Dick Summer reveals the REAL father of classic rock radio inBoston

[Dan Strassberg]

But since you lived in Albany at about the right time, do you remember Bruce
Bradley on WROW playing what I'd call something between EZ listening and Top
40? One of his favorite records was an instrumental called Rio Batucada--a
selection I have not heard since Bradley played it on WROW over 50 years
ago. Although he did no Top 40 schtick, the fact that he was enormously
talented really stood out. For all that it was a really low-budget operation
back then, WROW's air staff sounded very professional. (Before the studio
move to North or East Greenbush--site of the original Channel 41 tower--the
studios in a grungy apartment building on State St were a nightmare.)
Besides Bradley, other WROW announcers that I remember were Mark Edwards
(Arnold Friedman), George Leighton, and Ralph? Vartigian. Bradley came to
WROW from Buffalo (not sure which station). He was a master at all of the
slick production gimmicks of the day--backsells, talking over a record's
intro and stopping within milliseconds of the vocalist's first note and
doing it without making it sound forced or contrived. In that era,
announcing and doing it well was a real art. I think Bradley went straight
from WROW to WBZ.

--
Dan Strassberg, dan.strassberg@att.net
eFax 707-215-6367

----- Original Message -----
From: "A. Joseph Ross" <joe@attorneyross.com>
To: "Donna Halper" <dlh@donnahalper.com>
Cc: "boston Radio Interest" <boston-radio-interest@rolinin.BostonRadio.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 30, 2006 12:59 AM
Subject: Re: Dick Summer reveals the REAL father of classic rock radio
inBoston


> On 29 Jul 2006 at 12:28, Donna Halper wrote:
>
> > That is true to a certain extent-- daytime it was a straight-ahead
> > top-40, but the overnight show always had more freedom, so Dick could
> > use drop-ins (or "hacks" as they used to be called) and occasionally
> > play songs nobody else on the station played, especially weird novelty
> > records like "Grandpa's Grave."  ('They're removing grandpa's grave to
> > build a sewer..'-- ah they don't write lyrics like that anymore.) But
> > the daytime jocks also had their share of weird novelty songs too-- I
> > recall Bruce Bradley using segments of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "I Put a
> > Spell On You" as his favourite drop-in... Still, it's obvious the
> > station used heavy dayparting and Summer probably had the most freedom
> > to experiment.
>
> I remember Bruce Bradley playing excerpts from "Grandpa's Grave"
> regularly as part of his schtick in the early 60s.  Along with his
> campaign to get people to send in their used teabags as pillows for
> underprivileged sparrows.  And profiles of the Nutley Nutritional
> High School Faculty.  When he did Dynaflow Needleman, the Drivers Ed
> teacher, I identified him with my own Driver's Ed teacher.  Dynaflow
> Needleman, however, had the distinction of having knitted his own car
> from steel wool and having been the first to drive from Boston to
> Honolulu nonstop and make all the lights.
>
> > When Dick briefly programmed over at WMEX, he tried to create an AM
> > version of free-form progressive in 1969, if my memory serves. It was
> > called "The Human Thing", and It failed miserably.  But it was an
> > interesting experiment.
>
> I remember that, and I liked it.  Too bad not enough other people
> did.
>
> --
> A. Joseph Ross, J.D.                           617.367.0468
>  15 Court Square, Suite 210                 Fax 617.742.7581
> Boston, MA 02108-2503                    http://www.attorneyross.com
>
>