Photo: WMCA DJs | By Chris Kornelis, Wall Street Journal || In May of 1967, Gary Stevens told his listeners that he’d gotten his hands on new music from the Beatles that none of them had heard yet. This is what his listeners tuned in for. Decades before the internet, social media, Napster, Spotify and MTV, radio was where you first heard new releases from the Rolling Stones, the Supremes and the Righteous Brothers.
Stevens was one of the WMCA “Good Guys,” the New York station’s roster of DJs at the height of the British Invasion and the halcyon days of Motown. The Beatles had already released “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” earlier in the year, but Stevens didn’t just have a new single. He had an entire album: “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” He claimed that his sidekick—a bear named Wooly Burger—had smuggled it out of England.
“Not only was he a Good Guy,” Stevens’s son, Christopher, said recently, “he was a wiseguy.”
Stevens was WMCA’s star, a local celebrity, the host of its teen-focused 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. slot whose listeners thought of him as a friend.
“People were not just tuning in to hear music and call letters and news, they tuned in for a friend, a familiar voice that made you feel good,” said Bruce Morrow, aka “Cousin Brucie,” who competed directly against Stevens in the night slot at WABC, where he still hosts a show. He added: “If you were successful, you knew the secret: how to talk right directly to an audience. Gary had that secret.”
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Go here to read the rest of Gary’s story:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/gary-stevens-a-new-york-radio-dj-who-spun-the-british-invasion-dies-at-84/
Write to Chris Kornelis at chris.kornelis@wsj.com
Photo: WMCA DJs | From the radio station’s Facebook page