Did you you read Caitlin Hernandez's LAist longread about the history of LAX and how to keep it from driving you totally around the bend? This time on Off-Ramp we're digging into one of the most surprising and weirdest aspects of the airport's history ... when the airport created a ghost-town that today resembles what LA will look like a few months after the apocalypse. We'll drive there with author Denise Hamilton, who set a novel there, and a former resident.

Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live; and bythe Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

Off-Ramp theme music by Fesliyan Studios.

When the Grammy Museum honored Big Jay McNeely in 2017, when he was 90, they said:

McNeely is a true original and the last of a generation of blues/R&B musicians who inspired the early rock pioneers, and are still around to remind us where popular music came from.

As Off-Ramp jazz correspondent Sean J. O'Connell put it when he interviewed him for the show: 

"Big Jay McNeely was etched into pop music immortality in 1951. Photographer Bob Willoughby captured McNeely at a concert at Los Angeles's Olympic Auditorium 1951. In the photo, the Watts native is blasting his tenor sax on his back, the camera capturing the raised fists of post-war teenage hysteria seething in undershirts and pompadours at the foot of the stage. From Central Avenue with Charlie Parker and Art Tatum in the 1940s to the R&B circuit of the '50s and '60s, McNeely was there through a roller coaster of musical evolutions and had a good time along the way. His showmanship and soul are both youthful and timeless. He is rock & roll history, alive and well."

Big Jay died a year later, but not before our listeners got to hear his story, and now you do, too.

Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live; and bythe Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

Off-Ramp theme music by Fesliyan Studios.

Bob Willoughby photo used with permission from his estate.

Welcome to Doo-Dah; Doo Dah Surf - Part One; The Duke of Surfing; Doo Dah Surf - Part Two; Doo Dah Surf - Part Three; Hang Tiki; Surf Break; Time Capsule

Wine Country: Echo Park; Wine Country: Slow Pickings; Wine Country: A Tasting; Spitting Good Wine; United in Hate; Parkers Posing; Hail, Little Caesar; Twelve Tones, Hanging Ten; Lucille Ball Remembered

A Christmas Carol Redux

R.I.P. Ike Turner; From Face Paint To Real Paint; Paul Stanley Gets the Led Out; Christmas in Longo; Season's Giving: My Friend's Place; Give the Gift of Modernism; Father Boyle Parable; Tried and True; LA Punk Turns Thirty; O' Christmas Tree

Getting a Handel; Homeless Get Robbed; Follow-Up with Union Rescue Mission; Skid Row Serial Killer; Sing Along; Join the Chorus; Songs of Freedom; Cocktail Rules; Do Nothing Writers; Epic Waves Hit California; City Officials Kick Up Heels for Hanukkah; Light Thieves; ValleyWood; KPCC's News Zocalo

On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me....; John Rabe is Selected; Skid Row's Only Women's Shelter; Food for Stuffed Animals?; A Taste of Geisha; Coach Carroll Reaches Beyond USC's Ivory Tower; KPCC's Big Dog breaks down Big Game; You Are a Grain of Rice; Keach as Galileo; LAUSD Flunks P.E.; The Other Scrooge; Country Bumpkin tops the Charts in the Big City; First Lady With Style

Note from John Rabe

Happy Thanksgiving; Charles Phoenix; In Time For Turkey; The Ernie Kovacs of the West Coast; It's A Jingle Out There; The Basque Valley; Norman Mailer Was My Editor; The Abundant Pharmacy; Herbal Taste Test; Cast-Offs; Cross Talk