Re: Rockin' Hits of the 60s & 70s

[Rob Landry <umar@nerodia.wcrb.com>]

On Mon, 4 Oct 1999 hopfgapr@sprynet.com wrote:

> Larry DOBBS! Was the name at Counrty 93!

I'm not sure where he got "Larry" from, but he called himself "Dobbs"
after The Church of the Sub Genius's J.R. "Bob" Dobbs. The Sub Genius
thing was a running joke at WBOS at the time.

> (He also used the 'Zemo' name at WBOS pre-country in the 1982-83 timefrmane).

Zemo had been doing a Saturday night doo-wop show on WHRB for three years
as a student at Harvard.  He was a perfectionist; he used to aircheck
every show, take the tapes home, and listen to himself critically. He was
never satisfied with the way he and his shows sounded and was forever
trying to make them sound better. By 1982 he sounded (in my opinion)
pretty damned good.  After he graduated he continued to do his show while
looking for work. In the spring of 1982 he got a temporary job as a
vacation relief board-op for WUNR, which was co-owned with WBOS, and while
he was there the WBOS traffic manager's job became open, so he applied for
it and got it. A few months later, while he was doing one of his WHRB
shows, Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band came to visit. It seems Mr. Wolf
was a serious aficionado of doo-wop and a regular listener to Zemo's show,
and one day he decided to come down and introduce himself. So Zemo put him
on the air and let him spin a few of his favorite doo-wop records. On the
following Monday Zemo brought the aircheck of his show to WBOS and gave it
to Clark Smidt, who immediately began using him as a fill-in jock. Zemo
survived the end of Clark Smidt's format and the short-lived Barry
Skidelsky/Maxanne Satori regime that followed it, and after the transition
to country in July 1983 Dean James, the new program director/morning man,
decided to try Zemo as a country jock. That's when he became "Larry
Dobbs". He was possibly the best non-classical jock ever to come out of
WHRB. 

Rob Landry
umar@nerodia.wcrb.com