Alison Steele

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Alison Steele (January 26, 1937 - September 27, 1995) was a pioneering disc jockey in New York City.

Disc Jockey and sometime Music Director, WNEW-FM, (1966–79); Writer, Producer, Correspondent, Limelight, CNN (1982–85); Disc Jockey, WNEW–AM (1984–86); Disc Jockey, WXRK (1989–95)

Alison Steele achieved her greatest notoriety as a DJ on WNEW-FM, where she spun records on the night shift, after a major shift in station management and policy from an all-female MOR music format to progressive rock. Alison didn't know much about progressive rock when she started at this, and neither, apparently did the management of WNEW. She was basically left to her own devices and in this process, developed her persona, "The Night Bird".

She would start her show reciting poetry over Andean Flute Music, then introduce her show in her well-known sultry, smoky voice:

“The flutter of wings, the shadow across the moon, the sounds of the night, as the Nightbird spreads her wings and soars, above the earth, into another level of comprehension, where we exist only to feel. Come, fly with me, Alison Steele, the Nightbird, at WNEW-FM, until dawn.”

and then transition to recordings of some of the more exceptional and experimental music acts of the time. Some of the groups she would feature at that time would be KISS, Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, Lothar and the Hand People, Tangerine Dream, Edgar Froese, Moody Blues, Ramases, Renaissance, Curved Air, and many other groups of that genre. If it was raining on a Monday night, she would always play the Doors' classic Riders on the Storm as her first song setting the mood for that night's show.

Her show became a hit, and did much to push WNEW-FM into the forefront of progressive radio.

Steele is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and in 1976 became the first woman named Billboard magazine’s "FM Personality of the Year".

She left WNEW and worked at several radio stations until her illness prevented her working. Alison Steele died of stomach cancer in 1995.