Roy D. Mercer
Roy D. Mercer is a fictional character created by American disc jockeys Brent Douglas and Phil Stone on radio station KMOD-FM in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Douglas, who performed Mercer's voice, used the character as a vehicle for comedy sketches in which he performed prank calls. The two released twelve albums of prank call recordings under the Roy D. Mercer name via Virgin Records and Capitol Records. The character was retired in 2013 after Stone's death.
History
Brent Douglas and Phil Stone, disc jockeys at rock music radio station KMOD-FM in Tulsa, Oklahoma, created the Roy D. Mercer character in 1993. Initially, they used the character on comedy sketches for the radio station. Originally, the prank call sketches were a part of KMOD's morning show. By 1997, Capitol Records Nashville began issuing the sketches on compact disc. The first was titled How Big a Boy Are Ya?, Volume 1, in reference to one of Mercer's catch phrases. Eleven additional compilation albums have been released on the Capitol and Virgin Records labels. A Virgin Records Nashville executive noted that Mercer's early albums managed to sell between 250,000 and 300,000 copies, primarily due to word of mouth, without any promotion to consumers or radio airplay of the album tracks.In most of the sketches, Mercer will demand that the recipient of a call pay him money for some incident, and if the recipient refuses, he will threaten them with violence. Mercer has been described as speaking with "a mush-mouthed Southern drawl" and his style of comedy has been described as "not exactly obscene... border on offensive". Many of the recipients of the calls are suggested by their friends who supply Mercer with information about the potential recipients. Three notable people that Douglas and Stone had called were Bill Goldberg, cinematographer Barry Markowitz, as suggested by Billy Bob Thornton, and Chris Bray, production manager for Steppenwolf.
On October 12, 2012, the Phil and Brent Show ended its 27-year run with KMOD-FM radio. On November 21, Stone died from causes related to heart disease at the age of 57. In 2020, Douglas stated to The Tulsa World: "When Phil passed, that was the end of. I couldn’t do it without him, and wasn’t going to do it without him. It wouldn’t have been the same." Douglas himself would later die from an unknown cause on February 8, 2025.