590 MIGHTY MEMORY #487

PHOTO INDEX: WARM'S JIM GANNON, AKA DALE DENVER, WARM'S CHRIS O'BRIEN, AKA CHRIS STARR.

THE BOYS FROM ‘BAX

WARM Radio very rarely wooed people away from other stations in the 1960s. True Terry McNulty came from WSCR, Tommy Woods from WNAK and Joey Shaver from WBAX but it was a given that if a new personality came from out of town it was from another city. In the mid 70s WARM started recruiting more aggressively locally. Around 1977 WARM went jock shopping at WBAX. In the mid 70s after Jim Ward left the station to start WARD, the Merv Griffin group still owned the station. They put an aggressive campaign to market themselves as a top 40 station. They featured twenty twenty news and had 6 disc jockeys who did 4 hour shifts.
Jim Gannon was known as Dale Denver on WBAX. Starting at 2am and ending at 6, Denver was the all night disc jockey who kept on moving up when people moved on. He went to WARM in the late seventies doing all nights, then afternoons. In the early 80s when WARM had Bill Kimball as a Program Director, it was decided that there would be tandem shows. Gannon was paired with Harry West in the morning. West who always was his own act was not happy. Gannon gamely tried to carry on in the mix but it just wasn’t clicking. After Kimball went on his way. Gannon did afternoon shifts.
Chris O’Brien came to WARM after spending a few years doing drive time on WBAX. He was best known as Chris Starr and was mischievous. His double ententes with then news woman Madeline Fitzgerald were way ahead of the Howard Stern Robin Quivers talk. Starr and Fitzgerald never went over the line..much and jelled well. O’Brien went over to WARM doing night and drive time. O’Brien later worked at WEJL AM which I think might have been his last radio gig in this area.
I was on my first day on an internship from King’s College when morning man Rick Walker got into an argument with a pompous GM named Dick Booth. I was talking to Walker when Booth made a smart remark and its was on. Walker left the building. I felt horrible because I thought I precipitated the firing. The Receptionist Lenore Brace later told me this was brewing long before I got there. (She and Starr later married). Walker wound up at WARM as Don DelVechio doing 10am to 2pm. Ron Allen gave him his name due to the popularity of a long gone, little remembered detective show on ABC.
Keaton one of my readers send me photos that his mom copied. He writes, "My late Mother made copies of them for me from Jim Gannon who was working with her about 10 years ago at a telemarking company in the old Scranton Dry Company. Gannon was close friends with Chris O'Brien and apparently had kept in touch over the years. They both had worked at the old WBAX. When Chris O'Brien left WARM in the 80's, he went to WFBR Baltimore and did mornings,later worked at WQSR Baltimore and finally at The Voice of America in Washington, DC. Gannon worked at WDSL I think it was after WARM. Where they both are now, who knows?”
At last report DelVechio was on the Exeter Police Force.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Thanks to "Keaton" for the WARM memory and photos.
REVISED FOR CONTENT: Sunday Nov. 21st, 2010, 12:21PM Eastern Time.