… Thank you so much for turning us on, we’ll try to return that favor now …
[Description by Uncle Ricky]
The now voice-famous Johnny Donovan is captured in his early years in New York, overnights on WOR-FM, in this scratchy stereo treasure from March 16, 1969.
Some of the boardwork seems a bit rough, the jingles step on the music and some of the mixes don’t favor Johnny, but it was overnight, after all. Perhaps the Board Op wasn’t ready for prime time. The playlist is quite remarkable, with a few mid and low-charting Top 100 tunes that have rarely, if ever, been heard since. There’s also a lot of high-frequency splatter (distortion) throughout, and most of it probably came from marginal FM reception and the authentic vinyl recordings.
Newsman Ron King gets to say his name, and that’s about it for the newscast. The ‘scoped version presents a solid demonstration of classic Bill Drake formatics. Johnny didn’t have to say much to do his job!