Boss Radio: Revealed at Last
    Ron Jacobs & Bill Drake
    June 19-20, 1999       home

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That "Radio Name"

RON JACOBS: You were born Phillip Yarbrough, so how did you get that radio name?

BILL DRAKE: Oh, it wasn’t my idea. You have to realize at that time—back in the late 1950s—companies would go in and buy radio stations. They all would copy one another. But the stations weren’t paying anybody any money. So a guy would go into a market and if he was good, somebody from across the street at another station would offer him more money and hire him. Bartell Broadcasting Company figured a smooth way around this. They assigned everybody a different name and Bartell then owned the name.

RON JACOBS: The company.

BILL DRAKE: Yeah. So the station I went to work for was WAKE in Atlanta.

RON JACOBS: Which was a big station.

BILL DRAKE: Well, a 250-watt radio station. It was the biggest 250 watt station that I ever saw. We wound up with a 42 share [in the local radio station ratings]. They were going to name me Blake. They wanted something that rhymed with WAKE. So I said how about Drake? That was my mother’s side of the family. Drake.

RON JACOBS: So the whole thing about San Francisco and the Sir Francis Drake Hotel and all that, is bullshit.

BILL DRAKE: What was that?

RON JACOBS: People say that you got to San Francisco after Atlanta and you changed your name to Drake when you get there. Because of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco. That's bullshit, right?

BILL DRAKE: I’ve seen that published. A lot of people talking about that--talking about how it actually happened. But, no, I was Drake in Atlanta from 1958 and then went to San Francisco in 1961.

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