Biondi had hung in longer than most. The first time he got behind a microphone was as an 8-year-old in Auburn, N.Y., near his hometown of Endicott, N.Y. (”I never knew that kids weren`t supposed to hang around radio stations,” he says.)
At first, ”I wanted to be a priest, just like every Catholic kid-until I saw a girl in a bathing suit.” From that moment on, Biondi spent every spare moment at the local radio station, hoping for the moment when one of the local deejays would get sick so he could read a commercial or two. ”I was always a ham,” he says.
After graduating from the local high school, he took a few courses at a small college, but quit once he got his first radio job (in 1951) working a split-shift in Corning, N.Y.
Three months later, he (and the rest of the staff) was fired when a new owner came in; so Biondi headed to Alexandria, La., where he got married and encountered the music that changed his life-as well as American popular culture.
”I used to hang around the Greystone Grill, which was in the black section of town on lower Third Street in Alexandria, and I`d be the only white person in the house. It was great. And that`s where I got my training, that`s where I heard the music that was the roots of rock `n` roll.
”Until then, I had been content to spin the big bands, the Glenn Millers. That music was great, too, but it wasn`t the kids` sound. Let`s face it: They were waiting for something new, and I was too. So here I found it.
”By 1953 (which Biondi considers his starting-point as a rock `n` roll deejay), I did a show in Alexandria on Saturdays called `Jamming Jive,` where we played nothing but race music,” says Biondi, referring to the term for early rock `n` roll. ”I was known down there as Daddy-O Substitute, because I was the weekend fill-in for Daddy-O Rainey and Daddy-O Fox.
”I remember playing music by Fats Domino, early Lloyd Price tunes like
`Lawdy Miss Clawdy,` Ruth Brown, Buddy Johnson, Joe Liggins and the Honeydrippers.
”Then I started playing records by Elvis, and listeners would call in to ask, `What`s an Elvis?`
”Anyway, when rock `n` roll exploded in the mid-`50s, I was ready.”
Biondi was fired in Alexandria in 1954 (another change of management), but headed north to small towns in Pennsylvania and upstate New York, where he began preaching the gospel of rock `n` roll.
”Things got hot when I started in Youngstown (Pa.),” he recalls,
”because they said I could play whatever I wanted.
”Unfortunately, as soon as I put on a Little Richard record, the manager came in, ripped the needle off the record, threw the disc across the room and said, `We don`t play that kind of crap here.` ”
Biondi ultimately got his way, though, from the station owner, who gave him nearly free rein. And that`s when he started having fun.
He still remembers the night he brought in Jerry Lee Lewis (who had never played in the North before) and actor Michael Landon (a teen idol who could barely sing) to perform at a local record hop.
”About 4,000 kids showed up, and I put Michael Landon on first. The place went wild, absolutely crazy; then Jerry Lee went on.
”After that set Lewis said to me, `You better put me on first for the next set.`
”So I put Lewis on first, and he did 14 songs without stopping. The crowd went nuts, and he was covered with pools of sweat. As he left the stage, he walked up to Landon, who was waiting to go on, and said, `Okay pretty boy, beat that.` ”
Then there was the time Biondi brought in the man with the swinging pelvis.
”I asked him to autograph my T-shirt,” Biondi recalls, ”and he said to me, `What are you going to do with it.`
”I said, `I`m going to jump into the crowd and see what happens.`
”Unfortunately, that`s exactly what I did, and all these screaming young girls started tearing at me like crazy. They all wanted a piece of that shirt, and no one got a piece bigger than a quarter. I wound up in the hospital emergency room with cuts and scratches.”
After being bounced from the station in Youngstown (”a new regime came in”), Biondi landed in Buffalo, where he was able to hold onto his job for nearly two years before getting in trouble.
”I had this boss who married a teenage bride, and the night they returned from their honeymoon his wife had a pajama party for her
girlfriends,” says Biondi.
”So he came into the studio and starting bugging me and picking at me. After about an hour he said, `Now I want you to straighten up. I`m going to the movies, I want to relax, so don`t screw up.`
”When he walked out the door I went on the air and said, `Hey, my boss just left the studio. Can you imagine him coming in here the day after his honeymoon?`
” `He`s driving down Main Street in a gray Impala, so if you see it, throw rocks at it.`
”Somebody threw one right through his windshield-seriously. So I got fired.”
Looking back on his career, Biondi has no difficulty understanding why
”I had gotten this reputation as a rebel, someone who doesn`t like authority. But, finally, I just couldn`t handle that anymore.”
So after being booted from WCFL and a station in Cincinnati in 1973, he stepped into his car and started driving, visiting relatives and taking it easy.
”After driving around for several months, I thought I`d go to Myrtle Beach for a while, relax and play golf,” says Biondi, who`s no longer married and has an adopted son living in California. ”Otherwise, I wasn`t really sure what I was going to do.
”But once I got to Myrtle Beach, I said to myself, `What the heck?`
”So I went to the local radio station, talked to the manager-who didn`t know who I was-and he hired me. I took home $97 and some cents a week, and it was beautiful. I was playing golf, I was on the ocean, and I played what I wanted.
”I was sort of depleted financially, but the important thing was that I was still on the radio.”
Biondi would probably be in mothballs in Myrtle Beach to this day, had it not been for a ”Where Are They Now” story on Biondi that Bob Sirott did in 1983 on WBBM-TV (Channel 2).
The ratings response was such that WBBM radio (96 FM) brought Biondi back home to Chicago, where he has been on and off the air ever since.
”You know, the one thing I think I`ve learned over all these years is that radio hardly has changed at all,” he says.
”I remember at WLS, one of the biggest things I ever pulled is the night I got so tired that I did all my commercials at the top of the hour and then said to the listeners, `Okay, now we`re going to have the rest of the hour without any interruptions.`
”So what are you hearing on the radio today? Everybody`s boasting that they`re playing 55 singles in a row without commercials.
”When I started at `LS, we had 30 records on a playlist to spin over and over and over. So look at the hit stations today-they`re playing 30 records over and over and over.
”About the only thing that`s different is that most of my generation of deejays is off the air. Lujack is retired; Howard Miller hasn`t been on the air for years; but I`m still around.
”And I tell you-I`m never going to stop, I`m not interested in rusting away,” says Biondi, who`s probably the only rock `n` roll deejay in America who`s pushing 60. The irony is that the songs he plays used to be on the cutting edge, and now they`re the certifiable oldies.
”Do you think I mind that these songs are now called oldies or classics?” says Biondi, bristling a bit. ”That`s a compliment. My music has lasted.
”And you know what else? The kids today know all the oldies, and they love `em.
”Hey, I`ve made mistakes-I probably should never have left Chicago, I shouldn`t have run off every time I got into a fight.
”But I`m here now, and I just wish that everybody could have a tenth of what I`ve had. I`ve got enough memories to keep me happy for as long as I live.
”I knew Mick Jagger; I knew Brian Jones, rest his soul, of the Rolling Stones.
”I saw Buddy Holly live onstage. I was a close friend of Bobby Darren`s. Jerry Lee Lewis spent three days at my house.
”No matter how you stack it, I`m a lucky guy.”
