EL SEGUNDO HERALD September 6, 2018 Page 15
South Bay’s Own Jay Crawford,
Inventor and Entrepreneur Deluxe
By TerriAnn Ferren
Jay Crawford was born to John and Kay
(Teer) Crawford on Dec. 7, 1948 at Torrance
Memorial Hospital, when it was located on El
Prado in downtown Torrance. Jay grew up in
the South Bay with his older brother Kim and
two younger sisters Jan and Kris. He had what
would have been the ideal childhood with open
fields and the Pacific Ocean at his doorstep.
Jay attended St. Lawrence Martyr Grammar
School and Bishop Montgomery High School,
and then graduated from Long Beach State
University with a degree in Industrial Arts. At
that time, Jay’s father John was in the engine
business and sold engines to oil refineries
and the oil field industry. Jay worked for his
dad for four or five years as a mechanic and
then got into sales and building rigs for the
offshore building industry. But Jay not only
worked for his dad during this time. He also
worked with Kim in the race boat business,
where he learned more about engines, drives
and sound. Now these race boats were not only
fast, but they also were very large. So large,
that Jay built a 2,000-square foot garage to
house the speedboats.
One day three years out of college in 1975,
a friend, Alex Bryce -- who happened to work
at Burbank Studios -- came to Jay knowing
the latter knew engines. Alex told him that the
generators at the studio were way too noisy.
“He said, ‘When we go out filming, we have
to park a block away and run a thousand feet
of cable to the set in order to eliminate the
sound and it sure would be great if we had a
generator that was real, real quiet,’” said Jay.
“I said, ‘I could build one,’ -- never having
built one. That is just the way I am. I can
do that.” He gave me a chance and said, ‘If
you can do that, I can get Burbank Studios
to fund you.’”
Jay researched and then dove into working
on building two generators for the Burbank
Studios. They were one-fourth the size of
anything they had ever seen before. They
were super-small, real quiet and extremely
reliable. The studios took the two generators
and immediately placed them on the show The
Love Boat, where they remained during the
series run. From there, they moved to Fantasy
Island, another popular television show at the
time. Then Jay was approached by the studios
again and asked if he could build them more
generators. “I go, ‘Yeah, I can do that,’ said
Jay. “So I got out of the ‘boat business’ - but
I was still working for my dad. I was building
them out of my garage for the studios. I was
probably building two a month. I would go
to work with my dad, then I’d come home,
go out in the garage and work from 6 p.m.
until 2 a.m. in the morning, and then I would
come in, go to bed, get up, go to work for
my dad, and come back and go work in the
garage again building generators.”
The new, quiet generators caught on and
pretty soon Jay received calls from Fox, MGM,
Universal and all the other major studios
for his newly invented super-quiet, compact
generators. He told me, “Word got out and
these were really popular. I built about 200 in
my garage over about five years. It got bigger
and bigger and bigger. Then Universal said
they can buy 20 of them and they needed
them ‘right now.’ So I moved out of my
garage and bought a big building in Rancho
Dominguez – and in about a year it was an
all-out blitz to get these built.”
Word got out indeed. Now not only local
studios were calling on Jay Crawford to build
his quiet generators, but studios in other countries
came calling, including Russia, China,
Australia, among others. One interesting bit
of information I learned from Jay is that in
Europe, they don’t usually roll sound at the
same time as they film because they add the
sound later. Reason? They would insert/dub
different languages -- Spanish, French, Italian,
German, etc. -- in the studio where it is quiet.
They don’t want to have to shoot several versions
of the same film with different sound
on location – they do it later.
“As it happened, Universal called again
and said Schindler’s List is shooting and
they wanted to take all the equipment to
Europe,” recalled Jay. “In the contract, they
were required to leave all the equipment in
the Czech Republic. He said, ‘We needed two
generators in a week. Can you build them?’
Well, we built two generators in a week and
they were real happy and they told a lot of
people in Europe that they came from us.”
What happened after that? Well, Jay Crawford
built 2,500 of his super-quiet generators in
seven sizes for the movie business all over
Europe. Some were as small as a smart car
and others so large as to fit into a 40-foot
container. Amazing.
Jay’s generators were used in 95 percent of
the movies made at that time, including all
the blockbusters like The Godfather. And in
addition to filming, they also supplied generators
for the actors’ trailers.
As he was creating state-of-the-art superquiet
generators for the movie business all over
the world, Jay also took care of the outdoor
concert business. For example, he supplied all
the generators for the historic Michael Jackson
World Tour through Europe and Russia. His
generators would power up the stages, and
Michael Jackson was so popular that he had
a group of generators. They would set up one
night for a show and as Michael Jackson was
performing in one city, a crew was setting
up another venue in the next city for the
next show. They would leapfrog the stages,
generators, etc. “He would cross the border
with 80 trucks and they would clear them in
30 minutes,” added Jay. “It was amazing. No
tour was ever as big as Jackson and none ever
will be. It was just so huge.”
How did they get the generators to Europe?
Well, Jay said it depended upon how soon
they were needed…and if it were immediate,
they would fly the equipment via a huge
Russian air cargo plane (which could hold six
tractor/trailers).
Another very interesting tidbit Jay told me
about was that during the Michael Jackson
show in Europe, he saw licorice being handed
out to everyone as they entered the concert.
Jay noted how nice it was they did that. “I
talked to one of the guys that worked there
that was handing out licorice to everyone. He
said, ‘That isn’t a licorice – that is a sedative.
We can’t let people get so wound up at
these concerts,” said Jay. “So they were eating
licorice - and it was a natural sedative.”
Jay’s generators put the power in The Rolling
Stones, The Doors and all the other “outdoor”
rock and roll groups of the time. His company
Power & Electric was on a roll, so to speak.
The military also knocked on Jay’s door
for his unique, small, quiet generators. One
tap came from the Presidential Communication
Agency, which always travels incognito
with the President of the United States in
vans and pick-up trucks so in the event of a
power failure, they can move in and set up
communications for the President immediately.
Jay surprised me when he told me he never
patented his invention, “I never really patented
it,” he admitted. “I have always felt that if you
patent stuff and somebody comes and knocks
it off, you spend all your money trying to fight
them in court. There is no sense to spend all
that money. And no one was knocking it off.
I was the only game in town -- the only guy
for years and years and years.”
Selling his company in 2000 to Multiquip,
Inc., Jay continued working for that firm for
four years. Then, as his sons were graduating
from college, they wanted to build generators
again. So Jay and his sons Evan and John
bought property in Rancho Dominguez again
and started building generators in 2005, selling
them to the same people he had sold them
to when he had begun. One big change. He
had invented another generator! This one was
even quieter and super-clean. Very, very quiet.
Jay knows what makes noise in an engine:
exhaust coming off the tailpipe, noisy fans,
air intake into the engine… and the engine
itself makes noise.
I learned generators are used for innumer-
Jay Crawford
Jay Crawford’s generator
able events including broadcasting the Lakers
games, many events at the Microsoft Theater
at L.A. LIVE, Coachella, Stagecoach, dog
shows, openings and gatherings big and small.
During the busy summer season, there may
be 12 events on a weekend, all at the same
time. Yes, Jay puts the power in your event.
His sons created another company, Power
Trip Rentals, and not only rent out generators,
but other heavy equipment used for studio
locations, filming and events large and small.
Check them out at www.powertrip-rentals.com.
After talking with Jay, I was floored by his
down-to-earth humble way of telling the story
of how he invented a generator -- which quite
literally changed the way movies around the
world and all outdoor events are powered,
set up and run. Invention ideas come to us in
many ways. In Jay Crawford’s case, it came
by way of a friend with a problem. Jay’s first
response? “I can do that,” as he said. His
advice? “Go for it. And if you fail? So what?
Start all over again. Figure another way to do
it.” So let’s all take a lesson from this humble
inventor and entrepreneur and be willing to
take a chance, go for it, and say, “Yes!” •
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