December 2024
The Superflex
A Publication of the Alabama Historical Radio Society December 2024
NOTE FROM PRESIDENT WAG
Members,
We held our annual year-end business meeting and Holiday social on Monday, December 30th at which annual elections were held. John Outland chaired the nominating committee which included members Willie Henderson, Dave Johnson, Ray Giles, and Maurice Hill. All officers (President, Wag Waguespack, Vice President Steven Westbrook, Treasurer Mike Woodruff & Recording Secretary Grady Shook) serve one-year terms and were re-elected for 2025. Three Board members rotate off at year’s end: Willie Henderson, Jim Cawthon, and Ray Giles. Ray and Jim did not seek re-election and were recognized for their service. Willie was re-elected to another three-year term (2025 through 2027) and the two open position nominees were elected: Boyd Bailey and John Herndon. We look to all three for an introductory bio for an upcoming newsletter.
Mark your calendars!
This is the date and link for the next AHRS Business meeting to be held on Monday, Dec 27th, 2025, at 7:00 PM.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86330579924?pwd=ckZLWEJMb0V2ajhBUzh0S2liQnlmZz09
Meeting ID: 863 3057 9924
Passcode: 631140
We were pleased to see Dr. Chris Shelt and his wife at the year-end meeting; she is doing well following treatment at UAB. Willie Henderson is recovering from elective surgery as is Maurice Hill (an orthopedic procedure). Jim Cawthon is recovering from a cardiac event, so please keep these folks and their families in your thoughts and prayers.
We recognized Members lost during 2024: James T. “Jim” Rogers, Harry Butler, Chet Lambert, and Randy Parker.
Congratulations to Dave and Celeste Cisco who celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary on December 14th.
My apologies for catching the couple without their characteristic smiles. DJ Tom Killian at work.
At the business meeting, we recapped other Society 2024 activities. These have been captured by our newsletter during the year and a special thanks is extended to VP Steven Westbrook who writes for, edits, and archives The Superflex.
Highlights:
· 2ndEdition of the late Harry Butler’s book on Alabama broadcast history We are working to edit and print his unfinished work this coming year.
· Legends of Broadcasting last April and, looking forward, save the date for the upcoming event April 17th, 2025
· Acquisitions: books to library, donated by Butler family and others plus those purchased at the Dayton Hamvention in May
· Outreach
o Boy Scouts Radio Merit Badge
o Forum on “Love of Dx-ing” co-presented by Dave Cisco and Russ McGuire. Given in person at the 2024 BirmingHamfest, to the Tuscaloosa and Gadsden amateur radio clubs and by Zoom to a NC club (John Green’s local group)
· Museum and Shop
o Upgrading, rotating, and protecting articles in the Don Kresge Memorial Radio Museum
o Major tube sorting initiative
· Auctions We had three this past year and likely another early in 2025
· Hamfests, especially Birmingham Feb 28-Mar 1, 2025, and Huntsville in August 2025
· Business meetings and newsletters Tell us how to improve them and ideas about future programs and content.
Boyd Bailey’s electronics class will be deferred until January 11 at the Shop and via the web and continuing with topics relating to solid state electronics. A separate email will go out from Boyd and Steven. We thank Boyd for continuing his teaching, hosting our Zoom conferences, and now serving on the Board!!
Note:
The following link should work for future classes in perpetuity (or until otherwise notified):
Topic: AHRS Radio Restoration Class
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88180351990?pwd=N2lucjB3WVhtR05nTSs5S0xGcURadz09
Our sponsored radio history exhibit at the Homewood Public Library during November has closed and was well received. Again, we thank Steven Westbrook and Grady Shook who planned and set up the exhibit.
The date for our next auction has not been decide. When is the date is set the membership will be advised by email.
Zoom link for the auction will be:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81499093101?pwd=rEAw3xWgPqlI1VXojhNg2brPErqGZ5.1
We applied for, and received, a grant from the Holle Family Foundation to help finance publication of the 2nd Edition of Harry Butler’s History of Alabama Broadcast Radio 1920-1960. We also received a generous grant from the McCrary Family Foundation for this endeavor and for future additions to our collections.
We cannot approach year’s end without hinting about dues being due in January. They remain a bargain at $25 annually. One may pay in person at the shop, by mail (P.O. Box 131418, Mountain Brook, AL 35213), or via PayPal on the website (alhrs.org)
In closing, let me wish everyone a safe and prosperous 2025 and include some photos from the yearend meeting and social. Thanks to all who contributed to this year’s event, including my wife, Carolyn, who has been most forbearing and forgiving of the time I spend with AHRS.
Respectfully submitted,
Wag
President, AHRS
drminims@aol.com
Bruce Morrow aka Cousin Brucie
Born: Bruce Meyerowitz October 13, 1935 (age 89)
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Occupation(s)
Disc jockey, radio announcer, actor
Years active
1959–present
Spouse
Jodie Berlin (m. 1974)
Bruce Morrow (born Bruce Meyerowitz; October 13, 1935) is an American radio performer, publicly known as Cousin Brucie or Cousin Bruce Morrow. In an October 2020 interview, Morrow said he received the moniker "Cousin" while in the lobby of his midtown Manhattan WABC studio when an elderly woman once asked him "Cousin, lend me fifty cents to get home" to whom he did give that fifty cents. The name stuck for six decades.
Early life
Morrow was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Mina and Abe Meyerowitz. Morrow, who is Jewish, was raised in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood, where he attended elementary school at P.S. 206. While attending James Madison High School, he was involved with the All City Radio Workshop at Brooklyn Technical High School. Wanting to pursue a radio career, he spent 10 hours a week working for dramatic educational productions at radio station WNYE-FM.
Morrow enrolled as a student at Brooklyn College but transferred to New York University[6] to study in the Communications Arts Program.
Career
Radio work
Morrow's first stint in radio was in Bermuda at ZBM-AM, where he was known as "The Hammer".[7] He began his career in the US at New York City Top 40 station WINS (AM) in 1959. In 1960, he relocated to Miami, Florida, for a stint at WINZ (AM) before returning to New York the next year for the major station WABC (AM 770), another Top 40 station. Morrow worked for WABC for 13 years and 4,014 broadcasts until August 1974, when he transferred to rival radio station WNBC replacing Wolfman Jack who quit to tour with The Guess Who. After three years there, he quit performance to team with entrepreneur Robert F.X. Sillerman to become the owner of the Sillerman Morrow group of radio stations, which included WALL and WKGL, now WRRV, both in Middletown, New York; WJJB, later WCZX, in Poughkeepsie, New York; WHMP in Northampton, Massachusetts; WOCB in West Yarmouth, Massachusetts; WRAN (now dark) New Jersey 1510 in Randolph, New Jersey and television station WATL Atlanta. The group later purchased WPLR in New Haven, Connecticut.
During 1982, Morrow resumed working as a radio announcer for New York's WCBS-FM, an oldies station. Initially, he filled in for Jack Spector every third Saturday evening for the Saturday Night Sock Hop program. After Spector's resignation in 1985, Morrow became the main performer for the program and renamed it the Saturday Night Dance Party. The station also added his nationally syndicated show Cruisin' America. In 1986, he began working the Wednesday evening shift, when he hosted The Top 15 Yesterday and Today Countdown. In 1991, the Wednesday show became The Yearbook, emphasizing music from the years between 1955 and 1979.
When the radio program Cruisin' America ended in December 1992, Morrow continued hosting a WCBS radio program named Cruising with the Cuz Monday evenings until the end of 1993. After that program ended, he hosted the Saturday night and Wednesday night programs there until the station's change to an adult hits format named Jack FM on June 3, 2005. Soon thereafter, he signed a multi-year deal to host oldies programming and a weekly talk program for Sirius Satellite Radio and for 15 years from 2005 to 2020, hosted programs for Sirius XM satellite radio on the '60s on 6 channel. Cousin Brucie's Saturday Night Party – Live was broadcast Saturday nights, while Cruisin' with Cousin Brucie was broadcast on Wednesday nights. On Sunday nights, Best of Brucie, a compilation culled from his SiriusXM broadcasts, aired. His crew included at various points former senior producers Adam Saltzman, Lauren Hornek, Emilio Medugno and producer Colton Murray. On his Wednesday, July 29, 2020, program, he announced he was leaving SiriusXM following that Saturday's broadcast, characterizing it as not a retirement.
Days later, it was announced that Cousin Brucie would be returning to WABC in New York City, where he was previously a DJ from 1961 to 1974. The station was reviving its previous 'Music Radio 77 WABC" format for Saturday evenings with the otherwise all-talk station airing Cousin Brucie’s Saturday Night Rock & Roll Party weekly from 6pm to 10pm, beginning September 5, 2020. The program was described as featuring music from the 1950s and 1960s and "a good touch" of the 1970s.
Film and television
Morrow's voice can be heard in the movies Across the Universe, Gas Pump Girls, and Dirty Dancing; he also had a minor part in the latter, playing a magician who saws Baby (Jennifer Grey) in half, and served as period music consultant. He can be seen making on stage introductory remarks for the 1966 documentary The Beatles at Shea Stadium. He also appeared in the 1978 movie Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and had a guest appearance in the 1990s science fiction television series Babylon 5 [in "War Without End" (Part 2), playing the first officer of Babylon 4]. In Across the Universe, the radio station call letters he used were WEAF which were the call letters of 660 in New York before it became WNBC.[11] He also played a television contest announcer in Between Time and Timbuktu, a 1972 National Educational Television production adapted from several short stories by Kurt Vonnegut.
Charity work
Morrow has worked for the Variety Children's Charity (for which he served as president for ten years) to help fund children who are disadvantaged, physically challenged, sick or needy and he volunteers with Gatewave Audio Reading Service for people who are blind or visually impaired.WhyHunger (which in 1975, was founded by Morrow's close friend, the late singer-songwriter, Harry Chapin).
Personal life
In December 1974, the divorced Morrow married Jodie Berlin, at the time the corporate manager of executive development and internal placements for the department-store chain Alexander's. Morrow has three adult children and two grandchildren
Honors
Morrow was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1988,[1] and the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in the radio division in 2001. In 2010, he received the Bravery In Radio Award from William Paterson University and its radio station WPSC 88.7 FM, for a track record of "inspirational radio programming and lifelong commitment to the medium of radio". Born in Brooklyn, part of geographical Long Island, he was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2018. In 1994, the city designated West 52nd Street (where the headquarters of former WCBS-FM parent CBS are located) as Cousin Brucie Way.
Wikepedia (Edited)
Quotes of the Month
Television: The device that brings into your livingroom characters you would not allow in your livingroom.
-Red Skelton
I have put on a lot of weight…I only weighted six and a half pounds when I was born.
-Red Skelton
We meet every Saturday (unless a Holiday weekend) at 8:30 A.M. until around 11:30 A.M., at the one-story AHRS Shop at the corner of 8th Avenue North and 18th Street, (1801 8th Avenue North, Birmingham, AL 35203). Please use the rear (Southeast) entrance.
The Shop is open on Tuesdays at 8:30 A.M. until around 11:30 A.M. Note that parking can be a problem on Tuesdays, so you may have to find street parking occasionally.
Regular monthly members meetings are on the fourth Monday night starting at 7:00 PM with the Executive Meeting starting at 6:30 PM
Please come join us!
The electronics classes are generally on “Zoom” and “in-person” at the AHRS Shop, typically the first Saturday of each month (except when something special is taking place, then we agree on an alternative Saturday)
Check your emails for the schedule and how to participate.
We start from the beginning Ohms Law, inductors, resistor and Capacitors color codes, as well as what each component does within the radio circuits. We also teach how to use test equipment used in the repairing of radios. We teach troubleshooting radio troubles, as well as how to read a radio diagram.
Currently the class is studying advance topics relating to troubleshooting and project radio repair. We are retooling our website in hopes of archiving prior classes for those who may have missed a prior class. Email will provide timely details on date, topics & links.
There are coil winding classes, and one-on-one repair help. Come join these classes!
Membership dues are $25.00 a year, payable beginning in January. If you have questions about your dues, you can contact Treasurer Mike Woodruff at 205-823-7204. Dues can be mailed to AHRS at P.O. Box 131418, Birmingham, Alabama 35213 or paid on-line at https://alhrs.org
Be sure and check out our website at https://alhrs.org, which has copies of all newsletters from 2006 to the present (click on News), videos, photo galleries, museum, Old Time Radio columns, Projects, Reading Rooms, Archives, and Contact Information. Within the next few months we hope to update our website and add additional content and new capabilities
President – Richard “Wag” Waguespack
(205) 531-9528
drminims@aol.com
Vice President – Steven Westbrook
(205) 305-0679
spwestbro@bellsouth.net
Recording Secretary – Grady Shook
(205) 281-3007
gshook@bellsouth.net
Treasurer – Mike Woodruff
(205) 823-7204
woodruff_michael@hotmail.com
Boyd Bailey, Member and Instructor
(334) 412-6996
boyd.bailey@charter.net
Newsletter Editor/Webmaster – Steven Westbrook
(205) 305-0679
spwestbro@bellsouth.net
Web Address:
https://alhrs.org
E-mail Address:
ahrs2000@gmail.com
Youtube Channel: Alabama Historical Radio Society - YouTube