Playing jazz for her listeners as they relax and unwind in the evening is a dream job, says Danae Alexander, host of WNUA-FM’s Lights Out Chicago.
“I think of the audience as a small, cozy group and it’s like they’ve invited me to their home,” Alexander says. “They’re all people I could sit down to dinner with. My duty is to be a nice house guest.”
Her listeners echo the sentiment. Jill Gossett, immediate past vice president of the local chapter of American Women in Radio and Television and director of sales at Shadow Broadcast Services, says: “While I’ve never met her, she makes you feel like a guest in her home with her personal and intimate delivery. Evenings wouldn’t be the same without her.”
Alexander is a welcome visitor in the homes of many Chicago listeners, judging by her 14-year stint at the station and her extensive radio resume. In the mid 1970s, Alexander was the first woman to be hired as an air personality at WDAI-FM (later renamed WLS-FM). She worked there for several years, after having started her career in the late 1960s at the all-female jazz station WSDM-FM.
“Every day is fresh and I don’t think I’ve been on the air that long,” she says, “but it’s been three decades.”
Her foray into broadcasting was more of a lark than the realization of a longtime ambition. When she graduated in theater from Mundelein College, being a female disc jockey “wasn’t an option” she says. But at a college get-together, a friend encouraged her to audition for WSDM. She decided to take a chance and she landed the job.
“It was so odd (for listeners) to hear a female voice,” Alexander says. Now when people recognize her deep, rich voice off the air, she says it is “amazing.”
While she says she never experienced discrimination, she does acknowledge that “in the beginning, you had to be better than your male counterparts. You couldn’t slip once. The pressure was enormous.”
An early mentor was radio broadcaster Yvonne Daniels, who worked at a number of Chicago stations during her 30-year-plus career, including WLS-AM (she was that station’s first woman disc jockey).
Of Daniels, who died in 1991, Alexander says: “She was a mentor to me and to many. She fought. She had to fight; she struggled for decades.”
Alexander has seen significant changes over the course of her career, such as increased opportunities for women. “Now, there is no gasp if a woman walks into an audition.”
And, not surprisingly, technology has pervaded her daily routine at the station. She entered the computer age “kicking and screaming” but is now resigned to punching buttons on a computer rather than juggling stacks of CDs.
She’s hard-pressed to come up with downsides of radio work. Her favorite aspects of the job are sharing her love for music, meeting her audience, getting to know the artists and gauging what people will like to hear. “Chicago is a unique market. People have certain tastes and aren’t afraid to express them, they’re not afraid to say they don’t like it. They are also very loyal once they are attached.”
Her show runs from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. Monday to Friday and the hours suit her fine. “I’m not a morning person,” she says.
A native Chicagoan of Greek heritage, Alexander has had strong support from her family throughout her life and says she has been influenced the most by strong women, namely her mother, godmother and sisters.
Her godmother tells a story of dabbing some oil on Alexander’s lips during her baptismal ceremony, hoping that this would endow her goddaughter with a gift for speaking up, and she teases that she is responsible for Alexander’s success.
From her mother, Alexander learned to have confidence and believe in herself. It was this early lesson that helped her build a following on the air. “I never had a persona or faked anything. I was able to be myself. If you don’t, you’re going to get caught and it shows through.”
But while Alexander strives for a natural demeanor, she explains that there is an element of drama in her work. “Radio is theater of the mind,” she says, “with no props, no visuals, no facial expressions. People imagine you as a character and you have to get the point across concisely, energetically, emphatically.”
Theater is a great education, she says, especially for people who want to work in radio. “It blends so many disparate things–history, carpentry, math, literature, music. It’s fun for kids and they get a well-rounded education.”
She advises that if you’re new to the broadcasting business and you encounter people who do something better than you do, don’t be jealous. Learn from them, she says, do your best and keep growing.
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e-mail: jfitzgerald@tribune.com
