Dick Summer & the Nightlife Show on WBZ Radio 103 Boston | August, 1964
Jul 21, 2006 
49 Comments
Now, from the 50kw Boston blowtorch reaching 38 states, Dick Summer’s legendary night show on mid-60s WBZ!
The history of WBZ is a long, storied one reaching back to the beginnings of commercial broadcasting. Only the second licensed station in the US (although not in it’s inevitable form), WBZ was generally a pop station, first in the golden age of radio (pop in the respect that it ran the popular programs and music of the day, having been a part of the NBC ‘Red’ network in the 40s), and later, as Boston’s second top 40 station, lasting until 1966.
Smack in the middle of WBZ’s top 40 era was Dick Summer. He ruled the nighttime airwaves in Boston and all up and down the eastern seaboard until the station shifted to nighttime talk in the late 60s. Summer’s ‘Nightlife’ show was a mix of music and mystique, as you’ll hear in this aircheck. There were, of course, the top hits of the day with a generous dose of ‘oldies’ from the 50s and earlier in the 60s decade, but Summer adds in some strange radio dramas and talks about men from Mars… the stuff that certainly would fit today’s “Coast to Coast AM with George Noory” ((C) Premier Radio Networks).
Strangely enough, there are no snappy WBZ jingles, few commercials and one frequent PSA about Systic Fibrosis. This show, at least on this tape, is very much just Dick Summer and a stack of records. Fun and interesting listening for those who remember the early to mid-60s.
Thanks to Matt @ BigAppleAirchecks who sent this in over a year ago and we’re just now getting around to posting this. Thanks again, Matt.
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I worked with Dick Summer in the late 60′s when we
were both at WNEW in New York. Nice guy…quite
unique air sound.
Glad to hear him again on this WBZ aircheck. Would
love to hear some others from the 60′s era on WBZ.
How about some Bruce Bradley?
Bill Diehl
Correspondent
ABC News Radio
New York
Hey Bill, How have you been? I’m thankfully out of the business. Living just west of Philly. Doing freelance communications… a weekly blog/podcast at http://www.dicksummer.com, flying my plane, and chasing Barb. How about you ? Dick
Hello Bill -
I’ve been trying for many years to get more WBZ airchecks, unfortunately there aren’t many around. There is one person who may be able to help you, and it just occurred to me as I write this. Aaron Mintz. He’s an aircheck trader/collector based in Deerfield (I think) Massachusetts. I know a few years ago he had a pretty impressive collection of WBZ recordings, but I couldn’t pry any out of his hands.
I think he has a website, so check around.
Bruce Bradley was also one of my favorites, but I’d love to get my hands on the Larry Justice show from sometime in the early 70s. Larry held down the afternoon drive slot during the years that WBZ experimented with a one, then two hour news block starting first at 6pm, then at 5…. something they would toy with over the next 10 years. Justice made such an impression on me at a very early age, as mom ONLY listened to WBZ… and every day we picked my dad up from work at 5pm as Larry Justice’s show was just ending. I woulda been 7 or 8 years old, and I trace my getting the radio bug to this.
Strange how these airchecks evoke memories. Thanks for your comments, Bill!
Nice to hear a disc-jockey from that period without the use of echos, jingles, and the other sounds that marked that period. He just uses what is a very nice voice.
Dick…You are the hot dog man. I had forgotten about you, my apologies,but back in 64 when I was 22 I did the late evening show on WWNH in Rochester,N.H. After sine off at midnight myself and my friend Johnny Chick went out fot hot dogs at a little stand next to a laundromat in Somersworth,N.h..and….of course, we has ‘BZ on the radio. I can’t begin to tell you how many hot dogs we consumed while listening to you.And since we were young DJ’s, we marvelled at how great it would be to be as good as you….and someday work at WBZ…with the likes of Carl Desuze…Dave Maynard
…Alan Dary…Norm Prescott and so many others. My time frames may be off a little bit but the aforementioned guys were legends at 1030.
To Bill Diehl;
IN THE 80′s i worked a a little station in BIDDEFORD, Maine…WIDE…and we took the ABC Entertaiment feed in the afternoon.
Backed time the music listened for the “chirp” and you were on the air with a two minute report.I think one min for you and one for spots.
This was back in the day when Joe Templeton was anchoring the morning news on ABC Information NET.
In the grand scheme of things, to be trite, it was a great time in radio…especially with the great material coming from the various ABC Net feeds including, of course….Paul Harvey.
WBZ radio was always number one in my mind. I would love to find airchecks of Alan Dary, and Norm Prescott from WORL or WBZ. They were very special to me, a big reason I got into broadcasting as a career.
Didn’t Dick Summer leave WBZ and go to another radio station in Boston in the late 60′s, where he had a show called “The Lovin Touch”.?
A list of when Dick was where is at
http://www.440.com/namess3.html
(scroll down to Dick Summer), although it leaves out his overnight stint at WZLX/Boston in the late ’80′s/early ’90′s. He did a lot of creative things in the night slots, including something like “Lovin’ Touch” on ZLX, but my recollection it was more relaxation and motivational than the more lyrical “Lovin’ Touch”.
He also has a website at
http://www.dicksummer.com/
There’s a Bruce Bradley/WBZ aircheck on another site called ReelRadioairchecks.com
Thanks for the aircheck.
I also remember Dick for his amazing “Subway” show, Sunday evenings about 6pm to 8pm in about 1966-67 as I recall. One of the very first album rock programs. He played The Mothers Of Invention’s “Freak Out” album, Blues Project, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, many early greats. This was quite a while before WBCN. And all this on a 50,000 watt, clear-channel station blasting all over half the country certain times of the year. Zappa’s “Help, I’m A Rock” on a 50,000 watt AM!
Unbelievable!
By the way, Dick did return to Boston in 1969 as Program Director and evening guy on the legendary
WMEX. He loosened up the playlist, and hipped up the station. Then, suddenly, he was gone.
I was a college student in Boston in the mid-6o’s and listened to Dick Summer every evening. We even began calling our sandwiches “shrewsbury’s” to support his campaign. Remember?
I returned to the NY-Long Island area after graduation and was lucky enough to catch him again on WNEW-FM. The good old days of Bruce (no longer ‘cousin’) Morrow, Allison Steele, Roscoe, etc.
Dick Summer ruined several years of high school for me! My parents were very permissive(old-fashioned word)and my sister and I were allowed to stay up all night listening to the show. None of my friends were and on the days I actually made it to school, his show was all I talked about. We were was obsessed with The Shrewsbury Campaign, the nightlite spring, possibly Nick Danger??? and all the other fabulous silliness. In addition to the crazy, original nonsence he talked was the music. I was about 13 or 14, and of course I loved the Beatles but he played so much more. I’ll never forget the night he played Tom Rush’s The Urge for Going, a song he introduced as written by a sixteen-year old girl from Canada. I heard those very unique opening chords, got a chill, and went and woke up my sister. She slept a little more than me. Tom Rush, Joni Mitchell, folk music-it was love. I still love the music he played. Dick Summer was one of the biggest formulative influences on me in my teens-maybe ever. Its so great to hear this show–the greatness of the internet–after so many years.
Thanks Dick Summer
Wasn’t Dick responsible for “One hen, 2 ducks, 3 squawking geese”, and on and on. I can still recite the entire thing from memory. We all loved him back in those days….
I remember that Irving the 2nd, Venus Flytrap Supreme..SUPERPLANT password was ….”one hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four limerick oysters, five corpulent porpoises,six pairs of Don Albartos sneakers, seven thousand masadonians in full battle array, eight brass monkeys from the ancient sacreat crypts of Egypt, nine apathetic sympathetic diabolical men on roller skates with a marked propensity, procrastination and sloth….ten lyrical spherical diabolical denizens of the deep who all stall around the quo of the quay of queasy at the very same time….” heck…I think I’ve screwed up the last part..
help me remember!!!
dick summer was as cool as the other side of the pillow. as a teen in nh, bz was on all the time,and listening to dick summers night lite show on my little transistor radio was a nightly routine. bz had some great jocks—bruce bradley and jefferson kaye come to mind–but summer was the best. ty dick—for the fun and for your voice.
Dick Summer,
He had, and still has,(listen to the Binder & Binder ad on TV and tell me it’s not that voice), the most singular voice. It somehow conveyed warmth, honesty and intelligence in equal parts and at the same time. But 1) The WBZ show was called the ‘Nite Lite Show’, NOT NightLife. 2) No one mentioned the Nite Lite Instant Swamp, 3) or the Grape Aid Society, (it’s a GAS!), or that 4), he had Jose Feliciano live in the studio, on his show when he was in Boston playing The Unicorn, or other Boston coffeehouses; years before Jose had any kind of fame or hit records, or Summer’s reading of ‘The Telltale Heart’ on Halloween, and on Nite Lite Night, the shows anniversary in February. I was a 14 year old who wrote him as “Elwood Elephant” and was invited in to see the station. It was hard to convince my mother, but worth it, and the biggest thing that had ever happened until then in my life. He was extraordinary, and I have not seen his like since then.
One correction, or explanation. When I met Dick Summer, as I said, I was a kid, in 8th grade I think; but he was as warm and friendly and as nice a guy as he sounded like on the radio. He was a true gentleman who showed real interest in a radio-struck little kid, he toured me through WBZ, or the studio I guess, and let me watch him begin his show, and then mentioned my name on the air which my mom and I heard as we drove home. He was not just a great radio DJ, he was a remarkable person.
I remember when Dick Summer had a rant about the woman who was beaten to death (in New York City I think, Kitty Genovese?)in front of many people while they watched without interfering. Summer wanted everybody to wear a dime on a string around their necks to make a pay phone call in case they came across someone in a similar situation.
I remember very well Dick Summer’s campaign to ‘wear a dime – be a nag’… I’ve forgotten now waht the NAG stood for! But you bet I sent into the station for my free little plastic ‘dime holder’ that fit on a chain andI wore it faithfully – just in case I might need to call for someone in trouble.
WBZ was the best. My 3 friends and I used to go all the way to Harvard Square to hang out around the station. We got to be friends with Bruce Bradley (whose show came before Dick Summer’s) and disovered that he lived in the same town as we did. We ended up taking a huge stack of letters home to match up with an equally huge bunch of mail from England. Our job was to match up US/UK penpals. Does anybody remember getting a UK penpal that way?
There will never be a pop music radio era to equal those truly ‘wonder’ years.
Dick Summer still lives on (Binder and Binder ad)with his unique voice. He was a big hit in the 60′s in Boston, and did a show called the “lovin thing” if memory serves. Quite a legend.
had the pleasure of speaking to dick on the phone recently…a first class guy and a big help to someone who needed a bit of assistance…i used to listen to his show on my front lawn in the early sixties in new york..one of the very best.
Dick Summer was “FM radio” in Boston before there was “FM radio.” He was the first I remember to play non-Top 40 music. I believe he was the first to play Circus Maximus song “The Wind,” which is now considered a classic of the era. I was a kid – probably junior high school – but he made me feel like I was figuring out what “cool” was. I believe he was also the one who told us to change the station and listen to a John Lennon interview on another station, and then come back. How often does that happen?
funny dick was a legend thats for sure remember nightlighters against gutlessness dime around the neck for the phone call but he sold out hes doing talk for crap lawyers binder and binder how have the mightey have fallen
Dick Summer was THE night-time Dj in Indianapolis, and broadcast from a little booth on top of Merrill’s HighDecker, across from the state fairgrounds on 38th St. His voice was soft and smoooth and he created the most romantic moods for those of us cruising around on a date in Indy. He always closed his show with the tune Summertime.
Back in the early 60′s I was a student at UNH in Durham, NH. I started my radio career at the student FM station, WUNH, which had all of 10 watts of power. WBZ was, of course, the top station we all listened to and that included Dick Summer. I remember so well those many late nights when my radio friends listened to his show. I also remember fondly his reading of a Lord North poem (at this moment I can’t for the life of me remember) that was so well done that I can still hear Dick’s voice telling the tale. After I moved on to commercial radio in the Durham area, I sort of tried to imitate Dick’s format, with not much success. After all, there could only be “one”! If you ever read this Dick, thanks for the memories! You are truly one of America’s great radio personalities.
Yow this triggers memories. I’d lay awake at night in my little bedroom on Barnesdale Rd in Natick, reading my collection of old Grossett & Dunlap series books under the covers w/ a flashlight, listening to Dick Summer on ‘BZ.
One memory esp, beyond the Sandwich/Shrewsbury campaign and ads for amber turn signal inserts: Sometime in the late autumn of ’63, a coupla months before their Ed Sullivan appearance, Dick played a Beatles song. I think it was “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”, but I’m not sure. The interesting thing was his lead-in to the song. Something like this: “And now a new song from over in England. Some group called The Cockroaches. The Mosquitoes. No, actually, they’re the Beatles. Chortle chortle snicker snicker.” May have been the first Boston airplay of the Fab Four, group name sarcasm aside.
Thansk so much for posting this. Yep, the memories flood back.
– stan
“Wear a dime and be a NAG… a Niteliter Against Gutlessness.”
I believe this was in response to a Phil Ochs’song “A small circle of friends” that Dick played occasionally
Hi Stanley,
Actually, it’s my understanding that only three Beatles songs could actually have ever been played in Autumn ’63 on ‘BZ: She Loves You, Please Please Me, and From Me To You. I don’t thing “Hand” became available until late December, and wasn’t released, generally till early January of ’64. But the Beatles were played on WBZ as early as the Spring of 1963 because people in the Boston area, and around the country remembering hearing about this “strange group.” Of course at the time, no one had the foggiest idea that they’d grow into a global phenomenon and that people would be listening to and talking about them for decades. Johnny
I was a 7th grader in Chicago when I first picked up WBZ and Dick Summer on September 16, 1964. I listened to his show almost nightly until Dave Michaels (who I also liked) took over in late 1967.
Way out here in the Midwest, reception was problematic. WBZ is at 1030 on the AM dial. When its signal drifted out, either KDKA (1020) in Pittsburgh or WHO (1040) in Des Moines would drift in. All three were 50-KW stations.
In the winter at sunset I could pick up the tail end of the Jefferson Kaye show (or later Ron Landry). Following him was “Contact” with Bob Kennedy, the Bruce Bradley show, then Dick Summer. A few times I even picked up a bit of Carl de Suze right at dawn.
Dick Summer was very big on folkies like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Phil Ochs and Tom Rush. (He was the only host to play Rush’s version of “The Urge for Going.”)
Anyway, it was a real pleasure to hear this aircheck.
P.S.: The show was called “Nightlight.”
This brings back so many memories. The Kitty Genovese comment relates to a song done by Phil Ochs, Outside a Small Circle of Friends, which I believe Dick first introduced me to.
Dick Summer was a pioneer. Playing Ken Nordine’s Word Jazz, performing his own poetry productions, and then introducing the “Boston Sound” which began to gain some traction from about 66 – 67. What a pleasure to find this site. I hope thru this site he becomes aware of how much he was appreciated at BZ and elsewhere.
Dick Summers… man this guy was great, i listened to him when i worked the overnight shift at a mobil gas station in Andover,Ma with a good friend, we used to laugh are asses off while he did his thing, we couldnt turn him off and would listen to the whole show even called in a few time, he had this bit where he called himself Rumplestilsken Farfignugen..lol Dick Summer’s evil twin..lol man good times, thankx Mr Summer you are the greatest!!!
I remember riding around with a friend of mine and listing to Dick late at night in the early 60s. One thing I remember that has stuck with me is when he told everyone to paint on their screens in the winter. A little water with food coloring mixed in and freezing temps and you could paint a picture in winter.
Dick Summers frequently played a song from the Fantasticks performed by the Great Serafin, who I believe was a street singer in Boston. I seem to remmeber that he loved the passion of this singer.
Listeners to Boston radio in the 60s were very fortunate to have many outstanding personalities.
Shouldn’t the title on the Dick Summer article have the word (or phrase) “Night Light” and not “NightLife”?
Dave C.
Groton, CT
Yes, you are right, it was called the night lite show.
Dick was a “radio hero” of mine in the early ’60′s on WBZ. There really was nobody like him. I vividly recall his remotes at Paragon Park, Natasket Beach, in Hull, MA……he was in a trailer in the middle of an amusement park, playing current Top-40 rock…..in the Summer…….how can you get any better than that???
His nightime gigs on WBZ, later in the ’60′s were also great. He had the ability to create an atmosphere that just fit, in terms of the time of night and the times in which he broadcast.
It probably was Dick that caused me to think about braodcasting as a career, as I was intrigued by radio voices. Dick’s voice is one-of-a-kind, and his voiceovers are legendary and seemingly forever…..
I chatted by phone with Dick a few years ago……far more of a thrill for me than for him, because I was able to talk to a true hero of my teen days.
-Tom Burke
Mobile, AL
redcross19@yahoo.com
All these people must be my age . . . Yes – 8th grade under the covers in Painesville, Ohio, 30 miles east of Cleveland. Dick Summer and the Nite Lite show, WBZ Boston, 50 thousand watts. Only on the nights when the atmosphere promoted good reception. I had a pencil mark on the radio dial to line up the needle at the same spot each time. And it had to be right on, or, like my buddy said above, you would get other stations transmitting from who knows where. I loved his subtle, sophisticated voice. It was my first exposure to the East Coast, and I vowed I would live in Boston some day. (Fortunately, my wish came through.) I just recently thought of you again, Dick, and found this great site. In homage to you and the cultural shifts you introduced , thanks.
These letters put me on the floor. Thank you. I was just taking down our Christmas tree, when a friend of mine sent me a note suggesting I look here. It was like a present I almost missed left under the tree. My e-mail is Dick@DickSummer.com if anybody would like to write. The website is http://www.dicksummer.com. It has a (free) weekly blog and podcast. I don’t do the web for business…it’s just a way to keep in touch with some good folks.
Happy 2010.
Dick Summer
In mid 60′s as a teenager I faithfully listened to Night Light Show and Subway as a religious experience. Parents thought I was asleep,but I had a 2 transistor radio in my bed, with an earphone so they wouldn’t know. Woke up for school many morns with a dead battery and the cord wrapped around my neck. Shrewsburies, and the PASSWORD, and Iving the Venus FLYTRAP were all part of my life. But the MUSIC…Tom Rush, Phil Ochs, Circus Maximus, The Blues Project, Jose Feliciano, would forever burn in my soul. I’m a musician today, and I say without hesitation that you had more influence on me than any artist or super-group. I owe you a GREAT debt, Sir, as do many others. God Bless You, Mister Summers!!
An honer to post after THE MAN himself. A heartfelt Thank You for creating the soundtrack of my youth. This clip brings back so many fond memories that I cant begin to note. I will say that Dick was a pioneer in radio at a time when bland was the order of the day. The exposure to the folk-blues scene,’The Boston Sound’ and assorted esoterica like Frank Zappa were miles away from anything Boston had to offer until WBCN hit the air.
I still remember having to turn the radio station back to WMEX because my older brother thought it was his radio and it had to be set to Arnie ‘Woo-Woo’ Ginzberg and the Night-Train Show.
Not that Arnie wasn’t great in his own way…But thanks again Dick for saving me.
I remember WBZ so well in the sixties. Juicy Brucey and of course Dick Summer. I would put my transister radio under my pillow and listen to Dick Summer. One night I heard a ghost story or something.I was scared to death. WBZ was the station to listen to in those days. So boring today with all news all the time. Remember the lineup-Carl deSuze, Jay Dunne( I was his hygienist once) Jefferson Kaye Contact, Bruce Bradley and Dick Summer. Thanks guys, you made my summers, as I walked the beach at Wells looking for boys, ya ya boys. why did Ringo sing that?
I listened to “WBZ, Radio 103, A Group Westinghouse Station” in Windsor, Ontario, Canada in the ’60s and loved catching the Dick Summers Nightlife show, (although up until this posting I thought it was the “nightlight” show)
The reading of Alfred Noyes’ “The Highwayman” and Dick’s attempts to change the Sandwich to the Shewsbury, the Venus Flytrap bit, his very serious and ligitmate attack on “apathy” and his referral to it as “gutlessness”, telling about Phil Ochs playing at the Unicorn Coffee house, not to mention all the great tunes. We had great radio in Windsor in those days, “CKLW, THE BIG 8″ was the big boy on the block, but at 10:30 every night I’d tune into WBZ because they always got the latest British Invasion tunes a few days earlier than the midwest, and as a 14, 15 year old, I always had the “scoop” on the latest tunes. My radio was on all night even after falling asleep. I was listening to Dick’s show the night Winston Churchill died and I seemed to awaken just a few seconds before his announcing Sir Winston’s death. In 1966 my dad and I went to Steamtown in Vermont and my dad suggested we go into Boston and look up the radio station and see if I could meet Bruce Bradley and Dick Summers, but as a young teen ager (16), for some crazy, unknown reason I didn’t want to do it. I wished my dad had kicked my proverbial arse and made me go. I also missed going to Fenway Park for the same reason. Hindsight being 20/20, I would have loved going to see if I could have met these great pair of DJ’s as they had a pretty important role in presenting the new and exciting music of the day.
I miss those radio days but they were exciting, fun times.
Thanks Dick. You were wonderful.
Eric Roth
Another Canadian – I lived in eastern Ontario about 60 minutes south of Ottawa – who grew up in the mid-60s with Dick (Summer) and Bruce (Bradley).
What a great station WBZ was and what great personalities, including also Jeff Kaye, Carl De Suze, Jay Dunn and Dave Maynard.
I can still remember Bruce Bradley introducing the Rolling Stones when they first had hits in North America (1965) as “the five uglies”. And he used to love to insert the “oh-oh-oh-oh yah, muh!” line from Screamin’ Jay Hawkins version of I Put A Spell On You.
Does anyone know if Bruce is still on the air somewhere?
Yes I distinctly remember “Juicy Brucey” Bradley inserting the “Mwah!” line and especially the “A-h don’t cay-ah if you don’t wo-nt me, a-hm yo-ahs!!!” line at the most opportune times. It was really effective and comical, out of context like that, and no one really knew where it came from, since the song was from 1956 and they never played it on AM radio in the ’60s. When I later heard the entire song, on ‘BCN I think, I was blown away, both because now I had finally heard the song it came from, and the song itself was so great. I’m very happy I came across this thread.
BTW here’s the original Screamin’ Jay Hawkins “I Put a Spell on You” that Bruce got the clips from. Listen for yourself. It doesn’t get any better than this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwXai-sgM-s
Wow, you just took me down a memory that is always good to remember—being young and in love. Thank you so much for all the poems, yours and the ones you made yours. I would lov to hear The Highwayman again—You read it out loud, like I heard it in my head. Do it for all of us again? LOL. If you do—let us know. I told my hubby about your poems, and I think he needs to hear some. I am older, but still a big romantic kid—like you! Thank You So MucH! Peace, Jacki
OMG – listening to this was like being 11 years old again. Memories that have been sitting right on the surface. August of 1964 was the summer of A Hard Days’s Night and I was Beatle Crazy. There was Dick Summer and “Nightlife” . I would listen, waking up in the middle of the night with my head on my 9V transistor radio. I agree with Jacki – would also love to hear The Highwayman.
Paulie – you are also right – Dick Summer and “Nightlife” exposed me to and gave me an appreciation for different forms of music, comedy, even history. Summer’s calm voice and the show became an island and soft spot away from a life of abuse and childhood trauma, a kind “friend” to hang with at night. I will eternally be grateful to him.