Musings: Hearing voices on the radio the soundtrack of my life
The Newsradio 880 on-air farewell show on Aug. 22. Credit: Peter Haskell
Recently, our then 10-year-old granddaughter walked into our kitchen, heard an unfamiliar voice and asked where it was coming from. I then realized that neither of my adult children use radios in their homes.
The recent demise of WCBS Newsradio 880 got me thinking about the loyalties we develop to our favorite stations and favorite voices. I knew I could not bring back Lou Adler, Jim Donnelly, Neil Busch, Lou Timolat, Spencer Ross, Barry Landers and “Dr.” Bob Harris, but now today’s guys and gals are gone, too. They were with me in good times and bad, wherever I went in the metro area.
Radio has been the soundtrack of my life, as I’m sure it has been for many of my generation. A voice on the radio is often the first one we hear in the morning or the last one at night. As a teenager, that morning voice usually came from one of WMCA’s “Good Guys” or a popular WABC disc jockey. The nighttime voice might have been that of WABC’s “Cousin Brucie” Morrow or Murray (the K) Kaufman on WINS.
At summer camp, my bunkmates and I could follow the exploits of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris only by listening to Howard Cosell’s five-minute updates at 8:25 a.m. on WABC. When sports fans couldn’t be in front of a television, we relied on Mel Allen and Marty Glickman on the radio.
When I walked into my high school social studies class on Nov. 22, 1963, radio voices delivered some of the worst news we would ever hear.
The sound of WABC was a constant as we Long Islanders walked among beachgoers with transistor radios. WABC even played a jingle, “Time to turn so you won’t burn.” A transistor radio could also be surreptitiously tucked under a pillow at night so we could listen to our favorite disc jockey, a late baseball game, or the storyteller Jean Shepherd on WOR.
As with WCBS, we were saddened when rock stations WMGM and WINS changed formats in the 1960s.
I understand that we now can get the substance of WCBS Newsradio, music and talk with a tap on a cellphone. But satisfying our needs by using our mobile devices can never replace the relationships we developed with those voices we heard on the radio.
— Howard J. Herman, Great Neck
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