YESTERDAY, WE LAMENTED WITH NEW YORKERS the news that “WCBS Radio, the Soundtrack of Countless Cab Rides, Goes Quiet.” Today in Part 2, one of the station’s early DJs Bill Randle made a name for himself in my native Cleveland, even to his own Wikipedia entry.
Bill Randle, Pioneering DJ. Wikipedia’s highlighting of Bill Randle’s name jogged my Cleveland memory big time. Wikipedia recounts, “As a pioneering disc jockey at radio station WERE in Cleveland, Ohio, he helped change the face of American music. In the 1950s, Time magazine called Randle the top DJ in America. His popularity and huge listening audience allowed him to bolster the careers of a number of young musicians, including the Four Lads, Bobby Darin, and Fats Domino.”
Racial Equality. Indeed, in June 1953, Randle “distinguished himself by promoting a show that included black and white performers on the same bill.” To put this in perspective, see other pioneers “Norman Granz—Jazz Impresario, Car Nut” and “Dave Brubeck.”
The High School Shows. As described in Wikipedia, the musical documentary The Pied Piper of Cleveland: A Day in the Life of a Famous Disc Jockey offers “footage shot at several live shows at local high schools and auditoriums in Cleveland, Ohio, on and around October 20, 1955.”
I knew about these shows, but, alas, never attended. (Ever the highbrow, I was relishing classical music field trips to Cleveland’s Severance Hall.)
This Haley collection YouTube comes from Bruno Mark.
Bill Randle, Bill Haley, and a Kid Named Elvis. Wikipedia describes what I missed: “Performers featured included Elvis Presley (several months prior to his first RCA Records recording sessions), Bill Haley and His Comets (still riding high from ‘Rock Around the Clock‘ topping the US music charts), Pat Boone, LaVern Baker, Roy Hamilton, Johnnie Ray and others. This was the first film Presley ever appeared in, and is the ‘movie short’ referred to by Randle when he introduced Presley on his first national TV appearance on Stage Show in early 1956.”
Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey with Elvis on Stage Show. Image from elvis-history-blog. (Did I ever tell you that my maternal grandfather may have gigged with the Dorseys? Uh, yes.)
Note, Ed Sullivan’s introduction of Elvis didn’t come until September 9 of 1956.
Bill Randle’s Tornado Reporting. And his Jaguar XK. Having recently read of tornadoes in Northeast Ohio, I am reminded of Bill Randle’s dramatic on-air reporting of Cleveland’s 1953 tornado.
My enhanced reverence of the man also comes from his interest in the early sports car movement. Bill drove a Jaguar roadster, perhaps at the time an XK-140.
Jaguar XK-140 Roadster. Image by Hyman Ltd.
Also, later in Bill’s career, two of his many academic achievements included a master’s degree in Sociology and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Case Western Reserve, whence my Ph.D. in Mathematics. Indeed, Bill taught popular music at CWRU, though if we did overlap I was probably otherwise occupied with dynamical systems of quite a different sort.
Back to WABC with Fran Lebowitz. Kilgannon recounted in The New York Times, “The writer and commentator Fran Lebowitz said she heard about WCBS’s closure on Monday from [sister station] WINS, which she usually favors over WCBS because its signal is stronger on her radio.”
“WCBS reporters like Peter Haskell and his subway socks were fixtures at news events for decades,” wrote Corey Kilgannon. Image by Mary Altaffe/Associated Press via The New York Times.
Kilgannon continues, “ ‘I was thinking after hearing the news that it’s probably a matter of minutes before we don’t even have radios anymore,’ said Ms. Lebowitz, adding that since she does not use a computer or cellphone, she listens to news radio ‘400 times a day, on and off.’ “
“Ms. Lebowitz, 73, said that when she mentions her radio news habit to younger people, they say, ‘The radio? What’s that?’ ”
Yeah, I know, Fran. I’ve been around younger people too. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024