Posted on 04/30/2003 12:18:33 PM PDT by raccoonradio
Jerry Williams: Not a bad guy, as legends go
by Howie Carr Wednesday, April 30, 2003 Jerry Williams invented talk radio in Boston, although he'd have probably told you he just invented it, period.
Not a bad guy, Jerry Williams, but they'll never have a dinner for him now. After the show he's getting on a big old bus . . .
One fact I certainly can't argue with: Jerry Williams invented me, at least my talk-radio persona. When Jerry started reading my columns on the air, I lived in Somerville, and now I live in Wellesley. What can I say now to Jerry except, thanks pal.
It's hard now to explain just how big Jerry Williams was, and for how long. It's like trying to explain the late George Frazier to someone who never read his column in the papers. You had to be there.
So let me put it this way. You can figure the approximate age of a New Englander over 40 by when he or she first started listening to Jerry. The former Gerald Jacoby's first station was WMEX - James Michael Curley used to call in to his nightly show after Arnie Woo Woo Ginsburg.
I first remember him from 'BZ, after he came back from Chicago in 1969. Those were his national days, when he gave George McGovern the tape of the calls from the Vietnam vet. After he was forced out of 'BZ in 1976, he returned to Boston and WRKO in 1981.
Every afternoon, at 3:07, he'd say, ``Hello New England,'' and you knew it was time to fasten your seat belt, or not, if you so chose.
It's easy to pigeon-hole Jerry by bringing up a few issues and topics - that seat-belt referendum, the aborted prison at New Braintree, the annual end-of-spring-ratings-book sex survey. (On the Internet message boards yesterday, everyone claimed to have been listening the afternoon the woman called in to tell Jerry how much she enjoyed doing it on top of the washing machine.)
Jerry Williams had amazing clout. He put me and Barbara Anderson on with him as ``the governors'' in the spring of 1989, and by November our two-hour Tuesday afternoon slot had driven the Globe completely around the bend. They ran not a story, but a series about us, and the title summed it up: ``Poisoned Politics.''
The next year, 1990, the Republicans swept to two statewide elections for the first time in 16 years, in addition to knocking off eight incumbent Democratic state senators. If anybody ever owed Jerry Williams that dinner he never got, it was Bill Weld, Paul Cellucci and Joe Malone.
Jerry Williams was at the absolute top of his game. And he was 67 years old.
Jerry went to the mat for this newspaper in 1988, when Ted Kennedy was trying to force the man he kept calling ``Rudolph Murdoch'' to sell the Herald and the New York Post. From a car, Kennedy called into the show and immediately went after Jerry's drivel, or, as he put it, ``dribble.''
``I've been listening to that dribble of yours this afternoon.''
``My dribble,'' Jerry said, dead-pan, ``or someone else's?''
``Your dribble,'' Ted Kennedy said.
Thirteen minutes later, Ted Kennedy hung up on him. And Jerry felt he had to assure the audience: ``This is not a comedian doing this.''
If you're above a certain age, you can probably remember at least one time sitting in your car in the driveway, not wanting to turn off the ignition and make a run for the house because you might miss another ``Rudolph Murdoch'' moment before you got inside. That Ted Kennedy interview was my in-the-car moment.
Then Jerry got old, and he was finally getting out of the business, for real, and I was the guy who took his place. What is there to say now except that if it hadn't been me, someone else would have given him the nudge, which is what I'd call it, or the shove, if that's the word you prefer.
Jerry would always grimace when someone called him an ``entertainer,'' because he thought he was being dissed, although I never understood why. If you can't get people to listen to you, or read your stuff, it doesn't really matter what you're saying, does it? And Jerry could always draw a crowd - what better epitaph is that for a radio guy?
Good night, good luck and good night to you, Jerry.
Howie Carr's radio show can be heard every weekday afternoon on WRKO AM 680, WHYN AM 560, WGAN AM 560, WEIM AM 1280, and WXTK 95.1 FM.
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