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HERB OSCAR ANDERSON “The Morning Mayor” – PART ONE – What does HOA have to do with Technology?
(UN-EDITED) Herb Oscar Anderson or HOA. They called him the morning Mayor of New York. He was my teenage musical curator on New York’s WABC 77.0 radio from 1960 – 1968. I began listening to music back in 1960 when HOA arrived at WABC until he left in 1968 – when I entered my post beatnik pre-hippie college years. Where did the music start? Elvis for sure. Connie Francis and Jim Reeves were there. The great Marty Robbins singing “El Paso.” Chubby Checker, Brenda Lee and Roy Orbison were playing through my 8 transistor radio with the single ear plug. They were certainly all friends of the Morning Mayor HOA. He was the Jockey that taught America that not all Rock n’ Rollers were bad – still mixing in some big band sounds and speaking sweetly to the post 50’s stay-at-home housewives. I think the last song he might have introduced me to was the Beetles “Hey Jude”.
Now, I was going to interview him on the I Heart Radio show “Yak About Tech”. The first question people had was “What does HOA have to do with Tech?”
Way before my theatre days in London and New York. Years before most of you knew me as the founder of Blue Marble ACG, (a legendary internet marketing company), there were a couple of 14 year old Brooklyn boys in the 1960’s addicted to their radios and music. We divided our time between WMCA 57 (first on your dial) and WABC 77, the progenitors of New York Rock and Roll. My friend Andrew Levy and myself, depending on who the DJ was, would go back and fourth between the two. We would take turns. I’d listen to Herb Oscar Anderson, he’d listen to Joe O’Brien (with his sidekick, Benny). In the evenings it was Dan Ingram or B. Mitchell Reed (BMR). But we listened. It wasn’t long before we knew what we wanted to do.
CONTENT CREATION
Our respective families knew we were obsessed with creating our own radio station. If memory serves me right, I think we wrote our very first business plans at 13 or 14 years old. We were going into competition with WABC and WMCA. Andrew created WAML radio and I created WDJY. We took our plans to our parents. His family, better off financially than mine, bought him a Webcor reel-to-reel tape recorder. Some days after school, we’d go to work at his house creating our shows. As it was his tape recorder, we created WAML first. The show was a combination of songs recorded directly from the “Victrola” and recording our favorite show personalities from the radio. In the interview with HOA, I told him that he was a guest on my show years earlier.” We would physically splice the recordings of him from the radio directly to the recordings that we made so it would seem as if HOA was our guest.
After a few months, my dad surprised me with my very own reel-to-reel. It was a knockoff of the Webcor called Lucor. It would do just fine. Days on end, I would do nothing else but tape new shows. I’d interview all the people living in my apartment building. I’d borrow “singles” from my family and friends to record. I’d have all the popular DJ’s on and mimic my favorite talk show personality Barry Gray of WMCA fame. I was now ready for WDJY to not only compete with WAML, but with WABC and WMCA. The competition was on.
DISTRIBUTION
I was envious of Andrew living in a private home while we lived in a 1 1/2 half bedroom apartment where I shared a room with my brother. But then it occurred to me that I could use this to my advantage. I knew I needed a distribution channel. So, HERE COMES THE TECH.
During the old Bell Telephone days, phones were rather simple gadgets. Only a few rudimentary technologies were involved. It was easy to get your hands on old phones. People were upgrading to colorful Princess phones and...
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(UN-EDITED) Herb Oscar Anderson or HOA. They called him the morning Mayor of New York. He was my teenage musical curator on New York’s WABC 77.0 radio from 1960 – 1968. I began listening to music back in 1960 when HOA arrived at WABC until he left in 1968 – when I entered my post beatnik pre-hippie college years. Where did the music start? Elvis for sure. Connie Francis and Jim Reeves were there. The great Marty Robbins singing “El Paso.” Chubby Checker, Brenda Lee and Roy Orbison were playing through my 8 transistor radio with the single ear plug. They were certainly all friends of the Morning Mayor HOA. He was the Jockey that taught America that not all Rock n’ Rollers were bad – still mixing in some big band sounds and speaking sweetly to the post 50’s stay-at-home housewives. I think the last song he might have introduced me to was the Beetles “Hey Jude”.
Now, I was going to interview him on the I Heart Radio show “Yak About Tech”. The first question people had was “What does HOA have to do with Tech?”
Way before my theatre days in London and New York. Years before most of you knew me as the founder of Blue Marble ACG, (a legendary internet marketing company), there were a couple of 14 year old Brooklyn boys in the 1960’s addicted to their radios and music. We divided our time between WMCA 57 (first on your dial) and WABC 77, the progenitors of New York Rock and Roll. My friend Andrew Levy and myself, depending on who the DJ was, would go back and fourth between the two. We would take turns. I’d listen to Herb Oscar Anderson, he’d listen to Joe O’Brien (with his sidekick, Benny). In the evenings it was Dan Ingram or B. Mitchell Reed (BMR). But we listened. It wasn’t long before we knew what we wanted to do.
CONTENT CREATION
Our respective families knew we were obsessed with creating our own radio station. If memory serves me right, I think we wrote our very first business plans at 13 or 14 years old. We were going into competition with WABC and WMCA. Andrew created WAML radio and I created WDJY. We took our plans to our parents. His family, better off financially than mine, bought him a Webcor reel-to-reel tape recorder. Some days after school, we’d go to work at his house creating our shows. As it was his tape recorder, we created WAML first. The show was a combination of songs recorded directly from the “Victrola” and recording our favorite show personalities from the radio. In the interview with HOA, I told him that he was a guest on my show years earlier.” We would physically splice the recordings of him from the radio directly to the recordings that we made so it would seem as if HOA was our guest.
After a few months, my dad surprised me with my very own reel-to-reel. It was a knockoff of the Webcor called Lucor. It would do just fine. Days on end, I would do nothing else but tape new shows. I’d interview all the people living in my apartment building. I’d borrow “singles” from my family and friends to record. I’d have all the popular DJ’s on and mimic my favorite talk show personality Barry Gray of WMCA fame. I was now ready for WDJY to not only compete with WAML, but with WABC and WMCA. The competition was on.
DISTRIBUTION
I was envious of Andrew living in a private home while we lived in a 1 1/2 half bedroom apartment where I shared a room with my brother. But then it occurred to me that I could use this to my advantage. I knew I needed a distribution channel. So, HERE COMES THE TECH.
During the old Bell Telephone days, phones were rather simple gadgets. Only a few rudimentary technologies were involved. It was easy to get your hands on old phones. People were upgrading to colorful Princess phones and...