Condolences to the family of the multi-talented Tom Peake who spent 40 year at KOOL radio. Here's a picture from a very cold! Phoenix Open remote broadcast. The snow on the call letters is quite appropriate!
Tom was always in it to win it...he will be missed.
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Tom Peake first arrived at KOOL-FM in 1980 replacing Bill Kelly, at least as an announcer.
I have a rather unusual personal memory of him, though we never physically met each other. This occurred right around New Year's week of either 1986 or 1987. KOOL-FM was doing a top 1,094 countdown the way WABC used to do its year-end countdowns (though I didn't know *that* at the time); namely, they didn't play the songs in numerical order. Anyway, I had called to ask Tom about that and before I could get anything out of my mouth, Tom asked me to sing a few lines from the Electric Prunes' 1967 hit, "I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)." I obliged, though I had to restart my acapella singing because I believed I was on the wrong note. After singing the first two lines of the song's first verse, I asked, "How does that work for you." he politely said fine and then allowed me to ask and then answered my question.
Two songs later (I had my radio on KOOL-FM at the time), the Electric Prunes song came on. And, at the very beginning of the song, Tom played back the recording beginning with him asking me to sing a few bars of the song to where I asked, "Does that work for you." It turned out that my acapella singing was pitch perfect and after my singing, the first two lines of the song were performed by the Electric Prunes, and then I heard Tom give an ecstatic shout of "Yes!" as I had nailed it.
And now he's gone. RIP Tom Peake!
