When you have a partner, you only have to worry about failing 50% of the time. But, by yourself, you are solely responsible for your show. Partners are good crutches you can lean on. It took some time to become truly confident and comfortable with just me again.
The other personalities at WFYR were great guys. Bob Barnes-Watts was the midday DJ. He was a British transplant who had been with the station about five years. Bob was easy going and didn't seem to take things too seriously. The guy who followed me, the evening jock, was “Smokin'” Joe Dawson. Joe was a great jock who seemed to know just about everybody else in radio. One of his buddies was the legendary Howard Hoffman who worked at WPIX-FM and WABC-AM in New York as well as a laundry list of other great markets like San Francisco, Houston, Phoenix and even Chicago. Back in 1974, Hoffman, along with Randy West, Russ DiBello and Pete Salant created a parody called Nine! The Ultimate Radio Format. It is now considered probably the best parody of the music radio format ever done.
The first time I met Howard, he was between jobs and living off the rest of a payed-off “no cut” contract. He said he just came to Chicago to hang out for a while with Joe. Occasionally, Howard would come up during his air-shift and the two of them would simply screw around. Howard would place fake calls to Joe's show and it was hysterical. He was one of the funniest ad-lib and voice talents I ever heard. At this writing, Howard is the Production Director for Disney's ABC Radio properties in Los Angeles including KABC Radio. He also is a very successful voice-overs artist for characters, animation, commercials and other multimedia.
Chicago is a great place to work because everybody pays attention to you: event promoters, networks, film companies, talent agents, record reps, and anyone else who has a product, service or client to promote. They all want you to mention their new TV show, new movie, new
