Radio Days

Michael A. Gonzales remembers radio as a shared part of daily life in 1960s and ’70s Harlem: family members and neighbors heard the same music, rather than choosing private playlists. His mother’s WNEW-AM introduced him to classic pop and the American Songbook, including a melancholy song she sang while bathing him. As a child, he misread its lyrics as a sign that motherhood had made her unhappy. Later, breakfast radio brought Bacharach and David hits and other popular songs; he persuaded her to switch to WABC, where host Harry Harrison played current pop and R&B. The songs became tied to his early crushes, school life, and imaginative ideas about confidence and justice.

Gonzales traces how radio widened his tastes and gave songs personal meaning. He gravitated toward story-driven hits such as “Cat’s in the Cradle,” “Midnight Train to Georgia,” and “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” whose imagined tough-guy hero offered a fantasy of confronting a bully. He recalls admiring the lively, knowledgeable DJs and discovering the Beatles through a friend. In high school, he thought he had outgrown WABC and pop, until a chance turn to FM introduced him to Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” Finding WNEW-FM’s rock programming transformed his listening again. The memories show how broadcast radio, family habits, friendships, and songs associated with specific moments helped shape him into a music omnivore.