As a baby boomer myself, I have fond memories, almost painful in their nostalgia. I grew up in a sleepy suburb forty five minutes drive from Center City Philadelphia in a tiny and then-quiet hamlet of Exton. The AM airwaves crackled with an intense buzz - an energy that hinted at something profound and exciting - almost like the promise of sex or religious ecstasy.
In the mid-sixties, the music available to me on my beat up hand-size transistor radio was limited.
The choice, always, was "Famous Fifty Six," 560 on your AM dial: WFIL-Philadelphia. They played I guess what was considered Top 40 - but it was rich in the heritage of the area. Philadelphia was the home of many great groups and had its own heady and unique blend of Soul, Rhythm and Blues and Black-Oriented Funk. Later this became known as "The Sound Of Philadelphia," but at the time, it was considered simply "the music."
Little did I know at the time that the music of groups like The Delfonics, Archie Bell and the Drells, Sam and Dave and The Four Tops would influence me profoundly in my own musical career. I also had no idea at the time the legacy that had come before it: namely Doo-Wop and Fifties music. (Just down the pike from me in Pottstown there was another guy named Daryl Hall listening to the same stuff, and he had still not yet met John Oates.)
Philadelphia had been called by some "The last bastion of doo-wop culture in a McDonald's world." These words were written about Philadelphia, but they apply equally to Philadelphia's legendary radio personality Jerry Blavat -- The "Geator with the Heater," the "Boss with the Hot Sauce." The unique DJ, still going strong and now as much a Philadelphia institution as a cheesesteak or the Academy of Music.
At the time, we didn't know Jerry Blavat would become a broadcasting legend - the East Coast's heir apparent to Dick Clark. (Clark of course made his own stellar contribution to putting Philly on the map in that his original 'American Bandstand' was broadcast from 1957 to 1963 from the City of Brotherly Love on WFIL-TV 6)
Jerry Blavat - The Geator With the Heater
There is so much we did not know - that Vietnam's dilemma had reached a breaking point; our country would soon be divided by the conflict of war in the same way as North and South Vietnam had been geographically split. The encroachment of our own government's collusion with Big Business hadn't started yet - and radio was still in it's own golden age, uncorrupted by corporate power.
Jerry Blavat's voice came out of the air as a god-sent revelation: 'Come on, come on, West Philly, come on, South Jersey, come on, yon teen agers everywhere. Hit that thing now. Hey, hey, ho, ho. Let me say greetings and salutations. Welcome to the biggest of all big-time ones. Once again, yours truly, the Geator with the Heater and, of course, everybody here, swingin', tick-tock-rockin' with the big time Chez-Vous tower of power. The toughest dances in the entire world! Let's kick it off the big time, Du-Ettes -- 'Please Forgive Me' -- oooohh!'
Those beautiful summers we spent listening to all the great oldies in a mix that was selected by the boss jock are brought back each time I tune in to the few stations left still keeping this vital music alive. It was kinetic, when moments were connected like the cosmos connected stars and atoms.
Each time I hear those nostalgic sounds takes me back to a more innocent time - when the possibilities were endless - when harmony and melody mattered - when dreams and reality met the horizon like the earth meets the sky.
All across America, boomers were grooving to the anthems that would become the soundtracks to our lives, on radio stations large and small - in other hamlets and towns not yet realized and in the hearts and minds of the multitude that would go on to form empires from the dust of the Earth.
As they happen the seconds as they occur seem inconsequential, but in hindsight they mean everything.
The way backward may be lost, but as we grope blindly forward into the future in this stream of onrushing technological change, trying to understand our vast universe and our place in it, the sounds of those oldies but goodies echo back to reassure us that greatness is still possible.
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