For almost 22 years Dan Ingram was the top rated jock on 77WABC in New York. Since the station had such a huge signal he was also a top rated jock in other markets such as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. He later worked on other New York outlets including WCBS-FM.
I first heard Dan in the mid ‘60s. Growing up in Los Angeles I knew of WABC but had never heard them. So I wrote a letter to the station asking for a sample of their programming. They sent a one-hour tape of a recent Dan Ingram show. Within ten minutes my head almost exploded. This guy was so funny, so quick, so fearless (he often goofed on commercials and the music), had such a great voice, precision timing weaving his content into the intro of records, and somehow managed to communicate as if he were talking only to me. I had heard some great disc jockeys. The Real Don Steele, Robert W. Morgan, Larry Lujack, Gary Owens, Don McKinnon, but I’m sorry, Dan Ingram was the best. He said more funny things in one hour (and all off the cuff) than anyone else did in a week. And he continued doing that for almost fifty years. It’s utterly mind-boggling. And if you thought he was funny on the air -- when he turned that mic off that's when the real hilarity took place.
I’ll bet if you grew up on the East Coast you too are crying right now.
More than just a deejay, Dan was a “broadcaster.” During the famous Northeast Blackout of November 1965 Ingram drove to the station’s transmitter in Lodi, New Jersey and stayed on the air for eleven hours via a generator anchoring coverage of the emergency.
We met thanks to mutual friend, Jon Wolfert, and I stayed close to Dan for 40 years. We’d get together for dinner whenever my wife and I were in New York or when he and his wife were in Los Angeles. I had a reading in New York of a screenplay I had written and got Dan to read the stage directions. Forget hearing actors playing the parts, I was blown away that Dan Ingram was actually reading words I had written. That’s like Vladimir Horowitz playing a little ditty you had banged out.
Dan also did thousands of national commercials. I once said to him I hear his voice on spots in LA but no one else knows who he is, and he said, “When I walk out of the building I don’t want people saying ‘Hey, there goes Dan Ingram,’ I want them saying ‘Hey, who is that guy getting into a Rolls?”
Here’s a sample of Dan Ingram on the radio, thanks for friend-of-the-blog, Howard Hoffman.
His favorite moment in broadcasting is when he received a fan letter from a young girl who was about to commit suicide. She was listening to Dan, he said something that made her laugh, and that snapped her out of her deep depression. If she could still find things funny she still had things to live for. She thanked Dan for saving her life.
Dan has shaped many lives, gotten generations through tough times, adolescence, power failures, and personal struggles. To me he was an inspiration. And a mentor. For fifty years Dan has kept me in awe… and in stitches. My love and prayers to his family and millions of fans.
People on the radio are invisible. Their presence is in the air. Dan may have passed but that presence, the sound of his voice, and the joy he brought to our lives will stay with us forever. And will go with us wherever we are. That’s the true magic of radio. And Dan Ingram.
from By Ken Levine
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