Talk Radio Pioneer Jerry Williams has died

Associated Press ^ | 4/29/03 | Associated Press

[raccoonradio]

Boston Globe obituary

JERRY WILLIAMS 1923-2003

Talk radio innovator pushed hard on issues
By Mark Pothier and Ralph Ranalli, Globe Staff, 4/30/2003

Jerry Williams, widely considered a pioneer of talk radio, died yesterday at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston at age 79, three weeks after suffering a stroke.

Mr. Williams, who could be simultaneously hard-edged and softhearted, was arguably one of the state's most powerful political forces in the 1980s. Armed with 50,000 watts and an unlimited supply of public outrage over a deep recession, he skewered Governor Michael Dukakis, led a charge to repeal the state's seat-belt law, and whipped up an antitax, antiestablishment fervor that resulted in the election of an unprecedented number of Republicans to the Democrat-dominated Legislature.

Mr. Williams sometimes called himself a ''classical liberal'' or a ''populist'' but gleefully defied conventional political labels. In his later years Mr. Williams championed fiscally conservative causes, but he built his reputation by being a liberal lightning rod for controversy in the 1960s. He welcomed Malcolm X as a frequent guest and passionately opposed the Vietnam War and President Richard Nixon at a time when both were buoyed by positive poll numbers.

''He was the best, there's just no question about it,'' said Howie Carr, a WRKO-AM (680) radio host and Boston Herald columnist. ''In many ways, he invented talk radio.'' Mr. Williams's appeal and clout waned along with voter vitriol during the prosperous 1990s, and though time has overtaken many of his political victories (Republicans' power in the Legislature has faded, and the state eventually reinstated the seat-belt law), friends and former colleagues say his legacy will be the dominance of talk over other programming on the AM dial.

''He was basically responsible for the talk radio that we have today,'' said Barbara Anderson, the Citizens for Limited Taxation director who was a weekly guest host on Mr. Williams's show in the late 1980s. ''He had a real gift for recognizing the theater in talk radio, as well as a real passion for the issues. Jerry wasn't playing. He was genuinely angry about things like the Big Dig and seat belts.''

Mr. Williams's voice surfed radio airwaves for more than 50 years, a remarkable accomplishment in a business known as much for its fast exits as its fast talkers. ''There aren't going to be any more 50-year careers in radio,'' Carr said. ''People would stay in their cars to listen to him eviscerate someone.''

Most recently, he hosted a one-hour show on WROL-AM (950) while fighting a series of ailments including kidney disease and the onset of Parkinson's disease. He also made an abortive comeback attempt in 2000 at the now-defunct WMEX-AM, but Williams's greatest ratings successes came at WRKO, where for more than a decade he was loved and loathed by listeners, and feared by most politicians.

Gene Burns, now a talk show host at KGO in San Francisco, was at WRKO in the late 1980s, when Mr. Williams's influence helped repeal the state's seat-belt law and scuttle Democratic governor Dukakis's plans for a big prison in the tiny town of New Braintree.

''God, he was like a bulldog,'' Burns said in an interview with the Globe last year. ''He would take an issue and just rip it to shreds until he got what he needed to get done.''

Mr. Williams, whose Marshfield home was filled with antiques and radio memorabilia, was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. He got his first radio job in 1946 at New York's WMCA and by 1957 was hosting a 10 p.m. talk show on WMEX in Boston, where he stayed eight years. He returned to the Boston airwaves in 1968, this time on powerful WBZ, whose clear signal boomed into 38 states. Mr. Williams once taped a poignant call from a self-described Vietnam veteran from East Boston. It became an antiwar rallying cry nationwide, and Democratic senator George McGovern sometimes played the tape at his presidential campaign rallies.

In 1976, Mr. Williams was fired by WBZ, an action he always maintained was taken because he was too controversial. For the next five years, he talked at stations up and down the East Coast. In 1978, Larry King called him for advice -- Mutual Radio had offered King a syndicated show, but the hours were unusual. Mr. Williams told him that he would take the job if King turned it down.

''Everybody who has ever done talk radio owes Jerry Williams a debt,'' King said in an e-mail message to the Globe last year. ''He was the first of the great muckrakers.''

Mr. Williams stormed back to Boston in the early 1980s, capturing ratings with a combination of politics and occasionally off-color entertainment. His annual sex survey shows -- open to women callers only, because ''men lie'' -- included frank talk about masturbation, bondage, sadomasochism, and preferred positions. The show, PG-13 material by today's measure, horrified some listeners but was a ratings blockbuster.

''I would call him and tell him don't get sick,'' Anderson said, ''because we're not filling in for you that week.''

In 1986, Mr. Williams led a successful drive to repeal the state's seat-belt law (he said it infringed on personal freedom), but the zenith of his populist power came a short time later, when he, Anderson, and Carr started regular Tuesday sessions on WRKO. They called the raucous roundtable segments ''The Governors'' after a newspaper columnist wrote that they acted as though they were running the state. The trio took on bureaucracy, no-show jobs, welfare spending, and elected officials who found cushy niches on the public payroll for friends and relatives.

But when the tax rollback ballot initiative The Governors championed was defeated, observers considered it a sign that the wave of discontent Mr. Williams had ridden so long had crested. In 1994, Mr. Williams was shuffled to mornings, his on-air time cut in half. Eventually he was exiled to weekends. About five years ago, he was fired.

After frustrating exchanges with callers who did not share his opinion on an issue, Mr. Williams would sometimes launch one of his trademark lines: ''I'm getting out of the business.'' But the sentence was saturated with sarcasm, and regular listeners knew he could not be serious -- to many of them, he was the business. Mr. Williams, whose ego was as sturdy as his voice, would not have argued the point.

He leaves three daughters, Eve Meredith Williams, Susan Camille Hobson, and Andrea Beth Williams, and four grandchildren.

Visiting hours are tomorrow, from 2 to 4 p.m. and from 6 to 9 p.m., at Carroll Thomas Funeral Home, Hyde Park. Funeral services will be private.

This story ran on page C1 of the Boston Globe on 4/30/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

[raccoonradio]

Howie Carr on Jerry Williams:

Jerry Williams: Not a bad guy, as legends go

by Howie Carr
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Jerry Williams invented talk radio in Boston, although he'd have probably told you he just invented it, period.

Not a bad guy, Jerry Williams, but they'll never have a dinner for him now. After the show he's getting on a big old bus . . .

One fact I certainly can't argue with: Jerry Williams invented me, at least my talk-radio persona. When Jerry started reading my columns on the air, I lived in Somerville, and now I live in Wellesley. What can I say now to Jerry except, thanks pal.

It's hard now to explain just how big Jerry Williams was, and for how long. It's like trying to explain the late George Frazier to someone who never read his column in the papers. You had to be there.

So let me put it this way. You can figure the approximate age of a New Englander over 40 by when he or she first started listening to Jerry. The former Gerald Jacoby's first station was WMEX - James Michael Curley used to call in to his nightly show after Arnie Woo Woo Ginsburg.

I first remember him from 'BZ, after he came back from Chicago in 1969. Those were his national days, when he gave George McGovern the tape of the calls from the Vietnam vet. After he was forced out of 'BZ in 1976, he returned to Boston and WRKO in 1981.

Every afternoon, at 3:07, he'd say, ``Hello New England,'' and you knew it was time to fasten your seat belt, or not, if you so chose.

It's easy to pigeon-hole Jerry by bringing up a few issues and topics - that seat-belt referendum, the aborted prison at New Braintree, the annual end-of-spring-ratings-book sex survey. (On the Internet message boards yesterday, everyone claimed to have been listening the afternoon the woman called in to tell Jerry how much she enjoyed doing it on top of the washing machine.)

Jerry Williams had amazing clout. He put me and Barbara Anderson on with him as ``the governors'' in the spring of 1989, and by November our two-hour Tuesday afternoon slot had driven the Globe completely around the bend. They ran not a story, but a series about us, and the title summed it up: ``Poisoned Politics.''

The next year, 1990, the Republicans swept to two statewide elections for the first time in 16 years, in addition to knocking off eight incumbent Democratic state senators. If anybody ever owed Jerry Williams that dinner he never got, it was Bill Weld, Paul Cellucci and Joe Malone.

Jerry Williams was at the absolute top of his game. And he was 67 years old.

Jerry went to the mat for this newspaper in 1988, when Ted Kennedy was trying to force the man he kept calling ``Rudolph Murdoch'' to sell the Herald and the New York Post. From a car, Kennedy called into the show and immediately went after Jerry's drivel, or, as he put it, ``dribble.''

``I've been listening to that dribble of yours this afternoon.''

``My dribble,'' Jerry said, dead-pan, ``or someone else's?''

``Your dribble,'' Ted Kennedy said.

Thirteen minutes later, Ted Kennedy hung up on him. And Jerry felt he had to assure the audience: ``This is not a comedian doing this.''

If you're above a certain age, you can probably remember at least one time sitting in your car in the driveway, not wanting to turn off the ignition and make a run for the house because you might miss another ``Rudolph Murdoch'' moment before you got inside. That Ted Kennedy interview was my in-the-car moment.

Then Jerry got old, and he was finally getting out of the business, for real, and I was the guy who took his place. What is there to say now except that if it hadn't been me, someone else would have given him the nudge, which is what I'd call it, or the shove, if that's the word you prefer.

Jerry would always grimace when someone called him an ``entertainer,'' because he thought he was being dissed, although I never understood why. If you can't get people to listen to you, or read your stuff, it doesn't really matter what you're saying, does it? And Jerry could always draw a crowd - what better epitaph is that for a radio guy?

Good night, good luck and good night to you, Jerry.

Howie Carr's radio show can be heard every weekday afternoon on WRKO AM 680, WHYN AM 560, WGAN AM 560, WEIM AM 1280, and WXTK 95.1 FM.

[seamas]

Ken:

I'm another Masshole who left in your era, except to Florida. Married a rebel and will never go back as much as I like the eccenticities of the Irish?Italians in the Bay State. Remember listening to Jerry Williams on WMEX (1320?) in the 60s. ?

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

does Severin resemble That actor that played the riddler in Batman (think his name was Frank Gorshin)?

Perhaps a bit. To me he resembles a young Jaques Cousteau.