In spite of its late popularity among morons, Tony Bennett's "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" is a truly remarkable piece of work. The excessive air on the mike, the lisp--normally recording defects--are used to make a masterpiece. It's ideal listening at 1 or 2 a.m. when nothing else is going on.
Ever since "SF" was recorded--in the '60s I guess--there has always been a radio station in Washington that played it. Even during the past-20-years onslaught of talk radio's visigoths and ostrogoths, you could hear "SF" and its like.
Until last Monday. That's when WGAY joined up with the visigoths.
WGAY's call letters--humorous to many, no doubt disappointing to some who tuned in--are a Washington institution (named for Connie B. Gay) that will themselves be gone by next Monday. Even now, doused is the "WGAY" atop the World Building ca. 1968, once Silver Spring's tallest structure. "G..A..Y" was the arch-broadcaster of what was called "beautiful" or "easy listening" aka "elevator" or "dental office" music. It played the mellowest arrangement of a "A Summer Place" extant and it played it in "Quadraphonic Stereo."
Lately, G..A..Y was the area's only big-band, Tony-Bennett-kind-of-stuff format. One would think that with all the geezers staying here to die instead of going to Florida, such an enterprise would be viable. The thing is: the surviving geezers have either moved on to classical or they want to hear news/weather/"How to Save Two Cents on Taxes." G..A..Y divested itself of local personalities and piped in low-overhead programming from L.A. The same recorded weather reports were broadcast for three days.
To my mind, the perfect way to format a radio station will always be what WMAL did in the '70s. They had a little bit of everything, mostly music. M.A..L still has its long-running "When Radio Was" rebroadcasts of old radio shows in the wee hours of Sunday. The "Golden Age of Radio" being a myth, these are drivel, but compared to "Biznow on Business" and "Your Money Matters," they are Bill Mayhugh playing "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" at 3 a.m. in 1975.
On a related note: [Named Deleted] next door to my employer has hired Johnny Holliday to do some Catholic thing for them. As we old-timers know, Johnny will work for anybody. He and one of the daughters have been in the building of late. You can hear them all over the hall.
Epiloque, 2004: Since writing the above, I have discovered that the Dark Ages have not totally descended. WAMU 88.5 FM, the NPR station has Rob Bamberger playing old records on Saturday evenings and Ed Walker playing old radio shows on Sunday nights.
One talk show show worth listening to is the John Bachelor Show out of New York on WMAL, Saturday nights (if Johnny Holliday isn't preempting with UMD Basketball(!). You can listen to Bamberger until it's off.) Bachelor covers a wide variety of obscure subjects and new books, and the people he interviews are knowledgeable as opposed to the screaming fischfrauen and other strident non-entities heard on Limbaugh or Hannity. ~NJC
--Copyright 2001 by Neal J. Conway
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