BY ERIC MODEL

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

JOURNEYS INTO NEW JERSEY

Danny Stiles, a fixture on New York radio for 63 years, died a couple of months ago at age 87.

We find ourselves still thinking of him and what he came to represent.

Best known as the self-proclaimed Vicar of Vintage, Danny Stiles was a proud son of New Jersey.

His story is one of a time and place – the time that of 20th Century; the place – the metropolitan area but mostly, New Jersey.

Danny Stiles was born in 1923 and grew up in Newark and Linden during the Great Depression After graduating from high school in 1941, he enlisted for the Navy after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. After being honorably discharged due to an injured hip, Stiles went to college and held several jobs before starting his radio career.

Stiles’ first radio job was at WHBI in Newark on December 2, 1947 buying the air time for sixty-five dollars a week. His career took him to Allentown's WHOL in Pennsylvania and other stations in New Jersey before returning to Newark on WNJR (AM) as the "Kat Man." At WNJR, Danny met a young Brooklyn native who worked as a gofer, Robert Smith, who would later move to the border blaster XERB-AM and broadcast as Wolfman Jack.

“Danny was more than a radio host,” WNYC Program Director Chris Bannon recalled shortly after Stiles death, “He used his voice and musical taste to create a radio landscape that felt fully three dimensional to his many fans. He could simultaneously evoke radio’s golden age and make it still seem very much alive.”

Danny Stiles was the last survivor of a line of radio voices who shepherded the great America standards – names like Martin Bloch, Jim Lowe, William B. Williams -- and programs like the Milkman’s Matinee, and the Make Believe Ballroom.

Unlike some of the bigger radio host names, Danny Stiles often had to hustle to be heard. He is as remembered for his tenacity and entrepreneurial creativity as much as for the music he played. For years he hosted “(Friday Night) Dance Parties” and “Sunday Brunches” in surroundings as diverse as The Red Blazer on the Upper East Side, to hotels near Newark Airport to pizza and pasta joints in Belleville and Time Square. And then, who can forget his five-minute ads for the Pantagis Renaissance – Snuffy’s along Route 22 -- or Three Guys from Italy?

Stiles hosted weekend big band programs on WNYC for close to 30 years, and he is well remembered by listeners from there and his other stops along the New York radio dial – at one time he could be heard on at least 5 stations at all times of day.

He was also known by variety of nicknames, among the Archangel of Archives, Ballaboos of Beautiful Ballads, Didactic Doctor of Dreamy Discology, Dean of Déjà vu, Great Guru of Golden Gramophones, Passionate Pasha of Peripatetic Platters, and Styles on Your Dials.

And, he is well recalled by listeners all those many years.

For example, there is Peter G. Balazsy of North Haledon. Upon Stiles’ passing he wrote on a WNYC online bulletin board, “Danny was a friend and a great man. I started listening to him back when I was only 13-years-old in 1955 when he was a DJ at WCTC in New Brunswick … I remember my first early hints at Rock ’n’ Roll music after school as Danny played The Penguins “Earth Angel” and many more … I went to the New Brunswick HS auditorium one memorable snowy night for the Rock Concert that Danny organized with Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.”

Over time Danny Stiles became known for playing America Popular music standards from its golden age – pre the Roll ’n’ Roll described above. The likes of the Boswell Sisters, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Russ Columbo, Frank Sinatra, Sophie Tucker, Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor and Irving Berlin.

And towards the end, he was just about the only one playing this type of music on the radio.

A sound of the night, Stiles – even in his late years – was still hoping to be able to play his music to a larger audience, when more were awake and listening.

“What bugs me the most about only being on in the overnight hours,” he once said for a newspaper profile, “is that I can’t expose this music to the kids. They’re the audience of the future, but they won’t know about it if they never hear it. This music needs to be on an FM station in the afternoon.”

“It’s a shame,” he lamented. “The audience is there if someone just does it right.”

They’re still playing repeats of Stiles’ old programs on WNYC on Saturday nights (8-10 pm on AM 820). The station describes them as a “Music Museum.”

To me, it’s more a musical time capsule – harkening another place, time and sensibility.

It’s a sound to be found no place else these days. That’s why it and the unique eyewitness perspective of Danny Stiles’ voice continues to be heard, even after the passing of the man.

Danny Stiles did not just play the music, he lived it.

Interestingly, there on Saturday nights along with his music, Danny Stiles lives on where we knew him best – on our radio dial. Just as Danny would have liked it.

For more on Danny Stiles, click here or here.

Eric Model explores the "offbeat, off the beaten path overlooked and forgotten", on Sirius XM-Radio and at journeysinto.com.

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