Wink Martindale, a radio, television entertainer, and recording artist has died at age 91. Martindale passed away in Rancho Mirage, California.
Martindale, a legendary radio DJ, TV game show host, and a Southern California resident with his wife Sandy were former Calabasas residents. In 1994, Wink recently published his autobiography, “Winking At Life.”
I interviewed and profiled Wink in 2006 for Goldmine magazine. He was the first DJ to play the Beach Boys’s “Surfin’” on AM radio station KFWB.
On June 2nd 2006, Martindale received a long overdue star on Hollywood Blvd’s Walk of Fame. In 2006 Wink also executive produced the DVD “7 Steps To Stardom: How to Becomes a Working Actor in Movies, TV, & Commercials by Christina-Ferra-Gilmore. In this decade he was featured in the VH-1’s “Behind The Music” profile on Barry White.
In 2006, the A&E cable channel broadcasted a two-hour “The History of Game Shows” which Martindale narrated and was featured quite extensively. Readers might be familiar with Martindale from the 19 TV game shows he hosted over multiple decades including “Gambit,” “Tic-Tac-Dough,” Shuffle,” Trivial Pursuit,” “High Rollers,” “Debt” “Words and Music” and “What’s This Song?”
Wink even hosted a 1999 music video for the popular alt rock group Everclear. In 1959 Martindale had his own national best-selling # 7 record in “Billboard” Top 40 hit with “Deck of Cards” for the influential Dot Records label and appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” His chart success led to subsequent movie appearances in “Let’s Rock” in 1958 and “The Lively Set” in 1963.
Martindale in 1956 on WHBQ-TV hosted “Top Ten Dance Party,” a 90-minute show that also featured live performances and interviews with Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison. In 1959 after relocating to the West Coast he headlined “The Wink Martindale Dance Party” on KHJ-TV 1959-1960, and later KCOP-TV 1960-1962. From February-August of 1962, Martindale then had a brief stint working for Dot Records in A&R. He signed Dore (Herb) Alpert, who took his $750.00 record advance monies from Dot and quickly plowed it directly into forming A&M Records with partner Jerry Moss, and their label’s first hit single “The Lonely Bull.”
Wink then returned to DJ work on KFWB, having been behind the microphone of both KHJ and KRLA. He also asking his agent to send him out for game show auditions, and in 1963 he hosted his first game show “Zoom” for Los Angeles area station KTLA-TV. It was in February 1964 that Wink hosted “What Is the Name of That Song?” The local buzz and attention the melodic program received steered Wink to NBC-TV in October, 1964, and shortened its title to “What’s This Song?” that had Gene Pitney, Skitch Henderson, Ruta Lee and Deborah Walley on the series.
Wink, birth name, Winston Conrad Martindale, born December 4, 1933 in Jackson, Tennessee, began his radio journey in 1951 at WPLI-AM in Jackson, Tennessee, and today U.S. music fans can enjoy his inviting voice through the sound of MOR pop standards, the American songbook singers, arrangers and songwriters. Martindale is a resident archivist, music historian and well-intentioned friend serving them well in Southern California on AM 1260/540 with his educational and essential weekly three hour “Weekend With Wink” program Saturday 12-3:00 p.m. In addition, Wink does “Music Of Your Life” a nationally syndicated broadcast Monday-Friday nationally since 1996 on 177 radio stations. Previously, for nearly 50 years listeners have heard Wink’s indelible voice and his highly informative radio shifts in Southern California on stations KHJ, KRLA, KFWB, KGIL, KMPC, KABC, and KJQI.
In 2006 his two current radio shows are recorded daily in his Calabasas home studio. His very enjoyable format incorporates a wide variety of music from the 1940s to current popular recording artists. “I play adult contemporary music. Standards. One thing I always like to do is to leave people with some nuggets, something to chew on. The elements of my shows have good content. A sound bite, history, just something that makes people think rather than segue into music,” suggests Wink, who regularly spins Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Vic Damone, spotlights musical arrangers like Percy Faith, Henry Mancini, Nelson Riddle, Axel Stordahl, and Tommy Dorsey. “I integrate the new vocalists as well like Diana Krall, Michael Buble and Michael Feinstein, The local 1260 show has a regional angle. And the 540 signal goes into San Diego like a local, so we’re dealing with both L.A. and San Diego. It’s sort of a magazine of the air. I get amazing fan mail. I’m also turning people on to Percy Faith like his ‘Theme from A Summer Place’ and ‘Delacato.’”
In 1977 we will sadly approach the 30th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death. Martindale decades ago narrated an audio biography “The Elvis Presley Story” for Ron Jacobs and Tom Rounds of Watermark Productions. In 2005, Wink and his wife Sandy appeared in “Elvis, by the Presleys,” a May 2005 CBS-TV telecast, now out on DVD.” In addition, Wink is also cited in author Peter Guralnick’s book on Presley, “Last Train To Memphis.”
Wink Martindale was actually present on Thursday, July 8, 1954 at radio studio WHBQ in Tennessee the night Sun Records founder, and record producer, Sam Phillips came to the station with the first copy for fellow DJ Dewey Phillips, who had the 9-midnight shift on WHBQ when he spun Presley’s “That’s Alright Mama” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky” numerous times on his influential radio shift in the mezzanine of the Chisca Hotel on South Main Street.
Martindale, a librarian, whose own program, “Clockwatchers” was a morning drive time slot, was interestingly, at the radio station that night when Sam Phillips handed the monumental advance pressing of the record to the influential DJ Phillips. Martindale really had no reason to be at the station when Sam Phillips arrived. Wink was at the station with two of his football-playing buddies in Memphis who wanted to see the studio. “We elected to do it at night. Sam Phillips walked in with ‘That’s All Right Mama.’ I later found out that Dewey knew Sam was coming in with the record but didn’t know a lot about Elvis. He just knew he had something hot, according to Sam. We’re at the station and hear all this commotion going on, and Dewey is playing it over and over and the switchboard lights up like the proverbial Christmas tree, and we all felt this stream of excitement but had no idea we were watching and experiencing music changing that night. It was that heavy.
“By now, we’re in the studio with Dewey and we got Vernon and Gladys Presley’s telephone number. They lived in a Lauderdale Courts apartment, which is low rent housing in East Memphis. Gladys answered the phone, and she said Elvis was so nervous he went by himself to see a double feature of westerns at the Suzores Theater on Jackson Avenue, not that far from the station. Elvis knew Dewey Phillips would be playing his record that evening. The Presleys had a truck, drove over and they found him, sitting by himself in the dark theater, and whispered, ‘Son, your record is getting played and they want you to come to the radio station because there is a lot of excitement.’ Dewey then interviewed him on the air and Elvis later said he didn’t know he was on the air and that there was a microphone sitting in front of him. Elvis told me later, and at the time, he was very quiet, soft spoken, and introverted, that if he knew he was being interviewed, he would have been so nervous he wouldn’t have been able to talk. That night started Presley-mania. I met him that night and we remained friends until the day he died.
“In 1956, right after he’d come back to Memphis from doing his first movie, he came on my television show, ‘Top Ten Dance Party’ to say hello. Shortly thereafter Presley became a star in 1956.” Wink, through Dewey Philips, had convinced Elvis to appear on his own “Dance Party” to help support the Cynthia Milk Fund Charity. “Elvis chose my show, did me a favor, the Colonel didn’t want him doing interviews, and did the community a favor, and as far as I know it’s the first filmed interview he ever did.”
There were no videotape recorders in ’56, but Wink, knowing it was not in the show’s budget, hired a local photographer who also made a kinescope of what might be one of the first ever-recorded interviews with Elvis. “He still was approachable and was nice, pleasant to be around. The big difference was that he had security around the block when he did my ‘Dance Party.’ He danced with the kids. He was even more different in those early days than later like in 1969 in Las Vegas when he made his comeback with ‘Suspicious Minds.’ He was electrifying when he used to sing on the back of flat bed trucks because that’s when he was unbridled. All that stuff was new then. Later it became more structured. He would do the karate moves, and all that, adding to his luster, if you will, doing that new stuff. In those early days, like at Ellis Auditorium in Memphis, being from Memphis, we were amazed in the beginning, and amazed even more so as the years went on by. Then he got to be so big. Because there had never been an Elvis Presley before. Even Dick Clark said ‘There will never be one again.’ It was phenomenal.
“I think his voice became better and better as he sang and the sessions went by more and more. He had just a natural voice that has exemplified everything he had grown up with. It was beautiful. It was an amalgam of rhythm and blues, black music, country, gospel, hillbilly, pop. He always said his favorite records in 1953 were Patti Page’ ‘Tennessee Waltz’ and he loved all those records we were playing on WHBQ. ‘Vanilla music,’ but he also listened to WBIA all the time in addition to WHBQ, because he loved black music.
“When Elvis was in town it was routine that Gladys, Vernon and when Elvis was in town, they would all watch my show every Saturday ‘cause that’s the way he kept up on what the kids were doing,” Wink volunteers. “The day I started my teenage dance party out in California on KHJ-TV in 1959, we arranged to air an interview with Elvis from Germany where he was stationed and just gotten in the army. Plus, I used some of the interview I did with Elvis in Memphis. And he I was talking to Elvis, (supposedly live) in Germany, he had just gotten in the army, we were able to build up and it was really quite a coup.
‘Who is this redneck from Tennessee, Wink Martindale, who comes out here and is able to get Elvis Presley?’ And we’re talking 1959. And he already had hits like ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ and ‘Don’t Be Cruel.’” This interview, along with the audio soundtrack of Wink’s 1956 TV interview with Elvis are included along on the disc “This Was Elvis To Me.” www.winkmartindale.com
Later, in 1961, when Presley was filming the movie “GI Blues” in Culver City at MGM Wink saw Elvis again. “He was still approachable, nice and very pleasant to be around. I went over to the studio at MGM with my producer Al Burton from ‘Dance Party’ who wanted to meet him. We said hello. Elvis had his uniform on that he was wearing in the movie. He was busy but he had a break in shooting. He was the same to me and no difference whatsoever.”
Ironically, Wink’s wife Sandy Ferra had met Elvis during the filming of “G.I. Blues” in April 1960 at her father’s Panorama City nightclub, The Crossbow. “When Elvis first came out of the army he came to my dad’s nightclub The Crossbow in Panorama City. (Actor) Lance LaGault was our bandleader. (LaGault acted in some Presley films and was a pal of his). Red West was the bouncer when he first came out of the army,” mentions Sandy, who briefly joined our conversation. “Elvis first came to dad’s nightclub on every Thursday. There was a dance floor, band, stairway, balcony, and Elvis could be up there with Tuesday Weld or whomever, having a great time looking at the kids dancing, seeing Lance, and no one bothered him because he had his own little area and my dad would bring him whatever seeing Donnie Brooks, Dorsey and Johnny Burnette. Sam Cooke was in there. Glen Campbell would play for $5.00 a night just after he and Jerry Naylor had just got to town from Albuquerque, New Mexico.”
Sandy was cast as a dancer in several Elvis movies, including “Viva Las Vegas,” “The Trouble With Girls,” and “Girls, Girls, Girls.” Presley was also a regular visitor a few years later to Tony Ferra’s Red Velvet club in Hollywood, where he enjoyed the Righteous Brothers on occasion. Future Presley band mates James Burton and Glen D. Hardin would play the room. The historic “Shindig!” TV series taped in the same neighborhood held some show after parties at this famed venue. The Knickerbockers were the house band in 1965. Before he was a member of the Monkees, Mickey Dolenz was a parking lot attendant there.
“The last time Wink and I saw Elvis in Las Vegas at the Hilton that same day he had seen us together on a show called ‘Tattletales’ on CBS. He had watched this show about how much do you know about your spouse. And he was amazed that we knew so much about each other. He said what a small world it is because he raised me in California, knew Wink in Tennessee, and now here we were together recently married. (August 2, 1975). Elvis was thirsty and I went behind the bar in his dressing room and gave him Mountain Valley mineral water,” recalls Sandy. “We had health concerns about him and we wrote him a letter,” Sandy muses. “We had a little house in the Pacific Palisades at the time and said ‘if you just want to get away please stay with us and let us take care of you.’ I don’t know if they gave him the letter when we were leaving the hotel. But we never heard from him.”
“Sandy and I went to Las Vegas to see him twice and always invited backstage,” Wink continues. “It was December of 1976 at the Las Vegas Hilton. We went back, place was packed with people. That’s when he was going with Ginger Alden. All the guys were in the room, but he only wanted to talk to Sandy and I. He was behind the bar, you could hear a pin drop, because when the king was talking no one talked. ‘Tick-Tac-Dough’ also was a huge big hit and he was going on and on how proud he was of me and my career. That night Sandy and I left his dressing room we got depressed and cried. I told Sandy, ‘this will be the last time we ever see him.’” Presley died the next year. “We went to Graceland a month after the funeral with DJ George Klein and saw Vernon Presley, and we paid our respects privately, and prayed. It was so sad. I gave Vernon a copy of my ‘That Was Elvis To Me,’ Wink discloses.
On his current radio shows Presley is heard often. “Elvis is background for me,” reflects Wink. “When I play his music on the radio it’s almost like a celebration. I play his songs and any negatives that might go along with the later stages of his career and life don’t even occur to me. It’s only when I make it a point to talk about a specific thing that I have a memory of the down days. I think about Elvis Presley the super star, the king of rock and roll and the good times. We weren’t around the bad times, I knew they were happening but we weren’t privy to them. Elvis fits many radio formats. I’ve got all these sound bites that work so well around his songs with people talking about him.
“What happened to me, and the reason I can sit in this beautiful home with a beautiful wife and live a wonderful life evolved and happened, because I knew what I wanted,” concludes Martindale, who holds a B.S. degree from Memphis State University, with a major in Speech and Drama and a minor in Journalism. “So many kids, don’t know, even when they get out of college, what they want to do with their life. I was so lucky because I always wanted to be in radio.”
