Bill Bailey made it to “the bigs” while he was young – Chicago’s “Big 89” WLS (he was the second Bill Bailey there), Detroit’s WDRQ, and two stations in Washington D.C. (WKYS and then-Xtra 104 WXTR). Later in his career, he worked in Grand Rapids as the PD/afternoon jock at WLHT before his most recent gig doing wakeups on Grand Valley State University’s oldies WGVS/WGVU (850/1480). WZZM television reports that Bill “died of an apparent heart attack on the 17th tee at the Meadows golf court in Allendale” – and yes, he was participating in a station-sponsored golf event. Chicago native Bill Bailey won a Marconi in 1998. How did he break into the business? Trying out radio at what was then called Armed Forces Radio (now American Forces Network), during the Vietnam War.
John Landecker worked with Bill Bailey in his early days at WLS. They are standing side by side in the back row of this staff photo below...
In "Records Truly Is My Middle Name", John also tells a story about how Bill Bailey helped him out during those early days...
TRANSITIONING TO CHICAGO
As much as I was loving this radio station, there was one thing that bothered me right away. Mike McCormack wouldn’t let me use my middle name again.
I had been John Records Landecker in Philadelphia — that was the guy that they hired — but when I came to Chicago they lopped the Records off my name. (I eventually was allowed to use it again when a new program director came aboard.)
Even though I couldn’t bring my whole name to Chicago, I did bring one thing from Philly: the high school assembly program. I started doing it right away. I learned quickly, however, that Chicago was a little bit different than Philadelphia.
I had no idea how segregated Chicago public schools were, so I naively chose the schools based on enrollment. I remember walking into Englewood High School, and realized pretty quickly that every single kid in the school was African-American. Two kids, in particular, were staring at me.
“What’s goin’ on?” one asked the other.
“Aw,” the other replied, “just some honky with a tape recorder.”
They weren’t exactly interested in my presentation. But I had an epiphany that day while I was bombing on stage. Bill Bailey, the guy on the air after me every night, was an African-American. So, after that one time, I made sure to check if we were going to an African-American high school, and if we were, I brought along Bill, and had him wait in the wings. I’d come out and do my spiel, and they’d be as apathetic and disinterested as they were at Englewood High, but then I’d say, “Let me bring out another WLS jock to give me a hand. Please give a big round of applause to the guy that follows me on the air every night, Bill Bailey!”
At first he would be greeted with the usual polite applause, but the second they made eye contact with him, the place would go insane! I’m sure that the high school assembly program had a lot to do with the gigantic teen numbers we got in those days. There was a time at night when we had over a third of all teens listening to us. We had the highest nighttime ratings in the entire country.
Records Truly Is My Middle Name is available via Eckhartz Press.
