?
How'd you follow this?
Yeah?
I was the morning man at Koe and Denver for a while and we had taken some troops to Europe through the radio station you know of Jack Frost then believe it or not, Hey, and uh, we enjoyed it. We came home home and my wife said, you know, we didn't get to Florence where all the art treasures were in a lot of places. Women, nice, we go over there and stay as long as we want, come home when we want. That'd be great. She said, let's do it. I said, you're crazy. She said, I know,
but let's do it anyway. So we did. We sold our house, but her furniture and stories took two ye rows went Daly for about five months, and then the money started running out. She came back looked for a job, and I was looking around and my parents were in Henderson, Kentucky, round Evansville, and my brother was in down the southeastern Kentucky. I'm driving through Louisville on the way to visit him, and I heard this radio station and the Milton Metz
was on. They were doing all these great things. I said, I'll check them out when I get back, you know. Came back and came through one day and wanted to see Hugh Barr, who was the operations director, and brought a tape and Hugh couldn't see me, he was busy, but his assistant took my tape and otherwise that's said. A few weeks later he said, hey, I'll but come to work for us.
So that's incredible, And here's why the gig that Tony and I have right now, it's incredibly hard to.
Give because there's there's only so many.
Even when a lot of radio stations stayed live twenty four hours. There was only so many slots you could get in in a little for radio when you got in that was pre FM, right.
Well yeah, yeah, they they had, but they were playing classical music.
But my point, my point is there is even less slots to get when you got hired.
Is Jack Fox?
Your real name is my real name?
See?
Okay? Well, Tony, Sorry, I used Jack Frost in Kansas City and Denver. I thought i'd used when I came back, and uh, Wayne Perky said no, everybody here has used their own name. So I'm Jack Fox, which is great.
Well then, Wayne, I mean Wayne Perky for a morning guy. Yeah, yeah, me, I got stuck with the cruise name.
Uh hown't that happened.
I was working at w x L in Christian Radio days sold out. They kept me to work with Usty Stillwell at Kiss one O four and Buddy Scott who's from Kentucky. Jim Cancer is his brother who owned a coffee corporation, and also they both wrote W E K Why and Richmond A long time ago? Long story short though, The part on that was basically Buddy said, we gotta chanke your name, we gotta chanke your name, and I said this is how I talked.
And I go, that's what.
Scott sounded ironically, that's what the guy sounded like. And he had a job in radio, so he was a great program director of Chicago. But Jim heard his brother. Well, he said, you know, we need to change her name. I go, well, I don't know, what do you think? He goes, you know, back when I was in Chicago, Uh, there was this madam that that we would share that was in our the cos same condo, same condo, And he said, he said, and.
He said, I thought she had the cool, coolest radio name. Her name was Tony Cruz and they would share a cab together. And I go, you can't name me after a whoror oh wait, oh wait, that's where I got it.
To the original Tony Cruise was a prostitute.
She was a madam.
Different, hi, madam, she was a pimp.
Okay, right, we're getting this inform on the last day, thirty one years, right, shame on you.
That's why I called myself take news Cruise. Wow.
So when you worked at the Christian station, yeah, that was a station seat. Did it seem a lot like Albert Show? Yeah?
It was very similar.
Yeah, of course, well, they sing against hell, not for it.
Jack Fox.
Okay, so you came on w h S Jack Fox in seventy three seventy four of the tornado hits.
Horrible day for Louisville, Kentucky.
I've been on the air for a tragedy before, and I got to tell you, it's a I was completely out of my element.
You have all this disastrous stuff hitting the city of Louisville. What's that like for you? At seventy interesting it was.
I was new to town too. I'd been probous and uh, we had just come here. I didn't expect that at all. I was on the air that day. I was on til three thirty, and of course it'd hit right after that. All afternoon we were giving alerts Brandenburg every thirty seconds of gayn update and I went off the air. Jeff Douglas came on and we were listening and Dick Gilbert was in the helicopter. Yeah, oh yeah, he maneuver so he stayed up. Everybody chased it.
He chased the damna.
He was on the air and he said, well, they say there's a tornado, but wait, there it is. And he followed it. He just followed it in a helicopter. Yeah, and I remember he he told us at one point he said, folks, Cherokee Park as we know it is no more. And I thought, come on, Dick, don't be so dramatic. Wow.
So what was downtown like in seventy four? You know, I had to see some pictures. The Sealback was closed for a while. The other big hotel was at the Louisville Hotel. They were closed for a Yeah, there was there were questionable businesses.
On Main Street.
They were just renovating what is now Forced Street Live. It was the Gallery at that Yeah, at that time, Stewart's was still there always they were still there, but they were on decline and they were shutting Fourth Street to make Fourth Street called it the mall or something.
Gallery.
Well, the Gallerleria was the part that they made seventies seventies. Yeah, the GALLERYA was the second or third renovations they've been trying to But we were right on the edge of when I heard people talk about Stuart's and Bis and all those things. They were still there, but they were just fading away.
I can't imagine.
There had a great studio.
My dad used to take.
My dad would take us on Saturdays and he would drop us off at the Kentucky Theater on Fourth Street and we would watch Bruce Lee movies all day long. He would come back and pick us up from downtown, take us alie trolley home.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was a lot. I mean there were left you there old town. Yeah, let me downtown that Yes.
Our kids in the UH I guess the early eighties. We take him to them all and leave them. Yeah.
Absolutely, a different, different world. If you're listening Jack Fox as our guest. If you've been in any airport, you've heard his name. As a matter of fact, I'm starting to get anxiety because I hate airports.
Give give old Tony some advice.
Yeah, don't need any advice from him. Just to enjoy enjoy retirement. And you will, yeah, you will. You'll be busier now than you ever were. Believe it or up. But it'll be things you want to do when you want to do them.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.
I absolutely I remember Tony, And what year did you first come to h A. I came in October ninety two, ninety two, Yeah, right right around that time. I remember you and I were sitting at a U of L football and you had just come to has and you hope that someday you would be on the air, and you wanted to do sports yep, And I said, he's gonna do it. Yeah, you've done everything though, really, Yeah, I heard you talk with Van this morning about running
the board ops from Tokyo and everything. Yeah, and you've paid your dues.
But nineteen eighty six or eighty seven, so of the guys at XLN were asking me, what do you what would you really like to do? And I said, well, when Van Vants retired, I'd like to do sports talk, or if Wayne Perky retired, I'd like to do mornings and then a flat or somehow.
By the way, by the way, sports radio was not what everyone thinks of the terms of sports radio came became and you know, superstars and all that. Sports radio was kind of a niche thing, right, It was new. It was not a big thing where everybody had to tune in the sports radio like they did. So you so you when you say, of course he wanted to do that, that was sort of a different kind of thing. Oh you want to do sports, Okay, okay, that sounds.
Well, I'd heard it, you know here, but I didn't realize that not many markets had sports talk radio back then, Chicago and New York, Columbus and places like that.
Let's talk about the comedy you kept because uh, to the best of my knowledge, maybe three morning show hosts.
On w h A s Uh.
Well, no, that's not.
Scholar Ray Ray Waldon, Ray Shelton. Okay, what about sports Jim Walton big part of but it was a different style. It was a different right, right, Let's talk about sports talk though it was advanced. It was you than Lachlan McClain. That's it. Wow.
And then they fired uh Lochlan McClain for embezzling from the company. Why so, but no, seriously that that's uh that that's that's pretty outstanding.
Tony Cruise, Well, I mean I've been blessed and I'm thankful for but you know, I just had the model stay cheap, you know.
I say, because I've done three different formats. And when you're doing it at the time, you don't know you're this is special times, right, just you're doing it and you move to the next thing. I think the mistake we all make is at those times that we're doing this stuff. We don't sit at home and go, boy, that was cool. Like we didn't do that. We were just so moving to the next thing.
Well, Tony has never let his ego get the way I assume you have it.
I don't know, but I certainly haven't.
I got a Jack Fox question.
So I've never retired from radio, obviously, and I've never walked away from radio.
We've tried.
I have been fired from radio rock radio. I got fired by the grace of God. I got picked up doing white collar or work with radio station.
But here's what I will say. When I was off the air. Of the years I was off the air, I was.
Fiending, almost like a dope fiend for a creative outlet, because there is something about having this job. You have to have some kind of creativity in you. When you retired, you were able to do the airport announcements. But before that, did it drive you crazy not having some kind of creative outlet.
Well, it's interesting.
One of the things I did was I have read at the printing house for the blind, have recorded audiobooks for a while since nineteen seventy eight OAT, and that let me move right into things I could do. It on my terms when you wanted to and still use your creativity. Did a lot of voiceover work, so I tried doing some of the studios.
So I tried doing that and they said, well now the blonde people are mispronouncing words.
Well you got a studio at home. And then years later these two goofballs call you in say Jack Fox, will you be Yeah?
I don't know why. So when we get home, we were looking.
For legitimacy, right, So I said, Jack, say your name, this is Jack Fox, and you're listening to Tony and why.
But they also made him do a disclaimer that the views and the opinions of notily. No other show does this, why are we? But so anyway, man, you look great, you look happy, absolutely terrific. You look healthy, you look happy.
It's more like a lot of golf and doing things like that. Oh good, I'm going on a thirty mile bike ride on the ninth really really yeah? Did the Miami Reil Road up in that that path?
What's the day?
June ninth?
On June seventeenth, I'll be watching a murder she wrote, marathon and it's on the Hallmark channel.
Shape is to make you JOCKO. Jack Fox is best to Tony. Thank you.
Look for Tony Cruz is retirement everything you thought it would be me.
Yeah, I love it now. I miss I missed the daily I missed the people. I enjoyed that. Yeah, and the activities we were involving doing things like this. I ain't like that. Yeah, but having to get up and go do it to a different story, right, yeah, right, thank.
You, thank you.
We'll see Matthews.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Grill Masters seventh, by the way, Matthew's party in Brown Park.
Yeah.
Grill Masters Supply. That's what I'm talking about.
Baby free lunch Friday out here, and we're talking a great free lunch. We got competition style ribs from the Hogfathers. We have pork sliders, we have brisket, baked beans, Coast Law and it's all getting served up at eleven am. You got time get out here. Grill Master Supply in the fireplace. But Pellow Windows and Doors house those energy bills?
How are they during the winter? How about the summer? They quite high?
Probably is your windows your doors, Let's upgrade them with Pello Windows and Doors.
Why.
Pella rated number one for highest quality, number one for highest craftsmanship, and number one for highest value. And of course they're made right here in the USA, and they're even made right here in Kentucky by your friends and neighbors. We're talking replacement instruction, commercial vinyl fiberclass woodclad windows, patio doors and more. Check them out today at Pella Louisville dot com. And when you get them, make sure that you also have the best of the best when it comes to toilets.
Yes, I'm talking.
About And by the way, Bargain supplies on East Jefferson Street, not East Market. I don't know why I misspoke earlier.
You threw me off may a little bit.
Do you think maybe you misspoked because you're so much pain because you tore your achilles attendant?
No, that was me alrighty BK Plumbing Supply. John Bergen is the owner. He's such a great guy, and of course John would sell toilets. This isn't a regular toilet. This is the this will change your life. I got it installed about six months ago. It is called the Toto Nexus Toilet S seven. It's a Biday toilet system. There's a remote control. The water is heated to the temperature you like. You can control the streams two different streams, and there's a there's a blow dryer there. You hit
that button, it dries you for you. It reduces almost to zero the toilet paper you need. Ladies, there's a different button for you because you have different parts. And guess what your life will change. We had a navy seal on the other day and he goes, oh, I love those toilets.
I had.
I used one when I was in Korea. He goes, They're awesome. Don't be afraid. It's called the Nexus, the Toto Nexus, so called John Bergen at four fifty nine hundred for nine fifty nine hundred or amy, She'll also take care of you, but call a guy named John. He sells toilets at beatk Plumbingsupply dot com. Back after this live from Girlmaster's Supply News. Ready wait forty w H A s.
H.
If you want to come up to losers retirement party, we got we got we got competitions.
Real bad message.
Now listen, come on up, say goodbye to the beloved Tony Cruz and say goodbye with a free lunch.
By the way.
Up here at the grow Master's Supply, we're talking competition style ribs me Joe Elliott and Tony just had a couple of these ribs.
We got porch spiders.
We had one.
We have baked beans with brisket. We have a Coast law and it's all free. Come on by grill masters supply they're serving up now, so come on.
Okay, great. Yeah.
So when Tony Cruz twenty one years in the seat at w H A S and sometimes at four am, Olly Joe Elliot, we get a call and h and Joe would fill in for how many times were the surprise fill in for Tony Cruz?
Joe not too much on that. We used to have a morning guy. I don't want to say anything bad about this guy. He was a great guy, but he was known for getting there late. Tony is Tony's pretty much on time and ready to go. I didn't get too many calls.
Uh, I was late four times?
Oh are you serious?
Are you making it?
Yeah? No, no, late late four times.
Radio people I think can remember every single time. Well, yeah, because it's so important.
Hang one side breaking news. This is out of New York City. Courtney Donahost is Tony Cruz. Exclamation point, congratulations to him from his old friend to exclamation points.
Then she goes on to say, Dwight, you're so sexy. Here's a picture now, hang on, hang on?
Is it the Batman picture?
No?
No, no, no no.
I don't know why she would send me a picture like that. It looked like a grizzly bear had a cardinals.
M I so, uh so, But Morning's has changed a little bit over the year, sure, and uh and what what we were doing?
Right?
So we went to more of and Joe can speak on that too, but Tony obviously, but it whent to more of a national sort of focus, right, So him and I, Dwight and I are more local. Terry's local. But you guys kind of tackle the tough stuff.
Well yeah, just kind of the outside stuff like you know, maybe tariffs or maybe whatever the judges.
Let me ask you this question real quick.
Huh.
And by the way, her sleep number is forty three an sleep numbers, Let me ask you this question. So I did Rock.
Mornings two different stations. I did morning show on KMF, also did mornings on one hundred point five The Fox.
When I was on q MA.
I remember going when we went to that new building, not the new one, now, Bishop Wayne, we were all in there getting coffee At the same time.
I looked at Wayne Perky. I said, Wayne, when do you get used to this? Meaning the hours?
Right?
Wayne Perky looked at me stone cold, and he said, you never get used to it? Did you ever get used to waking up? Three picks in?
Back?
When I'm natural? I produced for Wayne and I asked him that same question. I said, do you ever get used to this? And he goes no, and he goes, probably won't either if you're not, if you're well.
People, he's right.
People always make the comments say what are you talking about? Man, you get off at ten am? You got told well, there's other show prepace, something that goes into it. But besides the fact if you're getting up at three o'clock in the morning.
Well you're exhausted. Yeah, right, you're almost always tired, right.
Joe, because you would have to be unconscious at seven pm to get eight.
Hour trying to get too inside baseball. But I will say that there is a huge difference between a morning show, Oh my gosh, at five man, a morning show that starts at six there is and people and people say, oh, it's just an hour. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, oh no, that is a huge hour. I think if your show started an hour later, just at six, I think the show would be a little different.
Yeah, oh yeah, I think there's a lot lot more different. The biggest thing for Wayne and why he was able to keep it so local, is because people would come on the air between six and nine. Joe, who can tell you it's hard to get anybody to come on the air line really locally, locally now because they have so many other outlets, right, And so that's why if you think that we have more national or international approach, part of it is because of what you could get really live.
You know, we have the shift work that we used to have in the old days ge right, g was big as as ever was Ford was bigger than ever it was, right. We don't have that shift workers, but we still that five am hour. To tell you the truth is probably.
Until they started putting the try mark no, no, basically the cameras, I didn't realize how many people were really up at five o'clock. You know, it's a whole lot more than you think.
There's.
No it's let's talk about something else. Let's talk about the evolution of your show. Because over the years, it's gotten more difficult. If you've got an somible cast. There's my tequila dealer right there.
She gets distracted.
So listen, let's but let's talk about the evolution of your show. Because if you've got an ensemble cast, you've got even with a partner like Tony, I've got somebody to lean on.
He'll do the story, the story.
But that has been whittled down desperately because you used to have a gardener, somebody who garden reports, you had sports reports.
Your produced would kick in.
Now it's basically been whittled down to you. How much more difficult was that?
It was way way more I mean when Paul was with us, you know, we we would have a conversation and do the bull session right, which started the show out pretty good, you know, along with Scotty, and then it's uh, things went on. Scotty, you know, he also produced the show and he was doing sports too, but he had he had two jobs doing sports and producing the show, so he didn't have all the time either. So the back when Wayne was there, let's think about
this joke. We had Wayne, we had Ken Shawton, who was a character character and the person came in this the student, you know, and we talk to us for you know, six or seven minutes was all the time, right, right, You had Wishy, you had Brian Riblin, traffic guy, Barney Arnold back in the day. Yeah, I mean, hell, they say on the Farm Report, well give it. They were giving up up the farm markets.
I'm out here in the field and I just found a field mouse. We're gonna name him skitles.
I'm sure they had the Price of peas right.
Oh that was in the first hour the show, and then they then they would move on. But the joke used to be, you know, if you were gonna take Wayne Perky out, he was the number one morning man. If you're gonna shoot Perky, you'd have to shoot another eight or nine people.
Seriously, Joe Elliott.
It was like the Partridge family. They had so many people rights exactly right, you know, all the kids graduated and left.
Yeah, but if you have a Dwight's and I are the same way, I could tell when we're having a bad show, and at the end of it, I think I always think that it's not a Friday because I have two days to live with it, because it's like sports. Oh yeah, I just want to get back on the field, you know, And I know when it's a bad show, when you do a solo show, it's all on you. And there are times you PLoP the mic down right and you go, that was dumb.
What what am I talking about?
But it's also great.
Yeah, it's also great because I mean Tony. But it's also great because when you Letterman said this one time, and I mean, we're we do very different than what Letterman did. I don't mean to say we're any anything like that, but he said, when you do a good show, there's nothing better, all right, right right?
A man?
Yeah, get off the air at midnight. Sometimes when I used to do that show, I didn't want to go to sleep. Yeah, I mean it's so good when you do a bad show, just want to put your head through Well, gosh, I just I'm.
In majoring and I'll replay it over.
Yeah. You never forgive yourself. No, that's because you're serious about your job.
What's because you love what you do job. But man, you're right if we take what if we puts a turn out there?
But I will tell you more than once, particularly particularly on sports talk, I would think I had a terrible show. And then I would have five people it's just weird like the next days. Man, dude, that show that was great?
Well also, and here's the dangers of our egos. You can you can think you had that was the worst take ever, and then you get one person at Kroger that says that was the best thing ever, and it changes your mic because one person said that, which I always say, don't don't listen to your social media that has no. You had no gauge on whether there was a good show or not. So if you get four mentions of oh, great show today, don't read it because it's not.
It doesn't matter.
When do you think the best rating it is? My mic?
Up?
Yeah?
Yeah, When when do you think the best ratings were? For sports talk with you buddy?
The questions we were looking for a new coach or something. I don't know what there was.
He was the height locally was the Charlie Strong search.
No, no, no, I'm talking about just in general.
No no, no.
For w h A S. My best ratings came in in the summer. Really, Oh.
That's well, because do you think it's because you got a broad now and do different topics?
Well, part of it was that you know, we like we would talk to those sports psychologists about how don't be a bad dad do with your kids? Quit yelling at the umpire. I would do golf tips, yes, with the guys at the Southern Sports Golf tipsy. I mean we get we give away a bucket, the ball, bucket the ball.
But yes, but topics.
Yes.
But and then there there back then there was still enough where you had Nike and all those camps going on, so you could you could do you know that too.
Yeah, but there was It peaked out mid two thousand.
The hardest thing I had with sports was this, and that was the Internet because once you started getting guys putting up their own sites, yeah, you know, then you didn't need people to call.
You who's recruiting. I'll give you one more, and I don't know where up against we have to break John Auden. But let me tell you this. Here's another one.
Is uh, sports talk has gotten just so damn fragmented to begin with, with the station's popping.
Up everywhere, say the dumbest thing. What the problem is that it's real quick. The problem was when I first got into sports, if you said, if you got something wrong, it was a big deal, and you would call even your competition if they got something wrong, and you would go, hey, man, you okay, is everything right? And then it became it didn't matter if you were wrong. It just happened to be whatever noise.
Right right.
And that's why I got out of sports, because I was like, look, I'm not in this. You got to get it right and I can't. And he used to have really upset me that. It was like, why doesn't that matter anymore? But you know, that peaked out and then people stopped calling each other. So now the calls just sports shows are over right. They text now, which was a different game. But we're gonna get a break. Joey Elliott's with us, and then we say goodbye.
It's a very special.
Go hey Jefferson Animal Hospital, Baby, let me ask you a question. Your dog over fifty pounds, it's your cat over ten pounds. If they are they could cumify to be pet blood donors.
That's right. Your pets can donate blood just like you and I. But listen to this.
When your pet donates blood, they could save the life of four to six other pets. That's huge, huge, But there's also benefits for you and your pet like what I don't know, Free examinations, free vaccines and more. To find out, contact Jefferson Animal Hospital five zero two nine hundred pets five zero two nine hundred pets.
And if you have pets, make sure that you let these pets up on your Sims furniture. That's what furniture is for.
Baby.
Hey, how is your living room look? How's your kitchen look? Dining room? Bedroom?
You deserve to have a good looking home, so when you get home from working a hard day's work, you got somewhere nice to look at and relax.
You get that with SIMS furniture. How about this an entire seven piece bedroom.
Set, just nine hundred and ninety nine dollars, all seven pieces, nine hundred and ninety nine dollars. And we're talking high quality furniture like living room sets, bedroom sets, kitchens, dining sets and more. Even appliances and televisions. You're gonna love your Sims furniture.
One M.
Sims, Dixie Highway and Preston Hobby. Come on by, we are a grill Master's supply. The free Lunch Friday is underway. You got competition ribs out here. You have free pork sliders, free brisket, baked beans at coach Law and Moore. Come on by, say by to Tony Cruz and eat a free lunch with Grill Masters supply on Tony Dwight News Radio eight forty w h a s