Welcome. I am so thrilled you could join us today
for this deep dive. Thanks for being here. We
spend a lot of time on this show, you know, analyzing
these massive corporate shifts and sweeping technological
revolutions. Huge industry wide changes. Right.
But. Every so often you come across a single
human life that just it perfectly mirrors all
of those massive ships. Oh, absolutely. So today
our mission is to explore one of the most wildly
unexpected and honestly instructive careers in
the history of American entertainment. Rigdon
Osman Dees III. Which is a fantastic name. It
really is. But you probably know him better as
Rick Dees. Right. And for our sources today,
we're pulling from a really comprehensive biographical
dive into his life and career, along with some
historical milestones, legal records, and industry
data. There is a lot to cover. There really is.
The sheer volume of his accomplishments across
all these different mediums is just staggering.
Yeah. So my role today is to look beyond just
the timeline of, you know, what happened and
really analyze why it happened. Because this
one single career is a masterclass in media evolution,
adaptability and really the sometimes incredibly
ruthless business of pop culture. And it is a
wild ride. Just as a quick preview of the aha
moments we have in store for you today. How does
a guy record a novelty song about a duck? A duck,
yeah. Get fired. Because that exact song is quite
literally too successful. Right. Inadvertently
change United States copyright law and then go
on to build a radio empire valued at almost half
a billion dollars. It sounds made up. It does.
Okay, let's unpack this. We have to start at
the beginning, long before the radio empires.
Dees was born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1950,
but he was raised in Greensboro, North Carolina,
and he didn't waste any time. He actually began
his radio career at a local Greensboro station
called WGBG while he was still in high school.
And that early start is a really crucial detail
for you to keep in mind as we go through this.
Yeah, how so? Well, he wasn't just dropping into
the industry later in life based on sheer charisma,
right? He was learning the mechanical and technical
aspects of broadcasting from the ground up as
a teenager. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. And then
he went on to graduate from Grimsley High School
and headed to the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill, where he earned a bachelor's
degree specifically in motion pictures, TV and
radio. So he really treated the entertainment
industry as. a science to be studied before it
was a stage to be conquered. Exactly. He was
actively studying the very mediums he was about
to completely dominate. Right. And while he was
doing that, he was bouncing around the southeastern
United States, working for various stations to
cut his teeth. But the real launch pad. The place
where he steps onto the international stage is
Memphis, Tennessee in the mid to late 1970s.
Yes. He takes a job at WMPS AM 680, which is
known locally as the Great 68. The Great 68.
Yeah. And to understand this moment, you have
to understand the massive cultural phenomenon
of the era, which was the disco craze. Oh, it
was everywhere. It wasn't just a genre of music.
It was a cultural explosion that saturated fashion,
film. everyday life. And local radio DJs back
then were the absolute gatekeepers of that culture
for their specific communities. So what does
Rick Dees do with this massive cultural wave?
In 1976, he writes and records a satirical novelty
song called Disco Duck. Yes. Now, if you haven't
heard it, it is exactly what it sounds like.
It's a goofy, upbeat track featuring a Donald
Duck -esque voice. But the numbers behind this
joke of a song are absolutely mind -blowing.
They really are. It sold more than six million
copies. Wow. It hit number one on the Billboard
Hot 100. It earned a People's Choice Award for
Favorite New Song. Which is wild for a novelty
track. Right. It even made it into the movie
Saturday Night Fever. There is a brief scene
where older people are learning to dance to the
disco beat in a studio, and Disco Duck is the
actual song playing in the background. So it
became an undeniable cultural juggernaut. It
completely transcended being just a local radio
bit and became this massive international hit.
But the mechanics behind how that hit was managed
by the station. That is where the story takes
a sharp and highly instructive turn. Here is
where it gets really interesting. I found two
absolutely hilarious facts in our source material
about this song. First of all, Rick Dees is riding
the wave of a duck song, but he didn't even perform
the duck vocals on his own record. No, he couldn't
do it. He literally couldn't do the voice. The
vocals were actually recorded at Shoestring Productions
in Memphis by a man named Ken Pruitt. And get
this, Pruitt moved away before the song even
blew up. Oh, wow. Yeah. Then, when the song became
a massive hit, they had to take the show on the
road. So they put together a tour build as Rick
Dees and the cast of Idiots going all the way
from Disney World to New York City. And who did
the voice for the tour? For that tour, the duck
vocals were done by Michael Chesney, who had
previously done comedic voices for Dees. That
is just a brilliant piece of branding. Being
the famous face and the namesake of a voice you
physically cannot produce. But the second fact
is even crazier. His own station management expressly
forbade him from playing disco duck on the air.
Right. Rival stations in Memphis were refusing
to play the record because they didn't want to
inadvertently promote a competitor's morning
DJ. And his own station wouldn't let him capitalize
on it either. Which is so backwards. It culminated
in him actually getting fired. He went on the
air one morning, mentioned that his song was
almost number one in the entire country. but
lamented that his own station wouldn't let him
play it. Management immediately called it a conflict
of interest and let him go. What's fascinating
here is that it's the ultimate irony of 1970s
radio. This incident perfectly captures the rigid,
hyper -competitive nature of local broadcasting
at the time. How so? Well, you have to remember,
local terrestrial stations back then, meaning
traditional AM and FM radio broadcast over actual
radio waves, they were absolute fiefdoms. Right,
highly territorial. Exactly. The station management's
primary and often only concern was their local
market share. They simply could not handle the
tension between having a local broadcaster and
an international celebrity in their booth. Because
he was suddenly bigger than the station. Yes.
The moment Dees outgrew the local AM broadcast
footprint, he became a threat to the station's
tightly controlled ecosystem. He wasn't just
their local guy anymore. He belonged to the culture
at large, and the station saw that as a liability
rather than an asset. which means he had to figure
out his next move. After sitting out a mandatory
45 -day non -compete clause, Dees bounces back.
He gets hired by RKO Radio to do the morning
show at another Memphis station, WHBQ. And he
is so successful there that the station owner,
RKO General, sees the writing on the wall and
offers him the morning show in the second biggest
market in the country, Los Angeles. The big leagues.
Exactly. He moves out west to KHJ on the AM dial.
And he arrives in Los Angeles at a very, very
precarious moment for the medium. AM music radio
is rapidly losing ground to FM. Right, because
of the sound quality. Yeah. AM was historically
dominant, but it had technical limitations. It
was prone to static. It broadcast in mono. FM
provided a much higher fidelity, clear stereo
sound, and listeners were demanding that quality
for their music. AM was really starting to be
viewed as a dying platform for pop music. But
Deez doesn't just go down with the AM ship. When
his station, KHJ, switches its format to country
music, Deez leaves. He makes a remarkably smart
pivot to Key Eye FM in July 1981. Yes, the jump
to FM. This is the massive business aha moment
for you listening. He didn't just become a popular
DJ in Los Angeles. Over a short period, Rick
Dees turned Kiai FM into the number one revenue
generating radio station in the entire country.
It's unbelievable. We are talking about an asset
value approaching half a billion dollars. It
is a staggering financial reality. Yeah. He took
the momentum of his personality and matched it
perfectly with the rising technological dominance
of the FM dial. Yeah. But we also have to look
at how he did it. Right. The actual content of
the show. Exactly. He's a pioneer of what the
industry calls the morning zoo format. I remember
those. Yeah. If you've ever listened to a morning
radio show that features a chaotic mix of zany
sound effects, recurring comedic characters,
parody songs, and that really high -energy forced
cheerfulness banter you are listening to the
format, Dee's helped perfect. It completely changed
morning commutes. It turned the morning commute
from a passive music listening experience into
a highly active entertainment routine. He had
Los Angeles in the palm of his hand, but he didn't
stop there. And again, his next massive leap
comes from a seemingly petty dispute. As these
things often do. We see the birth of his globally
syndicated weekly top 40 countdown in October
1983. Why did he start it? Because Key Ice FM
dropped the legendary American Top 40 program
over a dispute about playing network commercials.
Deez stepped right into the void and created
his own countdown starting on just 18 stations.
And if we connect this to the bigger picture,
this is where Rick Deez transitions from a highly
successful local broadcaster into a global media
commodity. The syndication model. Yes, we need
to talk about the mechanics of syndication because
it is the ultimate business multiplier. Instead
of broadcasting live to one city. A syndicated
show is recorded once and then licensed out to
hundreds of different stations to play on their
own schedules. It's scalable. You effectively
remove the ceiling on your earning potential.
This wasn't just a local L .A. show anymore.
The weekly top 40 eventually became the longest
continuously running pop music countdown in the
world. Wow. It was heard in over 200 countries,
broadcast on the Armed Forces Radio Network,
and in December 2008, it became the very first
English -speaking radio show to ever air in China.
It's hard to even wrap your head around the sheer
scale of that footprint. I really want you to
think about the business savvy required here.
He effectively turned his own voice, his own
morning routine, into a highly exportable product.
Because pop music is universal. He recognized
that universal appeal. By packaging that music
with his established energetic persona, he created
a flexible format that could be slotted into
almost any station on the planet. He didn't just
have one version either. No, he even created
different versions of the show for different
station formats. If a station played current
hits, they got the hit radio version. If they
played what the industry calls hot adult contemporary,
which targets an older, more mellow demographic,
he had a version for them. He even had 80s and
90s editions. He scaled his personality to fit
every possible market need. He built an absolute
empire. But as with any empire, there are clashes.
Which brings us to a really bizarre legal pivot
that ended up impacting the entire entertainment
industry. The Supreme Court of Comedy. We are
heading to the Supreme Court of Comedy. In 1984,
Dees gets nominated for a Grammy Award for his
comedy album Hurt Me Baby Make Me Write Bad Checks.
Around this time, he's working on another comedy
album. He wants to do a parody of the classic
Johnny Mathis song when Sonny gets blue. Deez
wants to call his 29 second spoof when Sonny
sniffs glue. A very subtle, highbrow, artistic
reimagining. Exactly. So Deez and his record
company do the standard industry practice. They
reach out to the copyright owner of the music,
a man named Marvin Fisher, to ask for permission.
And let me guess. Fisher says absolutely not.
He completely refuses to let his beautiful song
be associated with sniffing glue. So what does
Dees do? He just puts the track on the album
anyway. Which leads directly to Fisher suing
Dees for copyright infringement. And this is
a massive aha moment for anyone interested in
how creative industries work. This wasn't just
a joke. It resulted in a landmark 1986 ruling
from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, known
as Fisher v. Dees. What did the court actually
say? Because I know this changed everything.
The court ruled in Dees' favor. They found that
the 29 second spoof was clearly intended to poke
fun at the specific recognizable style of singing
that Johnny Mathis was known for. So it was protected.
Because his core purpose was poking fun, the
court ruled it qualified as a parody. Right.
Therefore, it was protected under the doctrine
of fair use and was not copyright infringement,
even though Dees didn't have permission. That
is huge. I want you to really consider the ripple
effects of this. Dees literally helped shape
the legal precedent and protections that modern
creators and comedians. rely on today. Like YouTubers.
Yes. If you go on YouTube and watch a reaction
video or go on TikTok and see satirical lip sync
or listen to a weird Hal Yankovic album, all
of those creators are shielded by the legal groundwork
laid by that 29 second glue sniffing joke. Without
it, the modern Internet landscape for parody
and satire might look very, very different today.
He was clearly a pioneer when it came to protecting
his own creative rights and pushing the envelope.
But... So what does this all mean? Protecting
a brand of that sheer magnitude also required
a ruthless approach to business one that occasionally
crossed a serious legal line. We do have to look
at the darker side of the business. We do, to
get the full picture of the man. In 1991, Dees
found himself on the losing end of a completely
unrelated massive lawsuit. He was successfully
sued for $10 million in damages. Wow. The court
found that Dees and his business manager acted
with malice and oppression by deliberately diverting
profits from his lucrative business. top 40 countdown
program away from a former business partner.
That specific phrase, malice and oppression,
is heavy legal language. It really breaks the
illusion of the cheery DJ. It really does. Listeners
heard this energetic morning zoo voice every
single day on their drive to work. He sounded
like their best friend, but behind that microphone
was a fiercely aggressive corporate machinery.
Right, the cutthroat reality. Building a half
-billion -dollar brand isn't just about playing
hit records and doing funny voices. It involves
complex partnerships, hard -nosed negotiations,
and, as we see here, litigation, where tens of
millions of dollars are at stake. It's a stark
reminder of the dual nature of these massive
media personalities. The persona is fun, but
the business is cutthroat. I remember hearing
his voice popping up everywhere in the 80s and
90s, not just on the radio. Didn't he try to
make the jump to television and movies as well?
He absolutely did. It was an unrelenting push
to stay culturally relevant. He understood that
his core product wasn't just radio, it was his
voice and his persona. Right. And he was more
than willing to license that out to ensure he
remained a fixture in the American living room.
He played the iconic Los Angeles DJ Ted Quillen
in the hit Richie Valens' biopic La Bamba. He
hosted the syndicated Paramount TV series Solid
Gold. Oh, I loved Solid Gold. He guest starred
on huge sitcoms like Roseanne, Married with Children,
and Diagnosis. Murder. He even did a massive
amount of voice acting. I was looking at his
credits, and it is a wild list. He was Rock D's
in the Flintstones, Rocket Rick in Jetsons. The
movie and his voice is literally the radio DJ
you hear in the opening credits of the 1983 cult
classic film Valley Girl. He was everywhere.
Much later in 2020, he even voiced Peter Griffin's
impression of him on Family Guy. And in 2021,
he became the voice announcer for Nextar's Rewind
TV network. Now, not all of these cross media
attempts were massive hits. For instance, he
had a late night talk show on the ABC network
in the early 90s called Into the Night. starring
Rick Dees, which ran for only one season before
being canceled due to low ratings. That's a tough
market to crack. It is, but the hit rate doesn't
matter as much as the strategy. He was ubiquitous.
He was cross -pollinating his radio audience
with TV and film audiences, creating a feedback
loop that kept his brand at the top of pop culture
for decades. That unrelenting drive brings us
to his most recent pivot, the digital era. After
23 incredible years at KISFM, Dees left the station
in February 2004 with no official explanation
given to the public, by the way, and was famously
replaced in the morning slot by Ryan Seacrest.
Talk about a changing of the guard. Really? Dees
bounced around a bit after that. He hosted mornings
on Movin 93 .9 with Petty Long Legs Lopez and
Mark Wong until that station changed formats
to Spanish contemporary music in 2009. He was
actually one of the last voices heard on the
station before the flip, telling his loyal listeners
to go find him at his website. He later did a
stint at KHHT for about a year. But the real
capstone to this narrative of adaptability happens
much more recently. In March 2025, Rick D's Entertainment
signed a major forward -looking deal with iHeartMedia.
Securing his legacy. Exactly. This deal essentially
opened up the vast, decades -long archives of
the weekly top 40. They launched permanent iHeartRadio
web streams, including a dedicated classic channel
entirely focused on his old broadcasts from the
1980s, 90s, and 2000s. That is so smart. To promote
this new digital venture, he even briefly reunited
with his legendary former co -host Ellen Kay
on her morning show on KOST FM. It is the ultimate
victory lap for the digital age. It's a brilliant
monetization of nostalgia. Just look at the complete
lifecycle of his adaptability here. He goes from
local AM radio, recognizes its decline, and jumps
to dominant FM radio. Right. He hits a ceiling
there, so he pioneers global terrestrial syndication.
And finally, when traditional radio fragments
in the modern era, he moves to digital streaming
archives. He has managed to successfully monetize
his voice across five decades of technological
and cultural shifts. He realized that the shows
he recorded 30 years ago still hold massive emotional
and nostalgic value today. And he found a modern
distribution network to capitalize on it all
over again. So let's look at the incredible journey
we've just taken for you listening. We started
with a high school kid in North Carolina meticulously
learning the ropes at a local station. He goes
to Memphis and records a novelty song about a
duck that sells six million copies, even though
he couldn't actually quack. Still blows my mind.
He gets fired for being too successful, moves
to Los Angeles and turns Key I .S. FM into a
half billion dollar radio titan. He starts a
globally syndicated countdown over a petty commercial
dispute, accidentally becomes a pioneer of American
fair use copyright law to protect a 29 -second
joke about sniffing glue, and eventually licenses
his entire life's work for the streaming generation.
It is a phenomenal story. And as always, knowledge
is most valuable when you can apply it to your
own life. For you listening, the story of Rick
Dees is a definitive masterclass in the art of
the pivot. Absolutely. When AM Music Radio started
dying, He didn't complain about the changing
times. He went to FM. When his local management
told him no, he found a way to syndicate himself
globally. When the formats changed and terrestrial
radio fragmented, he licensed his decades of
archives to the digital streamers. He never,
ever stayed married to a declining medium. He
was always looking for the next open door, and
if one wasn't open, he just built his own. Exactly.
And looking at the entirety of his massive career
raises an important question that I want to leave
you with today. Rick Dees. Built his empire,
his wealth, and his cultural influence by capturing
millions of listeners at the exact same time
every single morning. Right. It was appointment
listening. It was a highly centralized media
landscape. There were only so many dials on the
radio. When you look at today's world, a hyper
-fragmented algorithmic landscape of infinite
podcasts, custom streaming channels, and hyper
-personalized Spotify playlists. Is it even possible
for a single human voice to unite and influence
global pop culture in that exact same synchronized
way ever again? Wow. That is a fantastic question
to ponder. We went from an era where everyone
in the country was listening to the exact same
top 40 countdown on their way to work to an era
where everyone is living their own personal algorithmically
generated audio bubble. It's a completely different
world. It really makes you wonder what the next
Rick Dees would even look like or if that mold
is just permanently broken. Thank you so much
for joining us on this deep dive. We loved unpacking
this story with you and we warmly invite you
back for our next exploration. Have a great day.