0:00 so jim jamiro has had an illustrious career in the entertainment business he created the disney channel jim what sparked your interest in music and in particular the the songs from from that that great american songbook period two of my classmates were talking to each other and one asked another about a song and the other person says don't i don't know ask jim he'll know who are you and where are you going [Music] what do you want together we'll find the
0:36 ideal path on the way to wow show with your host kevin bell should you pursue a deep passion you have for your career our guest this week jim jamiro would say yes he did it successfully and he's going to talk to us about how you might be able to do the same thing but first i'm going to go over here and talk to philip about mixing up a cocktail all right what are you doing for us this week so we're going to be making a cocktail named after a broadway play from 1917 called up and mabel's room uh it's very
1:13 similar to a brown derby in that it uses whiskey grapefruit and honey so we'll start that here uh unlike the brown derby the mabel's room calls her rye so we're gonna do an ounce and a half of rye excellent well a cocktail based on theater sounds like the perfect thing for this session with jim you know what let's um let's mix up a couple of extra ones so we can share them with the crew because i think they'll really like this sure yeah i knew you would say and grapefruit yeah i knew you would say that so i already prepared a second oh shaker before you go see we just don't want to give him two blitz
1:50 so back in the 1910s a lot of broadway plays uh had cocktails so patrons would enjoy a cocktail before or before end during the show so it's nothing oh wow oh i thought you meant on stage though but you're talking about the people watching the show no wonder so many of those shows were so highly thought of i mean when you've had a couple of cocktails why not if we're gonna add an ounce of grapefruit juice to this you know they're doing this supposedly
2:25 and they're going to be doing this more in movie theaters now which should help the movie industry out i would think yeah absolutely who doesn't enjoy a little libation while you're watching something yeah can make a bad movie tolerable [Laughter] a little funny our director is giving me a funny look maybe not we won't mention any names of intolerable movies though will be kind and unlike the original recipe i like to add a little splash of lemon juice to it okay all right
3:02 thank you very much you've got the double double shaking action that's the sign of a true professional bartender thank you angry uh people get angry if they're waiting too long for a drink now that seems to be counter intuitive you know you're waiting for a drink just relax it'll be there exactly and that is in here
3:38 [Music] yeah just in case they're a little different you mix them all together and fix that uh yeah or maybe not it's got that old-fashioned cocktail color to it you know sort of golden a lot of a lot of juice like a pinkish hue a lot of juice yep all righty
4:19 okay i'm gonna take the fullest one sure because i can't i'll let you pass out the other ones to the correct actually you know what oh yeah yeah two of my favorite things ryan grapefruit juice right what could go wrong cheers [Music] so jim first of all thank you so much for for coming on the show i really appreciate it um we're gonna we're gonna get you in
4:54 studio here but are you are you drinking anything special i i got some good purified water here okay well this is this is up in mabel's room which was made in your honor you know because it was a broadway show in 1917 right so here here's a toast to you bottoms up kevin yeah when you first mentioned that drink speaking of music i thought you were talking about maybe maybe it was mabel mercer because mabel mercer was considered to be one of the original great cabaret performers of all time she was inspired frank sinatra and so many other people and the cabaret society in new york has
5:30 actually named the mabel mercer society after her she's quite yeah quite quite written in the music world yeah wow well so i'm going to start out i'm just going to read um a short biography of you so our viewers know a little bit more about you so jim jamiro has had an illustrious career in the entertainment business he created the disney channel and as its first president brought it to profitability in two years through a series of innovations including interactive programming and the disney channel magazine jim was
6:06 also a pioneer in home video especially as president of walt disney home video for six years where he launched one of the first direct marketing campaigns having started his own company j2 communications in 1991 jim turned around the national lampoon brand among many many honors jim is a voting member of the motion picture academy which is the organization that sponsors the oscars every year what jim is here to talk to us about is his lifelong love affair with the great american songbook the music of cole
6:41 porter richard rodgers irving berlin and so many other legendary composers and lyricists so i i met jim through his pop popular lecture series that he uh presents both at the beverly hills public library and i guess at the 92nd street y in new york i've never seen you there it's called jim jay's jukebox and that is going to lead me to my first question so jim what sparked your interest in music and in particular the the songs from from that that great
7:16 american song book period it goes back to my teen years you know uh when i was a teenager we all loved music that was the most normal thing in the world to love the music of the day but i i knew from the time i was in my teens that i had a very special way of hearing and listening to music i just did and i remember a little incident which i didn't think much of at the time two of my classmates were talking to each other and one asked another about a song and the other person says don't i don't know ask jim he'll know now i'm 13 years old i didn't understand the significance of
7:52 that but why did i have that reputation among my classmates that among all of them who love music that i somehow heard in a different way so i spent my entire life uh in the entertainment business but loving music at the same time and and uh and then my first wife uh passed away in 1995 she was a singer wonderful singer uh by the name of jody donovan i was shut down at the time i was not interested in dating i thought maybe it would be interesting to do something about this music so i actually called the beverly hills public library
8:27 and i said would you be interested in me doing a lecture on music and they said yeah you know why exactly you know and so i i did and they put me in a little room with about six people a little conference room and now i'm getting about 150 people one night at that lecture after my cruise ships all around the world uh so it goes back a long way and while i didn't major in music or or study music uh it's just it's just it's just an evaluation of music as far as why i like this kind of music simply because it's
9:03 to be judgmental about it kevin because it's better than most other music the the level of sophistication and quality uh in this music is really without precedent either before or after uh and and you're you're you're pretty close on the dates i i date the great american songbook from about 1915 to about 1960 and and i believe that the music was more sophisticated uh but i know that the words were more sophisticated because because i can speak english i don't write music but i can speak english and when you study those lyrics and look at
9:38 those lyrics the craft that goes into those lyrics is absolutely astounding uh and it's it's an interesting thing because many lyrics today are not artful they're a little bit sloppy uh and i think it's an interesting contrast because you hear so many young people in the music list today talking about art artists well that's only part of the story the thing that that that is maybe even more important in a lot of ways is the craft if you if you if you analyze a cold porter lyric the craft that it takes to have three successive triple rhymes you know it flows off your tongue but it's really
10:14 hard to do that johnny mercer the great lyricist johnny morrison you have to take pain you have to take pains in order to get this done and i appreciate that i love language anyway so uh so what i do in this lecture basically is is share my passion for this music and help people even though they already love music help them elevate their appreciation of the music to another level and i guess the greatest compliment that i can get from time to time is gee i've been listening to this music all of my life but i never really understood the glory of it the magnificence of it
10:50 i don't long answer yeah no no no i mean it it it's interesting you i if if my daughter were sitting here next to me she would go wait daddy he's he tells me the same thing that that you're telling me you tell me because i the the the command of the english language demonstrated by the great american songbook is just astonishing it really is so it's but somehow you you transition from that that love of music as a teenager you did get into the entertainment and
11:25 media business was that as a result of your love for music or how did how did that happen you didn't pursue music but you pursued entertainment and me so concurrently with with that i love communications i love anything to do with communications i love public speaking advertising radio television film uh marketing anything that had to do with one person speaking to another person or one person speaking to a group i just loved it so and in particular uh mass media and i remember when i was a senior at penn state
12:00 wanting to be a practitioner on radio and television and film all the great corporations came to the university uh to recruit especially the pittsburgh corporations alcoa u.s steel jones and lachlan you know they were looking for i never went to any of those jobs none because i knew that what i wanted to do was go to new york and work for cbs now interestingly enough when i first got interested in media uh because i was in high school plays a lot and on the debate team and announced the football games i thought i wanted to be like you are you know in front of the camera
12:36 and i was pretty good at it in my high school where my graduating class had 54 people in it you know not a whole lot of competition wow then as soon as i got to penn state i realized to be honest with you i was okay but i wasn't that good you know i wasn't ever going to be you know the next lawrence olivier on the boards so i transferred that feeling from getting in front of the camera getting behind the camera and then and then the rest is history so that during that period during my career uh at disney and cbs my own company i always loved music but i really do do
13:12 that much about it except for hiring musicians to work on our shows so they were kind concurrent loves as a matter of fact media and music it seems to me for a teenager those are pretty sophisticated uh self-assessments to make um did you make those on your own did you have um counselors or your parents guiding you you know what i'm saying what was what was more of that process that's a really really interesting question uh and the answer the short answer is in those early years
13:48 no i didn't uh and the reason i say that is because i was a broadway musical theater aficionado i love musical theater but my mom and dad didn't take me to musical theater i have friends who love musical theater and they will say very often it will say something like i remember my mom and dad first taking me to a musical comedy in uh you know when i was eight years old i did not have that experience so that i i got that on my own now i would say that my mother you know did love music and i can still remember her little radio in her kitchen in pittsburgh
14:23 listening to kdka it was my favorite station that was a big music station in those days so so i was on my own uh for all of that and then i actually actually ended up taking my mom and dad to broadway music you got to see this mom and dad and i'm taking them to see shows but i got a summer job at wfil in philadelphia that's where they did american bandstand in those days uh uh in in the summer between my junior and senior years at penn state well i was the happiest guy in the world guys actually working at a big market television station
14:58 and i worked for a guy named bill mogray bill mowbray was a great musicologist just just a great one he somehow took me under his wing i admired him so much and i respected him so much that he would say things to me that seemed to be an opinion but i took them as gospel so that for example bill mulberry once said to me you know the real secret of the basie band is the sac section well i have taken that as living gospel ever since i mean if you talk to me about the crazy man i'm telling you right now it's not about freddie green [ __ ]
15:33 it's about the sax section and then he once said uh you know every note that hoagy carmichael ever wrote came out of vic spiderbeck's horn the great coronet player well the interesting thing about that you know he said that in a very uh unequivocal way every note came out of his horn well it turns out and i've read many hokey carmichael uh biographies in the in interim years intervening years it turns out that hokie acknowledges the tremendous influence i hope that bix had
16:08 on on his music so bill mowbray uh what was a great influence and i just tell you one other story because it's a very interesting personal story so bill mulray kept saying to me you know when i die jim i'm going to give you i want you to have my record so we should have all my records here thousands of big banner hundreds of big band records and uh he finally did pass away he was living in clearwater florida at that time and his wife called me up later and said you know jim he meant what he said he wants you to have these records so i don't know what he wants to have these records and please well i have a lot of trouble taking
16:45 people things from people who have passed away that means really can you keep him for a while he said she said no problem he had a special room for all of his records i don't go in that room you can you can you can stay as you can i'll keep them there as long as you want and finally after about a year i went down to the clearwater and packed up all those records which i have uh in a in a cabinet on the other side out of this room so jim take a maybe a person just coming out of college
17:20 or you know someone they've been in the military for a few years or maybe more than a few years and now they're transitioning to civilian life and they've got this thing that they deeply deeply love maybe it's music maybe it's something else what advice would you give them for turning that into a career something that they i mean i suspect in some ways you would be a person who would say i never worked a day in my life because i was always doing what i loved right so what what advice do you have for someone
17:55 who's in that career transition position who wants to you know have a career like you had something they can love well if they already love it they've already passed the first test which is to have passion about something that would be my first piece of advice but you've already given that as a premise and it is a very very good premise i have a couple practical things to say uh i think you have to be very proactive you have to be very proactive uh and and i like may i tell you a quick story about being proactive because it it it could be instructive
18:31 about how you have to make your own way i wanted to work for cbs i was i was getting a graduate degree at penn state and i wanted to work for cbs i wrote them a letter i devised an idea for a term paper talked about the internal communication structure of a broadcast station the apprentice being was here's a media company but how do they communicate with each other within and to do that i would have to talk to every uh department head at that station for a day and then kind of coordinate how they communicate with each other be programming and promotion and sales and production and so forth
19:07 so i wrote them a letter jack schneider still very much with us was a general manager at the time he became a very big man at television uh and i said i want to do this paper can i come and talk to you he said sure so i went down there i met with him in the morning and then i met with each of those executives through the day and at the end of the day they did a wrap-up now i'm going to tell you something that's unequivocal kevin i didn't think i didn't hope but i knew that at the end of that day i was going to get a job offer i knew it that's why i went there oh i had to do the paper anyway but it
19:42 was a pretense to get in and talk to those people and i knew it i knew it went through the whole day schneider back into jack snyder's auto and i remember his first he says you've turned up everybody's shirt tales here today those words would you like to come and work here this summer uh now that's just a little story but the truth of the matter is that it was my i it was my pro-activity that that made that happen i came up with the idea i sent the letter i journeyed to philadelphia so
20:18 you really have to so people say you have to be breaks you have to get lucky yeah but you can make your own breaks you can create your own world by being proactive the the other thing that's it it's really knit but it's important if you don't know anybody then use the law of large numbers you know if i were trying to get a job in radio and i didn't know anybody i wouldn't send out 10 resumes i'd send out 150 recipes he sent 150 resumes a hundred we're going to front 100 will get thrown away immediately 25 more people look at it and say i'm not interested 25 more will say maybe
20:55 much for maybe later and then three might call you and say come on in for an interview that's called the law of large numbers so uh so make your own way be proactive spread the net as widely as you can and finally i would say be willing to start small somebody was just talking to me about that the other day they wanted to get in the radio business they had this dream you know about working for a radio station in chicago i said go to albuquerque new mexico go to oxnard california start small get some small market experience get
21:30 you know you know hone your craft and then you can move up from there because you know life is long and if you are willing to pay the price it's not a bad price to pay by having stepping stones in your life you can make that time work for you you know it's like like the stock market if you start early you know you can get you can get rich just by being a normal investor over 60 years it's just the way it work but if you want to get rich quick you're more likely to fall flat on your face so that the stepping stones to a career
22:05 you know twenties thirties forty fifty got a lot of time you know to get to that peak job you might want in mid mid mid age so being willing to pay those prices is a big deal well that that's those are all three fantastic pieces of advice and and that actually takes us to the end of the interview it went so fast but um jim thanks again for for being on the show it terrific terrific to have you on and hopefully we'll we'll keep in touch and and we'll we'll see you uh at jim jay's uh jim
22:42 jim jay's jukebox yeah we got an alliteration there right we'll see you guys my next one uh zoom is on april 28th a week from wednesday oh okay i've got i think i've got in my calendar so i'll see you then yeah sounds great thanks thanks so much jim kevin i enjoyed it very much thanks for having me that's our show for this week thinking back to the advice that jim gave about finding a job doing something you love be proactive i mean it's it's amazing right to put together a whole paper and then have the chutzpah
23:18 to contact somebody in the field and say i want to talk to all your executives about this but look it got him in the door and we can all do that and then plan out the steps right we're not going to start at the top we're probably going to start at the bottom but if we have a plan on how we're going to progress we can get there speaking of guests if you found your way to wow in one of the realms go to the way to wow show dot com and drop us a line let us know you'd like to be a guest maybe you'll be where jim was sometime further into the season
23:54 courage at all times my friends marie you're still my bell [Music]
24:42 you