(Edited to add a WNEW link.)
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a Top 40 jock like the ones I listened to on the radio. But I’ve often wondered, in the years since, whether I could really have lived that life. The WKRP in Cincinnati theme had it right: the life was often “town to town, up and down the dial.” Many of the most legendary Top 40 jocks were nomads, jumping from one market to another, blown on the winds of changing ratings, changing formats, changing management, and/or changing times. Take one representative example, Big Ron O’Brien, who, over a career that spanned nearly 40 years, worked in Kansas City, Denver, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Milwaukee (the preceding four over a six-year span), Washington, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Denver again, Philadelphia again. That’s a lot of packing and moving.
Ron O’Brien died over the weekend due to complications from pneumonia at age 56. He’d been in Philadelphia since 1996. His last program director said, “I never knew a guy who loved being on the air as much as he did. There was such joy in his voice. He was put on this earth nothing other than to be on the air.” And he was very, very good at it. In addition to his major-market gigs, he hosted a national show called On the Radio for several years. But he paid a price for that life, too: His obituary notes that he’s survived only by his mother.
I remember O’Brien’s brief Chicago gig, doing evenings at WCFL. He wasn’t there long—as I recall, ‘CFL went through at least three evening jocks in a period of just a few months in 1974. He landed in DC after that, at WPGC, but was blown out in 1977 along with the rest of the station’s jocks after they went on strike to protest a new station policy that would have required them to record voice tracks for their shows instead of doing shows live, essentially converting full-time positions into part-time positions. You can find some airchecks of Big Ron at WPGC here. (The WPGC tribute site is a great one, giving you the flavor of the way Top 40 radio used to be, so I’m adding it to the blogroll.)
Here’s a song that was at its chart peak (#31) this week in 1974, the year O’Brien hit Chicago. Albert Hammond is best known for “It Never Rains in Southern California,” one of the most indelible records of the 1970s. He also wrote Leo Sayer’s “When I Need You” and “The Air That I Breathe” by the Hollies, and may be best known among a younger generation of listeners as the father of Albert Hammond Jr. of the Strokes. Although several of his releases made the Hot 100, only one other one made the Top 40. An odd little fact about Ron O’Brien reported in his obituary is that he apparently loved trolleys. So this one’s appropriate today.
“I’m a Train”/Albert Hammond (buy it here)
(New at WNEW.com: Rock and Roll Dreams Come True.)
Filed under: Radio Tales, Tracks
Big Ron also hosted a show in the 1980s we used to carry called “Future Hits.” It was a program produced and distributed by, who else…Westwood One.
I thought Carole Bayer Sager wrote “When I Need You”. Was that a collaboration?
And I hadn’t known he wrote “The Air That I Breathe”, which is by my lights one of the ten most beautiful pop songs ever.
Scraps: Yup to the collaboration between Hammond and Sager. “The Air That I Breathe” was also a collaboration, with Mike Hazelwood. And yup also to that being one of the most beautiful pop songs ever.