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Guy King ushers in bad boy Rock ‘n’ Roll

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting

It was the moment that ushered in Buffalo’s rock ‘n’ roll era; the craziest radio prank to date in Buffalo and Tom Clay– who was one of many men who used the air name “Guy King” on WWOL Radio– kicked it off in style… and with a visit from the cops.

July 3, 1955 saw a broadcast event that wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow 65 years later, but caused fire trucks to be dispatched and a disc jockey arrested in the heart of Downtown Buffalo.

Leading into the Independence Day holiday, “wearing Bermuda shorts and waving a microphone,” wrote Buffalo News radio critic Anthony Violanti years later, Guy King “climbed out the window of WWOL and sat atop a billboard, 75 feet above Shelton Square in downtown Buffalo,” yelling to the cars below to blow their horns while he played Bill Haley & The Comets’ “Rock Around The Clock” over and over.

Tom Clay was arrested after spending time perched atop the WWOL billboard in Shelton Square. Traffic was snarled for hours in what was then considered “Buffalo’s Times Square” because of the lights and action. Today, the area little more than MetroRail tracks in front of the Main Place Mall.

Buffalo Police and Buffalo Fire didn’t appreciate the prank, and Clay spent part of the night in the clink, but not before Clay turned the mic on and broadcast a scuffle with police—who had earlier promised he wouldn’t be arrested if he climbed down.

Despite having done a similar event a few months earlier to raise money for polio research with the blessing of police, this time Clay was charged with two penal code violations: disorderly conduct and creating a disturbance. He was released into the custody of WWOL owner Leon Wyszatycki, but when Clay left the station in the days following his arrest, he was re-arrested and couldn’t post the $500 bond. He spent two more nights in jail.

From The Buffalo Evening News

“I didn’t intend to disturb the peace, I sincerely believed I was doing something to entertain my listeners,” Clay told the judge as he pleaded guilty and was fined $25.

“I am not going to punish you very much but this should serve as a warning to others,” said Judge Casimer T. Partyka in handing down the sentence.

It should be noted that 16 years earlier on WGR, an upstart disc jockey named Clinton Buehlman would hang out of the window of the Rand Building, and encourage motorists to drive by and honk.

At the time, the Courier-Express reported lightheartedly on Buehlman’s exploits.

“Clinton Buehlman is not bothered by fear of high places; he recently perched on the ledge of the eighteenth floor parapet of the Rand Building while his picture was being taken.”

Meanwhile, The Buffalo Evening News summed up Clay’s time at WWOL as having “created near riots with car parades, worked his audience into a frenzy by playing the same R & R number for long periods of time and… def(ying) police.”

Tom Clay in 1959, as he was fired from a Detroit radio station after admitting to accepting payola. Trouble followed him, as he was also run out of town after asking listeners to send a dollar to join a Beatles Fan Club. 80,000 kids sent a buck—most got nothing back.

Clay is best remembered, however, for his 1971 song “What the World Needs Now Is Love”/”Abraham, Martin and John,” featuring a blend of the two songs interspersed with audio actualities featuring John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Once Clay left the station, immediately there was a new “Guy King” on WWOL. The name was the “house name” for the afternoon drive host on the station, and several men used the name on the air.

WWOL, 1956 ad, featuring Fred Klestine, Vic Bell—who’d later broadcast at WKBW as Jack Kelly, and Frank Ward as Guy King.

Guy King #3, Frank Ward, was the man who replaced Clay. He was also known to climb out on billboards— but by the time he was doing it in 1957, law enforcement didn’t seem to mind.

Ward and and his fellow WWOL deejay Fred Klestine would climb on top of the Aero Drive-In movie screen during appearances at the Union Road, Cheektowaga location.

Before he was known as Guy King, Frank Ward was popular on WKBW.

The Rico Family

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting

Willis Conover might have been the world’s favorite jazz disc jockey, but in 1950’s Buffalo, Joe Rico was tops.

He started spinning what Buffalo Evening News radio reporter Ray Finch called “smoking hot discs” in 1947 on WWOL Radio, before moving to WEBR in the mid-50s, WUFO, and then WADV-FM through the 70s.

A steady, smooth deep-throated delivery and a knowledge of and love for jazz made Rico “the epitome of cool,” according to critic Gary Deeb.

Rico’s influence mattered to the musicians of the jazz world. Stan Kenton’s “Jump for Joe” was named with Rico in mind, as was Count Basie’s “Port o’ Rico.”

As much as he was known for bringing jazz to Buffalo’s radio dials, he was just as involved in bringing the top musicians in the country to perform in Buffalo.

As a promoter, Joe Rico’s greatest triumph was the Buffalo Jazz Festival—a nearly impossible to imagine lineup over two days at Offermann Stadium in 1960.

Joe Rico was raised in radio. His parents were the heart and the voice of Buffalo’s Italian-American community. For 50 years, Emelino Rico — known to listeners of “Neapolitan Serenade” as “Papa Rico” and the head of “Casa Rico” — broadcast Italian music, in Italian, for Italians, from his home on Seventh Street on Buffalo’s Italian West Side.

For most of five decades, come 10:30am, the Liberty Bell March would open another program of cultural pride, personal warmth and a taste of the old country. While he was heard on many stations through the years, often two or three stations at the same time, for 45 years the Ricos were heard on WHLD 1270AM.

Emelino came to America as a movie producer in 1922. Ten years later, on a stop in Buffalo, he met Mary Pinieri, who was destined to become the West Side’s beloved Mama Rico.

Mama Rico told listeners to their 50th anniversary celebration on WHLD in 1985 that their lives were spent highlighting the best in Italian music and culture, “helping others, and doing charitable work.”

The Ricos worked to bring some of Italy to Buffalo, and some of Buffalo to Italy, with many trips and exchanges. Papa liked to tell the story of a 1967 audience with Pope Paul VI, when His Holiness greeted him immediately by saying, “You run the Italian program in Buffalo.”

Many of Buffalo’s most famous Italian-Americans said the time spent at Casa Rico helped jump start their career — folks like Tony Award-winning choreographer Michael Bennett and pianist Leonard Pennario.

This page is an excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting by Steve Cichon

The full text of the book is now online.

The original 436-page book is available along with Steve’s other books online at The Buffalo Stories Bookstore and from fine booksellers around Western New York.

Torn-down Tuesday: Shelton Square in 1964

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Until the lifeless and drab Main Place Mall and Tower replaced its character-filled old buildings, billboards and neon signs, Shelton Square was more or less Buffalo’s version of Times Square.

Buffalo News archives

It was the city’s crossroads; it was bright and vibrant. It was the place where people transferred streetcars and buses — just about every line in the city came through. Standing in Shelton Square, you were a few blocks from the Crystal Beach Boat in one direction, a few blocks from the Town Casino the other way. It was the middle of the action that was Buffalo.

If you remember it, it was a special place.

It was filled with character and characters. There was Domenic Battaglia, who ran the newsstand shown at Niagara and Main starting in 1929 “with his oversized cap, news apron and halfchewed cigar.” His News obituary called him “a goodnatured curmudgeon who was out daily in all kinds of weather to sell newspapers and magazines. He never wore gloves even on the coldest days and often heckled his customers who did.”

Battaglia’s newsstand is in front of the Harvey & Carey Drug store at Main and Niagara.

He moved to Main and Church when the entire Niagara Street was eliminated from the map, now underneath the Main Place Tower.

In the very foreground of the photo is the top of the Palace Burlesk sign. George Kunz, whose beautifully crafted memories of days gone by used to appear in The News, wrote “the Palace exuded life. Pedestrians passing during showtime heard raucous, robust sounds of extravagant fun. The orchestra blared, drums rumbled and laughter, a rollicking outrageous laughter, tumbled out the doors onto Main Street.”

“Such was the theater’s fame that for years the Palace was used as a focus for any downtown geographical instructions,” wrote Kunz in 1993. “’You know where the Palace is . . . well, you turn right there.’ Everybody remembered the lively marquee with the dancing girl figures kicking endlessly to the rhythm of blinking lights.”

Right next door to the Palace, disc jockey Tom Clay — known as “Guy King” on WWOL Radio – ushered in the rock ‘n’ roll era in Buffalo on July 3, 1955, when he climbed out of the station’s window and onto the giant WWOL billboard.

There, he urged the teens in his audience to drive to Shelton Square and honk their horns if they wanted to hear Bill Haley and The Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock.” They did in huge numbers, and he kept playing “Rock Around the Clock” until the fire department showed up with a ladder truck to help police get him off the billboard. After climbing back in the station window, he was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for the stunt.

On the pages of The News, Janice Okun wrote about Hughes Restaurant, “the dingy old coffee shop on Shelton Square where you sat on high stools at even higher marble tables and injected fat into yourself in the form of Snappy Cheese Sandwiches, while drinking coffee from a clunky mug carefully. Because if you dropped the mug, it would break a toe.”

Minnie Feiner’s had high tables, too. And there was Minnie Messina’s cafeteria through the ’50s and ’60s.

In 1965, most of the buildings in this photo started to come down. In December, it was announced the new $20 million complex being built in its place was given a name “big enough for such a big project — Main Place.”

This block of Niagara Street, between Main and Pearl, is now covered by the Main Place Tower. City Hall (upper left) and the McKinley Monument were visible from Main Street at Shelton Square until 1968.

At the time, editorial page writers panned the name, saying it wasn’t distinctive and was “anything but appealing.”

One writer said, “It’s a terrible name. It grates on one’s ears. … It certainly wasn’t given too much thought.”

In hindsight, though, it’s probably better that the name many wanted to keep — Shelton Square — was retired. It makes it easier to give a name to the memories.

A 1980s view of Main Street, with the Main Place Mall and Tower on the right and Woolworth’s and AM&A’s on the left.

Buffalo in the 50’s: WWOL’s Guy King arrested hanging out on a billboard

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

It was the craziest radio prank to date in Buffalo and Tom Clay– who was one of many men who used the air name GUY KING on WWOL Radio– kicked off Buffalo’s Rock’n’roll radio era in style.

Leading into the Independence Day holiday, Clay played Bill Haley & The Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock” over and over again, while hanging outside the studio window out on the WWOL billboard in Shelton Square, urging motorists to get a look at him and beep their horns to say hello.

Shelton Square, late 1940s, showing street cars, the Palace Burlesk, and WWOL Radio. Buffalo Stories archives

Buffalo Police and Buffalo Fire didn’t appreciate the prank, and Clay spent part of the night in the clink.