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Does Anybody remember WPAW in the 50s?
- Thread starter bcushman
- Start date
That likely would have been when the studio was in the building with the coal yard but might have been after the new one was built down in the hole off John Street. Which was it?
You've described Jack Manzi who later worked under other names but I think that was earlier than when he started in radio.
You've described Jack Manzi who later worked under other names but I think that was earlier than when he started in radio.
I can't remember the address but the studio was located in the "basement" of the building. I first met Jack when he was the manager of a drive in in Kingston, Mass, where I was working. I started answering all his mail (snail in those days of course) and he knew of my interest in radio so took me under his wing. After I finished high school I lost touch with him but heard that he had died of a heart attack. I will always remember the time he had been looking for a certain record with the song "Poor Butterfly" for a theme song and finally found it on a 78 in a record store in Plymouth. He put it in the back seat of the car and when he went to get it the sun had melted it! It was not a pretty sight, either for the record or Jack!
Ah, that would have been an entirely different "Jack".
My earliest memory of WPAW had the studio at People's Coal in Valley Falls. When Nick was granted the full kw days and 500W directional nights he had RCA do a turnkey on the John Street site but continued to run it from the old studio as he had a bad experience with a hired manager and wanted the whole thing where he could see it all the time. It wasn't too long before operations moved to the new building (which is still there, though a transmitter shelter only). In the earlier days the transmitter was somewhere along a different river with a tower that got bent by a boat during a hurricane flood. I think the studio was, at that time, in the lower part of a building Nick owned in downtown Pawtucket (perhaps below People's Camera Shop. I believe one of the two RCA transmitters he bought at the time of the move may still be maintained as a backup.
My earliest memory of WPAW had the studio at People's Coal in Valley Falls. When Nick was granted the full kw days and 500W directional nights he had RCA do a turnkey on the John Street site but continued to run it from the old studio as he had a bad experience with a hired manager and wanted the whole thing where he could see it all the time. It wasn't too long before operations moved to the new building (which is still there, though a transmitter shelter only). In the earlier days the transmitter was somewhere along a different river with a tower that got bent by a boat during a hurricane flood. I think the studio was, at that time, in the lower part of a building Nick owned in downtown Pawtucket (perhaps below People's Camera Shop. I believe one of the two RCA transmitters he bought at the time of the move may still be maintained as a backup.
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