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    he's back, y'all

    Ken Hoffman broadcasts the big return of one of Houston's most beloved morning radio personas

    Ken Hoffman
    Jun 13, 2022 | 10:00 am
    Mr. Leonard Houston Platinum Radio
    Mr. Leonard is back in Houston.
    Photo courtesy of John Rio

    One of the most beloved morning radio figures ever in Houston, last seen here 30-plus years ago, is finally back on the air.

    Well, he wasn’t exactly seen, and he’s not exactly “on the air.”

    Mr. Leonard, the outrageously funny character on the wildly popular John Lander and the Q-Morning Zoo radio show from 1982 to 1990, now is hosting a Saturday morning show on a new Internet station called Houston Radio Platinum. The station plays a classic rock format, including Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Bee Gees, Chicago, Eagles … you get the idea.

    Just visit the official Houston Platinum Radio and visit “Listen Live” or download the free app.

    The (high-pitched) mystery voice
    While he was a key figure on the ratings behemoth Q-Zoo, when radio stars were big celebrities in Houston, Mr. Leonard, though presenting himself as a man about town, was never seen by his listeners. That was part of the gimmick. Who was behind the mystery voice?

    The Q-Zoo dominated Houston’s dial with ratings that seem incomprehensible in today’s fractured radio industry, with terrestrial, Internet, subscription, streaming, satellite, and podcasts all competing for listeners.

    Mr. Leonard, performed by John Rio, moved the needle for 93Q Radio. With his lime green leisure suit, cherry red shoes, lime green Pinto, wife Onetta and lame excuses why he wasn’t coming to work that day, Mr. Leonard was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma neatly tied up in a silly comedy sketch.

    If Lander sent him to Cooter’s club on Richmond (the bar where four New York Mets were arrested for brawling) for a personal appearance, Mr. Leonard would call in and say he was at the Cooter’s location in The Woodlands. Where was everybody?

    There was the time that 40,000 fans were at the Astrodome for Mr. Leonard’s announcement that he was running for president with running mate Clara “Where’s the Beef?” Peller. He did show up that night, driving around the bases in a car with the windows rolled up, only his arm sticking through the sunroof waving to his supporters.

    His Houston Platinum Radio show marks the first time that Rio has hosted a show in his Mr. Leonard persona. Up till now, for the past 40 years, he always tormented a scolding, not-buying-it straight man with his excuses, schemes, and pranks.

    Leonard across the U.S.
    Mr. Leonard wasn’t just a sensation in Houston. After Rio did a comedy bit with Lander live in studio (usually why he had to leave work early that day), he’d jump into another room and do the same Mr. Leonard bit over the phone with a morning host in New York, Cleveland, Dallas, Philadelphia, Boston, and other major markets.

    Rio left the Q-Morning Zoo in 1990. There was, as Cosmo Kramer would say, “an incident” complete with a courtroom battle over who “owned” the Mr. Leonard intellectual property. Rio won but this national star wasn’t on the air in his own hometown.

    Rio has continued to play the Mr. Leonard character on stations across the country. As John Rio, in his normal voice, he’s hosted shows on the ABC Radio Network and, yes, you might have heard him while shopping for groceries on the Randall’s Radio Network. He also appeared for several years on Scott Shannon’s syndicated Top 40 Countdown Show.

    I had breakfast with Rio last week at the Buffalo Grille and asked him, how did you create Mr. Leonard in the first place?

    “In 1982, I was working on KRBE here in Houston hosting a nighttime show as myself when a friend called. He was recently hired at 93Q where John Lander was creating what would become the Q-Morning Zoo show. My friend knew that I did a funny voice for an urban kind of character and said I should do it with Lander on 93Q,” Rio said.

    “I told him, ‘I can’t do that, I work for KRBE, I can’t work for the rival station at the same time.’ He said that nobody would ever know because the character’s voice is so different from mine. Eventually I took him up on the offer and was working for 93Q in the morning while keeping my job at KRBE. I did this for a pretty long time. It would be several months before 93Q offered me a fulltime position.”

    But what to call Rio’s newly created character?

    “The character started taking off. We developed the character as the station’s public service director. The first bit was a public service announcement about boom boxes hurting people’s shoulders from carrying them around. As we were writing it, we wondered what should be his name? At the time, Mr. Bill was real popular on Saturday Night Live. I thought let’s just call him Mr. Leonard. I wanted a neutral name, kind of like Leonard, that would force people to use their imagination on what the character looked like.

    “That’s how it became a mystery character, mainly because I didn’t want KRBE to realize that I was working with Lander at 93Q at the same time.”

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    game, set, zina.

    Best of Ken Hoffman: Interviewing Houston's greatest tennis icon

    Ken Hoffman
    Aug 29, 2024 | 12:30 pm
    Zina Garrison, tennis player
    ITATennis
    Garrison, a tennis legend, is now the tennis director of Houston Parks and Recreation.

    Editor's note: After the sudden death of beloved columnist Ken Hoffman on July 14, CultureMap is republishing some of our favorite "Hoffman's Houston" columns. In honor of the U.S. Open, here's Ken's interview with Houston tennis legend Zina Garrison; it was originally published on June 27, 2022.

    As a child, Zina Garrison learned how to hit a tennis ball on the public courts at MacGregor Park during the 1970s and became, simply, the most accomplished player ever from Houston.

    She developed into a Grand Slam champion, a Top 5 ranking in the world, Wimbledon finalist in 1990 with 20 tournament titles, Federation Cup captain, and Olympic gold medal winner and later Olympic coach.

    Now Garrison is back where she started, only this time she’s devoted to making Houston a great place to learn and play tennis … again. Like she did.

    “I am now the tennis director of Houston Parks and Recreation,” Garrison tells me. “I’m over all the public tennis programs and facilities. The job came open recently and I applied for it.”

    Wait... she’s the greatest champion this city has ever produced — and she had to apply for that job?

    “To be honest, I was more interested in the benefits than the money. As you get older, you start thinking differently,” she shares.

    Unlike the major sports leagues in America, tennis doesn’t provide any healthcare insurance or assistance once a player, even a legend, retires.

    “They’re working on it,” Garrison, 58, notes. “But as of now, nothing.”

    Garrison said her first priority as Houston’s tennis director is to repair the public courts.

    “I want to bring the public tennis facilities up to where I’d be proud, where everybody would be proud, to bring people to use our courts. There are cracks in the courts. Nothing’s really been done in the last 20 or maybe 30 years,” she says.

    “I’ve traveled to Florida and some other places and they have really nice public courts. Tennis in Houston was really thriving for a while and we had nice courts and people could play in the parks. We had junior programs. We flourished. That’s my main goal.”

    While I had Garrison on the phone, I served up some questions:

    CultureMap: Wimbledon is on. You’re familiar with that tournament, right? Who are your picks to win the men’s side and women’s side?

    Zina Garrison: Yes, I’m familiar with Wimbledon. I have my alarm set for the early morning so I can watch. I have a weird pick, a more personal pick, for the men.

    I would love to see Rafael Nadal keep going on, but it’s going to be tough for him. The guy from Italy, Matteo Berrettini, I watched him play a couple of weeks ago and I think he’s going to surprise a lot of people. And I am absolutely in love with that little guy, Carlos Alcaraz, from Spain. He’s made me watch tennis again.

    On the women’s side, I don’t think it will be Iga Swiatek. I think it’s just too hard to keep a streak like hers (35 matches in a row including the French Open title) going in today’s game. It’s really wide open. I don’t really have a pick, it’s just who comes in and plays well at the right time.

    CM: What do you think about Natela Dzalamidze, the doubles player from Russian who switched her nationality to Georgia so she could play Wimbledon, which has banned players from Russian and Belarus this year?

    ZG: I don’t like that she was able to do that. I was just on the phone with (former pro turned broadcaster) Chanda Rubin talking about what’s going on in tennis these days.

    First of all, there is the human rights stuff that’s going on in Russia and Ukraine. We have to start forcing accountability for actions. A lot of people didn’t agree with what Wimbledon did, but I think they had to take a stand.

    CM: The women’s GOAT is easy — it’s Serena. But who do you think is the men’s GOAT?

    ZG: Wow, that’s a hard one. If you had asked me earlier this year, I would have said Roger Federer because of everything he’s accomplished. But right now I’m going to have to go with Nadal. Nadal has taken tennis to a whole ‘nother level, of getting people to watch, coming out of the pandemic, where he has matches and you think he can’t come back and he’s still grinding no matter what.

    For me, he is the epitome of what we need in this world right now: Never give up but not be selfish about helping others. I know it sounds clichéd, but that’s what I’m going through right now.

    CM: When I first met you, you were painfully shy. It was hard to get an answer out of you. Now you’re a TV commentator and a regular chatterbox. What happened?

    ZG: I was an introvert but I had always been intrigued by people of wisdom. A lot of it came as I developed confidence in myself. I had always been told at a very young age, if you really knew me, I spoke a lot. If you didn’t know me, I would be quiet. I would only speak about things that I was extremely passionate about.

    As I’ve gotten older, because of my experiences. I feel like I can help people so I’m not afraid to say what I want to say.

    CM: Starting the week after Wimbledon, coaches will be allowed to communicate with men players during matches. Up to now, that’s only been allowed in the women’s game. Every other sport allows coaching. Do you think tennis should allow coaching, too?

    ZG: I don’t think coaching should be allowed. That’s one of the great things about tennis. That’s a part of the sport, that you grow and figure things out. You learn to think for yourself.

    There’s always been little signals from coaches, but now you have these full blown conversations. Another bad thing about allowing coaching is it gives the players the opportunity to blame a loss their coach. That’s not good for the sport.

    CM: You were known for wiggling your butt when receiving serve. Did you know you were doing it? Did you do that on purpose?

    ZG: It started off as kind of a joke with my coaches. They said, we need you to move your feet. I said, you mean like this?

    So, it started as a joke but I realized that it helped get my feet moving: Okay, I’m going to keep doing this.

    I’ll never forget that year after I got to the Wimbledon finals, 1990, I went over to Japan and there were 1,200 people there … and all of them started wiggling!

    CM: What was the first extravagant thing you bought for yourself when the tennis prize money started rolling in?

    ZG: It was 1982, and I bought a candy apple red Volkswagen convertible with a white top.

    CM: You were on the Biggest Loser, the show where contestants compete against each other to lose weight. Let’s just say you didn’t win. Are you happy you went on that show, or do you regret it?

    ZG: I was one of the first who had to leave the competition. (No, you were THE first.) It was an experience, but I probably shouldn’t have done it. I think I regret going on there. It wasn’t what I thought it was.

    It was reality TV and at the time I didn’t know what reality TV was .I was more ready to get out of there than anything else.

    CM: Now here’s the big question, Zina. For years, I’ve had a running disagreement with ESPN 97.5 FM morning host John Granato about which is a more demanding, tougher sport – golf or tennis?

    Granato says it’s golf, because the tournament winner has to beat every other player that week, while in tennis the winner just has to beat seven players at most. And, each week, golfers have to contend with a different course.

    But, I say it’s tennis because players have to be in top physical condition, while nearly anyone in any shape can win a golf major.

    Plus, in golf, players have a caddy helping them make decisions. In tennis, players are on their own.

    In golf, you can have a bad day on Thursday and still win the tournament. In tennis, if you have a bad day in the opening round, you’re on a plane out of there.

    In golf, it’s the player against the course. There’s no defense in golf. In tennis, there’s a human opponent trying to beat you.

    In golf, the ball is lying still. In tennis the ball is coming at you at 140 mph.

    So which is the tougher sport, golf or tennis? I’m right ... right?

    ZG: Are you serious? Who is this guy who says golf is harder? The answer is tennis and it’s not even close.

    You’re playing against someone. You’re only controlling the ball when it’s on your side of the net. You can’t control what the other player is doing. It’s almost like a boxer coming at you.

    You have to have both the physical and mental capacity to win. In golf, if you have a bad day, it’s because you’re having that bad day. There’s no opponent competing with you. So, I’m saying it’s tennis.

    CM (note to John Granato): I win. Granted, it might have been the way I asked the question. Also, Garrison is a former tennis pro.

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