FROM THE DJ's STUDIO DESK:
Happy New Year to each and every one of you!!! I am so happy that you have chosen to visit this site once again and I hope your stay with Synesthesia will be pleasant and positive enough that you will enjoy returning...and hey, if you do, tell your friends! The more the merrier, especially when it comes to celebrating music.
All of that being said, I have to say that my opening "Session Notes" for the previous months have been of a more melancholy affair as they have been essentially utilized as memorials. In November, I commemorated Lou Reed. In December, I commemorated both George Harrison and John Lennon. And now, on the first day of this first month of the new year, I commemorate one more, a man who was indeed the very first to educate, entertain and enrapture me to the magic of radio and the power of the voice contained therein. From my childhood, from Chicago's WLS-AM, at this time, I pay tribute to.none other than Mr. Larry Lujack, who passed away on December 18, 2013 from esophageal cancer at the age of 73.
I was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois and as I have expressed to you in the past, music was as much an ever present part of my life and family as the presence of the sun in the sky. My early and formative years, which included the building and construction of my personal musical preferences, as well as the beginning of my drum lessons, was also a time when radio inexplicably became one of the closest friends I could ever wish to have. Before I graduated to FM radio at the beginning of the 1980's (just as I was also graduating to Middle School), I had spent nearly the entirety of the 1970s listening to music on AM radio stations, most specifically WJPC featuring the immortal Tom Joyner for the R&B, soul and funk hits of the day. I have absolutely no idea of when or how WLS entered my life but like the music that chose me, this radio station reached out of the ether, wires, tubes and electro-magnetic radio waves and somehow found me as well and so profoundly that I honestly cannot remember a time in my childhood when WLS was not a part of it.
Just as with the radio station itself, which in contrast to WJPC was, first and foremost, a rock and roll station which did feature R&B/soul/funk/disco selections that "crossed over," I absolutely cannot remember a time in which the voice of morning DJ Larry Lujack did not feature prominently in my life. He was known throughout the land as "The Superjock" due to his massive popularity, high ratings and ever increasing legend in Chicago. He was irreverent. He was sardonic. He was often grouchy yet the radio waves would shake with his infectious, wheezy laughter at life's absurdities and silliness, especially during his daily "Cheap, Trashy Showbiz" gossip reports and of course, his iconic daily "Animal Stories," during which he adopted the persona of "Uncle Lar'," who alongside his sidekick "little snot nosed Tommy" (played by WLS DJ Tommy Edwards), would share news stories starring the titular animals and at their most outrageous, bizarre and ridiculous. So popular was that particular feature that television commercials for the radio station would be centered around the "Animal Stories" concept and there was even a vinyl album sold (which I think I still have in my parent's house somewhere) that housed a collection of said stories to be heard to the listener's heart's content.
Larry Lujack certainly came off as cynical yet brutally honest, especially when some starstruck kid would call into the Lujack's program expressing their own radio disc jockey dreams only to be told firmly, yet in a manner that was as knowingly tender as a wise older brother or most trusted adult that the radio business was not an enterprise in which they should aspire towards. And yet, somehow, on every single show, Larry Lujack would conclude his broadcast with a close-miked and whispered, "Hey! I. Love. You." And I believed it every single time he said it for it never felt phoned in or fake. Larry Lujack always felt real.
Even as real as Larry Lujack was, he did indeed weave a fantasy, one that extended itself from his own radio personality to all of the other DJs on WLS, like the aforementioned Tommy Edwards and evening DJ John "Records" Landecker as well as the late Yvonne Daniels, who was not only notable for being a female DJ in a male dominated field but an African-American female on rock radio at that! Larry Lujack's radio realities also weaved a fantasy of radio dreams that even extended itself to the DJs of my future, from radio bad boys Steve Dahl and Garry Meier, the smoky voiced Patti Haze from WLUP-FM and the world class squadron of DJs that reside to this day on my favorite radio station, Chicago's Finest Rock, WXRT-FM.
The blurring of reality and fantasy all occurred within the power of Lujack's voice, the very element which fueled my imagination and questions about not only what did this man possibly look like, but most importantly, what exactly was happening on the other side of the radio. My intense childhood love of television's "WKRP In Cincinnati" originated from me beloved early radio days as it just made me wonder even more as to the goings-on in the radio industry. I mean--Who knows what the politics of commercial radio actually were during those days, whether Lujack really picked the songs he played or if they were corporate mandated and frankly, who cares. Because what he did accomplish so powerfully was the creation of a perception that he was the one man in the studio surrounded by music, picking the tunes and supplying the humor to bring an entire city together as they collectively woke up to face a new day in Chicago. Every single morning I would wake up to the sound of Larry Lujack's voice. I would hear the show in the house as I got myself ready for school. I would hear he show in the car and sometimes on a school bus. Essentially, Larry Lujack was as much a part of my daily routine, as brushing my teeth and eating breakfast. It would have been impossible to achieve that daily ritual without him and I wish that I had been able to have had the opportunity to thank him for all he gave to me.
I don't remember when I stopped listened to Larry Lujack but it was possibly sometime during Middle School as I made the full switch to FM radio and my musical horizons expanded greatly. Even though I had stopped listened, I never stopped caring about him and believe me, I NEVER forgot him. He was "with me" as I experienced new DJs and he was especially "with me" when I became a DJ for real upon arriving in college. I believe his spirit remains when I hear DJs on community radio and even Satellite radio. And you had better believe me when I express to you that he remains "with me" to this day as I "spin" songs on this imaginary radio station of WSPC.
When I read the news that Larry Lujack had passed away, my heart just fell. While he retired from WLS in 1987 and eventually relocated with his wife from Illinois to New Mexico, it is not unimaginable that I would have had heard little to nothing regarding news of his activities, but even so, his passing just broke my heart.
As I began writing this tribute to him, I was so very pleased to discover that in the remaining years of his life, he was inducted into the Illinois Broadcasters Association's Hall of Fame in June 2002, the National Radio Hall of Fame on November 6, 2004 and the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame on April 15, 2008. As well as he should have been as Larry Lujack was a man who completely epitomized the very best the medium of radio has ever had to offer, as far as I am concerned.
His gifts to me are immeasurable and bottomless. My childhood was made that much more magical just because of him. And even now, every radio fantasy I hold so dearly is due to dreams he weaved for me all of those years ago.
THANK YOU, Larry Lujack. May you rest in peace.
LARRY LUJACK
JUNE 6, 1940-DECEMBER 18, 2013
JUNE 6, 1940-DECEMBER 18, 2013
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