By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
I’m 30 years old– born 20 years after Perry Allen rocked the house down at KB.
I was about 8 years old when I first heard the famous Perry Allen aircheck from a 1959 WKBW promotional piece. Having grown up listening to radio in the 80s… I was just bowled over with how amazing and fresh and quick radio could really sound when someone talented and imaginative like Perry was left unshackled to work his magic in radio’s “theatre of the mind.”
Radio was always interesting to me, but what I heard Perry Allen do on the aircheck linked below was what I wanted to do– Make it fresh and alive and fast moving. Perry passed away after a hospital stay in California. He was 75.
This aircheck collection contains not only Perry, but all the classic KB “Pulsebeat News” and “Mr. Weatherman” jingles, along with a classic Irv Weinstein newscast. Irv is also the narrator.
This late 1959 WKBW Composite also includes the voices of Russ “The Moose” Syracuse, Johnny Barrett, Art Roberts, Dick Biondi :
I never knew Perry Allen, but his work certainly had a big impact on me. Aside from his time on KB in the late 50’s, he also came back to Buffalo to work at WEBR in the mid 70’s.