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INTRODUCTION

by Jim Harmon

Dick Lupoff often been said to have been at the leading edge of various waves of popular culture. He was among the earliest writers of serious ability to be interested in comic books as a fun part of the arts. He produced fan magazines and books on the subject, including his first mystery novel, The Comic Book Killer.

Other interests like Edgar Rice Burroughs, boys’ books from the start of the century, and the mystery genre in general were reflected in his output.

In this latest entry to his growing mystery list, The Radio Red Killer, Richard A. Lupoff offers a story involving a man who is a self-styled authority on Old Time Radio, who is at once hilariously insane and crunchingly poor. For this book, he offered me money to write the in­troduction, to take a break from writing my latest book concerning radio history, Boxtop Premiums on Radio and TV. He knows where to go for what he writes about.

The OTR program host, Lon Dayton, is only one of many remarkable characters, liberals, fascists, jazz musicians, hillbillies, to broadcast from fictional Radio Red—KRED—in the Bay area. One real radio station with an all inclusive philosophy in the Berkeley area, KPFA, carried an old-time radio program hosted by this writer for a time. The show originated at KPFK, North Hollywood, and lasted for several more years than its brief outing on sister station KPFA.

I observed only some of the political in-fighting Lupoff describes while I was there at the similar KPFK, but my biggest battle was over the type of splicing tape I used editing my masters.

It was Dick Lupoff who gave the audience the mixture of wit and personality that kept him on the air on KPFA for a record twenty years covering books and authors, probably some from radio, the medium that depended on the word.

An ear for correct dialogue is always useful for a writer. You not only have to put in good stuff, but throw out the bad. Hemingway called it a “shit detector.” Lupoff certainly has one, not only for his own characters in his story, but for the dialogue in the old radio pro­grams he creates for oleo pieces to accompany his play. You will hear echoes of Gabriel Heatter, Jack Armstrong, Bob Crosby, Corliss Archer—echoes from a vanished world.

Dick has said I inspired him to actually go out and do professional things in what had been a hobby. I had a number of science fiction stories in print, and one article on comic books in a fan magazine be­fore he did, but Dick has gone much farther than I have. He spent seven times more years at his radio station than I did. He has written more novels than I have chapters in my books such as The Great Radio Heroes. My latest venture is producing and performing in brand new commercial episodes of such radio classics as Tom Mix and I Love a Mystery. Dick Lupoff’s continuing career concerns creating an en­tirely new detective character, Marvia Plum, who one day may be­come featured on the Internet Drama Hour or whatever the medium is then. Once again, Dick Lupoff will be ahead of the pack.