Saturday night. Halloween 2020. Cousin Bruce Morrow is about a month into his return to WABC New York. He’s about 90 minutes into the evening’s show. And one break says it all.
Brucie is coming out of “The New Girl In School” by Jan & Dean.
He plays the famous “WABC Chime Time” jingle, which he can do again.
He takes a call from “Cousin Jean” on Long Island. Jean is a second-grade teacher.
“Let’s talk about this time [in] our lives: this horror, this nightmare we’re going through,” says Brucie. He asks if Jean is teaching via virtual learning or in-person. Her school is doing a hybrid model, she says, “but we’re working toward bringing all the kids back on Monday.”
“Let me ask you something Jean, and if you don’t want to answer this, I understand. Are you ready to bring the kids back to school?”
“We’re ready to have them back,” says Jean. Brucie and Jean agree that kids need their interaction with teachers and peers again. “As long as they’re doing everything safely, and we’re doing everything we can [to help them],” he adds. “I know all the parents out there listening hope that you get your wish, too. What can I play for you tonight?”
Jean wants to hear Jay & the Americans, “Cara Mia.” She wants to dedicate it to her husband of 21-years, Jim, who’s there with her. Cousin Brucie starts talking to Jim.
“This is the greatest thing, AM radio!” says Jim.
“Isn’t that amazing? People didn’t know what that was. It’s like a whole new thing,” says Cousin Brucie. “We have all this [digital] stuff now. Everyone forgot. And here it is, one of the best sounding, [most] fun formats in the world, and you and I [have] got it together.”
Brucie dedicates “Cara Mia” to both of them. “Good luck and God bless you and the kids. Here’s your song my friends.”
Cousin Brucie is back on WABC, forty-six years after leaving the night show at AM radio’s most famous Top 40 calls. He has spent the last 15 years on Sirius XM’s ‘60s on 6, which certainly felt like the only place Morrow could do what he does when his previous employer, Oldies WCBS-FM New York, became “Jack FM” in 2005. He’s now being followed on Saturday night by veteran recording artist (and former TV variety host) Tony Orlando from 10 p.m. to Midnight.
There is ample cosmic synergy at work here. In the early 1980s, Morrow launched a radio station called New Jersey 1510 on a North Jersey daytimer. With limited coverage, that station didn’t last, but the concept did. In the ‘90s, WKXW (New Jersey 101.5) Trenton, N.J., became the statewide radio voice that Morrow imagined.
There’s a lot of talk now about N/T stations following the lead of WABC (and others) with weekend Oldies. WABC tried it previously in the mid- ‘00s when WCBS-FM changed, but it wasn’t a new model even then. On the weekends, New Jersey 101.5 played Oldies with echoes of the classic sound of WABC.
However you view talk radio and its place in the national dialogue now, WABC was once—as a flagship station of Don Imus and Rush Limbaugh—at its epicenter. Now, WABC is trying to rebuild under a local entrepreneur owner, John Catsimatidis, a sign of radio’s shifting fortunes. The Oldies discussion in the format is just one of many about what AM/FM News/Talk radio should be now in the podcasting age.
I’ve heard N/T stations try to play Oldies and sound trapped between the two formats. WABC didn’t sound like that on Saturday, Nothing is more archetypically Cousin Brucie than playing “Cara Mia” by Jay & the Americans on WABC for two listeners who have probably been fans for decades, but could have just become his new best friends. But then he went beyond the nostalgic.
In doing so, Cousin Brucie found one of the few possible valence issues—the “let’s-find-a-cure-for-cancer”-type position that nobody is against—amidst our current travails. Nobody would dispute that 2020 is a nightmare, or that we wish kids were back in school safely. One can go no further than that and keep the consensus, and that is why Morrow didn’t. It was just how somebody with a lifetime franchise of being everybody’s friend would have handled it. And yet, it was not mere DJ happy talk.
And that was how I came to understand that Cousin Brucie is really a talk host. Broadcasters struggle with how to create talk radio for teens and young adults. Brucie was doing that in 1961; he just played some records in between. Perhaps that could have described a lot of jocks in the early ‘60s; Morrow stood out for continuing to do it after the Bill Drake era helped tighten and codify Top 40 radio. When Howard Stern came to New York in 1982, Stern made everything before him sound quaint to some listeners, and yet Stern and Morrow both ended up as the ambassadors for Sirius XM 25 years or so later.
Morrow had left WABC for crosstown WNBC, then station ownership, before coming back to help WCBS-FM itself channel the sound of WABC in its heyday. Now, it’s interesting to imagine what would have happened if Cousin Brucie had stayed with, or returned to, WABC as a talk host when the station changed format in 1982. Would he have helped WABC get a foothold sooner? Would WABC have still become the home of Bob Grant, then Limbaugh? Would a different Talk radio have taken hold in the ‘80s, rather than requiring the jolt that political talk gave the genre in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s?
Cousin Brucie is easily typecast as a representative of a very-different-age-of-radio. On Saturday night, he was absolutely of the moment. A great radio break may solve nothing; that’s beyond any one radio host right now, but Jean and Jim found it helpful, and so did I. I’m glad Morrow still wants to be on the radio at age 85. And once again in radio’s own multiply-challenged moment, where companionship is again the franchise, there is a blurring line between old-school and traditional craftsmanship.
Funny coincidence: I finally got around to listening to Brucie’s Sat Nite thing for the first time this week. He *sounds* better than expected — some 8 years ago I was in NYC in a rental car and heard some of his Siruis/XM show and I remember thinking “man, he sounds old”. But he sounded quite good Sat nite for whatever reason. And yes, the love the audience has for him is palpable. (Funny moment: he was doing some Halloween-appropriate songs and he played the “son-of-a-bitch” version of Devil Went Down to Georgia, which was a delightful shock.). But the local commercials: oy! (Rudy Giuliani flogging a moving company and some computer security outfit — WTF?)
Legendary talent for sure, but I lost a bit of respect for him when I saw an interview in which he said the Monkees were a manufactured group that lacked any musical talent. I thought the comment was going to be followed up by an acknowledgement of the fact that they turned out to be very talented singers, songwriters, musicians and producers, but it wasn’t.
I will stand up for the Monkees as a successful working band with a deep body of work beyond the hits. “Words” was one of my first favorite songs. I’ve learned many favorite songs through the years thanks to Blitz’s Mike McDowell. But not liking them (or most other groups) is not a friendship breaker for me. (For Mike, maybe.)
Great stuff as always. In reading your Brucie article it occurred to me that maybe the reason Brucie is the moment is because the industry is so starved for talent, connection and social contact (radio was the original social medium). And perhaps it doesn’t matter whether talent is on FM, AM or two cans linked together with string — it beats corporate oversight of a Main Street medium.
Keep up the great work.
Late to the Cousin Brucie party here. Back in the stone age, I was fortunate to have ‘learned Radio’ from Cousin Brucie while attending the Connecticut School Of Broadcasting in NJ in the 80s. The year I graduated I was named their top Student. Went on to some moderate success at some big stations in small markets (he says humbly). What a mentor and teacher. Cousin Brucie was amazing then…my whole career inowe to him.