Saturday night was the 4th and allegedly last Motor City Radio Reunion. The event, staged by Art Vuolo, Murray Gula, and Jo-Jo Shutty-MacGregor was a complete sell-out. The ballroom at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Novi was packed with familiar faces (and voices) from the hallowed studio walls of Detroit radio days gone by.
Over the course of the night, five Detroit broadcasters were honored - Sonny Eliot, Robin Seymour, Specs Howard, Ernie Harwell and myself. WWJ, the first radio station in the country, received an award on this, it’s 90th year on the air.
Now for a few of the intimate details…
I not only was honored to be “honored” if you will, but I served as the Master of Ceremonies for the evening. At our family table, which included my wife Gail, and my daughters Jennifer, Jackie and JoAnne, we ended up with a few extra seats. (Apparently my other three daughters whom I won’t name (Jill, Jessica and Julie) didn’t want to shell out the money.
The recently retired Sonny was in rare form… and his comments at the table were worth the price of admission. Especially when he started heckling the comic, Kevin McPeak. While Kevin was trying to do his act, Sonny repeatedly shouted out comments, and McPeak retorted with some great lines. At one point, Kevin said, “I’ve never been heckled by a ninety year old man with brown hair before.”
In fact, one of my lines from the podium was, “There’s more dye in this room than at a hair-dressers convention.”
Here’s a sampling of some of my comments as Emcee as the evening rolled along…
- We weren’t going to have the reunion this year, but we didn’t realize so many people were still alive.
- The committee wanted the event to be held between 4 and 6pm to get the early bird discount, but the under 50 crowd voted against it. But really… is there anyone here under 50?
- Every attendee tonight gets a special door prize — a plastic case to hold your pills in, labeled Saturday through Sunday.
- I am priviledged to announce that Mayor Dave Bing has announced a controversial plan to tear down most of Detroit and replace it with a giant Mosque.
- I apologize for the late start tonght… but someone set off the botox detector.
- Art Cervi, our own “Bozo the Clown” is here and I’m revealing a little known secret: Due to problems with his Bozo costume, he occasionally had to borrow Bill Bond’s red nose.
- Speaking about Bozo… A new book is out about Larry Harmon, the original Bozo, and the man who franchised over 300 Bozo’s around the country -including ours. The book claims that Bozo had woman after woman coming out of a really small car. So forget the shoes, apparently our Bozo has some really big pants to fill. But Art never fooled around with women… instead of taking a cold shower to simmer down, Art just used to spray water on himself from that little flower he wore on the collar of his Bozo suit.
- Randall Carlisle, “lady killer” former CKLW newsman and current TV anchorman out west has been on so many blind dates he should get a free dog.”
- Russ Gibb is here, the man who started the infamous world-wide rumor that if you played a certain Beatles’ cut backward, you heard the words, “Paul is Dead”. To show you how pathetic things have become these days, if you play a certain CD backwards now, it says, “Danny Bonaduce is Dead”.
- Jimmy Launce formerly of WJR is here… famous for his signature radio game, “Guess What I’m Holding In My Hand?” - an idea he borrowed from Pee Wee Herman.
- Tom Ryan joins us tonight. His wife Joan needed a kidney transplant eight or nine years ago and after testing everyone in her family it turned out that Tom was a perfect match. Joan’s doing great but three years ago Tom had both knees replaced. And that was from kneeling down, begging the doctor not to tell Joan that he was the perfect donor.
- Sonny Eliot has a similar story. A few years back he got a kidney transplant from a bedwetter.”
There were many more lines that I used in my 45 minutes on stage, but I don’t want to bore you, and besides, I need all the material I can get for my book!
Check back later today for photos from the big event!
- Dick