Posted by Steve Green on August 13, 2004 at 14:04:37:
In Reply to: Re: Chuck Leonard Passed Away Today posted by KCJackson on August 12, 2004 at 19:33:15:
I don't mean in the least to sully the mood, KC and the rest of all y'all; please understand.....
A bit of a preface to this potential peril might explain, even though the basics border on a form of heresy....... (And you, KC, are a fine writer, so I figure to hide behind your byline as flak protection :-).
Goes this way -- give me elbow room here for a few moments: I was never a big WABC fan as a youth. Perhaps a lot of AM DXers of a certain era in NYC were not. My fellow brood wanted WKBW, WPOP, WARM, WPTR, WGH, etc. There was a wider variety of music on distant stations than available in NYC.
Once in radio, for a living, for everybody, eventually, there was always Ingram, and the occasional Charlie Greer, and the awesome Bob Hardt, and those PAMS sonovox jingles, and the WABC studio smoothness, and the undeniably bighearted, confident and professional packaging of music radio. Once a fledgling DJ started to get serious about radio as an actual living, WABC was like Oz, professionally unattainable yet a blueprint not to be ignored.
In the adolescent meantime, Chuck Leonard's own WABC shift was way out of the mainstream for our curious nocturnal collection of dial-twisters, DJ wannabees and music seekers. The DXing gang did tune him in on occasion, of course, and I remember a few eventual impressions of him done by radio wannabees (and even radio pros on long Island). Sonny Taylor (then at WWRL) had Chuck down so pat that it was almost WRONG! Leonard's voice was the key. How polished and 'everyman' this fellow must've developed his style to be -- or if much effort was required at all on his part to attain the mix of consistency, company, and voice.
Fast-forward many years, to the Nineties.... and there is that same voice, like you'd recognize the voice of a relative; your uncle, your cousin, your own father, on WQEW..... playing records older than anything you ever dreamed of admitting you like or liked, especially as a teen. Indeed, there is Chuck Leonard on WQEW, playing Rosemary Clooney and the Four Aces and Andy Williams......That VOICE is there, a resonance from your distant youth, communicating again.
I regret having missed most of Chuck Leonard's WABC work. But he was a very frequent tune-in here in NE PA on WQEW, where I remember listening to him most. The ambience to me was indeed being like a kid again. Imagine being a semi-retired DXer, and hearing another delicious distant, fading AM signal with music your Folks played and enjoyed, and that Voice from the past still there in between the songs, all the while reminding you of how silly you must have looked, how silly your priorities must've been, the things you tooK with you in later life, and how it all added up to 'communications' in every definitive sense.
Imagine a very long radio career having begun and ended with class all the way. We should all be so lucky.