And thus begins the 2004 edition of WABC Rewound, a program that was heard for exactly 10 years each Memorial Day Monday, from 1998 until 2008. The 2009 edition was an internet only event and upon the semi-retirement of Johnny Donovan, the show disappeared completely in 2010.
This is hour 1 which features Les Marshack who did overnights in 1970. In fact, Marshack started doing the overnight show the previous year when Program Director Rick Sklar had Roby Younge removed for breaking format.
This aircheck begins with a then current ABC Newscast with information on the war in Iraq, etc. Then moves on to Rewound itself. Listen closely as WABC’s normal audio gets ‘tweaked’ within the first minute of the news to insert the legendary WABC reverb! Listen for plenty of hits and commercials for familiar places such as Dennison’s. Marshack had the perfect, authoratative voice. It never hurt that he began his radio career at WABC. Listen for a bit of historic irony in the first commercial during Marshack’s program, from the Ad Council – on how YOU can stop inflation! Tell THAT to our people in Washington today! Notice, BJ Thomas has the number one record in New York that particular week.
Marshack would go on to WPIX-FM (101.9) where he could be heard for most of the early 1970s.
Later in 1970, Jay Reynolds took over the weekday overnight time slot from Les Marshak. Re the Dennison the Men’s Clother commercial, that was the sponsor of said daypart on the station. Charlie Greer had that time slot in the Sixties (he left WABC for MOR station WIP Philadelphia in ’69 [it evolved to soft rock in the mid- if not well into the early ’70s btw]) and did those Dennison commercials live. When he left WABC and Roby Yonge (not Younge or Young) was moved from middays to overnights, the latter took over the Dennison live reads. Les Marshak continued this pattern, and Jay Reynolds possibly did the Dennison live reads when he took over overnights and possibly for the remainder of that store’s life.
Jim Perry (who announced, “News five minutes sooner on WABC” on this aircheck) was also a fill-in deejay and/or the weekend overnight deejay on the station and was the same Jim Perry who later hosted game shows on TV (the original version of “Card Sharks” and the reboot of “Sale of the Century”).