Radio's Alison Steele: Do you remember WNEW-FM's 'Nightbird'?

Here's the setting, fellow Nightbirds. It's the summer of '77, and you're at Jones Beach, off West End 2. You're probably not supposed to be there because it's just after 10 p.m. — and did your parents know where you were?

You turn on the portable radio to 102.7 FM — we had those things back then — and suddenly there she was: The Voice: 

"Hello, night bird. How was your day? Did you visit the gods in the valleys far away? What did you bring me on your visit from the sea?"

Alison Steele had arrived, as if borne across the waves and sand — a part of this setting as much apart from it. The magic of radio, indeed.

Besides eating and sleeping, we all remember our first time for everything, and for those from a certain place (here) and time (then), we remember the first time we heard Steele, who died 30 years ago this September at age 58 from cancer.

Steele was part of the night crew at WNEW-FM, a station with a generous share of other iconic voices — Dennis Elsas, Scott Muni, Richard Neer, Dave Herman, Pete Fornatale, Vin Scelsa — but as the solo female in this crowd, she stood out. Carol Miller was here too but mostly during the '80s and '90s. Steele ruled the night roost — 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. — from the late '60s to the end of the '70s.

"She was a professional of the highest order, and as a human being, she was wonderful, caring, compassionate and fun," says Elsas (now a weekday afternoon host at Fordham's WFUV/90.7 FM and SiriusXM's "Classic Vinyl," as well as co-host of Beatles Fab Forum on "The Beatles Channel").

"And that voice no doubt captivated thousands of young men, that's for sure — and if we're being politically correct, some women too."

Of that voice, the word "sultry" has often been enlisted as an adjective, along with "smoldering," "alluring" and "sensual." But in hindsight, they all seem wrong, or wrong-ish. Seductive perhaps, but hardly come-hither, The Voice was as much part of the music as the night: That Andean flute chant that opened her show, The Moody Blues, Genesis, Grateful Dead, the offbeat, the unconventional, the experimental, the weird, the wonderful. And then there was the poetry. She read a lot of that on the air too. She closed her show with The Beatles' "Flying," from "Magical Mystery Tour."

Both music (and poetry) and voice were as perfect a radio match as one could have imagined — or dreamed of.

Born Ceil Loman in 1937 in Brooklyn, she worked in various jobs at several city TV and radio stations, later became a cast member on a Ch. 9 show called "The Ted Steele Show," then married the host in the late '50s. She was 19.

In 1966, Loman — by then using her married name — became one of four female DJs for WNEW's FM station; they were pioneers but the format (easy listening) was not to last. When the station changed to rock in 1968, she became a founding DJ there too.

Steele was often asked — why the nights? "I thought there must be a lot of people," she told The New York Times in a 1971 interview, "that need something to relate to in the middle of the night, and if I could create some kind of camaraderie, a relationship between myself and the rest of the night people, then it would be more than just music."

And so she did: "The flutter of wings, the shadow across the moon, the sounds of the night, as the Nightbird spreads her wings and soars, above the earth, into another level of comprehension, where we exist only to feel. Come, fly with me, Alison Steele, the Nightbird, at WNEW-FM, until dawn."