Julius LaRosa’s Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame can be found on the south side of the 6200 block of Hollywood Blvd.

From Bill Diehl’s magazine rack

Julius LaRosa (WNEW 60’s-70’s) twice made the cover of Radio-TV Mirror in 1953 (Radio still came first then) a solo picture in September and a cover shared with Lou Ann Simms the previous March.

The story in the March issue concerned cast members of Arthur Godfrey’s radio and TV shows, and a trip they took to Miami to christen TV station WTVJ’s new studios, and do a show there.  They flew down in a charter National DC-6 from Idlewild,  (now JFK International.)  As the plane approached Miami, the article quotes Lou Ann (19 from Rochester)  as saying, “It doesn’t look very big.”  Julius (22, Navy vet from Brooklyn) at her elbow laughed and said “There’s more than meets the eye, believe me.”  

A red plush carpet was rolled out on arrival and “when Julius walked down the steps a sea of Miami girls were there yelling his name and waving autograph books.  He signed his name over and over, grinning and happy.  Lou Ann waited, beginning to see what Julius meant.”  

There was a reception at WTVJ and then the drive up fabulous Biscayne Boulevard and across the causeway to Miami Beach and the Kenilworth Hotel.  Again quoting from the article:  “And now the kids could let go.  They had each asked for a Cadillac convertible apiece to drive while they were here. But incredibly, the demand for rented Cadillac convertibles that weekend was overwhelming, and most of the available supply was already taken.  Eventually the Godfrey troupe got theirs, but for tonight Julius had to make do with a Buick.”

Oh yes, and there was Floppy, the Night-club Doll, a large doll, says the article, that Lou Ann was given at the Clover Club.  “What Floppy needs,” said the irrepressible Julius, ‘is a little excitement.’   The article goes on “…Julius the sadistic kidnapper, if you judged by his fiendish laughter and her blood-curdling shrieks of dismay…stood on the highest diving board, holding Floppy out over the drink. Floppy fell into the pool, ‘poor Floppy’ said Julius, sadly. ‘Beast, beast,’ Lou Ann cried. With that Julius dived into the pool, came up with Floppy in his mouth and paddled ashore like any brave dog rescuing a drowning baby.”

The article concluded with the flight home. “Julius slept. Lou Ann held Floppy under the air-conditioner above her seat.” It sure was another time, wasn’t it!  B.D.

The caption beneath the photo above, reads: A host of little Godfreys—both newcomers and veterans, beaming in the Florida sunshine: Left to right, Julius LaRosa, Janette Davis, organist Lee Erwin, Lou Ann Simms, Marian Marlowe, frank Parker, and Haleloke.

When the photo at right was published in “Radio-TV  Mirror” magazine in December, 1949, Martin Block was back at his old stand on WNEW after an unhappy year-long engagement with KFWB in Los Angeles, the station where he first went to work in the early 1930’s.  L.A., the second time around, rejected him as a slick, know-it-all New Yorker.   Block, in 1949, was five years away from ending permanently his long run on WNEW which had begun in 1934, when the 31-year old super salesman made an unannounced call on WNEW Station Manager Bernice Judis. After reading a few commercials and, the story goes,  speaking lovingly and at great length  about a common pencil she asked him to describe, he was hired as a part-time announcer for $25. a week.  By the time the “Radio-TV Mirror” photo was published,  he was earning more than $20,000 a week.   

After years of reigning atop the world of popular music with twice-a-day and nationally syndicated “Make Believe Ballroom” shows, movie shorts for M-G-M, TV announcing, music publishing, song writing and other enterprises, Block left WNEW on January 1, 1954, to be heard locally in New York, on WABC.  His final new-beginning was a move to WOR in 1961 for the weekend “Martin Block Hall of Fame” shows.  He was, by then, a stranger in a strange land of Beatles, Stones and Monkeys, no longer the singular voice that called the tune.

  When leaving WNEW, Block was quoted as saying it was strictly business, ABC (his syndicator) had offered him “a much better deal.”  But The Associated Press, in a September 19, 1967 dispatch following his death, quoted a friend of Block’s as saying, “WNEW never let go anybody they wanted to keep.”  

Martin Block’s “Make Believe Ballroom” is best remembered for its big band popularity polls and hit song countdowns, but the man who led the revolution on radio from live to recorded music, hosted many live on-location and in-studio music specials featuring some of the greatest talents of pop music, big band swing and jazz. For just one example, we direct your attention to “The Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong: 70 Years of The Martin Block Jam Session,” which includes audio of a session including Jack Teagarden, Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong.  E.B.

http://dippermouth.blogspot.com/2008/12/70-years-of-martin-block-jam-session.html

Thanks to Bill Diehl for another flea market photo find.

 WNEW1130.com has no affiliation with “dippermouth.blogspot.com” and other websites whose links may be published here.

Nat Asch, over a  stretch of years, held a variety of positions at WNEW and WNEW-FM that put him in the NY Giants broadcast booth, a GM’s corner office, the clutches of Klavan and Finch, and in an impressive assortment of  Manhattan saloons where he did meet and greet the great.  He posted a comment on “WBW VIS-A-VIS RNR,” which we intercepted and moved over here into this larger space.   Nat wrote . . . .

William B. Williams,  also known as Velvel B. Velvel, Guillermo B. Guillermo and half a dozen other non de plumes that he employed to identify himself during his extraordinarily successful daily turns on WNEW, was a master of what is known these days as the Great American Songbook.  I need hardly remind one and all that he named Frank Sinatra “the chairman of the board.”  (When Sinatra was informed that Willie had cancer, he invited Willie to his home in Palm Springs where Willie subsequently spent three weeks convalescing.)   Willie was also a great friend and especially was that so when he introduced me (as well as WNEW’s audience) to Buddy Hackett. More about Buddy at another time.

     Willie B, as he was most familiarly known, had a  clearly defined sense  both of humor and subtlety which was accompanied by a laugh that eventuated into a highly infectious cackle. You simply had to laugh when Willie cackled.

      He had little patience with those artists who “covered” other artist’s musical “hits” and had a way of both playing their music and expressing his distaste for their propensity for what he felt was copying. These days it’s called “covering.” By you it’s ‘covering’ and by me it’s ‘covering.’ But by Willie it was plagiarism, larceny! There was, for example, (and he always took advantage of the opportunity to display his language facility by never saying “for example.” He always used the Spanish “por ejemplo.”) the time that a good friend of the station, Buddy Greco, had the hit, “Around the World.”
     Within weeks, the singer Kaye Stevens produced her version of “Around the World” which, it turned out, was exactly the same as Greco’s; tempo, arrangement, exactly the same. (Greco, by the way, never forgave her.) Willie demonstrated his dissatisfaction with Steven’s record by saying at its conclusion, “nice try,”  in an easily identified tone indicating displeasure. 

      I loved Willie B. He, Hackett and I spent a great deal of time together…mostly laughing because Buddy who, in my opinion owned the single most original comedy mind I had ever encountered, never stopped being hilarious and Willie B. loved to laugh.

      They were the best days of my life.

      Nat Asch

Next time you’re in Hollywood, stroll over to the north  side of the 6300 block of Hollywood Blvd., and you’ll come to the spot where they put a star on the Walk of Fame for the ol’ spotted dog, Jim Lowe.  A lifetime devoted to American popular music is what put it there, and for giving radio broadcasting a good name in the years he was on  the air.

You’ll  find, below,  a recorded conversation Jim had with Doug Miles on WSRQ in Sarasota, FL eight years ago,  on  June 4, 2004,  followed by a David Hinkley story in The New York Daily News, from November 10, 2004, about a month after Jim retired, having conceded that “it is,” as he often said,  “later than it’s ever been.” E.B.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXn5JjiWwL4

That said, it was never easy to put the show together or find stations to carry it in a radio world that mostly acts as if music started with the Beatles. But Lowe did it for six years, when he could have been relaxing in retirement at his Long Island home, just because he still liked it. “The show was a labor of love,” he says. “When it became a labor, it was time to end it.”

Born in Springfield, Mo., Lowe didn’t come to New York as a crusader. He came as a songwriter and singer who in late 1955 had a hit with “Close the Door,” then a bigger one – a No. 1, in fact – with “Green Door.” He cut some songs his later fans might think odd, including “Maybelline,” and he had almost as big a hit as Jim Reeves with the melancholy “Four Walls.”

It was also noted that he had a great radio voice, and by 1962 he was doing Saturday nights at NBC Radio’s “Monitor.” A year later he joined WNEW-AM, doing the “Milkman’s Matinee” and “Jim Lowe’s New York,” which featured listener quizzes on esoteric facts. He returned to “Monitor” from 1969 to 1973, then bounced back to WNEW-AM, where he revived “Jim Lowe’s New York,” did a spell on the evening shift and in 1982 became program director.

Neither he nor anyone else could save the station, which finished its own run in 1992. So Lowe, like others, took to focusing on the music.”If all we do is keeping playing ‘In the Mood,’ we’ll end up in a museum,” he said. So he looked for new music that reflected the classic sound and style, and therefore could blend with the old. That’s the music he listens to at home these days, he says, and that’s what “Jim Lowe and Friends” was about. It carried the torch and helped to pass it.

One of those who picked it up, Jonathan Schwartz of WNYC and XM Satellite Radio, has known Lowe since the ’60s and says Lowe’s retirement, while well-earned, saddens him. “Jim Lowe, or ‘Mr. Broadway,’ is one of the passionate champions of the American Songbook,” says Schwartz. “He is a dedicated friend of craft: He was born with the knowledge that ‘home’ does not rhyme with ‘alone.’ ”                                             photos added by WNEW1130

Jim Lowe wrote and recorded “Gambler’s Guitar” for Mercury Records in 1953.

WNEW  30th Anniversary promotions in 1963, included a series of column-like promos, What’sNEW, placed in New York’s major dailies. The item below, which appeared in the Times and Tribune in September, 1963, is the  4th edition we’ve reconstructed from original clips collected by Bill Diehl.