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Sonny Joe White?

T

tubessoundbetter

just thinking about Sonny Joe White. It made me smile today
tried explaining him to a kid at work today
are there any favorite stories that you know that will help me in my cause
 
Sunny Joe was the only jock I ever heard who could come out of "She's a Bad Mamma Jamma" into "Crazy" from Patsy Cline and make it work! He was incredible at self promotion.... A couple of examples: He Played the DJ in "Eddie and Cruisers II" and he also got a recording contract from Atlantic Records although it never went anywhere (Jackie lucky) it was still quite an accomplishment.

30 years ago Sunny thought the WBCN midday guy would make a good Morning Man on Kiss 108. At the time those 2 stations couldn't have been more different but Sunny's ears told him that a very talented AOR jock named Matt Segal would work on Kiss.

Sunny thought big, he was the only local jock on local station that opened every show with "Good Evening America!" Sunny was a great programmer and a really good guy. He left us way too soon (Sept 96) just prior to internet streaming. What a shame he didn't live long enough to experiment with the Web. There is no telling where his creative mind would have gone with the internet. I can hear him now: "GOOD EVENING WORLD!" Boston radio was more fun with him in it.
 
I used to skip school just to stay home and listen to his show, especially "The Morning Work Out" 11am-11:20am was the bomb!!! They used to play Mixes in the morning at 11am.
Even when I moved to Amherst, Ma 1987 when I was 12 years old, there I used to listen to "95.7 KISS FM" they had the same there as well "The Morning Work Out"
The cloest example (these days) who is simular to Sunny Joe White is (Junior Roddigan) on Big City 101.3 (Bigcityfm.com) weekday afternoons around ?? 3pm-6pm. Despite his accent, Most recently, I told Junior one time, "You know who you remind me of from back in the day" He answered "Sunny Joe White?"
I was like "How did you know I was going to say that?"
He responded "I get that a lot, many people tell me that"
See for yourself (Despite his accent) You'll see
 
There were just so many songs that he picked to play on Kiss that he knew would sound great despite not charting high nationally or not played on straight ahead top 40 stations (I mean that Kiss always seemed to play dance/R&B songs that weren't Billboard pop hits). My record collection (remember records?) looked like the Kiss 108 playlist. I remember "Kiss Classics" like "Mama Used To Say" by Junior and "Just An Illusion" by Imagination to name two. I remember toward the end of his time with us, being on WVBF 105.7 in the early 90s and being high on "Would I Lie To You" by Charles & Eddie. I hear Magic 106.7 play that song almost everyday in their rotation and say "Sunny was right again."
 
As an Black man originally from Chicago and moving to Boston from Oberlin College near Cleveland in 1988, I was used to listening to great radio. For a few months I'm flipping up and down the dial, but nothing grabbed me… until…

I hear this DJ talking up a song. He had this strange, nasally, slightly strained voice… definitely did NOT have pipes. Now as radio DJs, we are all taught to hit the post… do not talk over the vocals under any circumstance! Well, this DJ not only stomped all over the post, he told the engineer "I'm not finished talking yet, start the record over," and kept talking! That was my introduction to Sunny Joe White.

The magic of Sunny was his ability to make you want to listen to him talk about anything. He always sounded like he was having a blast in the studio. And he was a great story teller… even when he was reading a liner, he made it sound personal.

The funny thing is I didn't think Sunny was that special as a PD until much later. I was extremely lucky to have grown up listening to stations programmed by Lee Michaels, Lynn Tolliver and Frankie Crocker, so I thought it was nothing to hear Steely Dan, The Tom Tom Club or Boz Scaggs on a Urban or Dance-formatted station. But once I figured out that nobody pushed the envelope like these PDs, that's when I was even more impressed by Sunny.
 
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