A Man Ahead of His Time

His name was Don.  He worked the overnight shift on WAVV-FM in Tampa back in 1975.  From midnight until 6 a.m. he presided over waves of beautiful music interspersed with the occasional weather forecast, low key live commercials, and innocuous station positioning liners such as: "Waves of beautiful music for Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater, all night all the time on W A V V." It was a snooze but lots of stations were doing it with great success as FM began its move from something owners regarded as a throwaway to the dominate band in the radio business.  The station was owned by a broadcast company headquartered in Atlanta that had enjoyed great success with its chain of Southeastern U.S.  broadcast properties.

I'm having trouble recalling Don's last name and, by the way, Don wasn't his real name, but the story I'm going to relate really did happen.  WDAE was the company's iconic AM station in the Tampa market and I had recently been hired as the morning man on Florida's oldest and (until my arrival) most respected radio station.  I was 27 years old and 'DAE was my first job in a major radio market.  My world was spinning in greased grooves.

The stations, WDAE and WAVV, were located in their own building in downtown Tampa at 101 North Tampa Street.  The sales, traffic and business offices were located on the first floor; the studios on the second, as I recall.  The AM operation was on one side of the upstairs, the FM on the other with an open office area for the disc jockeys between the two.  Every morning I would arrive around 5:15 a.m. to prepare to go on the air right after the 6 o'clock newscast.  Don, a very large and good looking African American, would often leave the FM studio  and drop by my desk to chat for awhile as he got ready to wind up his all night show.  He had lots of time to do this sort of thing as he was only required to speak every fifteen minutes or so.  As he got to know me better he confided in me that he had a charcoal grill going on the fire escape outside his studio and there were always  plenty of steaks and hamburgers if I was hungry.  This seemed a little weird to me but he was a BIG guy and I guessed he just liked to eat.  Another thing that seemed a little unusual was the constant traffic of very well dressed women who were consistently parading up and down the hallway on the WAVV side of the building.  Don claimed they were "good friends" of his who just dropped by to say hello.  Being young and stupid it didn't occur to me until much later that he had to be lowering the fire escape ladder for them to gain access as the front door and offices didn't open until 9.  Don also kept a rather large handgun in the studio with him.  Once he mentioned in passing that he was always armed and had, a few years earlier, done a little stint in Raiford (the state pen) for "opening up a guy in Tallahassee".   Being mostly interested in getting ready for my show and hanging on to my new job in "the bigs", I never gave much thought to all of this.  I liked Don and he seemed to think I was okay too.

One morning when I arrived at the stations Don had been replaced by another jock.  The new guy told me that Don had been arrested early the previous evening for running prostitutes out of WAVV.  Apparently the fire marshall had also been after him for cooking steaks on the fire escape.

To this day I wonder how it all worked out for Don.  Did he stay in radio?  Get into politics?  Politics would have been a natural transition from being a pimp, or from  radio for that matter.  I'd like to think he was just ahead of his time.  In the age of multi-tasking, old Don would be worthy of an "attaboy".

"Are you ready to party big boy?"