New York and Sixties Glamour Girl Jackie the K
Radio disc jockey Murray the K's glamourous go-go dancer wife, her fashions, and their wild life, as chronicled in New York Magazine 1967
Before New York magazine became the stand-alone glossy weekly (and now website with many popular verticals) known and loved far beyond the city, it started as the Sunday magazine supplement of the New York Herald Tribune newspaper in 1963. After the Herald Tribune went out of business in April 1966, it merged with two other papers (the Journal-American and the World-Telegram and Sun) to create the New York World Journal Tribune, an evening paper with New York continuing as the Sunday supplement. Editor Clay Felker continued his work there, every week from September 12, 1966, to May 7, 1967, when the World Journal Tribune ceased publication.
I have a copy of the May 7, 1967, issue of New York: The World Journal Tribune Magazine, and with an interview with Shirley MacLaine and a review of the latest Monkees record, there is little in that final issue that reveals it was the end or even possibly close to the end (New York wouldn’t reappear in its current form until April 8, 1968). Between articles on the rise of conglomerates and the loudness of garbage trucks is a profile of “Jackie the K”—Jackie Hayes, the wife of radio disk jockey “Murray the K.” Murray Kaufman was the top-rated radio host in New York City in the mid-1960s, where he hosted the evening show on WINS/1010, “The Swingin' Soiree.” As one of The Beatles' earliest supporters and friends in the United States, he was soon dubbed the “Fifth Beatle”—“a moniker he said he was given by Harrison during the train ride to the Beatles' first concert in Washington, D.C. or by Ringo Starr at a press conference before that concert,” one that would stick with him through the rest of his life. Tom Wolfe even devoted a whole chapter to Kaufman in The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, titled (of course) “The Fifth Beatle.”
By the time of this profile, Murray was program director and primetime DJ for one of the first FM rock stations, WOR-FM 98.7, following 1010 WINS switch to an all-news format (and it’s still the news choice for many New Yorkers). Jackie and Murray had married in January 1960; she was his fifth wife, and they met because her father ran “Murray the K's office over at Station WINS, upstairs in a two-story building on Central Park West right where it hits Columbus Circle.” Already thirty when they wed, Jackie was no nymphet, and as a dancer and performer, she was perhaps the best suited of his wives to his lifestyle. In addition to his daily radio shows, he produced rock 'n' roll shows three or four times a year at the Brooklyn Fox Theater in Downtown Brooklyn as well as producing and hosting TV variety shows (1965’s “It's What's Happening Baby” is now available on DVD), all featuring the multi-racial mix of artists whose careers he helped promote, including Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, The Yardbirds, Marvin Gaye, the Dave Clark Five, The Ronettes, Aretha Franklin, Del Shannon, The Supremes, and The Doors. Go-go dancing onstage at many of these events were Jackie and the “K Girls,” always dressed in the wildest fashions of the moment. Another one of his revenue streams were record compilations where “Murray (aided by his pretty wife Jackie) has gathered together a choice collection of golden gassers for a rockin' dancing party” or “for a hand-holding romantic mood.” Jackie featured prominently on the record covers, though her own music was not featured (she released one single in 1968 under her maiden name, “Call Me Any Old Time Of The Day”/ “Come Softly to Me”).
Listen to “Call Me Any Old Time” and “Come Softly to Me” here.
The video below includes four takes of The Doors performing “People are Strange” on Murray The K In New York TV special, broadcast September 22, 1967. The fourth version features Jackie in a skintight silver outfit—she can be seen from around 12:52.
Photos of her with Murray toward the beginning of their relationship, on the front covers of their two records together, show her in generic styles of the early 60s—a spaghetti-strap sundress, a t-shirt and tight capri pants—not yet the wild styles she would incarnate on stage and in life a few years later. Very much a Russ Meyer woman come to life, Jackie was all high, teased black hair, heavily lashed eyes, and perfect hourglass figure, always shown off to best effect in the tightest and most revealing clothes she could find or have made for her. Originally, Jackie wanted to become a designer herself, then tried her hand at acting (she studied acting with Marilyn Monroe at Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio). As she mentions in the New York profile, one of the designers she collaborated with was Betsey Johnson, then designing for Paraphernalia; "When I first met her I said, 'You have such a sexy body, why do you design things for a skinny body?' Her clothes are very unlike her; she's very sensual. I had her make this nice and tight." One of the Betsey Johnson dresses she sports during the interview featured racy black sheer panels down the sides.
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