Nobody ever says that. It's the stuff of movies. Any broadcaster will tell you that all you have is this little lit up box that says, "ON AIR" and half the time somebody has stolen the bulb from it for the mens room light . I got nuts over radio when I was trying to become an actor. I got as far as Universal in Hollywood to meet Mark Malis, the then head of casting. He said, "Yeah, I can help you kid, but you gotta move out here." Great. I have 5 kids and a house, and a low paying job at a radio station, and I'm just going to pack up and move. Hindsight says why the hell didn't you go, and common sense at the time said you can't possibly do this.
I read somewhere that Bob Crane started out in radio and worked his way to Hollywood, so that was the path I would take. Little did I know how the radio business was changing. I worked at it all the time, and waited for those great successful days to come, but radio changed and I was one of the last of the "local" radio shows to go down in flames.
I worked with some amazing talent, some super egos, some talentless morons, and made a lot of friends along the way, but in hindsight again, the only names folks might remember were the names from my earlier years as opposed to the latter part of my career.
I had a short but amazing ride at WREB in Holyoke. I was bringing home a whopping 145 dollars a week from there, so I would get up at 4AM drive 20 miles to the station, turn the transmitter on, and do two hours alone on the air till Richard showed up for his 8:30 block of news. I got off the air at 10, then went to my second job driving an oil truck till about 7, went home, ate, scanned newspapers for items for the next mornings show and was in bed by 10, day in and day out. When you're done wiping your eyes, I'll continue.
I worked with Richard and once with Tracy Cole at WREB. Imet my best friend Jonathan Evans there. I got to know one of radios first sucessful black broadcasters there, Willard Womack, and I got to know the first lady of talk radio there, Barbara Heissler. Now that was a grouping of people. One of the first black hosts, one of the first woman hosts, and a news guy more popular than anybody else on a 500 watt daytime only radio station. I did afternoons and evenings sometimes, Jonathan, (Chip) did mornings, Willard did mid days, as did Barbara. Then we got moved all around. Me to mornings, Chip followed me, Willard folled him, and Barbara finished up the day.
Talk radio today is always the same host and some citizen of the world that calls once and is never heard from again. In the days of WREB, some people would become,"regulars", and everybody new their voices. Take " Sweet Lelani" for example. A woman named Tanya who was on the air more than the hosts were. Like any port in a storm, when the calls were light, she was there. She got the name Sweet Lelani from The Personals of the Air show with Chris Plasse where everybody made up CB names for the show.
This woman had a one track political mind and would head in one direction every time she called, and as I didn't do politics on the air, ( that was Willard's forte ), I tried to figure out how to get this woman from bugging me so much.
One day, for no reason whatsoever, I started talking about diets. "How do you lose weight" I queeried to the masses. A few calls came in, and I had fun with the people calling, because that was my style. Make it funny. Then Tanya called. Step up to the plate as a political pitch is about to be tossed at me.
She starts about some Boston politico and goes into her tirade about taxes, government spending, the moon landing and on and on, so I jumped in with the following question:
" How do you lose weight"?
She said, " Excuse me "?
I said, " How do you lose weight"?
She said, " Simple, you just keep your mouth shut."
I said, " You must be one big woman."
"WHAAAATTTT"????......click.
She stopped calling me after that.
Then we had Dagmar. To this day, I do not have a clue what this was. On Saturday Night Live there was a character who was this androgenous person who could be mistaken as a man or a woman. Nobody was sure what it was. This was Dagmar. This person would call with comments that would make a third grader look like a Harvard graduate, and sounded like a man doing a poor imitation of a woman. At the end of the call, he...or she..or whatever broke into this maniacal laugh and would hang up. If we did remote broadcasts outside the studio, Dagmar would call the next day and tell us what we were wearing, but we never, ever saw he/she/it (please pick one). This went on for years, and nobody ever knew what Dagmar was, and it was never seen, as far as we know, by anybody at the station.
There was this legislation going on in 1980 concerning the Bottle Bill in Massachusetts. The biggest story of the year, a stupid bottle bill. A nickle to return your bottles, and Massachusetts was up in arms.
One day I got a call from a guy who was loaded. It was about 9:30 in the morning. He was tanked and started rambling on about the bottle bill.
He couldn't afford the extra cost, at least I think that's what he was slurring about. Next day he calls back, even in worse shape. Somehow I got him laughing so hard he said he was crying. I asked him his first name. He said it was Bill. That was the beginning of several months of the funniest calls I used to get on my program, from some guy I nicknamed Bottle Billy. He would call twice a week or so, and he built up a following. He'd tell stories, and I would interject comments during those stories, and he would start laughing. This was genuine laughter, and the stories became hysterical.
I thought that this guy had to be some sort of entertainer, so one day I invited him to the studio to do a show to see for myself what I was dealing with. He hopped on a bus from Springfield and showed up on time, drunk as a skunk. A little old unkempt man with a wild sense of humor an a problem with the bottle. He was genuinely funny, when you could understand him, and one of those people nobody would have ever known of if I didn't take the time to talk to him..Bottle Billy got his 15 minutes of fame, and he felt wanted. That's what talk radio used to be. When you called, the guy on the air answered. You got to know voices, and you felt important.
There are no more Dagmars or Tanyas or Bottle Billys on the air. Now you are screened, given instructions, say a few words, and you fade away in a heartbeat. Nobody remembers your words, or know who you are.
Arthur Godfrey was one of the first to try talk radio in the 50's. Back then, a caller would call the number given, and Arthur would answer the phone like you do at hime. Not on the air, but on a regular phone, and he would repeat what you said to the audience because the audience couldn't hear the caller. When somebody figured out how to put the caller on the air, it just took off. Now, you could call your hometown radio station, be ON THE RADIO....holy cow...I WAS ON THE RADIO!! Your friends and people at work heard you. When was the last time somebody said to you I heard you on the radio? Probably the last time you used a hula hoop.
Radio was owned by somebody who lived in the town where the station was. The hosts read the commercials. There was always a PERSON live and local on the air.
Those days are gone, but they don't have to be. Radio is one of the few things left that will still work today like it did yesterday, but the question is, is there still a market for that style of radio? There's that word, market. Bottom line...not the listener, but the bank account. Of course there's a market. If there wasn't, why would people spend thousands of dollars to get a flat screen TV, and cable, and sound system to watch TV Land?
Years ago, there was an episode of WKRP in Cincinati, a spoof of Dickens Christmas Carol. The part of Christmas future featured Herb Tarlick walking into this pure white quanset hut. There was an eerie fog, Herb was dressed in white. Everything was in white. You knew he was the only person still working at the station. The SALESMAN. But of course. He spoke into the mic and said," This is WKRP in Cincinati. Till tomorrow morning at six , Good Night." He threw a switch, and the station was off for the night. When I saw that when it aired for the first time, I thought, " Yeah, like that's going to happen some day." Well it has. Stations don't sign off for the most part at dusk any longer, but there's no people left. Rush Limbaugh will boast about being heard on some 700 stations or so, but did he ever apologize to the 700 plus people whose jobs he took? No.... No.
Go into any radio station after 10 AM and look at that little box outside the broadcast booth. The one that says "On The Air"
It will be dark.
Not because somebody swiped the bulb.
It's dark because nobody's there.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Tracy Cole
To women, he was the "monster" on the radio. Long before anyone knew the name Howard Stern, the WREB airwaves were filled daily with the voice of the first shock jock in New England. People thought Joe Pine had an attitude, but in the afternoons in the 60's and 70's, Tracy Cole blasted anything and everything, not by yelling. He never sounded angry, but he was. He often spoke in a monotone voice saying unbeliveable things to unknown thousands of people and generally getting them angry.So who was this guy, and what was his problem?
A man by the name of Chuck Crouse first hired Cole somewhere in Vermont in the 60's, and he had migrated down to Holyoke to do a talk show in the afternoon. Sounds simple enough, but Tracy was a different sort of character. At a time when you couldn't say "poop" on the airwaves, he figured out a way to use no bad language, but manage to insult people on a daily basis, usually one on one on the airwaves, and he got away with it.
The first time I met him was on the steps of the Chicopee radio station, WACE.. My mother was a talk show junky, and she listened daily to the rantings of this man with a very distinguished voice, and decided one day she wanted to meet him and present him with a gift. We hopped in the car, and headed to Chicopee so she could personally hand this guy a happy face smile button. I have no idea what she was thinking or why something as inane as a smile button was so important to her, but she was Mother and she wanted to do it. At that time, Tracy had been fired from WREB for something...sacrificing a puppy on the air or something like that.
People who listen to the same voices on the air for a while tend to develop a mental image of what that person looks like. Several times over the years, folks were amazed when they met me, as they always seemed to have a different impression of who I was. I guess I sounded taller on the air. This was the case with the first meeting of Tracy Cole. My mother had an impression of this man to look like Robert Goulet or Tony Bennett .When we got there, we rang the bell, and were told to wait a minute. When Tracy Cole came to the door, my mother didn't think it was him.. Where was the Tony Bennett look alike? Standing there was her idol, the man she listened to every day, and never missed a word. He was bald, had a scraggly beard, cross eyed, coke bottle glasses, a pot belly and clothes from the Goodwill bin. She introduced us to him and gave him the button, then asked for a picture of him, I guess so she could show her friends and say, "You'll never believe who this is".
To say she was taken aback is an under statement. He was not a good looking guy. I face for radio never rang mre truthfully.
It seems to me that Tracy was fired or lured back to WREB because when he left for WACE, the entire listening audience went with him, so back he came to the 930 frequency and settled into his old habits.
Let me tell you a little bit about Joe Alfano. He owned WREB, and was a very well known character in Holyoke. He was about 5 foot 2, and a dapper dresser if there ever were one. If you saw Joe as a regular on the Sopranos, you'd think he was perfect for the part. His opinion of air talent was, "have fun, do a good show, and don't get me sued". Not a difficult set of rules to live by. He prayed daily that Tracy Cole would abide by those rules. So, it's a warm summer day in the early 70's, Joe tells his daughter Judy, the secretary, that he and a salesman are having lunch at the Yankee Peddlar on Northampton street, and if he is needed, that's where to get him.. He and the salesman go to the Peddlar, Tracy Cole starts his program, and all is right with the world. This was the day, Joe later told me, that he knew even God hated Tracy Cole. As he recalled that day, they had a window seat at the Inn, and it was sunny and clear. Tracy was starting some diatribe on the airwaves, and because he could never really figure out how to use the tape delay system in the studio, he was on every day absolutely live. What went out over the airwaves was heard as it happened, not 7 seconds later. Joe never knew this. So now on this brilliant summer day, Joe and the sales guy are having a meal, and Tracy is taking a call. At the moment of the call, a huge black cloud passes over the Inn, and torrid rain and lightning obliterate the sunshine, and for three minutes Armegeddon falls from the sky. The black cloud passes, the sunshine returns and a waitress comes to Joe's table. "Mr. Alfano, there's a call for you from the station". Joe takes the call, then departs the Inn immediatly.
There were several dozen calls to the station going on as Joe raced back to the "scene of the crime". It seems there was a heated argument transpiring over the airwaves between Tracy and some woman. After a few minutes, about 3 minutes to be exact, the caller posed the following question to Mr. Cole. "Is it true you f### dead dogs", to which Tracy answered, " Yes, better than f###### you". That's it, lights out, game over.
That was the second time Joe had to go on the air to apologize to Western Massachusetts, and the first time he found out that Tracy never used the delay system. Tracy not using the delay was like Russian Roulette, and the gun finally went off. It wasn't bad enough that the caller used the word, but he did too, and that's what freaked out Joe. Tracy kept his job somehow and never did another program without the delay.
A few years later during a commercial break, Tracy went to the mens room and with dead air being broadcast, Judy alerted her father that Tracy disappeared. Joe found him, unconscious wih his head in the toilet. He had a stroke. A bad one. They sent him to the hospital, and a week later, I was doing his afternoon slot on the air. It was not an easy transition.
About a year later, Tracy was seen zipping all over Holyoke in his motorized wheelchair, somewhat of a rare device in those times. You could always see him coming because he had this triangular orange flag on a 10 foot pole flapping in the breeze. His voice was affected by the stroke, so he never spoke very much. Ironic how someone who made a living with his voice didn't want to speak any longer.
I ran into him on High Street one day and introduced myself. I'm not sure to this day if he even knew who I was. I begged him to do a show with me, and for some reason, he said he would.
The day he came into the studio, he rolled up to the consol and just stared down, spoke very little. It was the first time he had been back since the day of the stroke. I opened up the show, told the audience he was there, and the phone lines lit up. What was I getting myself into? What if people started to rag on this guy, saying things like it couldn't have happened to a nicer person? The calls started, and everybody was nice. I was stunned. A community that was driven insane by the tirades of this guy was honestly concerned for him.. What I didn't expect was Tracy's stroke had altered his reasoning and thought patterns. He gave strange answers to questions. "Do you miss the radio, Tracy?" "I think I went to the races that day" he would reply.
He barely used more than ten words, and what I had expected did not happen. He wasn't even sure why he was there.
That was the last time I talked with Tracy. He continued to fly around the streets of Holyoke in his chair, most likely coming from nowhere and headed to nowhere. He died in the summer of 1989 with little fanfare, I didn't even know he was gone till weeks later. I still have a tape of one of his shows. A slow deliberate banter, a sort of kettle you were just waiting to see boil, but it never did. He left that to the audience.
Joe Alfano had an illness also. Started with a lactose intolerance thing, but became something else. Shortly before he died, I went to see him at his house, but for some reason I could not physically see him. I never found out why. I sat in the hallway of Joe's home and talked with him through a partially opened bedroom door.. His voice was weak and scratchy, he was very ill. Tracy Cole came up in the conversation, and I asked Joe why, perhaps, he thought Tracy seemed so very miserable all of the time. Joe told me a story that might have been the beginning of Tracy's anger.
It seems that Tracy was a sort of gypsy in life for a long while. His youth was average, and after High School, he went on to college to study whatever it was he was pursuing at the time. Tracy had a roommate who was a go getter, and this roommate in the 1950's wanted to start a new magazine. He was sure this mag would work, told Tracy all about it, but said there was one problem.. He needed 600 dollars, and he wanted Tracy to loan him that amount, in return for a percentage of the magazine. Tracy told him it was a foolish idea, but the roomie said, " I'm going to do this. If you won't lend me the money, I'll get it from somebody, or I'll sell my furniture, or something". Tracy laughed at him, and told him someday he'd thank him for not lending the money.
Tracy never got his thanks, and his roommate did raise the money. Not lending that 600 dollars, in hindsight, was a big mistake for Tracy Cole, but for his roommate it was the start of a magazine empire that goes on to this day, and it is still headed up by Tracy's old college friend, Hugh Hefner.
A man by the name of Chuck Crouse first hired Cole somewhere in Vermont in the 60's, and he had migrated down to Holyoke to do a talk show in the afternoon. Sounds simple enough, but Tracy was a different sort of character. At a time when you couldn't say "poop" on the airwaves, he figured out a way to use no bad language, but manage to insult people on a daily basis, usually one on one on the airwaves, and he got away with it.
The first time I met him was on the steps of the Chicopee radio station, WACE.. My mother was a talk show junky, and she listened daily to the rantings of this man with a very distinguished voice, and decided one day she wanted to meet him and present him with a gift. We hopped in the car, and headed to Chicopee so she could personally hand this guy a happy face smile button. I have no idea what she was thinking or why something as inane as a smile button was so important to her, but she was Mother and she wanted to do it. At that time, Tracy had been fired from WREB for something...sacrificing a puppy on the air or something like that.
People who listen to the same voices on the air for a while tend to develop a mental image of what that person looks like. Several times over the years, folks were amazed when they met me, as they always seemed to have a different impression of who I was. I guess I sounded taller on the air. This was the case with the first meeting of Tracy Cole. My mother had an impression of this man to look like Robert Goulet or Tony Bennett .When we got there, we rang the bell, and were told to wait a minute. When Tracy Cole came to the door, my mother didn't think it was him.. Where was the Tony Bennett look alike? Standing there was her idol, the man she listened to every day, and never missed a word. He was bald, had a scraggly beard, cross eyed, coke bottle glasses, a pot belly and clothes from the Goodwill bin. She introduced us to him and gave him the button, then asked for a picture of him, I guess so she could show her friends and say, "You'll never believe who this is".
To say she was taken aback is an under statement. He was not a good looking guy. I face for radio never rang mre truthfully.
It seems to me that Tracy was fired or lured back to WREB because when he left for WACE, the entire listening audience went with him, so back he came to the 930 frequency and settled into his old habits.
Let me tell you a little bit about Joe Alfano. He owned WREB, and was a very well known character in Holyoke. He was about 5 foot 2, and a dapper dresser if there ever were one. If you saw Joe as a regular on the Sopranos, you'd think he was perfect for the part. His opinion of air talent was, "have fun, do a good show, and don't get me sued". Not a difficult set of rules to live by. He prayed daily that Tracy Cole would abide by those rules. So, it's a warm summer day in the early 70's, Joe tells his daughter Judy, the secretary, that he and a salesman are having lunch at the Yankee Peddlar on Northampton street, and if he is needed, that's where to get him.. He and the salesman go to the Peddlar, Tracy Cole starts his program, and all is right with the world. This was the day, Joe later told me, that he knew even God hated Tracy Cole. As he recalled that day, they had a window seat at the Inn, and it was sunny and clear. Tracy was starting some diatribe on the airwaves, and because he could never really figure out how to use the tape delay system in the studio, he was on every day absolutely live. What went out over the airwaves was heard as it happened, not 7 seconds later. Joe never knew this. So now on this brilliant summer day, Joe and the sales guy are having a meal, and Tracy is taking a call. At the moment of the call, a huge black cloud passes over the Inn, and torrid rain and lightning obliterate the sunshine, and for three minutes Armegeddon falls from the sky. The black cloud passes, the sunshine returns and a waitress comes to Joe's table. "Mr. Alfano, there's a call for you from the station". Joe takes the call, then departs the Inn immediatly.
There were several dozen calls to the station going on as Joe raced back to the "scene of the crime". It seems there was a heated argument transpiring over the airwaves between Tracy and some woman. After a few minutes, about 3 minutes to be exact, the caller posed the following question to Mr. Cole. "Is it true you f### dead dogs", to which Tracy answered, " Yes, better than f###### you". That's it, lights out, game over.
That was the second time Joe had to go on the air to apologize to Western Massachusetts, and the first time he found out that Tracy never used the delay system. Tracy not using the delay was like Russian Roulette, and the gun finally went off. It wasn't bad enough that the caller used the word, but he did too, and that's what freaked out Joe. Tracy kept his job somehow and never did another program without the delay.
A few years later during a commercial break, Tracy went to the mens room and with dead air being broadcast, Judy alerted her father that Tracy disappeared. Joe found him, unconscious wih his head in the toilet. He had a stroke. A bad one. They sent him to the hospital, and a week later, I was doing his afternoon slot on the air. It was not an easy transition.
About a year later, Tracy was seen zipping all over Holyoke in his motorized wheelchair, somewhat of a rare device in those times. You could always see him coming because he had this triangular orange flag on a 10 foot pole flapping in the breeze. His voice was affected by the stroke, so he never spoke very much. Ironic how someone who made a living with his voice didn't want to speak any longer.
I ran into him on High Street one day and introduced myself. I'm not sure to this day if he even knew who I was. I begged him to do a show with me, and for some reason, he said he would.
The day he came into the studio, he rolled up to the consol and just stared down, spoke very little. It was the first time he had been back since the day of the stroke. I opened up the show, told the audience he was there, and the phone lines lit up. What was I getting myself into? What if people started to rag on this guy, saying things like it couldn't have happened to a nicer person? The calls started, and everybody was nice. I was stunned. A community that was driven insane by the tirades of this guy was honestly concerned for him.. What I didn't expect was Tracy's stroke had altered his reasoning and thought patterns. He gave strange answers to questions. "Do you miss the radio, Tracy?" "I think I went to the races that day" he would reply.
He barely used more than ten words, and what I had expected did not happen. He wasn't even sure why he was there.
That was the last time I talked with Tracy. He continued to fly around the streets of Holyoke in his chair, most likely coming from nowhere and headed to nowhere. He died in the summer of 1989 with little fanfare, I didn't even know he was gone till weeks later. I still have a tape of one of his shows. A slow deliberate banter, a sort of kettle you were just waiting to see boil, but it never did. He left that to the audience.
Joe Alfano had an illness also. Started with a lactose intolerance thing, but became something else. Shortly before he died, I went to see him at his house, but for some reason I could not physically see him. I never found out why. I sat in the hallway of Joe's home and talked with him through a partially opened bedroom door.. His voice was weak and scratchy, he was very ill. Tracy Cole came up in the conversation, and I asked Joe why, perhaps, he thought Tracy seemed so very miserable all of the time. Joe told me a story that might have been the beginning of Tracy's anger.
It seems that Tracy was a sort of gypsy in life for a long while. His youth was average, and after High School, he went on to college to study whatever it was he was pursuing at the time. Tracy had a roommate who was a go getter, and this roommate in the 1950's wanted to start a new magazine. He was sure this mag would work, told Tracy all about it, but said there was one problem.. He needed 600 dollars, and he wanted Tracy to loan him that amount, in return for a percentage of the magazine. Tracy told him it was a foolish idea, but the roomie said, " I'm going to do this. If you won't lend me the money, I'll get it from somebody, or I'll sell my furniture, or something". Tracy laughed at him, and told him someday he'd thank him for not lending the money.
Tracy never got his thanks, and his roommate did raise the money. Not lending that 600 dollars, in hindsight, was a big mistake for Tracy Cole, but for his roommate it was the start of a magazine empire that goes on to this day, and it is still headed up by Tracy's old college friend, Hugh Hefner.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Richard Lavigne
He was the first radio personality I ever met, and I was so excited, I thought I would pee.Very few people probably remember him, but before there was a Paul Harvey, there was Richard Lavigne.
I was about 10 years old when I first met him. My mother worked at the Holyoke Daily Transcript, and had met him before. Richard was the voice of Holyoke radio. He was always on our radio, the old brown bakelite thing that sat on the kitchen table. So one day, I went with my mother to Newberrys department store on High Street for something. There was a big popcorn machine in the front of the store, and in front of that popcorn machine, I first met Richard, the owner of the voice on our radio at home. Richard was a diminutive man, but I remember looking up at him. My mother said, " George, this is Richard Lavigne." I think I broke into the Ralph Kramden humina, humina, humina stutter when I met him. I remember he was wearing one of those ties like a shoestring wrapped around his neck, and clasped in the front with a medalion of some sort. He always wore them, never a normal tie.
I don't know why it was such a thrill for me to meet this man, years later, I would work with on the radio. Why do we remember things from so long ago, so precisely, that we know where we were standing, or who we were with when we met someone. Richard never pronounced his last name the standard way, like Lavine. He used Lah-ving-yay. I never knew why. He was a curious little man who knew every person in the city, every thing that was going on around town at any time, and most importantly, he had a mind like a vault. He rarely forgot anybody or anything. Let me say here that when I worked at WREB radio, it was a talk show format, the first in the area, so there was no music. You relied on callers to get you through your show. If nobody called, well, you had to be prepared to talk about anything for as long as you could or the dreaded "dead air" thing would happen. When you got to the point of not having a clue of what to talk about, you asked Richard to come in the studio. After all, he was there all day every day doing whatever it was he did.
When Richard came into the main studio, all you had to ask him was what's new. Bam.. You were all set. This man was amazing. He just went, and one thought led to another, and that thought to another, and he never failed. He did a half hour news cast from 8:05 AM till 8:35 AM every day and just talked. No sound bites, no guests, one 2 minute break, and he never had enough time to finish.
Probably my best friend ever in life is a guy I met through that radio station, Jonathan Evans. WREB was a daytime only radio station, so in the summer months, the station could stay on longer, so the owner, Joe Alfano hired a girl named Chris Plasse, and on those summer nights, she hosted a show titled, "Personals of The Air", a talk show where callers used CB handles when they called in, as the CB craze was in full force during those days in the late 70's. I listened to that show every night. I never called, but I got hooked on it. Jonathan, a.k.a. Chip, called all the time, and he became such a good caller, Joe hired him for his own show. I met Chip at a little tiny mall in Holyoke during a "live" show that nobody was listening to, and we became friends.About a year later, I got hired at WREB. The place Richard Lavigne worked! During my first week, Chip showed me around, gave me the do's and dont's of the place, and one of the dont's was.."Don't watch Richard when he does his news". I thought that quite odd, as Richard did his news every half hour, then the 8:05 half hour news cast, then the 12:30 extention of the 8 O'Clock news, (I swear, that's what he called it), so why can't you look at him? Phobia? Nervousness? No. Polident. Yup, Polident. Richard had false teeth, and a bizaare life style do to illness that caused him to eat breakfast at 5PM or supper at 2 AM, and he slept strange hours, so when he did his half hour news blocks, it was commonplace for him to lean on his elbow, talk, and start to close his eyes. He did this all of the time, and he was never aware that all of that talking would make him drool. A puddle on the counter under his mic was what Chip was referring to. A puddle of Polident and saliva. Ergo, nobody looked at Richard when he read the news. One day, a flourscent bulb burned out in the news room while he was on the air. He talked for 15 minutes about that bulb, and he made it interesting.
Richard drove around in an old brown Buick, emblazoned wit a licence plate that read,"AM 930" the frequency of the station, and his travels would take him to some daily or weekly stops for news of the community. One of those stops was a visit to an area hospital, for a medical news update, or something like that, that he thought might be interesting. After one of these hospital visits, I was on the air when it came time for Richard's updates, and he started to talk about patient proceedures in the hospital. Richard just had some notes. On everything. He never read news verbatim, he just expounded on his notes, and I must say, there were times he would ramble, and I think just make stuff up because he thought it was interesting. So he's going on about the hospital and starts to go into a story that he"thinks" is based on facts, but he can't reveal his sources, (of course),and that doctors and nurses at this hospital allow folks to die if they believe it is in the best interest of the patient. They ignor the patients. The hospital was listening and every phone in the studio lit up. WHAT THE HELL IS HE TALKING ABOUT??? The station owner came racing into the studio from lunch. I was sitting there with the monitor off as usual, but the reel to reel tape recorder was running. Joe ripped the tape off of the machine and told me that tape never existed. I said OK.
Then the Transcript Newspaper called, and the 163rd call from the Hospital administrators. It was a nightmare. Richard's response? " I was only reporting the news". It was a rare occurance, and one of the few times the owner went on the air to apologize to a large organization for what surely was," factual error".
Richard was at that station for years, once getting fired for some other infraction, but the public outcry for his return was so enormous, he was hired back, something inconceivable today.
He never missed a day unless he was very ill. The diabetes he suffered with for years with finally took it's toll, and on a cold January morning in 1986, Richard's voice was forever silenced. There's nothing to be found of him on the net. Except for Mike Dobbs "Out of the Inkwell" blog, you can find few references to that great Holyoke station. I don't even have a picture of Richard. Just some old tapes of he and I chatting it up on the air, or him breaking into the studio one morning to tell the audience Reagan had just been shot. Richard coined the phrase, "The best little town by a Dam site", a reference to the dam between Holyoke and South Hadley.
When he finished his daily broadcasts, he would always tag the last one with this: "Untill tomorrow, God Willing, this is Richard Lavigne, hoping you all have a pleasant evening, and a better tomorrow".
Thanks Richard. God Bless you Richard. You were and always will be the radio voice of WREB.
I was about 10 years old when I first met him. My mother worked at the Holyoke Daily Transcript, and had met him before. Richard was the voice of Holyoke radio. He was always on our radio, the old brown bakelite thing that sat on the kitchen table. So one day, I went with my mother to Newberrys department store on High Street for something. There was a big popcorn machine in the front of the store, and in front of that popcorn machine, I first met Richard, the owner of the voice on our radio at home. Richard was a diminutive man, but I remember looking up at him. My mother said, " George, this is Richard Lavigne." I think I broke into the Ralph Kramden humina, humina, humina stutter when I met him. I remember he was wearing one of those ties like a shoestring wrapped around his neck, and clasped in the front with a medalion of some sort. He always wore them, never a normal tie.
I don't know why it was such a thrill for me to meet this man, years later, I would work with on the radio. Why do we remember things from so long ago, so precisely, that we know where we were standing, or who we were with when we met someone. Richard never pronounced his last name the standard way, like Lavine. He used Lah-ving-yay. I never knew why. He was a curious little man who knew every person in the city, every thing that was going on around town at any time, and most importantly, he had a mind like a vault. He rarely forgot anybody or anything. Let me say here that when I worked at WREB radio, it was a talk show format, the first in the area, so there was no music. You relied on callers to get you through your show. If nobody called, well, you had to be prepared to talk about anything for as long as you could or the dreaded "dead air" thing would happen. When you got to the point of not having a clue of what to talk about, you asked Richard to come in the studio. After all, he was there all day every day doing whatever it was he did.
When Richard came into the main studio, all you had to ask him was what's new. Bam.. You were all set. This man was amazing. He just went, and one thought led to another, and that thought to another, and he never failed. He did a half hour news cast from 8:05 AM till 8:35 AM every day and just talked. No sound bites, no guests, one 2 minute break, and he never had enough time to finish.
Probably my best friend ever in life is a guy I met through that radio station, Jonathan Evans. WREB was a daytime only radio station, so in the summer months, the station could stay on longer, so the owner, Joe Alfano hired a girl named Chris Plasse, and on those summer nights, she hosted a show titled, "Personals of The Air", a talk show where callers used CB handles when they called in, as the CB craze was in full force during those days in the late 70's. I listened to that show every night. I never called, but I got hooked on it. Jonathan, a.k.a. Chip, called all the time, and he became such a good caller, Joe hired him for his own show. I met Chip at a little tiny mall in Holyoke during a "live" show that nobody was listening to, and we became friends.About a year later, I got hired at WREB. The place Richard Lavigne worked! During my first week, Chip showed me around, gave me the do's and dont's of the place, and one of the dont's was.."Don't watch Richard when he does his news". I thought that quite odd, as Richard did his news every half hour, then the 8:05 half hour news cast, then the 12:30 extention of the 8 O'Clock news, (I swear, that's what he called it), so why can't you look at him? Phobia? Nervousness? No. Polident. Yup, Polident. Richard had false teeth, and a bizaare life style do to illness that caused him to eat breakfast at 5PM or supper at 2 AM, and he slept strange hours, so when he did his half hour news blocks, it was commonplace for him to lean on his elbow, talk, and start to close his eyes. He did this all of the time, and he was never aware that all of that talking would make him drool. A puddle on the counter under his mic was what Chip was referring to. A puddle of Polident and saliva. Ergo, nobody looked at Richard when he read the news. One day, a flourscent bulb burned out in the news room while he was on the air. He talked for 15 minutes about that bulb, and he made it interesting.
Richard drove around in an old brown Buick, emblazoned wit a licence plate that read,"AM 930" the frequency of the station, and his travels would take him to some daily or weekly stops for news of the community. One of those stops was a visit to an area hospital, for a medical news update, or something like that, that he thought might be interesting. After one of these hospital visits, I was on the air when it came time for Richard's updates, and he started to talk about patient proceedures in the hospital. Richard just had some notes. On everything. He never read news verbatim, he just expounded on his notes, and I must say, there were times he would ramble, and I think just make stuff up because he thought it was interesting. So he's going on about the hospital and starts to go into a story that he"thinks" is based on facts, but he can't reveal his sources, (of course),and that doctors and nurses at this hospital allow folks to die if they believe it is in the best interest of the patient. They ignor the patients. The hospital was listening and every phone in the studio lit up. WHAT THE HELL IS HE TALKING ABOUT??? The station owner came racing into the studio from lunch. I was sitting there with the monitor off as usual, but the reel to reel tape recorder was running. Joe ripped the tape off of the machine and told me that tape never existed. I said OK.
Then the Transcript Newspaper called, and the 163rd call from the Hospital administrators. It was a nightmare. Richard's response? " I was only reporting the news". It was a rare occurance, and one of the few times the owner went on the air to apologize to a large organization for what surely was," factual error".
Richard was at that station for years, once getting fired for some other infraction, but the public outcry for his return was so enormous, he was hired back, something inconceivable today.
He never missed a day unless he was very ill. The diabetes he suffered with for years with finally took it's toll, and on a cold January morning in 1986, Richard's voice was forever silenced. There's nothing to be found of him on the net. Except for Mike Dobbs "Out of the Inkwell" blog, you can find few references to that great Holyoke station. I don't even have a picture of Richard. Just some old tapes of he and I chatting it up on the air, or him breaking into the studio one morning to tell the audience Reagan had just been shot. Richard coined the phrase, "The best little town by a Dam site", a reference to the dam between Holyoke and South Hadley.
When he finished his daily broadcasts, he would always tag the last one with this: "Untill tomorrow, God Willing, this is Richard Lavigne, hoping you all have a pleasant evening, and a better tomorrow".
Thanks Richard. God Bless you Richard. You were and always will be the radio voice of WREB.
Voices from the past
For the longest time I have wanted to share a lot of things about my career in radio in Massachusetts. I have climbed all over the internet trying to find sites directly related to radio of years gone by in the Springfield, Massachusetts area. I believe this is the only one available on the web now, and I have a lot of memories to share about my tenure behind the microphone at old stations such as WREB in Holyoke, WSPR in the 80"s, WLDM which became WNNZ, and WMAS in Springfield, a station I was fired from twice.After coming back from Viet Nam in the early seventies, I had but one goal in life. To become an actor. Before my time in the military, I had been in a half dozen ot so stage shows, the first was in a show named, " Scarecrow Dick", a performance at the Joseph P. Metcalf school.in Holyoke, about a thousand years ago. I played a tree. As my Father always referred to me as a knot head, this was the perfect roll for be. I recall stepping on one of the branches of my costume and crashing to the stage, and the audience roared. That laughter was the Genesis of my career. I made people laugh, and I liked it. I liked it a lot.So here it is, over a half century later, and I still love to make people laugh, but I have lost the outlet to do so till today, when I created this blog.I will share with you stories of radio days gone by, my summers working at the Mt. Tom Playhouse, on the grounds of Mountain Park in Holyoke, where I had odd relationships with Tallulah Bankhead, Merv Griffen, Cesar Romero and others. I'll describe what it was like making the only movie I was ever in, and getting blown up in that movie. I also have a few stories about a television show I was part of on WWLP in the early eighties, but most of all, how and why I got involved in radio, and the way the radio business became the business of radio.I invite you to share any memories or questions about the stations above, or any people you might remember from those times, and I will probably start later today or tomorrow to let you know how radio was and why it can never be that way again. It was an amazing ride, and I would love to do it all over again, but I can't. Fortunately, I have hundreds of audio tapes to relive some of those times, and if science is correct, the residents of Alpha Centauri are listening to me right now. Some of them will send back hate mail, and I assure you, it won't be signed. Welcome aboard.
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