The longer you stay around radio, the more your friends leave it – either by finding new jobs, or by passing on. I’ve seen a lot of both over the past few years.

Word came to me tonight that Richard O. Biondi passed away on June 26, 2023 at the age of 90.

There’s a whole generation of radio talent that don’t know of Dick Biondi, or what he meant to radio audiences for the better part of 70 years. It’s for that reason that whenever I get a new radio class, I ask them to think about influences and share some of mine. Dick’s on that list. Biondi started on the air in 1947 as a teenager near his home in Endicott, New York. From there, it was on to bigger and better things. He held down a highly rated show in Youngstown, Ohio in the late 1950s before catching the big break: becoming one of the original air talent when WLS/Chicago jettisoned the Barn Dance in 1960 and flipped the switch to rock and roll. From there, it was on to Los Angeles and KRLA, and hosting a national program on the Mutual network. Radio took him back-and-forth across the country, but Chicago was where he spent the most time. Back at WCFL in 1967, he held down nights for a while battling WLS. On the other side of a stint in Myrtle Beach, SC, he was here at WBBM-FM in 1983. That wasn’t a great fit, and when WJEZ-FM flipped to Oldies in 1984, Biondi came on board as one of the original airstaff – where he stayed until the station changed format in 2006. His last stop was at WLS-FM, where he remained until 2018. Biondi was named to the Radio Hall of Fame in 1998.

It wasn’t uncommon for Biondi to pull Pulse ratings in the 70s and 80s at night. Everyone listened to what he had to say, and to the unusual way that he said it. He didn’t sound like a smooth-talking fast-paced disk jockey. He was different. He would criticize the boss if needed; on one occasion, he joked that the boss at WLS was headed to the movies, and said listeners should “throw rocks at his car,” giving the description. They did.

His contribution to the culture is noteworthy. Being an early rock and roll pioneer, he was early on artists like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and other. Perhaps most notably, he was the first American disk jockey to play a Beatles record on the air, almost year before America met them on Ed Sullivan. (Should I say a Beattles record? That’s how it appeared on the WLS survey back in March of 1963 and on the label of the original Vee-Jay release.) If you listen closely, he’s on the radio in Molly Ringwald’s bedroom in “Sixteen Candles.” He got to know everyone who was anyone in rock and roll, and those are the stories I enjoyed hearing from him.

(Read #35 carefully, and double-check that date.)

In 1996, I was hired as the assistant program director/music director of WJMK/Chicago, one of – if I may brag a bit – the best Oldies stations ever to grace the airwaves. I began the job on my 27th birthday, and immediately became second-in-command of an air staff that featured both Biondi and John Records Landecker. Biondi and I hit it off pretty quickly. He would call me every few days to check in. He would call me every payday to make sure he had a check. “You have a contract,” I’d tell him. “When you have been fired as many times as I have, you can’t be too sure,” he’d reply.

The days I enjoyed were when we’d cross paths in the studio or in the office, as he always had a story for me. He held down a regular Saturday afternoon shift, and on occasion I’d be filling in before him. One Saturday I was in the studio with a bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies my then-girlfriend/now-wife had prepared for me. I offered him one, and he was suspicious. “Where did these come from?” he asked. After I assured him they were fine, he ate most of the bag while regaling me with a story about the time a listener sent brownies laced with Ex-Lax to KRLA, forcing Casey Kasem to miss the start of his show after he wolfed down a few. Dick told me about the time a new group came to the station to persuade him to play their record and offered to answer the phones; they were The Doors. Or the time that Cass Elliot sat in a dunk tank outside the Hollywood Bowl. Or the time that Jackie Wilson heard that he was out of work, and found him in a bar in New York state, and slid a briefcase full of cash his way. “You helped me; I want to help you.” (For the record, Dick didn’t take the money.) I asked him once if he thought of ever writing all of this down in a book. “No one would want to read that,” he insisted. I think he’d have been surprised.

I’d watch as Dick interacted with listeners on location. I hated – HATED – live broadcasts whenever I was tasked with doing them. I’d get worked up for days before they were scheduled and be on edge the entire time I was stuck outside the studio. Dick thrived on them. He was able to make every listener feel special; he’d tell ladies that “they were too pretty to be with” the guy standing next to them, and he’d nod along with every story from every high school sock hop he hosted back in the day. Often they’d insist that they were listening the night that Biondi told the “dirty joke” that got him fired from WLS at the top of his game in 1963. He’d laugh along and say something like “Yeah, I shouldn’t have said that.” He confessed to me that there never WAS a joke. Dick left WLS in 1963 after, in an argument about commercial loads on his show, he hurled an ashtray at the sales manager and stormed out of a meeting. Assuming that he was fired for his actions, he never returned. “But why don’t you tell them that story?” I asked. Dick pointed out that it was better for the listener to hold on to their experience, whether actually lived or not. I never forgot that lesson. After all, we deal in theater of the mind in this profession, so what’s a little more stageplay?

I really wanted to include Dick’s thoughts on Top 40 radio in my dissertation back in 2016. When I called him, he seemed to vaguely remember me, but wasn’t feeling well that day, and wanted to reschedule our chat. We never were able to, and I didn’t get to include his thoughts in the paper – which I regret. There’s a documentary coming out about his life in radio, and if half of it is true it will be worth seeing.

Back in 2018, when Dick Biondi left WLS-FM, I posted a piece here with a link to “The Pizza Song.” It’s not that “The Pizza Song” is great; what is neat about it is that a terrible novelty record by a local disk jockey sold tens of thousands of copies. Tell me who could do that today. I’m glad I was able to get one, even if it was thirty-some years after its release.

Radio has lost another tremendous part of its history. Rest well, Dick.

You can hear “The Pizza Song” and its flip side, “Knock Knock,” at these links.