[One of the most famous performers to come out of Maine Township High School East (Maine East / MEHS) was Steve Goodman. Steve was a sportscaster on WMTH from 1962 to his graduation in 1964. The following is from interviews for a biographical book about Steve. To Chicago Cubs fans, he is most famous for his song “Go Cubs Go”. To many other people, he was a very talented composer and performer of Folk music. Also note the story mentions other future celebrities, Karen Black and Carrie Snodgrass, who were students at the same time, but not on the WMTH staff. The book “Steve Goodman: Facing the Music by Clay Eals” has a web site at http://stevegoodmanbiography.com/ and is available on Amazon.com]
Jack Coombe was the second station manager / sponsor of WMTH-FM in the early 1960s. Here is his interview for the book “Steve Goodman: Facing the Music by Clay Eals”. Minor corrections have been made for the then frequency of the station. It was 88.5MHz at the time and power was 16 watts.
Jack Coombe interview 9-12-00
At MEHS in the 1960s, because of my background in radio and show business, the board put me in charge of the radio station. Small station. WMTH-FM 88.5. Coverage wasn’t far beyond limits of township. Was a station at New Trier, WNTH-FM, sometimes mixed up. One south of Chicagoland, too. I don’t know of any of the stations that had a professional with my background running it.
Broadcast all the games. Creativity for students. I recruited students, got credit through drama department. I had a good budget, could buy good music. Did extracurricular activities around school of interest to general public.
When Steve came, he signed up originally as a sports announcer. He was primarily interested in doing the games, football and basketball. He did it, along with a couple other students. But I was always impressed, when he came into the station, even though he wasn’t on the air, he hung out there an awful lot, as a lot of students did. He always brought in his guitar. He’d sit and entertain us. A couple of original compositions. I don’t remember what they are now. He came in one day and said, “Here’s something that I wrote.” He played it for us, and we were really impressed. He was really dedicated to sports. He wanted to become a sportscaster in the worst way. I kept discouraging him.
I said, “Look, Steve, obviously you have a lot of talent. I know talent when I see it, believe me, because of my many years in show business.” — I encouraged Karen Black and Carrie Snodgrass. I “discovered” those two and encouraged them to study drama. Bob Brandenberg, chief announcer for NBC, announced under name Bob Branden. — When I saw Steve, I knew right away he had talent. “Steve, forget sports. There’s all kinds of sportscasters around. You might go places as a sportscaster, but I really feel you have a talent that should be exploited, and you should go into music, you should go into show business.”
He said he was going to take my advice. I didn’t know until years later, the name Steve Goodman starts showing up. I like to think I was responsible for going into show business. He wanted to be a sports announcer, and he wanted to know which schools he could go to to study radio and do top games. I kept discouraging him. He got a little annoyed a couple of times.
“Steve, pick up that guitar and start singing some of your compositions.” I guess then he suddenly began to realize that he had this talent.
He might have written the germs for some of his great hits there. Folk tunes. He was greatly interested in folk music. He would sing a lot of the existing. I don’t think he was that enamored of Elvis Presley.
[Radio station office] It was a hole in the wall. It was the size of an ordinary living room, probably smaller. Longer than wide. 12-13 feet wide and 15 feet long. It was smaller than a standard classroom. It was originally a storage room, and they refurbished it, put in all the equipment. We had the transmitter in the attic and an antenna on top of the school. My office was in there, the desk. We could handle quite a few. They couldn’t possibly all hang out there. We had a record library in the middle of it, a long table with microphones with a board with dials on it. There was a big window in front of us that looked right into the drama department. There, when we wanted to do something with a lot of people together, we would use that room, put microphones in there. It served as our main studio and the drama department’s main classroom. We really improvised in those days. It was an interior room. The only window led into the drama department.
[Kids came any time of day regardless of whether you were there?] No. That’s one thing I did not allow, is for kids to come in when I wasn’t there. I had to be there. Some of them did get in. I don’t know how they got the keys, but we were constantly arguing over this. I didn’t like it at all. I was responsible for all that equipment, and how they finagled keys, I’ll never know to this day.
I remember getting angry and kicking them all out a couple of times. I said, “This is not a hangout. This is a viable classroom,” in a sense. “You wouldn’t hang out in the English department classroom this way.” It was a kind of an escape for a lot of these kids. It was an extracurricular activity, like a gymnasium, where kids could hardly wait to go. These kids that were so inclined and talented. I had to screen an awful lot of students to find the most talented ones.
We had celebrities in there from time to time. I’m a percussionist. Played in Navy bands, sat in with Artie Shaw band. Known drummers came in. Louis Bellson. I would play fours and eights with them. Steve and others would cheer us on. Was a radio announcer most of my life. Worked way through high school in 1930s as radio announcer. Worked in Hawaii after Pearl Harbor on propaganda broadcasts. Wrote for Danny Kaye’s CBS radio show. TV, movie, nightclub.
We taped a lot of shows. It was never broadcast to the student body because there was no way of doing it, unless you put loudspeakers in every classroom, which is unforgivable. It was heard off-campus. They heard it at home, or if they were carrying radios, they could listen. This was aimed primarily at the parents and the community.
The idea was to give the community an idea of what was going on in the school and its activities, part of the educational process, plus uncovering and encouraging talent. This was our whole purpose of being. Parents could tune in and find out what was going on in school. We had a regular news broadcast, assemblies, visiting speakers, English department starting new program.
At noon we went on the air. We had the mornings to tape a lot of shows.
When school was closed, we were closed, too.
We broadcast a lot of sports games, a lot of the musical programs, too. I worked very closely with the music department.
Game broadcasts were remotes. Theron Whitfield chief engineer.
We had almost carte blanche with any equipment we needed. So we got this remote equipment and telephone lines installed. Money I don’t think was much of a problem in that school. We got all the equipment we wanted, and I had a big budget for music, records and transcriptions, all kinds of PSAs. It was a very rich school. We always felt we were the best rival to New Trier. New Trier had the reputation of being the best and wealthiest school in Chicagoland, but we always thought we were their equal, scholastically as well.
Last year I worked there, worked hard to get network established, with New Trier and school to the south. Paperwork prohibitive. Jealousies.
We had unlimited resources of all kinds. All I had to do was go to the music department and say we’re interested in broadcasting your concert, symphony band. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s do it.” We didn’t go out into the community. We stayed within the parameters of the school. I don’t think we went beyond the football fields. You didn’t have the portable equipment to do remotes that you do today. Tape recorders much larger then. Today, schools have TV stations.
World Book encyclopaedia lured me away.
Steve was rather quiet. He wasn’t loud or noisy. He wasn’t talkative. He was introspective. He used to sit there when other kids were talking and yakking away 50 mph, Steve would be kind of quiet. Maybe he was thinking of a new song. But then he’d bring out his guitar, and he’d change. He just came to life. He was an intelligent boy. I liked him. He always struck me as a person with potential talent, and I felt way deep, down inside of me, “Someday, this boy’s going to be something.”
Same thing happened with Karen Black. Sexy-looking with deep blue eyes. Got into plays, came alive. Same with Carrie Snodgrass. They were both mousy little girls until they got on the stage. Steve was a lot like that, too. He was quiet and introspective. Of course, he was very much alive when he did the sports. He loved sports. He wanted with all his heart to be a sportscaster. He had a great knowledge of sports and did very well. He did his homework well on the players. I was always impressed. We used to get a lot of comments on this boy doing the color. A lot of people would call us or contact us and didn’t know who he was. “Hey, that boy who did the color was very, very good.” It was his talent coming out.
