I've listened to some of his archives. I'm too young to have heard him. His monologues weren't funny, and he'd start playing music and singing. I don't know why people love his show.
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Jean Shepherd
- Thread starter TTalkradio1
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He's primarily a story teller. He's an early Garrison Keillor for the World War 2 crowd. His biggest hit was this perennial holiday classic:
He was on late at night on WOR. Not mainstream humor, with the pacing of early radio drama.
I know he narrated that. I think his audience was baby boomers, not the WWII generation.
He did more than narrate it. It's based on his characters and his story.
Maybe some older boomers heard him. But his stories and music came from the 40s.
He didn't start on WOR until the mid-1950s and broadcast until the 1970s, and baby boomers listened to him. I know about "In God We Trust, the Rest Pay Cash."
Yes I know all of that. As I said, his stories and music came from the 40s.
You said he was for the WWII crowd.
Wasn't that the 40's?
I'd heard the engineers running Jean Shepherd's radio program weren't able to do other tasks while he was talking away and storytelling, because he wanted to feel he was speaking to someone and wasn't happy just chatting into a mic at an unseen audience out in radio land. That in mind, they had to make eye contact with him and more or less be representative of his audience.
I'd also heard some opine that Shepherd perhaps wasn't as well known as he may have been had his broadcast career come earlier or later than it was. He came after the 'golden age of radio', but before the time when talk radio and news/talk became much more popular.
He was also known for stretching the truth, outright fibbing at times, and weaving his stories in such a way that they were a mixture of fact, reality, fantasy and fiction and the audience was unable to tell when he was being truthful or telling a complete fabrication. He even made up facts about his own life, background and biography.
There's a Youtube vid of him on Late Night with David Letterman in the early 80s that's kind of interesting, because rather than a standard late-night TV interview, it turned into Jean storytelling, and Letterman kind of just sat back and let him go on.
I'd also heard some opine that Shepherd perhaps wasn't as well known as he may have been had his broadcast career come earlier or later than it was. He came after the 'golden age of radio', but before the time when talk radio and news/talk became much more popular.
He was also known for stretching the truth, outright fibbing at times, and weaving his stories in such a way that they were a mixture of fact, reality, fantasy and fiction and the audience was unable to tell when he was being truthful or telling a complete fabrication. He even made up facts about his own life, background and biography.
There's a Youtube vid of him on Late Night with David Letterman in the early 80s that's kind of interesting, because rather than a standard late-night TV interview, it turned into Jean storytelling, and Letterman kind of just sat back and let him go on.
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Not the radio show.
Who do you think listened to WOR in the 60s and 70s? Teenagers?
He was known for having teenagers listen to him.
I meant "wasn't WW II in the 40's". In other words, referring to WW II is rather the same as referring to the decade in which the war occurred.
"He was also known for stretching the truth, outright fibbing at times, and weaving his stories in such a way that they were a mixture of fact, reality, fantasy and fiction and the audience was unable to tell when he was being truthful or telling a complete fabrication. He even made up facts about his own life, background and biography."
Yeah I heard he lied about his father's occupation and called some people in his neighborhood hillbillies, when the person was a WWII veteran.
Yeah I heard he lied about his father's occupation and called some people in his neighborhood hillbillies, when the person was a WWII veteran.
I
It was back in the early- mid-Sixties when a bunch of us teens would catch his tales of social tragedy, his observant mishaps of the Signal Corps, and his own childhood, on WOR 710. WOR was our parents' station!
Our age group had been introduced to his droll, cockeyed indulgences by an older group of guys on the block who were college age at the time.
We kids would get a chuckle out of the language he sometimes employed, and learned each show maybe two silly words he'd used. Some of his expressions obviously sat very comfortably with (?) maybe the 12-34 demo. That age group spanned back to the Beatnik days.
Point is : His description of the pre-teen years and the Army and his other misfortunes largely date back before WW II -- to the days of the Great Depression. He was a terrific listen, funny as heck, and spanned generations.
It was back in the early- mid-Sixties when a bunch of us teens would catch his tales of social tragedy, his observant mishaps of the Signal Corps, and his own childhood, on WOR 710. WOR was our parents' station!
Our age group had been introduced to his droll, cockeyed indulgences by an older group of guys on the block who were college age at the time.
We kids would get a chuckle out of the language he sometimes employed, and learned each show maybe two silly words he'd used. Some of his expressions obviously sat very comfortably with (?) maybe the 12-34 demo. That age group spanned back to the Beatnik days.
Point is : His description of the pre-teen years and the Army and his other misfortunes largely date back before WW II -- to the days of the Great Depression. He was a terrific listen, funny as heck, and spanned generations.
I didn't think he was funny and his singing annoyed me.
He was for a time in the mid-60s also on late at night on WNAC-AM in Boston (now WRKO). I think NAC and OR were both RKO stations. I was a young teen and listened when I could. When NAC became RKO and went Top 40 I could sometimes pick him up on OR. It wasn’t exactly comedy; it was long form storytelling with some humorous elements. Very different from anything I’ve heard on radio, before or since.
Jean Shepherd was a genius. Read about “I, Libertine.” Your honor, I rest my case. Excelsior!
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