JimPastrick
Market #53
rimember
 Offline
Posts: 438
Profession: Broadcaster
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« Reply #28 on: March 24, 2008, 08:22:49 PM » |
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My sincere condolences on the loss of your father, Devon. My apologies for this lengthy post, but I think it speaks for a lot of guys, especially those of us in Buffalo (and on the Buffalo board) who grew up listening to Jack on WKBW and being influenced by his incredible passion for radio.
There’s not a radio guy in America, Devon, who hasn’t in some way been influenced by your father’s professionalism, talent and quick wit. Jack Armstrong was legendary and his legend will live on. Yes, he was a fast talker; but he was an equally fast thinker with great sense of humor and amazing character voices.
Jack Armstrong was an outstanding radio performer who helped make some of America’s (and Canada’s) great radio stations better for having worked at them. He raised the bar for guys who worked with him and if you had the formidable task of competing against him, you had no choice but to get better… or find a job in another market.
Like most kids who grew up with a transistor radio stuck in his ear, I first heard Jack Armstrong when he did nights on the 50 thousand Watt blowtorch, 1100 WKYC Cleveland and was immediately hooked. He was playin’ the hits and smokin’! He defined the meaning of “having fun on the radio.”
Being a radio geek, I’d tell all my friends about this great jock in Cleveland that I’d discovered while scanning the AM dial and how they just had to listen to him because he was unlike any other disc jockey on the radio at the time. Buffalo’s favorite Top 40 stations, WKBW 1520 and WYSL 1400, were #1 and #2 on my radio but there were many nights when I’d tune down the dial to hear Big Jack doing his amazing act on 1100 WKYC.
It was great to hear Jack Armstrong riding the airwaves when he landed 90 miles up the road at Toronto’s 1050 CHUM. And when WKBW Program Director Jeff Kaye hired Jack to take over the 7 to midnight show at “KB,” it was the best of both worlds, as if he'd come home to Buffalo.
Night after night, Jack Armstrong put on a clinic for radio novices and veterans alike. There were those great song intros, never stepping on a vocal; those subtle lines, some of them couched in double entendre. There were the character voices, his sidekick The Gorilla being the most notorious.
Young wannabee d-j’s got a nightly lesson in flawless on-air production and presentation. And then there was that classic sign-off, a litany of advice and down home humor, weaved together in a 100 mile-an-hour delivery, but always clearly understandable and meaningful.
A few years later I met Jack and was awestruck. The man’s graciousness was equally impressive. He was down to earth and just “good people.” I was working at a small radio station at the time and was a candidate for a summer weekend job (which I didn’t get until a year later) at WKBW, but Jack encouraged me and wished me luck.
In our brief meeting, I chronicled his career like a kid who recites the stats of his favorite pro athlete… “I first heard you on WKYC, then you went to… and then… and when you went to CHUM you sounded great… and then you came to KB…” I suspect he’d heard it all before from better jocks than me, but he listened with an "aw shucks" attitude.
Years later, I had the pleasure of talking to him again at the Oldies 104 WHTT reunion. We’d talk a little shop, but he was more interested in talking about family and his father. Knowing he was a Carolina boy, I mentioned that my family and I had enjoyed vacationing on Carolina’s beautiful Outer Banks. He recalled roaming the beaches of the Outer Banks as a kid, long before they became over-built with condominiums, hotels and commercial strip malls. He made me laugh when he offered, “I used to go there when there wasn't anything more than a few piers and fishing shacks. Now it looks more like the other end of the horse!" There was that great sense of humor and wit that was Classic Jack!
Jack Armstrong may have signed off from this frequency, but he lives on in the memories of thousands of listeners and hundreds of radio people on whom he left his mark. He remains the epitome of a “personality jock” who set the bar high and always surpassed it.
And think about this, since FM signals travel through the ionosphere and just keep going, somewhere in another galaxy it's quite likely that intelligent life forms are picking up his show and saying, "Check this guy out, he's great!"
Eternal Peace, Jack!
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