590 MIGHTY MEMORY #482

PHOTO INDEX: WARM'S NORM HILL.

A WARM CHRISTMAS MEMORY

First off, I have been fortunate to have never had a bad Christmas. Through pain, personal loss, chemo therapy, crazy things that happened to me, I can honestly say I never had a bad Christmas. But there was one year in the early 1990s when I was having one of those holiday seasons where everything was going wrong. No matter how hard I tried, there was no way I could please anyone. It was Christmas Eve and I was down. Naturally I had my radio on after having to work on Christmas Eve. Driving home my car stopped. Electrical failure. . Christmas Eve, 4:45Pm, a few miles away from my house. Thank goodness I was near a pay phone. I hoofed it to the phone and called Triple A. I had one quarter left. Earlier in the radio, before the car fiasco I was listening to Norm Hill on WARM. Norm hosted “The WARM Hall Of Fame Show” from 7 to midnight for a while. Later he worked in traffic, did mid morning and was also a swing man. Norm was saying on the air how much he missed being home on Christmas Eve. (WARM then went with pretaped Christmas music after the 6PM newscast) So with the change I had left, I called Norm. We had been familiar with each other because of my appearances on WARM for public relations projects I had been working on. Norm had also done some voice overs for me too. I explained to Norm my situation and after he asked if he could help, I told him I had the car situation under control but that if he wanted he could play something for me, hell for us, two guys stranded on Christmas Eve. When I got back to the car, Norm was still in commercial break but when he came back on the air he said, “This song goes out to a good friend of WARM Radio, Dave Yonki who will, sooner or later like me, be home for Christmas”. The auto club came and I did get to my destination but the great thing was WARM played a song that made me laugh out loud, made me smile and think that “Hey this is still Christmas Eve!” My problems were minor compared to the stuff other people were trying to handle. And WARM Radio, whether it was Norm Hill or any of the talented jocks who commanded the airwaves was there to fill the void in whatever Christmas spirit was missing. After all these years, I remember Norm Hill, this incident and especially this song that came on WARM, the Mighty 590 during that challenging Christmas Eve trek home.

590 MIGHTY MEMORY #483

PHOTO INDEX: LOIS KOMENSKY AND DAVID LISCOV AT THE ST. JOHN'S FORMAL. CLASS OF 1970 BOYS CHORUS AT ST. JOHN'S CHRISTMAS CONCERT. (PHOTOS COURTESY CHARLES DAVENPORT, ST. JOHN'S CLASS OF 1970).

WARM, CHRISTMAS & THE KIDS

This weekend WARM Radio “True Oldies Channel” will feature the most spectacular Christmas songs of all time. Listening to the promos, I thought about those holidays past and how WARM played a major role in them. WARM had Christmas promotions and shopping sprees. (Mrs. 590 Forever won a trip in the 90s). WARM also promoted incessantly Christmas high school concerts. Now they did not rebroadcast them, that would be breaking format but they would promote the dickens (no pun intended) out of them on the PSBB. Another thing WARM did, way before it was fashionable and on everyone’s radar screen was the pleas to teen drivers to be cautious while going to those Christmas proms. Most likely you heard this Public Service Ad during every Prom Season but WARM made a special effort to promote safe driving in these and all other high traffic times for teeners.

And most likely you heard this song on WARM Radio every Christmas. Our pictures are courtesy of Charles Davenport an avid WARM listener. The year Charles graduated St. John’s (Class of 1970) Jose Feliciano debuted this Christmas classic.

590 MIGHTY MEMORY #484

PHOTO INDEX: JOEY SHAVER CIRCA 1966.

GREAT GOOD NIGHTS

We got a question from a reader of the WARM blog. Shirley Marquez asks:
For years, back in the days when radio stations actually went off the air late at night, Joey Shaver always played a recording of "Goodnight My Love" as his last song. I haven't been able to identify whose version he played; can you or somebody out there help?
Back in the mid 60s, WARM personalities not only had a sign on theme, they also had an end theme. George Gilbert had the Lettermen I believe doing an outro, and up until maybe 1968 Joey Shaver ended each nightly broadcast with the classic hit from 1954 called "Goodnight My Love" Shaver played it at the end of his shift making way for the all night deejay. Here's Jesse Belvin and "Goodnight My Love".

590 MIGHTY MEMORY #485

PHOTO INDEX: JOEY SHAVER AT THE KINGSTON ARMORY, CIRCA 1967.

WAR AND WARM

WARM Radio did its part for the troops during the Vietnam War. As our nation fights an unadvertised war in Afghanistan in this century, in the 60s WARMland's young men and women wound up in Vietnam. There are countless stories about parents and brothers and sisters and cousins sending reel tapes of the WARM personalities to their loved ones overseas. In the fall of 1967 WARM Radio was at a business event at the Kingston Armory (it was the annual Wilkes Barre Chamber of Commerce trade show). WARM's Joey Shaver manned a booth asking people if they wanted to send a taped message to one of the overseas patriots. As with everything WARM did back then, it was wildly successful. And it didn't cost much to set up some equipments and garner the good will of listeners far and wide/. No matter what your political persuasion, what your opinion about the war, WARM reached out to those families who had someone fighting and sometimes dying in that long ago conflict.

Here are two of the songs WARM played, two different philosophies if you will during this time period in American history:

590 MIGHTY MEMORY #486

PHOTO INDEX: FORMER WARM JOCK CHRIS STARR IN AN AD FOR HIS STATION IN BALTIMORE AND IN A STATION PROMOTION SURROUNDED BY A BEVY OF BEAUTIES.

CHRIS STARR RESPONDS

Our last WARM Mighty Memory featured Chris Starr who used the name Chris O'Brien from WARM. We heard from him and posted this response from him. In his response he talks about his days and interactions at WARM.

Jim Gannon was one of the nicest people to know. Maybe someone will see your post and he'll get in touch.
I remember by first jock meeting at WARM, the guys told me to shut up and just listen, because it was all a waste of time. Ron Allen after the meeting got under way and looked at me and said "Chris, you don't know this place was so screwed up do you?"
When I was a PD at WEJL and then WSCR and later WSCR (13 Q) the our favorite The Woody Guy, he told us that WARM was a "Well oiled machine" That wasn't true. There were plenty of Friday's nights when there wasn't even a jock schedule placed up for the weekend. We call to call to find out what the air shifts were.
So, after BAX, I went to WICK with Woody, then WEJL, I was PD there, then to WSCR with about 6 or 7 other EJL staff members including Jack Griswold. I coined the call letters "Why Even Jack Left" LOL.
So, after WARM, I went to Maryland, guess I'm one of the "lucky" few to make it to a major market, then Voice of America. That place is huge. Had people there who used to work for the BBC, Good Morning America, we had 2 of Larry Kings ex engineers (they hated him). Guys from The Tonight Show crew, Mike Douglas, you name it. The Voice America was considered the final step up. A federal Government job, great retirement and so on.
My final job in DC was.....ready? Working for Present Clinton and Air Force One. Can't say mush about that because it has a high security clearance and Nation Security issues. THAT was an amazing job. I did get to talk to Hillary once, her Grandfather worked with my Uncle in the old silk mill in Scranton years ago.
So, it was an interesting career. I also wrote for some national Magazine, was Editor-in-Chief of The W.C. Fields Magazine for the Fields family. We worked with A&E on the Fields biography. If you ever see it, look for me and my real name on the credits. I go them just about everyone to interview for the show. When they first called me, they asked if Fields really drank. So, they had no idea.
Jerry Heller was also very nice to work with at WARM. Ron Allen was always kind and considerate to me as well. Terry, I only worked with maybe twice, so I never got a chance to know him well. But he was a true professional and good to work with. It's so sad to see that so many of them have passed away.

ON WFBR……….

They took me and bought me 20 tuxedo's for a promotion when a limo driver would take me around Baltimore. I'd go into restaurants, pick up peoples checks and give them money. I had thousands on me each day. I couldn't believe it. When they took me for the tux, there were 5 promotion girls that worked there. I asked "Do I just bring the tux's back when I done?" they said "No! there yours!!!". That was a shocker. I was used to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, where everything was a trade out. This station at the time was owned at John Gambling "Gamblin with Gamblin from WOR in New York. I'd work 4 hours a day and was home my 10:30 am ...amazing.

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.

590 MIGHTY MEMORY #488

PHOTO INDEX: BUCK OWENS AND THE BUCAROOS AND THE ROOFTOP SINGERS.

WARM’S DALLIANCES

In the 60s music was changing almost every month. If you take a look at a 1962 survey sheet from WARM you saw songs from standards singers Tony Bennett on it. Then there was the emergence of the “girl groups” and the “Wall of Sound” from Phil Spector. One of the biggest and popular arrivals on the scene was the era of folk music epitomized by the Rooftop Singers, Peter Paul and Mary and the Seekers. WARM decided to capitalize on this new folk wave by running a program ON Sunday night entitled “WARM Hootenanny”. It wasn’t anything that was in depth or probing. It was just an ancillary program filled with that type of music sponsored by a business and then promoted by WARM throughout the week. Not wanting to rock the cash cow boat WARM created with Top 40 and News and Information, the show was safely tucked away on a Sunday night sandwiched between the Stegmairer Oldies Show and the WARM public affairs block that ran at 11PM Sundays until signoff.
A few years later WARM also introduced a TOP Ten countdown of the Country Hits in the nation. Again, it was sponsored but not put in any place to change the outcome of their main format.
These two attempts were clear demonstrations that while being number 1 with a major share of audience. WARM had its ear to the ground trying to make sure they weren’t missing anything in the pop music field. This dalliance into niche broadcasting was shortlived since those Hootenanny hits and country songs crossed over into the regular top 40 rotation. But it is worth noting that WARM, even in the 60s was looking to make sure they kept themselves in the music game. According to my records and interviews with people, (albeit very sketchy) The Hootenanny Show ran from '62 to about late '63 and the WARM Country Countdown lasted about 6 months from January 1966 to about mid May).