WAKR (1590 AM) in
Akron
Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 Census, the city pro ...
,
Ohio
Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...
in November 1956 as their overnight host. The following July, he was promoted to host ''Request Review'', an evening music program famously helmed by
Alan Freed
Albert James "Alan" Freed (December 15, 1921 – January 20, 1965) was an American disc jockey. He also produced and promoted large traveling concerts with various acts, helping to spread the importance of rock and roll music throughout N ...
a decade earlier. In addition to ''Request Review'', Muni
presented nightly weather forecasts on WAKR's television adjunct
WAKR-TV (channel 49), hosted ''The Hop''—a local music and dance program—on WAKR-TV, was WAKR's music director, and emceed teenage
sock hop
A sock hop or sox hop, often also called a record hop or just a hop, was an informal sponsored dance event for teenagers in mid-20th-century North America, featuring popular music.
History
Sock hops were held as early as 1944 by the American J ...
s throughout the city. Prior to leaving the station, the Akron
Junior Chamber of Commerce
The United States Junior Chamber, also known as the Jaycees, JCs or JCI USA, is a leadership training, service organization and civic organization for people between the ages of 18 and 40. It is a branch of Junior Chamber International (JCI). ...
honored Muni for one sock hop that also fundraised for a local
children's home Residential child care communities or children's homes are a type of residential care, which refers to long-term care given to children who cannot stay in their birth family home. There are two different approaches towards residential care: The fami ...
.
Along with his work at WSMB and WAKR, Muni also worked for a time in
Kankakee,
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Roc ...
.
Career
Muni then spent almost 50 years at stations in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...
. He left WAKR in May 1958 to join
WMCA (570 AM), one of the first
Top 40
In the music industry, the Top 40 is the current, 40 most-popular songs in a particular genre. It is the best-selling or most frequently broadcast popular music. Record charts have traditionally consisted of a total of 40 songs. "Top 40" or "conte ...
stations in the market. While at WMCA, Muni was briefly the subject of unwanted attention in both New York and Akron when a
congressional investigation
A United States congressional hearing is the principal formal method by which United States congressional committees collect and analyze information in the early stages of legislative policymaking. Whether confirmation hearings (a procedure unique ...
into the practice of
payola
Payola, in the music industry, is the illegal practice of paying a commercial radio station to play a song without the station disclosing the payment. Under US law, a radio station must disclose songs they were paid to play on the air as spons ...
called him in for questioning. He moved to
WABC (770 AM) in late 1960 as that station fully converted into a Top 40 format of its own; Muni was billed as part of the "Swingin' Seven at 77" airstaff that also included fellow former WAKR colleague Charlie Greer. There he did an early evening show called "Scotland's Yard" and was among the first WABC DJs to capture the attention of the teenage audience for which the station would become famous. He also participated in the competition to cover
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the most influential band of all time and were integral to the developm ...
on their first visits to the United States, and thus began a long association with them.
In 1965, Muni left WABC and ran the Rolling Stone Night Club while doing occasional fill-in work for WMCA. Muni had explored some opportunities beyond radio: for a short time he co-hosted a local weekly television show on
WABC-TV (channel 7) with
Bruce "Cousin Brucie" Morrow, and he would go on to record the spoken
single "Letter to an Unborn Child", about a soldier with a premonition, which was released in 1967 to little acclaim.
Muni decided to return to radio, and in 1966, he joined
WOR-FM (98.7), one of the earliest stations in the country to program free-form
progressive rock
Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog; sometimes conflated with art rock) is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. Init ...
music. The progressive format did not last at that station. In 1967 Muni moved to
WNEW-FM (102.7), which had been running a format of pop hits and show tunes, hosted by an all-woman staff. This time, the Progressive Rock format really took hold, with WNEW-FM becoming a legendary rock station. Muni stayed there for three decades as the afternoon DJ and sometimes
program director. Muni was described by fellow WNEW-FM DJ
Dennis Elsas as "the heart and soul of the place".
[ Under assorted management changes during the 1990s WNEW-FM changed formats, and in 1998 Muni ended up hosting a one-hour noontime ]classic rock
Classic rock is a US radio format which developed from the album-oriented rock (AOR) format in the early 1980s. In the United States, the classic rock format comprises rock music ranging generally from the mid-1960s through the mid 1990s, prim ...
program at WAXQ (104.3 FM), where he worked until suffering a stroke in early 2004.
Muni was known to his listeners by the nicknames "Scottso" or "The Professor",[ While he sometimes spoke in roundabout phrases and succumbed to progressive rock radio clichés such as "That was a tasty cut from ...", he also conveyed on the air and in his professional relationships a gruff immediacy that was a by-product of both his time in the Marines and his earlier Top 40 skills. His low, gravelly voice was instantly recognizable and often lampooned, both by other disc jockeys and by ]impressionists
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passa ...
such as on ''Imus in the Morning
''Imus in the Morning'' was a long-running radio show hosted by Don Imus. The show originated on June 2, 1968, on various stations in the Western United States and Cleveland, Ohio before settling on WNBC radio in New York City in 1971. In Octob ...
''.
A bizarre exchange occurred on October 6, 1975, when a hostage
A hostage is a person seized by an abductor in order to compel another party, one which places a high value on the liberty, well-being and safety of the person seized, such as a relative, employer, law enforcement or government to act, or ref ...
-holding bank robber
Bank robbery is the criminal act of stealing from a bank, specifically while bank employees and customers are subjected to force, violence, or a threat of violence. This refers to robbery of a bank branch or teller, as opposed to other bank-ow ...
in lower Manhattan called Muni on the air and engaged him in a conversation about the robber's often nonsensical demands.Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock music, rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California. The band is known for its eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, Folk music, folk, country music, country, jazz, bluegrass music, bluegrass, ...
,[ and the two peppered their post-]hippie
A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...
speech with discussions of Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
music and the like. Muni helped to keep the robber calm,[ and hours later the situation was resolved, and the robber captured, without any casualties.]Dog Day Afternoon
''Dog Day Afternoon'' is a 1975 American biographical crime drama film directed by Sidney Lumet and produced by Martin Bregman and Martin Elfand. The film stars Al Pacino, John Cazale, James Broderick, and Charles Durning. The screenplay is w ...
'',[ but the film was based on a different, 1972 incident, and had already been out in theaters for a couple of weeks by the time of the Muni episode.)
Muni specialized in playing records from up-and-coming, or sometimes just-plain-obscure, acts from the ]United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
on his weekly Friday "Things from England" segment.[ He also hosted the ]syndicated
Syndication may refer to:
* Broadcast syndication, where individual stations buy programs outside the network system
* Print syndication, where individual newspapers or magazines license news articles, columns, or comic strips
* Web syndication, ...
radio programs ''Ticket to Ride'' and ''Scott Muni's World of Rock''.[
Muni often referred to "we interviewed so and so," making reference to himself and either "Black" Earl Douglas or another producer. Indeed, Muni was friendly with many of the musicians whom he played, and they would often stop by the studio to visit on-air. He played ]poker
Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...
in the studio with the Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock music, rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California. The band is known for its eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, Folk music, folk, country music, country, jazz, bluegrass music, bluegrass, ...
,[ and he would let ]Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Emerson, Lake & Palmer (informally known as ELP) were an English progressive rock supergroup formed in London in 1970. The band consisted of Keith Emerson (keyboards), Greg Lake (vocals, bass, guitar, producer) and Carl Palmer (drums, percu ...
browse the station's huge record library and put on whatever they liked. An oft-related story tells that he was interviewing Jimmy Page
James Patrick Page (born 9 January 1944) is an English musician who achieved international success as the guitarist and founder of the Rock music, rock band Led Zeppelin. Page is prolific in creating guitar riffs. His style involves various ...
when the guitarist suddenly passed out from the aftereffects of the Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin were an English rock band formed in London in 1968. The group comprised vocalist Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham. With a heavy, guitar-driven sound, they are c ...
lifestyle. Muni calmly put on a record, revived Page, and completed the interview on the studio floor.John Lennon
John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of ...
and his family. After Lennon's murder he vowed to always open his show with a Lennon or Beatles record, a pledge that he kept for the balance of his career, often playing a "Beatles block".[
In addition to radio broadcasting, Muni also did ]voice-over
Voice-over (also known as off-camera or off-stage commentary) is a production technique where a voice—that is not part of the narrative (non-diegetic)—is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, theatre, or other presentations. ...
work for radio and television; the most known were a commercial for Rolaids antacid ("How do you spell relief?") and promos for ''Monday Night Football
''ESPN Monday Night Football'' (abbreviated as ''MNF'' and also known as ''ESPN Monday Night Football on ABC'' for simulcasts) is an American live television broadcast of weekly National Football League (NFL) games currently airing on ESPN, A ...
''.[ He also voiced episodes of NBC's '']Friday Night Videos
''Friday Night Videos'' (later becoming ''Friday Night'' and then ''Late Friday'') is an American music video show that was broadcast on NBC from July 29, 1983 to May 24, 2002. It was the network's attempt to capitalize on the emerging populari ...
'' during 1985–86 and promos for ABC Sports
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Televisio ...
which included boxing events on Wide World of Sports, the USFL on ABC, the Pro Bowlers Tour, the Sugar Bowl, the 1994 Stanley Cup Playoffs & Auto Racing including the Indy 500
The Indianapolis 500, formally known as the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race, and commonly called the Indy 500, is an annual automobile race held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) in Speedway, Indiana, United States, an enclave suburb of Indian ...
. His voice is also heard giving the introduction on the 1971 live albums '' Chicago at Carnegie Hall'' and '' Melanie at Carnegie Hall''.
Personal life
Muni had five children:[ three with his first wife and two with his second wife, to whom he was married from 1966 until his death in 2004.][
]
Death and legacy
He died on September 28, 2004, at the age of 74 in New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...
and is buried in St. Gertrude's Roman Catholic Cemetery in Colonia, New Jersey
Colonia is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) located within Woodbridge Township, in Middlesex County, New Jersey, United States.[Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF), sometimes simply referred to as the Rock Hall, is a museum and hall of fame located in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States, on the shore of Lake Erie. The museum documents the history of rock music an ...]
.[ The DJs at Q104.3 keep Muni's promise to New York listeners and still start their noon hour with the "12 o'clock Beatles Block".
Muni was inducted into the Rock Radio Hall of Fame in the "Legends of Rock Radio-Programming" category for his work at WNEW in 2014. He was inducted into the ]National Radio Hall of Fame
The Radio Hall of Fame, formerly the National Radio Hall of Fame, is an American organization created by the Emerson Radio Corporation in 1988.
Three years later, Bruce DuMont, founder, president, and CEO of the Museum of Broadcast Communicatio ...
in 2015.
See also
References
External links
WMCA site profile
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Muni, Scott
1930 births
2004 deaths
American radio DJs
Radio personalities from New York City
People from Wichita, Kansas
20th-century American musicians
United States Marines
United States Marine Corps personnel of the Korean War