VIDEO SUGGESTION

Jean Shepherd: Radio's Noble Savage (Edward Grossman, January 1966, Harper's Magazine):

Shepherd in the flesh is not young, lean, and wisecracking, as his disembodied radio voice implies, but, middle-aged, stocky, with a Mephistophelean goatee that is starting to turn gray, and a surprisingly earnest and polite manner. He regularly telephones his mother, who is "real" and really lives in Hammond, Indiana, a place-name that has the same mythical importance for Shepherd as Hannibal had for Mark Twain. "I'd still be there," Shepherd reflects, "working in the steel mills and chewing Mail Pouch, if it hadn't of been for the second world war." The Signal Corps snatched him out of the mills at age seventeen and infected him with the radio bug. Several times he tried to shake it off, taking up Volkswagen dealership and sportscar racing, but without long-term success.

When he came to WOR ten years ago, fresh from running a hillbilly jamboree and interviewing wild animal acts for a Cincinatti station, Shepherd began by broadcasting records and random talk all night. His public then was mostly "night people"-- cabbies, students cramming on No-Doz, transatlantic pilots flying in on WOR's 50,000 watt signal. Now he has a larger (100,000 on a good night) and, to judge from his mail, more diversified audience. Hip adolescents are particularly sympatheic to him. A girl in a Quaker prep school based her valedictory speech on a Shepherd bit about false values created by advertising; a Scarsdale kid, quoting Kierkegaard, tried to explain to Shepherd why parents are mystified by his programs. Within the trade, too, Shepherd has achieved a measure of fame. "Official-type guys see me on an elevator," he says, "and they tell me I'm a great black humorist. Whatever that is."

But the devotion of his fans and recognition of fellow professionals has not been enough to make Shepherd as well known as a crowd of lesser performers. He remains essentially an "underground" phenomenon. The reason is no mystery: he is on radio, and he is himself. While national reputations are made on television, with help from the press agent's art, Shepherd works in a local medium, and his work is a rare kind that PR men wouldn't know what to do with.

Undoubtedly it is too bad that more people can't hear Shepherd. Outside the Northeast, which is covered by WOR, his only outlet until recently was a small listener-sponsored station in Seattle whose apt call-letters are KRAB. It remains to be seen whether he can win audiences in San Francisco and Boston as well. On the other hand, it is gratifying that he is heard at all, and that many of his programs have been taped. Very soon, when the genetic race has run its course and everyone is born with a portable T connected to his navel, archaeologists will find these tapes, and they will call Shepherd's flights of fact and fancy the final good moments of a lost form of communication.

Jean Shepherd (1925-1999) was born in Chicago, IL on July 26, 1925--the perfect excuse for Christmas in July Posted by Orrin Judd at July 26, 2003 8:19 AM