RADIO WAVES
by Ben Fong-Torres
San Francisco Chronicle
Friday, July 25, 2008

"GENUINE" PAIN: Brian Copeland, the comedian and one-man show who does weekend and fill-in work as a talk-show host on KGO (810 AM), has returned to the theater stage with his autobiographical show, "Not a Genuine Black Man," which was an off-Broadway smash in 2006 after a long run in San Francisco. Having just done two weekends of benefit performances at his original theatrical home, the Marsh in the Mission, he will begin a three-week run at the Historic Hoover Theater in San Jose on Friday.

He is unlikely to stray from his story about growing up in the early '70s in an all-white suburb, San Leandro, and dealing with numerous racist incidents and situations, only to be accused, as a successful adult, of not being "a genuine black man."

If Copeland seemed all tingly at the Marsh, it wasn't just nerves. This past year, he's been through emotional and physical roller-coaster rides that could well make up another one-man show.

"I lost my grandma (Lena Arbee) last summer to a stroke," he says. "She's in my show, and she was very important to me. She was 85, but it was still a shock, and I went into a deep depression. I must've had a bad reaction to some antidepressants, because in January, when I was home after doing a show, I fell flat on my face. I just blacked out. I had some tingling pain in my arms, but a month later I was feeling better."

Then in March, on his way to a speak to students at Piedmont High School, two cars in front of him suddenly slammed on their brakes. Copeland didn't hit his in time, and his Miata was totaled. He was saved by an air bag.

The next day - Good Friday - he was feeling OK and went jogging. He took an unfamiliar path, hit an uneven part of the pavement and fell. Again he felt tingling in his arms, which had helped break his fall.

On Easter Sunday, while driving, he says, "all of a sudden, I got that feeling like your arm's falling asleep, but it was both hands, up to my elbow." The sensation spread to cover most of his upper body, and Copeland went to his doctor.

"He said, 'Oh, my God!' Which is not a good thing to hear, coming from your doctor," Copeland says. "He said, 'You need an ambulance!' At the hospital, they found that a disk in my neck was pressing against my spinal cord. One crack of my neck could've made me a quadriplegic. It wasn't caused by my falls, but if I hadn't fallen, I wouldn't have found this out. I had to have a disk taken out."

After successful surgery, Copeland returned to his radio show - and jumped right into the controversy surrounding KGO's Bernie Ward, who'd been indicted on Internet child pornography charges. When the story broke, KGO placed the topic off-limits for its talk shows, and Copeland complied.

But while recuperating from surgery, he read about Ward's defenders blaming his problems on a political conspiracy.

"I couldn't take it anymore," Copeland says. "There was information I was privy to."

He mentioned a heated and public debate he'd had with Ward, in which Ward defended the rights of a man who'd been accused of being a pedophile and of having allegedly posted sexually suggestive photographs of children online.

By the time Copeland returned to KGO, management had fired Ward, and ABC7, its sister TV station, had revealed transcripts of telephone conversations between Ward and a dominatrix.

Despite KGO Radio's directive, Copeland says, "there comes a time when consciousness has to dictate your behavior." He talked openly about Ward, then took listener calls. "There was a big stink about it," he says. "There were still 5 percent of KGO listeners who refused to believe it."

But KGO management sided with him.

"Jack Swanson (operations manager) told me he was proud to know me," Copeland says.

Now, ironically, he is in the running for Ward's job. Swanson, rather jovially, says the station is content to rotate guest hosts and take its time selecting a permanent replacement.

"It's been seven months," he says. "This may be a record."

Copeland, Swanson adds, "has told me his hat's in the ring."

But Copeland says that he'd be interested only "if it makes sense financially, and if it makes sense with the other things I'm doing."

There's his stage show, which is coming up on 500 performances and returns to the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek in September; and there's the book based on the show, which was selected as the Silicon Valley Reads book for 2009 by the Santa Clara County Library and other groups.

And there's his health.

"I'm at 90 percent," he says. "I can stand, and I can run again. This is the rising of the phoenix!"

JAZZ MAN: Congrats to Richard Hadlock, who began "The Annals of Jazz" on Aug. 3, 1959, on KJAZ by playing Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues." KJAZ, Hadlock says, was 2 days old and housed in "two closet-size rooms" in Berkeley. Having moved to KQED-FM, and then to KCSM (91.1 FM) 21 years ago, he's entering his 50th year of spinning great music.

Besides hosting "The Annals of Jazz," Hadlock has played soprano sax in numerous bands, including Big Money in Jazz, which features fellow KCSM host Mal Sharpe.

In a letter to his audience, posted on KCSM's Web site, Hadlock saluted KJAZ founder Pat Henry for keeping his all-jazz station alive, against all odds, for 30 years.

Hadlock's program airs on KCSM from 7 to 8 p.m. Sundays. Next week's show, he says, falls "on the eve of what would have been Louis' 107th birthday. It seems to me to be a good time to celebrate Louis Armstrong, virtually my musical godfather . ... After an opening spin of 'West End Blues,' I'll run my conversation with Armstrong, taped in 1963, but somehow never before aired. It is always a joy to hear this sweet, bright and gifted man speak. Even his words swing." So do Hadlock's.

HALL OF FAME: The third class of inductees into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame has been announced, and it includes some first-class professionals. More on the balloting and the inductees in a future column. For now, the names, in alphabetical order: Rosie Allen, Alex Bennett, Red Blanchard, Renel Brooks-Moon, Bob Fouts, Bill Gavin, Hap Harper, Mikel Hunter Herrington, Russ Hodges, Don Klein, Michael Luckoff, Dude Martin, Terry McGovern, Doug Pledger, Dave Sholin, Roy Storey and Russ Syracuse. The 17 new members will be inducted Oct. 1 during a luncheon at Berkeley's Doubletree Inn. For information: http://www.broadcastlegends.com.

RANDOM NOTES: Peter Finch, news director at KFOG (104.5 FM), is hosting a gathering of radio reporters, producers and others who tell stories over the airwaves for "an evening of aural entertainment," including playbacks of favorite air checks. All radio lovers are welcome, admission is free, 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Bazaar Cafe at 5927 California St. ... Norman Davis, whose Bay Area DJ resume ranges from Top 40 KOBY and KYA to free-form KSAN and KKCY (the City), has been hosting a blues show, "The Midnight Flyer," for years. The program has been picked up by KYCY (1550 AM) and airs at 8 p.m. Sundays ... 1550? That's where "Wonderful KOBY" was, 50 years ago, when Davis was there as "Al Knight." And, yep, you got it: He was the all-night man.

Ben Fong-Torres hosts "Backstage," 7 to 9 a.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. Sundays on KFRC (106.9 FM, http://www.KFRC.com). E-mail: pinkletters@sfchronicle.com.