Soupy’s fans of a certain age will probably remember him from television. Wikipedia describes the peak of his television career this way:
Sales is best known for his daily children’s television show, Lunch with Soupy Sales. It was originally called 12 O’Clock Comics, and later known as The Soupy Sales Show.[5] Improvised and slapstick in nature, it was a rapid-fire stream of comedy sketches, gags and puns, almost all of which resulted in Sales receiving a pie in the face, which became his trademark. He developed pie-throwing into an art form: straight to the face, on top of the head, a pie to both ears from behind, moving into a stationary pie, and countless other variations. He claimed that he and his visitors had been hit by more than 20,000 pies during his career.[1] He recounted a time when a young fan mistakenly threw a frozen pie at his neck and he “dropped like a pile of bricks”.
Sales’ career was mainly television, however, like so many others, he began in radio, in the 1940s. During the 1980s, Soupy was hired by 66 WNBC in New York for the midday slot, sandwiched between Imus In The Morning, and Howard Stern in the afternoon. it was a very successful run that spanned the time period from March 1985 to March 1987. During that time, Howard Stern was fired, Joey Reynolds held the Afternoon Drive slot for little over a year, and Alan Colmes was doing afternoons at the time Soupy left.
All that brings us to this aircheck. Soupy Sales was never employed full-time at WICC, however, he did fill in for the midday guy July 20 and 21, 1989. Sales was a performer and had a lot of material for his show. At the time, WICC was playing mainly Oldies and had a full news department. He did play a couple of songs during this aircheck, but this was mostly Soupy and a studio full of guests, all playing off of Soupy’s patter. Listen to the callers who get to talk to him, many for the first time, but some remember him from WNBC…
A big THANK YOU to Contributor Bob Gilmore for sending in this digitized cassette tape that he personally recorded.
