How it all started…

I’ve spent the last 60 years on this good earth, and sometime in the first 6 or 7 years I found this thing called radio. Don’t ask me how.  It was just there.  My first recollection was hearing “The Lone Ranger” and “Boston Blackie” on the radio. Was it WHEC? WHAM? I don’t remember. Or it might have been fiddling with my grandmother’s old Philco radio in her Fleming St. living room, when she’d listen to Attelio Iacelli’s “Italian Musicale” on WSAY. Growing up in the northern end of Rochester, NY (a little community called Charlotte-you say “Shuh-LOT”) we were as far from the source of radio as could be. But late at night (it was late for me) we’d stretch the “aerial” of our little table radio to hear the amazing stories come out of that little box. You had to actually picture in your mind what you were hearing, and guess what? IT WORKED!! One night my Dad came home with a Motorola 15″ TV (or was it 13″?) - and as I never could quite figure out, radio was about to change. No longer did you have to just listen. You could watch. I first remember watching Ed Sullivan, or Milton Berle or one of those variety shows on TV. I’m sure I lost my interest in what was coming out of the radio about then. It wasn’t about to be gone forever, though.

A few years later, my sister got one of those RCA 45 RPM changers for Christmas. (Or, was it a Silvertone?) Along with that, she got the soundtrack EP to the movie “Living It Up” - a flick with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in it. It might have been 1954 or 55, but I thought it was cool that the music we heard in the movie was on demand to us -as long as Barb didn’t mind (or wasn’t at home). She (like most teenage girls) started buying 45’s - Elvis, Pat Boone, the hits. The music would drift through her closed door - and into the ears of a very impressionable 7 year old. It wasn’t too much later that she briefly mentioned a date where she went to visit “the radio station” where “Melody Corner” originated. It was THE show to listen to every night because someone might dedicate a song to you — or you could dedicate a song to them. The only thing I remember her saying was that the dee jay had a big nose.

My first brush with a media star was sometime in the summer of 1956 or ‘57. In Charlotte, there was a band shell at Ontario Beach Park. Every Sunday they’d have some kind of musical thing -whether it was the Symphony Orchestra or Luigi and his pizzicato accordian. One Sunday afternoon, Ross Weller (who was the weather guy on WHAM-TV) was hosting the event. I thought “wow- a real TV guy right here in our town”. A couple of us young kids climbed on the stage to say hello to him . . . he unceremoniously threw us off. So much for Media people.

Also at the park was “The Merry-Go-Round”, and the bumper cars. It was a destination for families from all over the city every summer. Early on, I was hitting the beach. The water. (Pollution? What’s that?) - later on I was mobile. Had the ol’ 20″ bicycle and could go anywhere. In the Summer, there was only one place to go. The park. I was frequently without friends (who’d gone on vacation or were busy - or I just wanted to be alone) and would spend the day at The Merry Go Round. It was fascinating, because each ride featured “the rings”. Some kid would climb a tower, load a batch of rings into the chute and as the carousel turned people would grab a ring. (Some of the more adept would grab 2, 4, 6 at at time.) If you were lucky enough you got the Brass Ring -which entitled you to a free ride. Now the price of a ride started out as 5 cents…grew 6, then 10 before my time there ran out. But the fascination was more than the animals, the carousel or the rings. The owner at the time, Lloyd (something or other) was an interesting guy. Probably in his 50s at the time, he’d crank the thing up– and 3 minutes later crank it down again. Most of these old-fashioned carousels had their own music source, usually a calliope or mechanical band. Not this one. It had a WURLITZER juke box. The hits, and some really funky stuff (including Arthur Godfrey’s “Too Fat Polka”) would blare through the 15″ bullhorn mounted on the ceiling. Fidelity was awful. But it was another place to hear those hits -the same ones that came out of my sister’s record player.

It wasn’t long before I was about to enter the world of buying records. One christmas I was about to get my first record player. It WAS a Silvertone. Blue case, grey turntable that had an indentation for the 45’s, not a spindle in the center. (A bad idea as I was soon to learn.) The first record I got was “Wonderful Wonderful” by Johnny Mathis. I didn’t really care what it was, because it was something that would make noise coming out of the speaker. The second? “A Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” by Jerry Lee Lewis. We bought it for 98 cents at Daw’s Drugs on Lake Avenue. My mother was quick to tell me that it wasn’t “Jerry Lewis” - but I knew full well what was in the grooves of that yellow Sun Record.

ENTER CHERYL STEIGERWALD

I went to elementary school at George Clinton Latta school (PS 38). On the first day of 4th grade, I became instantly smitten with Cheryl Steigerwald. I probably spent the next week thinking of nothing but her-and one day in the car, the radio played “In The Still Of The Night” by The Five Satins. Right then and there, that became “OUR” song. There was only one problem. She didn’t know (or care) how I felt, and I was a pure nothing. Well as happened frequently, the class was split up and I went to a different room. Exit Cheryl Steigerwald. BUT enter Susan Morganti. I was learning of my Italian roots, and Charlotte was a bustling Italian community. I think I developed a crush on Susan because my childhood buddy Keith Edwards did. He liked her, so I should have too. I don’t know who ended up with that prize (and I think she was) - but I didn’t. However, we would go on “dates” (to the movies. On the bus) and afterwards go to her house and listen to her Hi-Fi. She played “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose It’s Flavor” on the home set at least 2 years before it was a hit on the radio. She played “Lazy Mary” before the radio got it. In Rochester, the radio got it. I got hooked on the hits.