Uncle Tom’s Got Dots
To replace an iconic columnist, MidWeek finds another local icon, deejay and show promoter nonpareil Tom Moffatt, to write a new three-dot column called Uncle Tom’s Gabbin’. It debuts next week
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Tracey Saito and Tom Moffatt share a laugh as he
autographs her copy of his new book
putting together the columns,” he says. “Then I began calling up some of my closest friends who are in visitor and movie business, to see if they could be sources for me. When I realized the support would be there, I called Don back up and said, ‘OK. Let’s do it.’”
Undoubtedly, Moffatt’s list of contacts is the stuff of legend. The fact that he has hobnobbed with anyone who is someone in the entertainment industry over the past 50 years - and maybe more importantly, has also remained friends with many of them, especially Jimmy Buffet and Neil Sadaka - gives him instant credibility. “Eddie’s always had great contacts,” he adds. “Likewise, I often know when famous people are here and nobody else knows it.”
So just how well-connected is Moffatt? Check out his autobiography, The Showman of the Pacific: 50 Years of Radio and Rock Stars, co-written with Jerry Hopkins, which was released in December by Watermark Publishing and has been flying off local bookshelves ever since. Incidentally, Moffatt has scheduled book signings at 2 p.m. Saturday at Barnes & Noble, Kahala Mall; and at 2 p.m. Feb. 11 at Borders, Waikele.
It was the book, in fact, that led to MidWeek offering him the column. A promotional copy was sent to editor Chapman, who loaned it to associate editor Steve Murray, who happened to show a photo to publisher Ron Nagasawa. “It hit me,” Nagasawa says, “that’s our replacement for Eddie!”
Or as Chapman says, “If you’re going to replace an icon, why not hire another icon?”
In the book, Moffatt offers readers a rare glimpse backstage in explaining how he staged shows in Hawaii for the biggest acts - from The Who, Santana and Frank Sinatra, to Michael Jackson, Sonny and Cher, Christine Aguilera and the Rolling Stones.
One of his most memorable and satisfying promotions occurred less than two years ago, for example, when American Idol came to town featuring local girls Jasmine Trias and Camile Velasco.
“At first, the people over at American Idol weren’t going to come to Hawaii because they said (Blaisdell Arena) wasn’t big enough for them to make money. So I guaranteed them at least two shows and that made the difference. We wound up putting on three shows, and we could have done a fourth had the building not been reserved.”
Another memorable show involved the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin. “I had her reserved to perform on a Friday and Saturday back in 1968, but she broke her leg a couple of days before the first concert. We wound up canceling those two shows and doing a Sunday show instead. Aretha came out and performed from a wheelchair.” (See photo of a wheelchair-bound Franklin on the book’s cover.)
And like any good autobiography, Moffatt’s book details his humble beginnings before his meteoric rise to prominence in the local entertainment industry.
He grew up in the 1930s in a rural town in Michigan, the middle child of a Canadian father and American mother. Wary of what life was like in the city, he spent much of his youth working on a farm and playing football. During his senior year, he was recruited to play tackle for an up-and-coming coach named George Allen, who had just taken the job at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa. (Allen would later go on to fame as an NFL head coach with the Los Angeles Rams and Washington Redskins.)
Unfortunately for Moffatt, however, his dream of playing college football never got past recruitment talk.
“I couldn’t get a straight answer from George Allen about whether my scholarship would be pulled if I ever got hurt,” he explains. “So I went to work instead, taking a job at the Dodge plant washing parts.”
Moffatt stayed at Dodge for a year before finally deciding to pursue his college education. Despite never being west of his own home state’s borders, Moffatt chose the University of Hawaii.
“I just wanted to travel,” he says, chuckling while explaining the reason behind his decision to move to the middle of the Pacific.
After enrolling at UH, Moffatt found a position as a junior announcer at KGU and immediately took a liking to this communication medium everyone was referring to as “theater of the mind.”
“I got so into radio that I decided to forsake college for a while,” he remembers. “Of course, that’s when the draft board caught up with me and I was drafted to go off to Korea and fight a war. But I was fortunate enough at the time that the Armed Forces radio station at Tripler was looking for an announcer. And being that I was the only person around that had some professional announcing experience, they grabbed me.
“I wound up spending my entire Army career over at Tripler Hospital.”
Shortly after his military days came to a close in 1955, Moffatt went back to working at KGU and also landed a job at KIKI. “Of course, after I got hot as a disc jokey at KIKI, KGU fired me because they felt it was competition to them,” he explains. “From that point forward, I went full time over at KIKI.”
A few years later, developer Henry J. Kaiser decided he wanted “the hottest young disc jockey in town” to head up his brand new station, KHVH. “Mr. Kaiser called all the high school principals around town to find out who the kids were listening to,” Moffatt remembers. “When my name came popping up, he hired me away.”
Eventually, Moffatt found his way over to KPOI, where he became one of the original “POI Boys,” a group of deejays on KPOI that included Ron Jacobs and Tom Rounds. As far as how Moffatt went from radio over to the promotion side of the business, he says, “Being a disc jockey and a concert promoter sort of went hand-in-hand. Early on in my radio career, a couple of local promoters called me up one day and said they wanted to do rock ‘n’ roll shows and wanted me to be their partner. I didn’t have to put in any money; they just wanted me to tell them who were the hottest acts to bring in.
“So it was a real sweet deal for me. I was like a match-maker for them. And in the meantime, I got to learn firsthand about the promotion business.”
His first promotion under this working relationship was called “The First Show of Stars,” which debuted in October 1957.
A month later, he met Elvis Presley for the first time and introduced “The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” to the crowds at both Honolulu Stadium and the Honolulu Civic Auditorium. Moffatt and Presley fast became friends “and every time he came to town, I pretty much had an exclusive with him,” Moffatt says.
“I’ll never forget the first thing Elvis ever told me,” the promoter continues. “I was broadcasting from the top floor of the Hawaiian Village Hotel, and Elvis, who had just come in from Los Angeles on the Mariposa, and his entire entourage had the entire floor below us. Anyway, he had just gotten into Hawaii at 8 that morning and I began playing all of his music back to back starting at about 9.
“The next day, I got an interview with Elvis through his manager, Col. Tom Parker, and I asked him, ‘How’d you like what you heard yesterday?’
“And Elvis said, ‘Well, I actually got tired of hearing myself, so I changed the station!’ And I was thinking to myself, ‘Elvis got tired of hearing Elvis?!’”
After forming a partnership with fellow POI Boys Jacobs and Rounds in the mid-1960s and promoting a slew of concerts, Moffatt officially broke away at the beginning of the next decade and launched his own business, appropriately titled Tom Moffatt Productions.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
The septuagenarian, who continues to do radio every Saturday morning on Oldies 107.9FM, believes he still has a lot to contribute to the local entertainment industry. Whether it’s in concert promotions, radio or as the newest columnist at MidWeek, Moffatt says, “I’ll keep doing what I’m doing as long as it’s fun for me.”
And what makes it fun?
“A full house,” he admits, chuckling.
“But honestly, as long as people are out there enjoying themselves, then it’s always going to be fun for me.”
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