How a Miami DJ brought the Beatles to the Beach. Remember these other Florida DJs?
When the Beatles conquered America in 1964, Miami Beach was where the group made history.
And you could say the Beatles got by with a little help from their friends.
Radio DJs.
The recent death of Sonny Fox has us reflecting on the voices of music DJs we loved on South Florida airwaves for generations.
How Rick Shaw bridged Liverpool and Miami
Take the late Rick Shaw.
He was the 25-year-old DJ on Miami’s hippest station, WQAM-560, and Shaw is credited with spinning the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on South Florida’s airwaves before anyone else locally.
“’I Want to Hold Your Hand’ was an amazing thing,” Shaw told the Miami Herald on the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ Feb. 16, 1964, performance on Sunday night’s “The Ed Sullivan Show,” a landmark gig that was broadcast from the Deauville Hotel on Miami Beach’s Collins Avenue.
The Beatles, who broke up 50 years ago in 1970, played Sullivan from New York a week earlier. But South Florida, in part because of music DJs like Rick Shaw, is a bright spot in Beatles’ history.
“I put it on, played it first in South Florida, and nobody had heard of the Beatles,” Shaw said about playing that Beatles’ 45 rpm single. “About 30 seconds into the record the phones exploded. Something was going on here, something really unusual and different. Those things become road marks and the soundtrack of your life.”
In September 1964, the Beatles performed at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville and refused to go on stage if the concert was racially segregated.
“We never play to segregated audiences and we aren’t going to start now. I’d sooner lose out appearance money,” John Lennon said at the time, the Beatle Bible reported.
Shaw was there to gauge the reaction he helped spark in Florida earlier that year.
“I have never in my life heard the screams, shouts and other assorted noises displayed when George, Paul, Ringo and John took the state in Jacksonville,” Shaw wrote. He also covered the Beatles’ first appearance in Miami Beach at the now crumbling and closed Deauville Hotel for a taping of “The Ed Sullivan Show” in February 1964 and played the Fab Four’s “I Want to Hold Your Hand” single on WQAM before any other South Florida station.
DJ Joe Johnson is another voice beloved to South Florida radio listeners for playing the soundtrack of so many lives. Now a morning host on WLRN 91.3 FM and host and creator of the syndicated Beatle Brunch program on Compass Media Networks, Johnson was DJ on oldies station Majic 102.7 FM when he reminisced about the Beatles on the Beach, 56 years ago.
“They spent more time in South Florida than any other city; they were here eight days,” he told the Herald in 2014. In Miami they really interacted with our local celebs. Cassius Clay. They loved the local flavor. I think for Florida to claim the Beatles as part of their own is really important.”
‘Sonny in the Morning’ and memories of Florida DJs
“Sonny in the morning” was for decades of South Florida radio listeners a familiar phrase. Many grew up hearing Sonny Fox’s familiar drawl on rock radio WSHE 103.5 FM, contemporary pop station WHYI Y-100 100.7 FM and KISS Country WKIS 99.9 FM.
According to his longtime radio partner Ron Hersey, who was paired with Fox on those stations, the DJ even inspired a 1978-1982 CBS sitcom about the pop music radio industry.
“Sonny was at Z-93 in Atlanta at the same time Hugh Wilson was writing ‘WKRP in Cincinnati.’ His ‘look’ was the inspiration for hiring Howard Hessman to play Johnny Fever,” said Hersey. “Sonny also used wind chimes on the air there, which later became a part of Venus Flytrap’s show.”
From Tanner in the Morning to Mark in the Dark
Sure, John, Paul, George and Ringo’s voices on Beatles hits and then solo hits kept us tapping our toes on WQAM, WFUN, WGBS, Y-100 and others from the 1960s to oldies satellite programs now.
But we’re talking the voices that introduced the music, kept us laughing in the morning, answering our phones with the slogan, “I’m listening to the new sound of Y-100!” in hopes of winning cash prizes, or slapping “SHE’s Only Rock and Roll” bumper stickers on our cars.
DJs like Shaw. “Crazy” Cramer Haas. Bill “Tanner in the Morning.” Don “Cox on the Radio” Cox. Jo “The Rock and Roll Madame” Maeder. 97 GTR’s Patty Murray. Kimba Schnickelfritz (she only needed one of those names to rock our world on Zeta 4). Jade Alexander. DJ Irie. “James T.” Thomas. Mindy Lang. Glenn Richards.
How about Greg Budell on Love 94 and his face on bus benches in the 1980s? Y-100 in the 1970s with Kid Curry, Earl “The Pearl” Lewis, Mark “In the Dark” Shands and Quincy McCoy.
Here are some of their stories from the Miami Herald archives.
Larry King has a special place in his heart for Miami, where ‘anything goes’
Published April 14, 2017
You know Larry King as a television talk show host for the more than 50,000 interviews he has done with, well, everyone. But he got his start as a radio DJ in Miami Beach playing music and then chatting between songs with visiting celebs.
On May 1, 1957, the man who would be King was born in a small booth in a Miami Beach radio station.
Moments before Larry Zeiger was to deliver his first radio broadcast for WAHR (now gospel station WMBM 1490 AM), the station’s general manager told the eager 23-year-old gofer that his name was too ethnic and would be difficult to remember. Zeiger, who had dreamed of a career in radio and who arrived from New York with $13 in his pocket, eyed a copy of the Miami Herald. He saw an ad for King’s Wholesale Liquor.
King. Larry King. The name stuck.
King’s ability to think fast on his feet developed two weeks after he went on the air at WAHR when he had to apologize to a barrage of irritated callers. Earning $55 a week to act as DJ and read news and sports reports, King was seduced off the airwaves by a lustful listener who cajoled him to her house 12 blocks from the station. Because he worked alone in the studio, he figured he could put a Harry Belafonte record on the air and make it back to the mic before the music stopped in 33 minutes. He didn’t count on the needle getting stuck in the groove just as the two fell into an embrace at her place.
Job perks aside, three more years would pass before King’s new surname would reflect his status in Miami’s media empire. The unlikely setting: a booth at Pumpernik’s on Miami Beach’s Collins Avenue near the Fontainebleau.
There, amid the knishes, chicken croquettes and baked goods at the defunct restaurant chain, King, now working for WIOD 610 AM, conducted his first celebrity interview in 1960. The lessons learned from that initial spontaneous chat with “Beyond the Sea” crooner Bobby Darin served King for the rest of his career.
Read the full story here.
‘Tanner in the Morning’ was South Florida’s first million dollar radio man
Published on Jan. 4, 1985
Bill Tanner, former program director and morning deejay at Y-100 (WHYI-FM), has returned to South Florida radio, lured by a million-dollar contract from EZ-105 (WEZI-FM).
The primary goal of Tanner, who spent the last two years at Washington, D.C.’s WASH-FM, will be to provide South Florida with its first powerful urban contemporary radio station.
As programming-operations director and morning-show host for EZ-105, Tanner expects to overhaul the station’s format, on- air personalities and image. Effective Thursday, EZ-105, which currently plays mellow adult contemporary music, will change its name to “Hot 105,” its call letters to WHQT-FM, and its format to urban contemporary — a blend of dance rock and rhythm and blues music performed mainly by black and some crossover artists, such as Prince, the Pointer Sisters, Madonna, the Gap Band and Hall and Oates.
“The format will be geared toward the Latins, Blacks and party-going, club-loving Anglos in the community,” Tanner said at a press conference Thursday.
As incentive, the station will pay Tanner $1 million over four years — an unprecedented sum for the South Florida radio market.
Published on Nov. 21, 1991
The future remains hazy for South Florida radio pioneer Bill Tanner, but one thing is certain — drug charges will create static on the morning personality’s 15-year record for innovation and wackiness.
Fill-in host Kid Curry, whose regular time period is the midday, will take over for Tanner indefinitely. The rest of the morning team, including sidekick Bo Griffin, will also be on the air beginning this morning.
“I’m going to take a leave of absence until the thing is sort of cleared up,” Tanner said Wednesday. Tanner said he did not know how long that leave would last.
Tanner, 46, a Deep South native whose first radio job was playing classical music at a station in Vicksburg, Miss. — at age 13 — has shown an uncanny talent for tapping into South Florida’s cultural diversity.
He has been program director at Power 96 since 1986, and took the job of morning personality in 1987. For most of his years at Power, it has ranked among the top five of South Florida’s 40 or so stations. Most of its audience is Hispanic, drawn by the station’s mix of Latin dance tracks, Top 40 pop and classic cuts from Miami’s disco heyday.
Tanner came to South Florida in 1974, as program director and morning man for Y-100 (WHYI 100.7 FM). From 1974 to 1982 he helped create and define that station’s fun-loving, pop-heavy format. Its flair for South Florida sun-drenched giddiness and offbeat humor made it a local institution. But the real plus was ratings dominance.
From 1983 to 1985, Tanner took another morning man/program director job with WASH-FM in Washington, D.C. — but the ratings dropped.
Regardless, the owners of what was then EZ-105 in Miami offered Tanner a four-year, $1 million contract to return to South Florida and create Hot 105 (WHQT 105.1 FM). Though the station made an initial hop in ratings in 1985, the numbers didn’t last. Tanner was fired.
At Power 96, Tanner has prided himself on a morning show that is more than wall-to-wall frothy pop songs. He constantly records and airs opinions from his mostly young and mostly Hispanic callers, and has taken up myriad issues with them — from constant hawk-vs.-dove polls during the Persian Gulf War to a morning-long welcome (and shopping spree) for a Cuban defector who windsurfed to freedom.
The Tanner in the Morning show is also known for inviting singing stars to record messages that order listeners to “Get up and get off with Tanner in the Morning.” The name of the show is always spoken musically, a play on the childhood jeer, “na-na- na-na-na-na.”
Published on Sept. 2, 2005
Bill Tanner, a radio veteran who’s well known in South Florida both on and off the air, has quit his post as executive vice president of programming at Spanish Broadcasting System to take up full-time consulting.
The 60-year-old decided not to renew his contract at the end of its five-year term on Wednesday.
He will now work full-time at his own company, Bill Tanner & Associates, consulting for nine radio stations around the country, including Miami-based Power 96, WPOW-FM (96.5). He may also consult for Coconut Grove-based SBS.
At SBS, he’s propelled some of the Spanish-language chain’s stations to top ratings in Los Angeles, New York and Miami. Last year, his salary and bonus exceeded $1 million, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
“He brought in a really essential understanding of programming principles to SBS,” said radio industry analyst Tom Taylor.
Tanner, who was crowned “the hottest programmer in Spanish-language radio” by The Wall Street Journal in 2001, arrived in Miami in 1974 as morning man for Y100, WHYI-FM (100.7). In 1983, he jumped to a station in Washington, returning to South Florida in 1985 to program the new Hot 105, WHQT-FM (105.1).
In 1986 he switched to Power 96 as program director, adding morning-jock duties the following year with the popular Tanner in the Morning show.
He resigned in 1991 after a well-publicized drug bust. A judge later threw out the case.
Although the Mississippi native speaks next to no Spanish, Tanner rebounded in Spanish-language radio.
‘Don’s name will always be remembered’
Published Sept. 16, 2003
Don Cox, a veteran disc jockey of the South Florida airwaves, died in his sleep Monday morning in Atlanta, said friend and former colleague Kid Curry, program director of WPOW-FM 96.5 (Power 96).
Cox on the Radio, as he was known, had been living with his mother. He was 55.
“He didn’t wake up,” Curry said.
Cox’s gravelly voice and sometimes bawdy on-air persona made him a star DJ for three decades in South Florida.
Cox came to prominence in South Florida on WHYI-FM (100.7) — generally called Y-100 — in 1973 when the ‘Johns’ dominated the pop station’s playlist: Elton John, John Denver and Olivia Newton-John. He briefly worked in Los Angeles at the height of disco in 1977.
When disco died and urban rhythms arrived, Cox followed the beat back to South Florida. He returned to Y-100 and then to contemporary hit radio, Power 96, in 1986.
In 2001, he ended his South Florida tenure with a brief, four-month stint at WKIS-FM (99.9) KISS Country. After throat surgery, WKIS chose not to renew his contract, and he moved to Georgia to care for his mother.
“It’s always sad when a friend who has so much talent and who was such a loving father and a nice guy dies,” Curry said in a phone interview from Power 96. The two had recently spoken, Curry said, and Cox sounded fine.
“I feel for his kids. It’s just a shock,” Curry said. Cox had two children and a stepdaughter with his fourth wife, March Cox.
Cox was known for his on- and off-air antics.
“He was the quintessential rock-’n’-roll DJ,” said Bill Tanner, who, as previous program director for Y-100 in the ‘70s and Power 96 in the ‘80s, hired Cox at both stations.
Perhaps inspired by TV’s wacky sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati,” Tanner and Cox came up with a novel idea. The DJ would broadcast his first Power 96 show live from atop the former Coppertone billboard in North Miami Beach.
Except that the mechanical arm that made the dog pull the little girl’s blue bathing suit down conked Cox on the head, forcing the DJ off the air and to the hospital.
“He was always having things like that happening to him; he was such a character,” Tanner said. Personal problems threatened to derail his career, however. In 1991, he was arrested for drunken driving and had his license suspended for six months. In 1986, he claimed he was beaten by four men who abducted him after his air shift on the former WINZ-FM (94.9) — now Zeta 4. He didn’t file a police report. In 1980, he was charged with cocaine trafficking and served four months.
Despite those setbacks, “If you look back at the history of radio in South Florida, I think Don’s name will always be remembered,” said Adam Jacobson, an editor with the Los Angeles trade magazine Radio & Records.
“He spoke to two generations of South Floridians.”
Published Aug. 7, 1986
A radio disc jockey promoting his station’s new format from atop the Coppertone billboard at the Golden Glades Interchange was sent to the hospital Monday when he ventured too close to the mechanical dog and got conked on the head.
“Remember those Road Runner cartoons where he runs off the end of the cliff and goes, ‘Beep, beep’ and runs back on the cliff again? That’s what I did,” said WPOW-FM’s Don Cox, who got brained by the cocker spaniel’s huge paws.
It took seven stitches at Parkway Regional Medical Center to close the gash. Then Cox, also known as “Cox on the Radio,” climbed back on the suntan lotion’s advertisement and returned to work.
WPOW-FM, which calls itself Power Hits 96, sent Cox to the billboard at 7 a.m. Monday to promote the station’s new rock and rhythm format.
Cox, who had been shouting to motorists through a bullhorn, decided to take a coffee break and walked to the east side of the sign to get down from the scaffolding.
“At which time,” Metro-Dade officer Jerry Shuler wrote in his police report, “after 37 years, the 12-foot cocker spaniel let go of the 25-foot-high girl’s bikini bottom and bit victim on top of his head.”
Listeners didn’t hear the thud as Cox fell to his knees. The station was playing a song by the Jets, called Crush on You.
“The only thing better,” said program director Bill Tanner, “would have been Sledgehammer.”
The Jams of Summer
Published May 28, 2005.
DJ Irie turned into a gambling man shortly before 3 a.m. Friday. “This is going to be the anthem for Memorial Day!” the DJ for the Heat and WEDR-FM (99.1) shouted to the crowd at Crobar on the eve of the annual bacchanal that’s come to be known as hip-hop weekend.
Irie dropped the needle on “Diamonds on My Neck,” a new song by Miami artist Smitty. The crowd, lackluster by past Memorial Day standards, nodded along, and Smitty, in the house with representatives from his major label, J, smiled.
If Irie proves right — and having made his prediction, the DJ has a vested interest in helping Diamonds break — Smitty may not just have the weekend’s anthem: He may have summer’s theme.
Memorial Day weekend is the start of summer, which means it’s also time to roll out the summer hits.
With hundreds of thousands of hip-hop, reggae and R&B fans having converged on Miami Beach for Memorial Day since 2001, South Florida’s clubs and radio stations have become a primary launching pad for the songs slated to be as omnipresent as ice-cream trucks and halter tops this summer.
“The reason why it’s so important to get your record played this weekend is everyone is in town from all over the world, including record executives and people who buy records,” said DJ Khaled, the 99 Jamz and nightclub jock who is considered one of the most influential DJs in the country.
“It gives you a chance to break your song in a nightclub where people can move their bodies to it. People go home and start asking about it; it becomes a demand.”
Among the crowds of revelers will be promoters, artists and producers trying desperately to get their records into the hands of taste-making DJs and program directors.
“What we try and do right now and what most labels are doing is preparing the tools: fliers, samplers,” Benny Pough, senior vice president of promotions for Def Jam, said last week. “We’re locking down prime spaces, like Wet Willie’s [on Ocean Drive] and Collins Avenue, where trendsetters hear your music and feel your energy. It’s a competition of who has the biggest presence, who’s pounding their chest the hardest.”
Such hits as Terror Squad’s “Lean Back,” Rupee’s “Tempted to Touch” and Khia’s “My Neck My Back (Lick It)“ soared in popularity after being pumped in Miami during past Memorial Days. South Florida artists in particular have benefited from their hometown’s rep as the place to party. Jacki-O’s “Nookie,” Trick Daddy’s “In Da Wind” and Pitbull’s “Dammit Man” all were hot summer jams launched at the ground zero of hip-hop weekend.
Some observers say the confluence of burgeoning talent, progressive DJs and some of the world’s top studios, clubs and producers is making Miami a hit-making capital.
A record is born
“For us down here in Miami, a lot of DJs are kind of ahead of the curve,” said Irie. “We get exclusive music, and we’re not bound and tied to clubs and radio, like a lot of places are. We’re free to do what we want to do. ... A record is born from that weekend.”
For example, South Florida producers Cool & Dre brought a track they had just finished mixing to Opium Garden one recent night and handed it to Irie. He wound up spinning Jae Mills’ “I Like That/Stop” three times that night and predicts it may break out this weekend.
Hip-hop records frequently hit first on mix tapes, then in clubs, then on radio mix shows, then on radio rotation. Miami DJs like Irie and Khaled, popular in clubs and on the air, have an unusual amount of power and freedom. According to Eardrum, a Washington, D.C., DJ and co-director of the Urban Coalition of record pools, 50 percent of clubs nationwide tell DJs what to play. “In Miami there’s more freedom.”
Miami’s fervent club scene is key to the area’s industry power. “In other states, clubs close at 2 o’clock,” said Teach, whose South Florida promotion company Big Mouth works with Pitbull and other major artists. “When people come down here, they really go hard. We set trends as far as nightlife.”
It’s the record promoters who hound DJs to play their artists.
“When it comes to weekends like Memorial Day, there will be multiple labels in town,” Irie said. “I’ll go to the radio station and when I pull up there’ll be five or six reps whose sole job is to get mix-show DJs to play new records. They’re all breathing down my neck, saying, ‘What do I have to do? I’ll do anything.’ It’s even worse in the club.”
Ultimately, radio plays the final, crucial role in making a hit record. The fact South Florida has three strong urban stations — Jamz (99.1), WPOW-FM (96.5) Power 96 and WMIB-FM (103.5) The Beat — competing to be the source for the newest sounds adds to the summer heat.
“Our jocks will be live and on the air,” said Power’s interim program director, Ira Wolf, aka Tony the Tiger, “feeding off the vibe of the weekend.”
Jamz program director Cedric Hollywood says he has been inundated with label requests to get such artists as Jim Jones, Fat Joe, Jadakiss, Funkmaster Flex, Ludacris, Jermaine Dupri and Redman live on the air.
Music vs. talk
“We love the artists,” Hollywood said, “but people want to hear the music. We have to figure out how to get people on the air but not keep them on all day.”
Miami has become so influential, it’s changed the sound of urban music, some say. Sounds that are popular here year round — the Caribbean strains of reggae, dancehall, reggaeton, salsa, merengue, soca — are perfect for summer records elsewhere. This year in particular, reggae may be as omnipresent as hip-hop. Featuring Buju Banton, Beenie Man and Elephant Man, the second annual VP Records concert Sunday at Bayfront Park is one of the weekend’s biggest events.
“If something works here, stations elsewhere will be looking to add the same songs,” said VP promotions director Samson.
Tastemakers differ on their predictions of the breakthrough song. Smitty’s name comes up a couple of times, as does Atlanta group Boyz N Da Hood. Tony the Tiger says “Your Body” by Pretty Ricky, a Davie group. Khaled says Rodney and Dirt Bag.
While summer hits can be ephemeral pleasures, forgotten from one year to the next, they can also startcareers. Jacki-O got a national deal out of her ode to her favorite body part. There’s a saying: “What happens here stays here.” When it comes to summer jams, not anymore.
Madonna starts her tour in the Orange Bowl — thanks to a Miami DJ
Published June 26, 1987
By now, almost everyone probably has heard at least one Madonna story. There are lots of them, mostly about her early years in New York — her will to survive and her uncanny ability to fish half-eaten french fries out of garbage bins. It has all been chronicled — the strict Catholic upbringing, the skid-row apartments, the abandoned synagogue in Queens where she first learned to write music, and the boyfriends who propelled her career. Even the myth about how she fried an egg on her stomach for her Super-8 film debut has been confirmed.
But a lesser-known bit of Madonnabilia concerns her discovery by a Miami disc jockey.
Mark “In the Dark” Shands was spinning records for the now- defunct I-95, when he came across a dance tune he thought might have potential. The song was “Holiday.” The time was September 1983.
“‘Holiday’ wasn’t even a single then,” Shands said. “Warner wasn’t promoting it, but we played it anyway. We were first with it, because we thought it was the perfect South Florida sound. It had great rhythm, Madonna was known to the club crowd, and it was produced by Jellybean Benitez, who was really hot at the time. It had all the right elements, and it just took off.”
Madonna says she’ll be forever grateful to Miami for the Top 40 launch and has chosen to kick off her American tour in the Orange Bowl out of loyalty.
All women, all the time — and Kimba, like Cher, only needs one name
Published Jan. 28, 2003
Popular South Florida disc jockey Kimba calls it her “estrus posse.” Kevin Carter, editor of Radio & Records’ industry trade publication Street Talk Daily, calls it “a bold statement.” Director of programming and operations Rob Sidney just calls it good business.
What “it” is is WLYF-FM (101.5)‘s decision to go with all-female DJ talent 24/7, making it the first station in the market — perhaps the nation — to boast this distinction.
The recent hiring of former Zeta (WZTA-FM 94.9) and Big 106 (WBGG-FM 105.9) rock jock Kimba — as close to a household name among South Florida radio listeners as any radio DJ — in the 7 p.m to midnight weekday slot, turned the adult contemporary station into a “unique phenomenon” according to Carter. She joins a roster featuring afternoon host Ellen Jaffe, music director and midday host Gayle Garton and morning host Susan Wise.
Says Carter, “The traditional way of thinking was that women didn’t like to listen to other women. ‘We’ll stick the girl on mid-days or she’ll be the cohost on the morning show and she’ll laugh at the guy’s jokes.’
“This is a positive step forward. It’s an ambitious experiment and I hope it works. Most stations in a major market wouldn’t take that kind of chance.”
Kimba, a woman never known to be shy and retiring, can’t contain her excitement. “I think it’s awesome!” she says, her voice familiarly throaty and energetic through the phone lines.
The gamble will work, she said, because “women don’t need all the bells and whistles. They want to hear what they want to hear and want to be talked to in a general manner and don’t need over-the-topness.”
Targeting women
“Who better to relate to a 30 to 40-something working woman than another working woman?,” asks Sidney, noting that LITE FM’s target audience is exactly that group — women who were in high school in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s and whose musical tastes were formed then.
Kimba, who won’t give her age but fondly recalls grooving to former South Florida FM hard rock outlet K-102 — a struggling late ‘70s/early ‘80s station that became oldies Majic 102.7 in 1985 — is in the right place.
‘Really cool’
“I don’t want to get Norma Rae on you, but it’s cool,” the graduate of North Miami-Dade’s American High School says. “It’s an industry that was male dominated for many years — and still is — and to have an all-female lineup, it’s really cool. I’d like to thank [former LITE FM jock] Ron King for retiring. I’ve been able to stay in my hometown.
“It’s funny, . . . Ellen and I have worked in this market for many years and had never met before until now. I’m thinking, the two of us would never be allowed to be in the same room together,” Kimba says, laughing. “We could do world domination depending on our moods.”
Adds Radio & Records editor Adam Jacobson, “I give Rod a lot of credit for taking advantage of [the station’s] strength. It shows their commitment to women. It’s almost revolutionary that a station playing music with a female lean wants to go after that. ... Kimba has name recognition from Zeta and that’s a shrewd move to get not just women listeners. If a guy is listening in the car with his wife, he’ll say, ‘Hey, that’s Kimba. Remember her from Zeta?’“
There are on-air male jocks on the station. One is “our male diva Greg Budell,” teases Kimba about the veteran South Florida DJ who appears on the morning show teamed with Wise. There is also “Stress Saver” traffic man Richard Lewis and Ron Phillips who handles overnight and morning show production duties.
“It’s like being at the softer side of Sears,” Phillips jokes. “I grew up in a house with all brothers so this is like having an extended family with the sisters I never had. Sure, this experience is something new. I have to remember to put the seat down. The reading material in the studio is different. Instead of Sports Illustrated and Maxim it’s Ladies Home Journal and Oprah. My wife says it’ll make me a better husband.”
The Jefferson-Pilot station’s distinction isn’t that men aren’t heard but, rather, that women are in the central roles around the clock.
“We don’t discriminate,” Sidney says, figuring listenership is 70% female at the market’s top-ranked adult contemporary station (and fifth most popular overall with a 4.5 rating in the latest Arbitron list released earlier this month). “We do have some male air talent and we don’t openly refer to them as ‘himbos,’ “ he teases.
“When Ron King retired last year we began an exhaustive search and everyone said, ‘Are you going to hire another woman?’ or ‘You can’t hire another woman, you have to have balance.’ I said, ‘I’m going to find the best qualified person.’
“We got more than 115 responses through industry publications. The vast majority were from men. The finalists, we whittled down . . . two were women and one was a man. And Kimba was the final choice, not because she was a woman, but because she had compelling things to say on the air. . . . She came on this station and is sounding like she has been doing it for years. It’s quite a leap to make, from mosh pit to soccer mom.”
Easy move
After 14 years on Zeta, cranking Pearl Jam, Metallica and a locals indie rock show, and now responsible for playing LITE FM’s (101.5) “molten magma core” of Celine Dion, Elton John and Gloria Estefan, as Sidney describes the station’s must-plays, Kimba’s adjustment came relatively easily, she says.
“My mother loved country music. Dad was into Nat King Cole and Dean Martin. I grew up listening to all kinds of things. I can listen to Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades” and go into Norah Jones’ “Come Away With Me.” I love going into a pool hall where there’s a jukebox and promoting the most extreme music just to see what people will do. I know most of the music on this station.”
That’s partly because “she’s an actress,” Sidney says. “They are actors playing a role. Kimba can adapt. She is talking about topical things that relate to 30-40-year-old working moms. She hasn’t once mentioned Creed or Sevendust or Jane’s Addiction. She’s well suited to our audience.”
Not daring
By its nature, however, LITE FM is not a daring station, despite taking this lead with its personalities.
“We are more receptive to artists listeners recognize,” Sidney says. “If Celine [Dion] sings the phone book there’s a good chance we’ll play a cut from that album. It takes a little more consideration for a song like Michelle Branch with Santana [”The Game of Love”] to get airplay on LITE FM but if it’s becoming exposed and the audience is familiar with it and other stations seem to be generating a good response we will pay attention. It’s not our mission to break the newest artist or expose unfamiliar music to our audience.”
There is one thing, though. Kimba won’t give her real name but she could be called “Mrs. Steven Tyler,” suggesting that she has a major jones for the darkly sexy Aerosmith lead singer. Aerosmith’s MTV-era hits “Janie’s Got a Gun” and “Jaded” were hot on Zeta and its ‘70s classics Dream On and Walk This Way had a home on Big 106. But rock group Aerosmith on LITE FM? How will she manage?
“DJs haven’t been able to play what they wanted to for a long time . . . [but] I still get to play Aerosmith,” Kimba says, the relief in her voice unmistakable. “’I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’ is probably the only one we’d play but it’s still Aerosmith and I still get to play it!”
Memories of ‘Mama Jo’ helped ground trailblazing Miami DJ
Published Nov. 14, 2009
Jo Maeder has described her family ties as “wisps of a cotton puff that couldn’t hold a single thing together.” So when she left a glamorous life as a radio DJ in New York to help care for a mother she didn’t particularly like in North Carolina, her friends thought she was crazy.
“You’ll be back in a month,” one warned her. And that was one of the kinder reactions.
But Maeder did more than nurse her mother. Over the course of three years, the two women got reacquainted and became best friends — a bumpy, poignant, often hilarious journey that Maeder chronicles in her memoir, “When I Married My Mother: A Daughter’s Search for What Really Matters — and How She Found it Caring for Mama Jo (Da Capa, $25). She’ll discuss the book at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at Miami Book Fair International.
Longtime Miamians may remember Maeder from the late 1970s and early 1980s as Madame Midnight and later the Madame, the first female DJ at Y100. (Her former husband, Jay Maeder, was The Miami Herald’s People columnist.)
“I still go back to Miami whenever I can,” she says. “I love Versailles. I go there every time.”
The first time Maeder lived in Miami was in 1969. She was 14 when she and her brother moved here from the Washington, D.C., area with their father after their parents split up.
“It wasn’t that I was closer to my father, but my mother drove me crazy,” she says. “Junior high was horrible and I wanted a new life. Looking back, it was teenage superficial stuff.”
But it was also the start of what would become a long physical and emotional separation.
Maeder begins her book when her brother calls to tell her he’s getting married and asks her to travel to the wedding with their mother, then living in Richmond, Va.
No joyful task, this. First, it means Maeder will have to fly and drive out of her way. More importantly, it means she will have to deal with Mama Jo in more than a perfunctory way.
She is shocked to find her mother, an inveterate hoarder, in steep decline. “Her back was so round, her ribs so bony; it was like putting my arms around a fragile bird cage.”
Mama Jo’s house was a disaster, too, the master bedroom and a guest room so filled with junk the doors wouldn’t open.
Months later, Maeder buys a house in Greensboro, N.C., and moves her mother in with her. Though doctors and a social worker cautioned her against taking in Mama Jo, the feared fireworks never materialize.
In fact, they form deep bonds and have remarkable adventures, including a “male fantasy night” in the next town over at which a dancer drops Mama Jo’s eyeglasses down his lime-green thong and she has to reach inside to retrieve them.
“I was so surprised at how funny she was, really funny,” Maeder says. “It wasn’t something I had noticed before. Looking back, I think she spent some of the other years just being depressed.”
The author, who divides her time between North Carolina and New York, is working on a second memoir about the radio business.
The three years she spent with her mother before Mama Jo died at 84 in April 2006 were life-altering, and it’s a theme, she says, that readers often pick up on. One told her: “You helped me see a way out of my pettiness.”
The experience certainly changed her. “I’m a much happier, calmer, forgiving person,” Maeder says. “It was an experience that grounded me.”
A teenaged DJ, ‘Cramer’ Haas, later helped build Y-100, Hot-105
Published Jan. 7, 1990
Harry “Cramer” Haas, the longtime South Florida radio personality known to listeners of Power 96 (WPOW 96.5 FM) as “Cramer the Midday Man,” died of a heart attack Saturday morning.
Mr. Haas, 46, hosted a show on the dance music-oriented Power 96 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays, and noon to 4 p.m. on Sundays.
“You could hear the smile in his voice,” said fellow Power 96 disc jockey Mark Moseley about Mr. Haas’ light, tongue-in- cheek delivery. “You could hear the twinkle in his eye.”
Mr. Haas, who was a heavy smoker and had undergone triple- bypass surgery in 1984, suffered the heart attack in his Bonaventure home about midnight Friday and died around 2 a.m. in Humana Hospital Bennett in Plantation, said Power 96 program director Bill Tanner.
Tanner and Mr. Haas had been friends from their first days in radio. They started in their early teens — Mr. Haas was 14 and Tanner 13 — on the only two radio stations in Vicksburg, Miss.
“It’s devastating,” Tanner said Saturday. “He was my friend from childhood. He’s one of a kind. I’ll miss him forever.”
Tanner and Mr. Haas worked together nearly all their 30- plus years in the business, and arrived in South Florida in 1974 to help get Y-100 (WHYI 100.7 FM) off the ground. Mr. Haas was the midday host on Y-100 for a decade, then moved to Washington, D.C., for several months in 1984, when Tanner started up a new station there.
In 1985, Tanner was hired to create Hot 105 (WHQT 105.1 FM), and Mr. Haas became the station’s first midday disc jockey. A year later, the duo moved to another new station, Power 96.
The station’s studios were flooded with calls Saturday from listeners, who expressed their sorrow over losing a personality they felt they knew. Tanner went on the radio Saturday morning to make the announcement.
Said Moseley: “There’s a certain segment of your audience — and you come to realize it when something like this happens — that are the loyal listeners. They feel the loss, too.”
“He was a friend on the radio and came across as a friend,” Tanner said. “People kept telling about how he would take time to talk to them when they called in to request a song.”
Mr. Haas, born in Port Gibson, Miss., also served in Armed Forced Radio-TV from 1966-67 during the Vietnam War, waking up the troops with the now-familiar “Good Morning, Vietnam” greeting.
Mr. Haas is survived by his brother Noel of Vicksburg and sister Rosemary Lumpkin of Tampa.
DJs pull stunts for a worthy cause
Published May 24, 1984
South Florida radio personalities are turning up in some strange places (even by DJ standards) this month — in a cherry-picker over Fort Lauderdale Beach, in scuba gear on top of a billboard, broadcasting from a Metrorail stop.
They’re doing these stunts to raise votes for themselves in a popularity contest, and to raise funds for a good cause. Which comes first? The good cause, of course, say the participating personalities.
It’s all part of P.M. Magazine’s “Favorite South Florida Radio Personality” contest, an effort by WTVJ-Channel 4 to raise money to expand Miami Children’s Hospital.
Seventeen AM and FM stations, from Palm Beach to Key West, are supporting personalities in campaigns for votes — in the form of cash mailed in by listeners.
As of Friday, a week before deadline, the votes had totaled approximately $5,300. The top three personalities were Greg Budell of WAXY-FM, Mike Reineri of WIOD-AM and Jack McDermott of WKAT-AM. Within a week after P.M. Magazine announced the contest May 7, several contenders were planning stunts.
Budell “suspended” himself (a pun on his recent suspension from WAXY) in a cherry-picker 30 feet above the beach for five hours on May 12, raising more than $1,000, mostly in $1 bills.
Saturday, he conducted a miniature golf tournament at Castle Park, with participants donating “votes” to enter.
Dave Caprita, morning show host on Love 94 (WLVE-FM), dressed in a scuba-diving suit and climbed a billboard on U.S. 1 in Miami during afternoon rush hour on May 10, collecting $65 from passing drivers and pedestrians.
Reineri is scheduled to broadcast this morning’s show from Metrorail’s Government Center Station, with a donation box nearby.
McDermott raised $160 at the station’s May 13 Big Band night at Monty Trainer’s Bayshore Restaurant.
And Billy Knight of WXOS in Plantation Key threw a “Bandito Bash” auction and food fest Saturday, with proceeds benefiting the hospital.
P.M. Magazine is cheering them on by spotlighting the campaigning personalities in short segments. After votes are tallied, the P.M. crew will produce a three-minute feature on the winning personality, to be aired on the May 29 show.
With all proceeds going to the Children’s Hospital, this contest will have a happy ending no matter who wins. But is this any way to measure popularity?
Mindy Welch, P.M.’s senior field producer and coordinator of the contest, says the contest wasn’t designed to be a serious survey.
If we look at it strictly from that point of view, we should look at the Arbitron rating book,” she said. “We’re all just trying to make some money for the hospital, and we figure these guys and girls have enough fans that will send in money in their behalf.”
At least one station, top-rated Y-100 (WHYI-FM), is abstaining because the station views this as an unrealistic poll.
I think it’s very wrong that some people get on the air and try to buy people’s votes,” said Tony Novia, Y-100’s promotions director. “The ratings show us who’s tops. It’s a very, very good cause, and I love to see radio people getting together, but I just don’t like the way it’s being handled.”
The participants disagree.
“I’m not looking at it as a life-and-death measure of my popularity by all means,” said Budell. “But on another level, a DJ’s ability to raise funds is indicative of his popularity.”
This story was originally published August 26, 2020 at 12:35 PM.
