nce upon a time, long before FlyingTypers, I worked at KXEO Radio in Mexico, Missouri, running specialized programming at KWWR- FM.
The best part of my job was creating original studio productions and scheduling block programming of old-time radio shows of the 1930s & 1940s, including The Lone Ranger, Gangbusters, The Shadow, and others.
From programming and sales at a radio station, I moved to New York City, where I worked as a club reviewer and music critic for The Hollywood Reporter while also starting up a monthly tabloid at JFK International Airport called Airport Times, The Cargo Paper.
     While working for The Hollywood Reporter, I interviewed Elvis, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, and many others.
     During the early years of publishing Air Cargo News, my passion for music and programming continued, as Air Cargo News created a 27-hour anthology of music and interviews with survivors of The Hal Kemp Orchestra, an anthology featured on public radio stations in New York and elsewhere.
     The music was recorded and transcribed from two hundred 78 rpm phonograph records that Kemp created from 1928 until 1940, when he died tragically and the band went out of business.
     Today one way I enjoy relaxing is by creating playlists that are shared with family and friends, although I listen to mostly classical music on a daily basis.
     This playlist was created after looking at a wonderful picture of a full moon and a United Airlines airplane that ran in FlyingTypers earlier in July.
     Our “Summer Sun & Moon Playlist” is taken from YouTube so we can be assured it will play for everyone, all around the world.
     In some cases, an advertisement may pop up, but stick with it.
     You will note that some songs are repeated by different artists.
     Audrey Hepburn’s reading of “Moon River,” for example, is entirely different from Henry Mancini’s full orchestra treatment (Johnnie Mercer wrote the lyrics). Mancini’s full orchestra version of “Moon River” topped the hit parade charts in the Americas when “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” played in the movies, although I have always felt the Hepburn reading is better, more personal, and quite sweet.
     Likewise, “Fly Me To The Moon” takes on vast colors in two different versions here. A soft, lilting bossa nova treatment by Astrud Gilberto is played against lush strings, while the great Big Band crooner, Perry Como, performs a melted butter vocal against a big orchestra set piece for a more upbeat take.
     My view of music is less about style and generation, and has always been informed by something Duke Ellington said:
     “If it sounds good, it is good;” that’s what the great “Edward A” proclaimed.
     The idea here is to loop and listen to the music via your computer.
     Sure, you can watch the videos, but the music is the thing, and some of the videos are fuzzy and unnecessary.
     You can fast-forward the ads, and after a first play the ads should not repeat.
     Also, if you only have time for one song, fast-forward to Willie & Brian and the Boys for “The Warmth of the Sun.”
     For me, every time I hear “Turn Off The Moon,” the closer, I wind up listening to the entire set again.
     Would love to hear your comments, and would certainly not have to be pushed too hard or encouraged very much to share another playlist for Christmastide that would include another from Tracy Tracy & The Primitives.
     Sun & Moon works nicely from track to track, but for me the most enjoyable listening happens when you can hit “random” and allow the playlist to change every cycle—if you own a Spotify account, the link to open Sun & Moon in your own music library, where you can randomize and resort the list, is here:
Geoffrey

eeping up with Richard Malkin, the iconic father of air cargo journalism, “The Centurion” who glided past 100 years of age just this past June, is not as easy a task as you might imagine.
As the original air cargo beat reporter, it’s no surprise that Malkin worked right up to 98 years of age, after which he finally put down his sword at the publication CNS Focus, rounding out a career in newspapers and publications that lasted more than 80 years.
     Dick started at local New York papers, writing and editing various dailies and weeklies in his native Bronx, New York, and later further north in Westchester, New York, but his contribution to air cargo began in 1943, when he began editing the publication Air Transportation. It was there that he gave editorial birth to that publication as it grew and changed into Cargo Airlift and then Air Cargo World, which he departed in 1978.
     Later Richard Malkin would edit Journal of Commerce’s Air Commerce, followed by a four-year stint at our Air Cargo News and then a long period of time with IATA CNS Focus, where he ended his career.
     With a surprising air of anticipation not unlike the feeling experienced before one’s first A380 flight, we spent a morning recently with Richard, who exited his comfortable home in New Hyde Park, New York.
     We were at once amazed!
     At breakfast time there he was, out on the sidewalk and into the car with great determination, at what is now the age of 100+.
     “My upper body is fine but there are issues with the legs,” he said, moving faster on the walk then we could.
     But Richard moved in the same way he always wrote—with purpose and clear focus, willing every part of his being to answer the call and get him where he wanted to go.
     After a century, not much has changed: one still has to make an effort to keep up with Richard Malkin.
     We sat in a place called the Omega Diner near his home and spoke for a few hours over an omelet and a cup of coffee.
     “I started to write a novel, but the eyes have weakened,” he said.
     “We are gong to see what we can do about that.
     “I was asked by Aleks Popovich to write some text for IATA after I left CNS Focus and got a call from Air Cargo World very recently to offer some story ideas, but I just feel at this point that part of my life that went on for such a long time, is over.
     “I do miss writing and keeping up with air cargo, but must choose what I read and spend my time with these days.
     “There is only so much strength,” Richard said.

     As reported here in June, Richard Malkin covered the 1948 Berlin Airlift and his stories were picked up all over the world; with that, air cargo journalism was born alongside a fledgling industry, as air cargo took off.
     We asked him what it was like covering the Berlin Airlift, and how he came to have his picture taken in his signature foreign correspondent trench coat and pork pie hat in front of the ruined Reichstag in 1948.
     “I got a call at Air Transportation from the U.S. Army with an offer to fly to Berlin, so off I went from Westover AFB in Massachusetts to Berlin.
     “I flew the links everyday for a month, going in and out of Berlin.
     “We knew moving tons of coal, milk, eggs, and clothing, air cargo had really ‘one upped’ the Russians who blockaded the roadways, so more often than not as we flew the narrow corridors back and forth to Berlin, they would harass us by sending up flares to nudge us back into even tighter air lanes in and out of the city.
     “Once on a break we drove over to the Reichstag and the Army snapped that picture, but our stay was cut short again as the Russians raised a ruckus.
     “It was a tense time, but we knew that we had won the day almost from the first flight, although the aircraft landing at Tempelhof would come in at such a steep angle to overcome buildings around the main runway, most often the aircraft made a pancake landing—meaning one second you were up on final, and the next down flat on the runway.
     “I remember the courage, dedication, and sense of purpose of all the fliers and ground support people at The Berlin Airlift was just superb.”


     As he returned home and continued his writings, the “Malkin Style” of air cargo reporting always included great preparation for all interviews.
     Richard would carry index cards with 30 or 40 questions written in advance of any encounter.
     Often post-interview, after his stories had worked their wonders, Malkin subjects would comment that Richard knew more about what made air cargo work than they did.
     To this day, Richard admits he spent the best years of his life at an airport cargo area, where he made history one story after another, at a time when he was the only one doing that kind of work.
     “Air cargo was good to me, and brought me a living wage when working at local newspapers paid half as much.”


     “I went in for an interview to get the job at Air Transportation in competition with two others, including a reporter from The New York Times and another from The New York Herald Tribune.
     “Just prior to leaving home, my son Barry, who I guess was about five at the time, pinned a set of wings on my jacket that he had gotten in a box of Cracker Jacks for good luck.
     “Some years later, my first boss, John Budd, said one of the reasons I was hired had to do with those wings.
     “‘We figured you knew something about aviation,’ Budd said.
     “All I knew was that with a growing family, air cargo would double my $45.00 a week salary.”


     “It’s changed,” he said, when he heard of the cadres of executives who—with little background in cargo or even, in some cases, aviation—are now heading up air cargo operations.
     “It’s the same,” he replied, as we spoke of overcapacity in every market with a pulse in 2013.
     “Wonder when FedEx is going to get into the ocean business—that would really close the circle,” he said.
     “They have already conquered air and road.”
     The thing that is so positive about Richard is that despite the drawbacks of age, he continues to persevere.
     “I learned from a very young age that you always have to work, but you should also enjoy what you are doing,” he said.
     “Right now I am working on getting the vision back a bit, and then we can move ahead,” Richard Malkin assures.
     That’s 101 from the man who invented air cargo journalism.
     Stay tuned—we will be doing breakfast again, but next time, I’ll wear my track shoes.
Geoffrey

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