Scott Muni

Scott Muni (May 10, 1930 – September 28, 2004, aged 74) was an American disc jockey, who worked at the heyday of the AM Top 40 format and then was a pioneer of FM progressive rock radio. Rolling Stone magazine termed him "legendary".^[1]

Personal

Born Donald Allen Muñoz in Wichita, Kansas, Muni grew up in New Orleans. He joined the United States Marine Corps and began broadcasting there in 1950, reading "Dear John" letters over Radio Guam. After leaving the Corps and having considered acting as a career, he began working as a disc jockey; in 1953 he began working at WSMB in New Orleans. His mentor was Marshall Pearce. In 1955 he began broadcasting at station WAKR in Akron, Ohio, and after that worked in Kankakee, Illinois.

Career

Muni then spent almost 50 years at stations in New York City. He became a Top 40 broadcaster at 570 WMCA in the late 1950s, just before the start of their "Good Guys" era, and did a number of record hops in the New York area. In 1960, he moved to rival Top 40 station 770 WABC. There he did an early evening show called "Scotland's Yard" and was among the first WABC DJs to capture the attention of the teenage audience for which the station would become famous. He also participated in the competition to cover The Beatles on their first visits to the United States, and thus began a long association with them.

In 1965, Muni left WABC and ran the Rolling Stone Night Club while doing occasional fill-in work for WMCA. Muni had explored some opportunities beyond radio: for a short time he co-hosted a local weekly television show on WABC-TV 7 with Bruce "Cousin Brucie" Morrow, and he would go on to record the spoken single "Letter to an Unborn Child", about a soldier with a premonition, which was released in 1967 to little acclaim.

Muni decided to return to radio, and in 1966, he joined 98.7 WOR-FM, one of the earliest stations in the country to program free-form Progressive Rock music. The progressive format did not last at that station. In 1967 Muni moved to 102.7 WNEW-FM, which had been running a format of pop hits and show tunes, hosted by an all-woman staff. This time, the Progressive Rock format really took hold, with WNEW-FM becoming a legendary rock station. Muni stayed there for three decades as the afternoon DJ and sometimes program director. Muni was described by fellow WNEW-FM DJ Dennis Elsas as "the heart and soul of the place". Under assorted management changes during the 1990s WNEW-FM lost its way, and in 1998 Muni ended up hosting a one-hour noontime classic rock program at WAXQ "Q104.3", where he worked until suffering a stroke in early 2004.

Muni's low, gravelly voice was instantly recognizable and often lampooned, both by other disc jockeys and by impressionists such as on Imus in the Morning. He was often known to his listeners by the nicknames "Scottso" or "The Professor", the latter to emphasize both his rock expertise and his age difference with most of his audience. While he sometimes spoke in roundabout phrases and succumbed to progressive rock radio clichés such as "That was a tasty cut from ...", he also conveyed on the air and in his professional relationships a gruff immediacy that was a by-product of both his time in the Marines and his earlier Top 40 skills.

A bizarre exchange occurred in August 1972 when a hostage-holding bank robber called Muni on the air and engaged him in a long, often nonsensical conversation; the two peppered their post-hippie speech with discussions of Bob Dylan music and requests to hear the Grateful Dead.

Muni specialized in playing records from up-and-coming, or sometimes just-plain-obscure, acts from the United Kingdom on his weekly Friday "Things from England" segment. He also hosted the syndicated radio programs Ticket to Ride and Scott Muni's World of Rock.

Muni often referred to "we interviewed so and so," making reference to himself and either "Black" Earl Douglas or another producer. Indeed, Muni was friendly with many of the musicians whom he played, and they would often stop by the studio to visit on-air. He played poker in the studio with the Grateful Dead, and he would let Emerson, Lake & Palmer browse the station's huge record library and put on whatever they liked. An oft-related story tells that he was interviewing Jimmy Page when the guitarist suddenly passed out from the aftereffects of the Led Zeppelin lifestyle. Muni calmly put on a record, revived Page, and completed the interview on the studio floor.

Muni was close to John Lennon and his family, and after Lennon's murder he vowed to always open his show with a Lennon or Beatles record, a pledge that he kept for the balance of his career.

In addition to radio broadcasting, Muni also did voice-over work for radio and television; the most known were a commercial for Rolaids antacid ("How do you spell relief?") and promos for Monday Night Football. His voice is also heard giving the introduction on the 1971 live albums Chicago at Carnegie Hall and Melanie at Carnegie Hall.

Muni also voiced many Radio & TV commercials such as Rolaids, JCPenney, Ricoh, etc. He also voiced episodes of NBC's Friday Night Videos during 1985-86 and also voiced promos for ABC Sports which included boxing events on Wide World of Sports as well as Monday Night Football, the USFL on ABC, the Pro Bowlers Tour, the Sugar Bowl, the 1994 Stanley Cup Playoffs & Auto Racing including the Indy 500.

Personal life

Muni had three children with his first wife and two with his second wife, to whom he was married from 1966 until his death in 2004.

Death and legacy

He died on September 28, 2004 at the age of 74 in New York City and is buried in St. Gertrude's Roman Catholic Cemetery in Colonia, New Jersey. Muni is included in an exhibit display of important disc jockeys at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The DJs at Q104.3 keep Muni's promise to New York listeners and still start their noon hour with the "12 o'clock Beatles Block".

References

↑ "Legendary DJ Muni Dies", Rolling Stone magazine, September 29, 2004. Accessed February 22, 2007.