I took a trip to the Big Apple today. That sounds like the kind of thing a guy who can’t stop talking about how well his tomatoes are growing might say. But actually, I grew up in the Catholic section of Brooklyn. No sex- ed classes in our high school…but there were fertility dances …the school called them record hops. The nuns never attended the dances, but their influence was never far from the girls in my neighborhood. If a girl from my neighborhood excused herself to slip into something more comfortable, she came back wearing a wedding gown. I spent most of my radio career in my home town. I called it “Skyscraper National Park.”We moved to Pennsylvania when I was asked to leave New York by the forces for profit in the broadcasting business.I go back to New York pretty often for my day job. And even though that’s where I was born and raised, I sometimes feel a little out of place now… when I got off the train at Penn station…and rode the big long escalator up to street level in front of Madison Square Garden…it really hit me today. I crossed the street with a whole crowd of people, and I could see everybody’s reflection in a big glass store window… but I couldn’t find myself in the crowd. That was a weird feeling… for just a moment I thought I’d lost myself. I mean, if you look in the mirror and you’re not there…that’s a problem.
I probably could have found myself if I had a little more time. But there’s not much time in New York. That’s what makes lots of people think New Yorkers are rude. Actually, New Yorkers are just in a hurry. Gotta hustle when there are 14 million people behind you trying to get across the same street. There’s no time to waste when you’re in New York. That’s the reason that most of what New Yorkers have to say can be summed up with one finger.
There’s actually a New York language. If someone says he’ll meet you “at his crib,” he means at his apartment, not his bed. A “Home Boy” is your best friend. A “freak” is your girlfriend. A “throw down” is a fight. And your clothes are called your “gear.”
I got to work with some pretty special guys in New York…guys like Wolfman Jack. Actually…there never was and never will be anybody like Wolfie. And, yes…that’s what he liked the other guys at WNBC to call him…Wolfie. Bob Smith was his real name. He was a Brooklyn boy too…so we had that in common. Wolfie was a comic book character with a huge heart. The screaming and “wolfin” while the mic was open was his act. But he was just Bob Smith from Brooklyn when the music was playing. He’d just kinda sing along, and ruffle through his liner cards during the songs.
I used to bring my Lady Wonder Wench with me to the station pretty often. And she remembers him very fondly. She says “he was very comfortable.” I’d say the same thing. He was a very comfortable guy.
That’s not to say that he didn’t know how to howl when the moon was full. As a matter of fact, the phase of the moon didn’t have much to do with it when the music got to Wolfie. Black music, especially. Race music was what they called it before the great Alan Freed made it mainstream. Wolfie was a black man in white skin…a white man who could definitely jump. And nothing was safe from getting knocked over in the studio when Wolfie was up and jumping.
But sometimes…after he had been naughty…things were kinda quiet while the records were playing. I mentioned liner cards, and those of you in the radio business probably thought that was a mistake. But it wasn’t. Liner cards usually have station slogans written on them that the program director wants the guy on the air to read at certain times during the hour. Boring stuff like, “More music, less talk.” Wolfie’s liner cards were different. He used them to remember what he called his “statements to my honeys.” They were sometimes jokes… sometimes quick snippets of Jonathan Livingston Seagull-type philosophy…and sometimes just barely disguised pick up lines. Sometimes the words didn’t really make much sense at all…except when Wolfie was saying them.
WNBC hired Wolfie to compete with Cousin Brucie on WABC. The WNBC promotion department took a series of ads in the paper featuring tombstones with “Brucie’s” name on them…and captions that said something to the effect that “Wolfie is here and Brucie’s time has come.” That never happened. And ironically, when Wolfie left WNBC, “Cousin Brucie” came over to our side.
Wolfie was as New York as the Brooklyn Bridge. He made his radio reputation on the west coast. But if you ever wonder where he kept his heart, look at the call letters on the microphone in almost all his pictures. They read WNBC. The world is a little quieter and a lot sadder since Wolfie went away.
Dick’s Details Quiz – all answers are in the current PodCast at www.DickSummer.comÂ
1- What has Catherine Zeta Jones got to do with Kansas City?
2- What did ants have to do with the Beatles?
3- Why did most people hold their noses at the debut of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony?
Scoring:
3- Right – Born in New York.
2- Right – Born to be wild.
1- Right – Born loser.
0- Right – Hatched.
YO: Many thanks to Dr. George Pollard for the huge interview with me he published at www.GrubStreet.ca . The article has lots of pictures and lots of memories…including Marge the Station Stripper, Al Heacock, the Father of Classic Rock, and Bruce Bradley, the most talented DJ I ever knew.
Funny thing about a long article like that…looking back at your life. Reading it was a little like not being able to find myself in that reflection of the crowd of people crossing the street in New York today. It was like I got lost in my own life. And there’s a lesson there: I’ve been a little too busy. I’ve got to take a little more time to find myself…in my own life.
According to the counter about 70,000 people read this blog every month. And I have no idea why. I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a sentence or two…just let me know what you get from reading this blog. For all I know you might have been one of the people in that crowd crossing the street today. If you were, I wonder…did you see yourself in the reflection in that window?
Or have you been in too much of a hurry to find yourself too?
Please just drop me a note at  Dick@DickSummer.com  I’m really interested
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