ALL PHOTOS MICHAEL DAVIS
Those beyond the 40-year watermark, however, recall Price's five-year run as the undead alter ego of Baron Daemon, the campy vampire who fronted two separate TV series for Channel 9 from 1962 to 1967. Older baby-boomers still have a soft spot for Price's former monster-movie host, who first presided over a Saturday-night-live (or rather dead) franchise designed to showcase the station's acquisition of American-International drive-in cheapies such as Roger Corman's Attack of the Crab Monsters.
Back then, it was all in a long day's work for John Michael Price, hired as a staff announcer just days before Channel 9 (then WNYS), the new ABC-TV affiliate in Central New York, first hit the airwaves on Sept. 9, 1962. The station quickly established itself as a brash upstart with its late-night horror movies, with Price's Baron Daemon taking his creative cues from the appeal of creature-feature TV hosts in other TV markets, such as Cleveland's wildly popular Ghoulardi (played by WJW-TV's mellifluous announcer Ernie Anderson, the late father of Boogie Nights director Paul Thomas Anderson).
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Price's vampire caricature combined Bela Lugosi-inspired riffs with a penchant for Ernie Kovacs-style comic mayhem, as he hosted the between-commercials skits for Channel 9's fright-flick series. The Saturday-night programs proved such a lucrative ratings hit (longtime sponsor Frank's Pizza moved a lot of pies during the show's run), Channel 9 also got the cockamamie idea that maybe the baron could metamorphose into a kiddie host for a weekday series.
Thus, The Baron and His Buddies popped up a few months later on Channel 9's afternoon schedule, with bloodsucker Daemon serving as an unlikely rocketship pilot, a goofy excuse to broadcast episodes from the Japanese cult cartoon Astro Boy and old Flash Gordon serials. Yet the local children turned out in droves to be a part of the show's daily peanut gallery. Compared to the skimpy video exposure given to kids who turned up on WSYR-Channel 3's Denny Sullivan and His Gang, in which some area Cub Scout troop in the audience would turn up in a brief camera shot during the last 10 seconds of the show, appearing on The Baron and His Buddies amounted to a cool-ghoul kiddie coup. (Full disclosure: When my second-grade teacher at Lakeshore Road Elementary School circa 1964 asked my classmates what we wanted to be when we grew up, among the standard occupations of fireman and cop, I blurted out, "I want to be Baron Daemon's bloody buddy.")
Price's silly sawtooth even recorded the hit novelty tune "Transylvania Twist," a rewrite of the Sam and the Twisters' 1963 hit "Fooba Wooba John," albeit with a coffin-kicking beat and graveyard lyrics to match ("Grab a hold of your baby and hold her tight/ 'Cause Baron Daemon is flying tonight/ If you see a weird shadow or hear a strange sound/ Scream your little heads off, the Baron's around.") "Twist" moved an astonishing 12,000 copies in the Syracuse market back in 1963 to become the area's top-selling local record ever.
The Daemon character pretty much went up in smoke when a fire raged through Channel 9's Shoppingtown studios in 1967, wiping out the baron's costumes and sets. The vampire's personal loss proved to be Price's professional gain, however, as he immersed himself in various other facets of the station's operation. The breadth of Price's 37-year career at Channel 9 is indeed considerable, with his wide talents ranging from countless commercial voice-overs to videotaping and editing his own news features.
And the "Good News" segments are a perfect fit for Price's endearing cornball humor, as he cheerfully admits, "I never take myself too seriously. I just really enjoy what I do." Despite the "Good News" groupies who enjoy his comedy, Price instead attributes Channel 9's impressive newscast ratings to the stable staff of anchorpeople, because viewers "start to identify with you and you become almost like {part of their} family."
Price has also led a busy life during his off-hours at Channel 9, including his seven-month Gulf War stint in 1991 as a public-affairs specialist when his Coast Guard Reserve unit was reactivated. And Price gets downright animated when he discusses his part-time passion as a sports officiator, including his stints with youth-league hockey, high-school football and as a blue-shirted umpire with the Amateur Softball Association.
Through it all, however, Price has remained humble about his special place in Syracuse TV history. Commenting on Price's success at luring 5,000 people at a 1960s Baron Daemon personal appearance, "Transylvania Twist" co-producer Hovey Larrison said, "If we brought in a nationally known person like Jerry Lewis, he couldn't do any better drawing people than you do." To which Price replied, "Yeah, but if I go to Rochester, I couldn't draw two people!"
Price had steadfastly turned down requests for more Baron Daemon appearances over the decades, although he did revive the macabre character for a May 1993 appearance at the first-ever Sammys (Syracuse Area Music Awards) show at the Landmark Theatre. And nostalgia nuts will have another opportunity when Price dons "his Kmart wig" again for the second annual Halloween Bash, to be held Saturday, Oct. 30, 8 p.m., at the Heroes and Legends Cafe, inside the Center of Progress Building at the New York State Fairgrounds. (Tickets are $5, with a portion of the proceeds to benefit St. Jude's Children's Hospital.) Although it's safe to say that the State Fairgrounds' gig will provide the final Baron Daemon sighting for the millennium, this vampire can never really be declared down for the count.
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Q:
What was it like during the early days of Channel 9?
A:
It was hectic and pretty darned exciting. We did all of our announcing live, all of the station breaks and a lot of the voice-over commercials. I would sit in an announcer's booth, and on the other side of the glass a director would point and cue you at the same time the on-air light would come on. You had 20, 30 seconds to read your announcements and then get off; sometimes the on-air light would go out in the middle of a sentence because we wanted to hit the network programming right on time. When it was local programming, and we were running our own movies, we could fudge it a bit.
I also did Silver Dollar Jubilee during the first six or eight months we were on the air, where we ran these old movies in the morning and asked questions about the movie, like, "What is the name of the leading man's dog?" So people would call in with the right answer during the break, and we paid them with nine silver dollars. I was also a weathercaster, before there were meteorologists; I'd get the weather from Hancock Field, then report whatever they had on the air. But that didn't last too long because within a couple of months I was doing Baron Daemon, and {station management} didn't feel I could do weather and the Baron at the same time.
Q:
Were the Baron Daemon segments on late Saturday nights taped?
A:
No, we were live for about the first year. Our floor manager, Bill Eadie, who just retired from Channel 9 two years ago, wrote a lot of the skits, ideas and concepts, but not necessarily the dialogue. Then the slapstick and one-liners were ad-libbed by us. When I say "us," I mean Dennis Calkins, a commercial artist who's still with Channel 9, who played my sidekick Very Hairy, and Bill, who would write himself into the show in different roles, such as Boris, "the world's smallest Frankenstein."
Remember, we were all in our 20s when we started, so when I run into people now and they say, "Hey, Mike, you oughtta bring the Baron back again," I say, "That was 35 years ago! I was in a different frame of mind back then. I had a lot more energy for that sort of thing." I wouldn't want to put on that costume now and do it everyday. When we started the Baron and His Buddies kids' show, I would be in that outfit everyday. And with personal appearances at night and on the weekends--I bet I did a hundred appearances a year--I'd be wearing that costume seven, eight, nine times a week.
People ask me, "Why don't you do a Best of Baron program?" But tragically, we have nothing left; we would just rewind the same tape and record right over what we had done the week before. We have about two or three really short outtakes, and that's it. The fire in 1967 destroyed everything.
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Q:
How popular was the afternoon show?
A:
We had 25 to 30 kids a day in our peanut gallery, and parents would make these reservations months in advance. We had a long waiting list. We would play games and giveaways with the kids. I think why it was so popular is that people saw a comedic vampire that wasn't scary. So I was a clown, but instead of a red wig and a polka-dot suit, I wore a vampire's cape and put on white powder and bushy eyebrows on my face, and I talked funny, like, "Hello, boys and ghouls! Mooo-oooh-ha-ha!"
Around the same time I did another children's show called Cousin Orky. He was a hillbilly hayseed character, and I wore a pair of my father's old baggy pants with wide suspenders and a ragged T-shirt, an old dress hat with a brim pulled down over my head, and a corncob pipe. I also blacked out a couple of teeth, and I used a voice very similar to Edgar Bergen's Mortimer Snerd. All of this just to show Warner Brothers cartoons on a live morning show. But I came out one day on the Baron and His Buddies afternoon show, and I {accidentally} did Cousin Orky as the Baron. I got the wrong voice with the wrong character!
Q:
What was it like appearing on Channel 9's Dance Party?
A:
Every week we would do the Dance Party show, which was first hosted by Rolland Smith, who left Syracuse {and went on to CBS News}, and then {Salt City deejay} Bud Ballou came in to host, and we were on live every Saturday afternoon for about two years. And I did a lot of them.
One of the gimmicks was that in the middle of the program, especially after we recorded "Transylvania Twist" in 1963, they would play the music and the kids would do the twist; then I'd run out and the girls would scream and holler, and I'd pick up one of the girls and run off camera. I'd give her a Baron Daemon T-shirt and sweat shirt, and with a red marker I'd put two little marks on her neck; then I told her, "When you walk back in, hold your head and act like you're weak, and that you might faint, because you lost all that blood."
Q:
Where was the single "Transylvania Twist" recorded?
A:
Mike Riposo had his recording studios up on the 10th floor of the top floor of the old Onondaga Hotel, which they tore down many years ago, on the corner of Jefferson and Warren streets. Sam and the Twisters was the band and the Bigtree Sisters were a backup trio. That was fun. We did a couple of takes where we did it all together, then he did some takes separately with the band, the girls and myself. I never did find out when the final product came out whether Riposo put some of those {separate tracks} together or whether it was one we did as a unit.
Capitol Records pressed the single, although it was on the WNYS label, and it was backed with the instrumental "Ghost Guitars," where I would come in and say puns like, "This tune's the most/ From ghost to ghost."
It was just a novelty song that the station did to promote Channel 9 and me as Baron Daemon, and it was distributed within our 50-mile viewing area. And when it was the No. 1 record in Syracuse for several weeks, I went to the boss and said, "Maybe we can go with this on a regional basis, let's try it {elsewhere} in the state, or in New England or Pennsylvania. Because it's a novelty thing, it might catch on." He said, "Well, they don't know about {Baron Daemon} down there, and we don't want to put the money into promoting and distributing it." Since I didn't have the money to finance it, that was the end of that.
But there were {interested} people. A deejay from Cleveland called me and said, "Hey, we've got this record, somebody who used to live in your area came out this way and they dropped it off at the station, and it's really cool, man, far out!" He gave me all the disc jockey talk of the 1960s, and he asked where he could buy it, and I said, "I'm sorry you can't, unless you come to Syracuse." Some disc jockey from Florida wrote a letter asking me the same thing. {Laughs.} So I'm a Syracuse one-hit wonder.
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Q:
Did the Baron Daemon phenomenon spawn some local imitators?
A:
WNDR-AM program director Dandy Dan Leonard called me and asked if I would like to come over to the radio station in the afternoon and do Baron Daemon. But the time conflicted with the Baron and His Buddies and the Channel 9 boss said, "No, I don't want you to do that. You're ours and we want you to do it just here." After I told Dandy Dan no, within a month or so they had their own vampire character named Count DeCreep, played by Fran McGrath--and he and I went to Onondaga Valley High School and graduated the same year. And we're both playing vampires at the same time!
Q:
Did the Baron Daemon character run its course by the time of the fire?
A:
I think we were good for another year or so, but we had a general manager {John McArdle} who had come in a few months before the fire, and he thought the character was offensive for children. But we were doing so well in sales, we had sponsors waiting for available time on the program. After the first few months we were on the air, we were No. 1 in our time slot right until the very end. So he didn't want to get rid of the show because it was bringing money into the station.
Then we had the fire and the show was off for about six months; during that time Channel 9 shared studios with WCNY-Channel 24. So six months later when we came back to our studios in Shoppingtown, I went to the general manager {with a list} and said, "I've got it all itemized to buy three new costumes for the ones that went up in the fire, and to redo the set..." And I started to slide this list over to him, and he said, "Just keep that. We had a lot of calls and mail over the first few months, but now people have gotten used to not seeing {Baron Daemon}, and I never really cared for it anyway, and it's just a good time to phase it out and forget about him." So we did, but when it finally ended after five years, there were no big crocodile tears from me. I thought, "Well, that was fun, but I'm just as pleased that it's over."
After the Baron and His Buddies, I continued to do a lot of announcing but I also started learning how to run the control board and got pretty good at that, so I filled in as an audio operator for quite a while. Then I got into news as a general assignment reporter for about six years, around the late 1960s to early 1970s, when we were still using 16mm film. I covered just about everything, but what I really liked best was the features, where I could have fun with it.
Q:
Was there an Adam West-type perception of you, where people thought you couldn't do anything but Baron Daemon?
A:
It was difficult to break away from it--not for me, but for other people. But Channel 9 was very nice to take a risk and let me be a general assignment reporter. And for a long time people didn't know I was the Baron. When Phil Markert and I were both working together at the station, people would run up to him and say, "You're the Baron, aren't you?"
Q:
Where did you receive your broadcasting education?
A:
I wasn't a very good high-school student, but my father and brother were Syracuse University graduates, so they pushed me {into SU}. But I wasn't there very long; I wasn't hacking it and I figured that before they throw me out, I'd better get out. So around 1960 or 1961 I went to New York City's Academy of Broadcasting Arts for about a year. We had some good instructors there, like Jim Gordon, who graduated from SU and called the Syracuse Nats basketball games; he left here and went to New York City and did Giants, Knicks and Rangers games for years. Telly Savalas was an instructor there, and so was William B. Williams, who was a big radio man on New York City's WNEW. And it worked out well because it was a trade school and all we did for six hours a day was broadcasting. The couple of courses I took at SU were in broadcast theory, and we never got in the studio; they took us for a tour of a studio only once.
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Q:
So you really got a second education at Channel 9.
A:
Oh yes, it was a lot of on-the-job training. When I started, it was at the end of the era where people could maybe get their foot in the door, and if they worked hard, showed some ability and were ambitious, they could work their way up. Those days are over; studios don't take chances any more. When you apply now, they say, "Where's your degree?"
Q:
How did the "Good News" segment evolve?
A:
It happened about 15 years ago, when the 6 p.m. newscast expanded to an hour, and I asked then-general manager Steve Kronquest about doing features. After I did two or three of them, he liked them enough to let me specialize in feature reporting. I have the best of both worlds, because of the nature of what I do, I don't have to worry about a conflict of interest, so they still allow me to do voice-over commercial work. They wouldn't allow that for a regular general assignment or investigative reporter. In fact, the last 15 years have been the most fulfilling of my career; I really enjoy coming in to work.
Q:
Where do the jokes and gags come from?
A:
I seem to have a knack for the puns and gags, and I think people now look for the stand-up closing kickers that I do. Rarely do I plan those in advance. When I get on location, and I see the surroundings and I chat with the people, something clicks and I ad-lib something on the spot.
Q:
Just like you did 37 years ago.
A:
{Laughs.} That's right, that's right. I just don't wear a vampire outfit, and I speak in my own voice, but it's the same material! But luckily, there seems to be an audience out there that likes that old shtick.
What's really gratifying is that I'll go into a classroom of third-graders, and the kids will be saying, "We see you on TV all the time," then I'll go to a senior-citizen home and they'll say, "We see you on TV all the time." So {my audience} goes from kindergarten kids to people in their 80s.
As a feature reporter I consider maybe 70 percent to 80 percent of my job as public relations. I don't really consider myself as a serious journalist, but whenever I go to a classroom of kids and the rapport that I have with them, that's all good PR for the station. And they recognize that, too, and feel comfortable with it.
Q:
How was reviving the Baron Daemon character for the 1993 Sammys?
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A:
Over the years people would ask me to appear as Baron Daemon at this or that function, and I'd say, "No, I don't want to do that anymore, that's behind me." But when I found out that Sam and the Twisters were going to get together, I thought it would be fun. And the Twisters and I had never performed live together. When I did {the old} appearances, I always lip-synched "Transylvania Twist." And it was fun, and I said, "That's it, I'm never going to do it again." {Laughs.}
Then Dave Rezak called me, and said that Al "Grandpa Munster" Lewis did the Halloween Bash last year, and would I be willing to do it this year. I was very concerned about what kind of music was going to be there; I didn't want to be there with a pot-smoking Woodstock crowd, I didn't want to be part of that scene. So Rezak guaranteed me that it would be a family-oriented event, and the bands will play a lot of 1950s and 1960s rock'n'roll. So it sounded like fun--and he made me a good offer, too.
Q:
What do you have planned for this Saturday's Halloween Bash?
A:
I've rehearsed with the band Prime Time at the music room of Christian Brothers Academy, and we'll do the "Transylvania Twist," plus some parodies I used to do years ago. I did Roger Miller's "King of the Road" only I was "King of the Grave," and Harry Belafonte's "Banana Boat (Day-O)" would be my encore number at live appearances, where I would sing, "Daylight comes and I want to go home." You can't be a vampire and be out in the daylight! Then there was a song called "Cotton Fields" {the 1961 folk hit recorded by the Highwaymen}, only I'd sing, "When I was a little bitty baron/ My mummy would rock me in my coffin/ In those cold damp mortuaries back home."
Then I would do these poems, where I would say, "And now, my cool ghouls, here is a Transylvania poem," and I would do nursery rhymes:
Little Jack Horner
Sat in the corner
Eating his piranha fish pie
He stuck in his thumb
And pulled out a stump
And they called him Lefty!
{Does his Baron Daemon laugh, then shakes his head, laughing.} I still remember the lyrics to that stuff!
