Long John Nebel in NYC/Jade in Tampa.

       Crackpots in the night...in New York City

Marvin Miller (The Millionaire) and great radio announcer in Los Angeles once wrote me that if you hold a map of the U.S. up...all the nuts and blots fall into southern California.

Well..he was wrong...a few hung around and invaded the Long John Nebel all night talk show  on WOR/WMCA In New York.

Long John is my pick for number four top radio personality behind Gary Dee Cleveland, Wally Phillips Chicago and Neil Rogers, Miami.

Each of these legends in the radio world (and some more coming here later)  were unique.

And Long John Nebel was unique.  

Let’s quote from the Wikipedia encyclopedia : 

“Some critics attacked Nebel for allowing crackpots free rein on the program, but he responded by saying his was not a traditional news or investigative journalism show, and that it was up to listeners to determine the validity of any guest's claims”.

Nebel paved the way for the likes of yours truly...Art Bell, and others to wile away the lonely hours of the night with intriguing thoughts and conversations. 

And having done a national all night radio talk show for almost ten years I can attest that it takes a lot of work and strong nerve to deal with some of the strange callers that seem in preponderance at that time.  But it is fun.

Long John Nebel had things so well in hand that he could actually leave the studio for a nice break about 3am allowing the “nuts and bolts” to go it alone.

Now that’s something to think about!  One wonders who took charge?
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As long as we are on the overnight talk topic.....meet JADE in Tampa!

           I invented live national overnight talk radio in November 1992.

          Spanning the radio dial at 2 or 3 am I discovered that nobody was LIVE...all tape re-runs from earlier in the day.

So I approached the original Sun Network based in Clearwater (Tampa area) Florida and they bought my idea.

We went live coast to coast at midnight five times a week...and for five hours our 800 number was full of callers.

I will skip all the reasons and results here (for later) to simple tell you about JADE in Tampa.

Just like Long John Nebel knowing what works with weird guests or callers...I had the nose for something special and JADE was special.

She called in one night and I was absolutely stunned by her voice.  I can’t explain it...just to say, no it wasn’t sexy...she was no Marilyn Monroe singing happy birthday to Jack Kennedy.

She sounded college age...not teen or mature...just marvelously “sweet” if that’s the proper word.  I’m not sure it is...maybe “soft” is better. I invited her to call in whenever we were on the air and she did...but didn’t strain it.

The male audience went for her big time.  Callers started asking questions about her..and even after a year we had no answers...JADE was “coy”.  And she seemed to love the attention.

I’ve will go on some more later in this blog about the mysterious JADE.  but let me give you another example of a caller who can start listeners talking.

He was Jacob from St. Louis.

He was black....but  he wasn’t uptight about it and could joke about things black in a humorous way like making fun of the Cardinals black shortstop Ozzie Smith for doing cartwheels on the field....or he might take off on a black politician....and he could get away with saying things that I could never say and he laughed about that stuff.  
       I can just image what Jacob would be saying about Obama right now!

These are just two example of “overnight” folks who helped make our show viable for many years. 

More on all this later.

Connect:

stanmajor@aol.com