This tape didn’t come with any background information, but ‘Jocko’ sounds suspiciously like the late Rosko Mercer, before moving on to WOR-FM. There are a LOT of 50s and early 60s tunes on this tape which was sent to us unscoped (so legally, I had to scope this down – kinda too bad though).
Really, if you listen to the jock patter this is SO much the same style as Rosko that I’m convinced he is one and the same person in this presentation. The nice thing is, while there’s really not much audio from those days, and ‘Jocko’ / Rosko airchecks are HARD to find, we have a complete cassette side to present here.
Listen now to WADO. The station would have been being creamed by WABC and WMCA in 1964, but they tried, eh? No jingles and very little in the way of programming elements to identify the station on this – so enjoy what appears to be a minor station playing in the big leagues.
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Jocko Henderson and Rosko Mercer are in fact two different people. Jocko was on WBAL, WDAS, WHAT, WWRL, WOV-WADO and also appeared on the WCBS-FM Radio Reunions. Mercer worked at WOR-FM, WNEW-FM, WKTU-FM and KMET. He also the voice of CBS Sports. He died in 2004. Henderson passed away in 2000.
Man! I never see airchecks of Jocko anywhere. This is the first one that I ever heard of besides the CBS-FM airchecks, where he came out of retirement for a few hours.
Thanks for the great discovery. Everyone can use a little more Jocko in their lives.
I hope that more are discovered.
Steven Green
This is Jocko Henderson…I’m sure of it. Broadcasting from Jersey swamps where WADO was located. This is very rare….
Well, the year was 1962, and I first heard Jocco on WWRL. This is a great aircheck. I just found your site, thanks for such a great Web site.
THIS IS THE JOCK\\
LOVED HIM SHOULD HAVE BEEN PRESIDENT BEFORE OBAMA
Just wondering if you got this from Aaron Mintz as I did many years ago when I was first searching for Jocko for a friend. I am very grateful for Aaron… I think of him as the king of airchecks!
This aircheck was from when English- (and even Italian- )language programming on WADO was being phased out in favor of Spanish-language programming (which continues there to this day). A year prior to this aircheck, WADO, which, since the Fifties, more or less, had featured mostly Italian-language shows during the day and black-formatted English-language programs–such as this aircheck–at night, expanded its Spanish programs (which were added circa 1962, initially on weekends as a replacement for Italian and/or black programs in said daypart) to the majority of its broadcast day. A little known fact is that the station, which featured R&B in evenings and Italian for much the remainder of its broadcast day, moved its weekday ethnic shows to nights in 1959, when it changed calls from WOV to its current call sign WADO, and, concurrently, its weekday-daytime format to Top 40, retaining that part of its schedule until the aforementioned first expansion of its Spanish daypart. (This gave New York City three-and-a-half Top 40 stations–the others being WMCA, WINS, and WMGM [and the following year, four-and-a-half Top 40 stations [with WABC having switched to rock'n'roll]]). (By 1964, Italian programming had been shortened to overnights, while Jocko’s soul-music show and Alan Fredericks’ doo-wop show [both during evenings] and Sunday black-church-service broadcasts were the only remaining WADO broadcasts in English, with Jocko gone from ‘ADO beginning later in December ‘64, and Fredericks (d. 2005) remaining until 1966, when Spanish broadcasts were expanded further.) The Italian programming, already cut back to overnights if not that plus nights since 1964, was moved to evenings after Alan Fredericks’ early-rock group-harmony show was cancelled, and Asian programs were added by being placed in overnights. The latter daypart was replaced with Spanish programming in the early ’70’s, as were the African-American church broadcasts(by that time cut back to Sunday nights) some two decades later. Much more recently, WADO switched from a Spanish AC/talk format (it was a mix of Spanish MOR and Spanish oldies early in its history as a Hispanic station) to its current Spanish news/talk format.
As Dale R. Patterson stated in his (her?) posting above, Jocko was a deejay on WOV at the time that he signed on with the station. He remained therewith for a few years after the call-letter change to WADO.