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
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….
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.
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.”
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.