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Arnie Woo Woo Ginsburg, Boston legend

I'm surprised it omitted his greatest claim to fame, popularizing the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie". Yeah he did it by naming it in his "Worst of the Week" feature, but hey that's the way it got famous.
Plus, I think it's really cool that in an age when lots of "ethnic" entertainers adopted more "mainstream" stage names, he kept an obviously Jewish surname on the radio. Any other big-time DJs in the early 60s keep a clearly ethnic surname?
 
Kemosabe said:
There was also Donald Allen Muñoz who changed his name to Scott Muni.
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And thus does not remotely belong on the list being generated here of DJs who DIDN'T change their "ethnic" names. I predict further thread drift into obscure small-market jocks who remained Kowalski or Ramirez or Goldberg or Patel on their airshifts.
 
KeithE4 said:
Dick Biondi
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"The Wild Eye-tralian."

CTListener said:
And thus does not remotely belong on the list being generated here of DJs who DIDN'T change their "ethnic" names. I predict further thread drift into obscure small-market jocks who remained Kowalski or Ramirez or Goldberg or Patel on their airshifts.
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You missed the point: Scott Muni kept an ethnic-sounding alteration of his name.
 
Kemosabe said:
You missed the point: Scott Muni kept an ethnic-sounding alteration of his name.
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Did he pronounce it as "MOO-nee" or "MYOO-nee"? (Sorry, never heard him on-air, as I've never lived within FM range of NYC.) If he was going for something Italian-sounding for his New York audience, he didn't try very hard. "Muni" isn't even an authentic Italian surname. "Mooney," though, is Irish, which might have been what his listeners would have thought he was if they never saw the spelling. But an Irish surname hardly qualifies as "ethnic" in American radio.

In any case, he chose to disown his Spanish surname in favor of a vaguely Euro-ethnic one that would go down more easily with an album-rock audience, kind of like anti-immigrant Bob Gigante taking on the "all-American" persona of Bob Grant.
 
CTListener said:
Did he pronounce it as "MOO-nee" or "MYOO-nee"? (Sorry, never heard him on-air, as I've never lived within FM range of NYC.) If he was going for something Italian-sounding for his New York audience, he didn't try very hard. "Muni" isn't even an authentic Italian surname. "Mooney," though, is Irish, which might have been what his listeners would have thought he was if they never saw the spelling. But an Irish surname hardly qualifies as "ethnic" in American radio.
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He pronounced it "MYOO-nee." (Perhaps it was a nickname.)

Irish pseudonyms were (and possibly still are) quite popular in radio. Dick Ulrich, former disc jockey and Bob Grant's announcer at WABC, used the on-air name Johnny Donovan. (It was always amusing to hear him proclaim in travel ads that he, as a Donovan, knew a thing or two about Irish travel.) Another example is Don Bombard, who called himself Bob Shannon. Then there was Steve O'Brien who was, well, a friendly S.O.B. :)

In any case, he chose to disown his Spanish surname in favor of a vaguely Euro-ethnic one that would go down more easily with an album-rock audience, kind of like anti-immigrant Bob Gigante taking on the "all-American" persona of Bob Grant.
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Album rock? Scottso used the Muni name at Top-40 stations WMCA and WABC well before he joined WNEW-FM.
 
I should add that program directors often assigned names to radio personalities. I believe the aforementioned Dick Ulrich was rechristened by a PD in Poughkeepsie. John Records Landecker was told he was Scott Walker at WIBG. Bob Cruz, on the other hand, had called himself Bob Morgan (in Tampa) before Rick Sklar hired him and insisted he use his real name at WABC. I don't know the backstory of Robert Ciro Gigante's becoming Bob Grant, however.
 
Kemosabe said:
I should add that program directors often assigned names to radio personalities.
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True. Woo Woo's old boss at WMEX, Max Richmond, put several jocks on the air as "Dan Donovan." The listeners either didn't catch on or didn't think it was worth complaining about.
 
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