I enjoy telling the stories of people who live to make a difference.  In a recent blog I mentioned Rascal McCaskill, and several of you found him interesting.  So forgive me, I know this isn't about real estate, but it's a true story about an incredible couple.  I hope you had a Rascal and Jerry McCaskill in your past. -- Bill Cherry

  {===Rascal McCaskill, at 80, Performs Once Again

Recently the 1957 graduating class of Baytown's Robert E. Lee High School gathered at League City's plush South Shore Resort and Conference Center to primarily honor the life of their longtime celebrity hero, Victoria's Bill "Rascal" McCaskill. To get together among themselves to see and be with old friends was secondary.

In the 1950s, McCaskill, now past 80, just out of the armed services, joined the soon to be legends of Houston radio; names like Ken Collins, Don LeBlanc, Daddy Deep Throat and Paul Berlin. And it was at Baytown's KREL-AM station where McCaskill took his "Night Train" radio program out each evening at 7 and brought it back to a close at 10 PM with Roy Hamilton singing and delivering the final message, "You'll Never Walk Alone."

McCaskill, an Eagle Scout before he was 16, mixed his scout values with the somewhat controversial tunes like "Annie Had a Baby," and the song of a recent victim of Russian roulette, Johnny Ace's "Pledging My Love." So irrespective of whomever wants to take the credit, it was McCaskill who introduced race music, later called rhythm and blues, to the Houston white teenage market.

Thousands of kids within the Gulf Coast signal area of KREL joined the ranks of the rabidly loyal Rascal McCaskill listening audience. What was going on at KREL spread with the same wildfire as that that was going on at the huge Nashville station, WLAC, and its own legend, Gene Nobles.

 { === Rascal McCaskill in 1953 - KREL's "Night Train"

Between records McCaskill squeezed in advice on how to solve a particular boyfriend problem, how important homework and studying were, and the reading of hundreds upon hundreds of postcards from listeners wanting McCaskill to dedicate special songs to their "someone."

The speculation is, and it's probably on the low side, that through the life of his KREL program, more than 100,000 request cards were sent in by listeners. The station had to hire a couple of students to come in after school to sort the mail and have it ready when McCaskill got there just before 7.

His radio audience went through the meeting and the courtship and the marriage of Rascal McCaskill with "Blond Top", who has been his wife, his only wife, for more than forty years, Jerry McCaskill. And she became a program celebrity in her own right as listeners would call in to speak with her.

Over and over McCaskill has seen throughout the years the undying expressions of admiration he garnered from the three years, 1953 through 1956, that his "Night Train" program aired on KREL. And it obviously bewilders him. It never fails. Every time we're together, or speak by phone, or email one another, he asks me if I can explain the phenomenon to him.

The answer is quite simple, although it's one his humbleness refuses to let him accept. It's known as charisma. Bill McCaskill had it then and he has it now. Fortunately the charisma he had over his audience more than 50 years ago has weathered the test of time, and it has because with his music and celebrity, he insisted that it made good sense to be level-headed and have good moral values.

So at the Baytown Ganders Class of ‘57 reunion, once more they put Rascal McCaskill on stage in front of a mike and among the turntables, and he cranked up Buddy Morrow's baritone sax version of "Night Train," his theme song of more than 50 years ago. As he spoke his first words, the theme song now playing in the background, McCaskill's normally very deep south regional dialectal conversational voice vanished on command, and his wonderful mid-west accent and resonant, self-assured radio voice took its place again.

Tears welled up in the eyes of the 200 now elderly men and women, as they went to the dance floor to relive those days. And for the rest of the evening, the Class of ‘57 danced to the very same tunes that they did back then when they'd jam the small KREL studio while McCaskill was on the air.

It was an awesome experience, I promise you. I wish you'd have been there.

                                      Copyright 2007 - William S. Cherry