Arnie Ginsburg
| Arnie Ginsburg | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Arnold W. Ginsburg August 5, 1926 (age 90) Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Occupation | Radio disc jockey, business manager, program manager |
Arnie "Woo-Woo" Ginsburg (born August 5, 1926) was an American disc jockey in the Boston radio market from the mid-1950s to the 1970s. Following this period, he became involved in the business side of radio as a business manager, president and owner of WVJV-TV, and later as an executive with Pyramid Broadcasting and program manager of their Boston station WXKS/1430.
Arnold William Ginsburg was born on August 5, 1926. He was raised in Brookline, Massachusetts, the son of Paul Ginsburg, who ran a millinery company and Sophia (Charak) Ginsburg, who had been a singer prior to marriage. Arnie graduated from Brookline (MA) High School in 1944. His first radio job was at the old WORL/950, where he was an engineer for announcer Alan Dary. He did not intend to be an announcer; but at one point, he sat in on air with Dary and got a good response. Despite not having the traditional deep radio voice, Ginsburg developed an audience that wanted to hear more of him, and he moved to WBOS 1600 AM in 1956 to be a night-time disc jockey. It was at WBOS, a station that programmed foreign language shows during the daytime, that he developed his own on-air Top 40 show; this prepared him for his move to a full-time Boston Top 40 radio station, WMEX/1510, in 1958.
While he developed a following during his time with WBOS, it was at WMEX that Ginsburg's popularity as a disc jockey expanded. He was unusual, and not just because of his high-pitched voice; he jokingly referred to himself as "Old Leather Lungs" or "Old Aching Adenoids", but he was best known as "Woo Woo" Ginsburg, for his use of sound effects: his show was called the Night Train, and he utilized a train horn. In an era where top-40 DJs were given non-descript and non-ethnic radio names, Ginsburg kept his birth name and did not change it. He also refused a salary from station owner Max Richmond, instead making a deal for a 25% cut of all the commercial revenue Ginsburg would generate for his show. This, he claimed, made him "the highest-paid jock on the station." According to Billboard magazine, by 1959, he was making an annual salary of $10,000, an amount higher than the median American income at that time. Ginsburg frequently did on-air testimonials for his advertisers, and perhaps the best-known was his work for Adventure Car Hop, a drive-in fast-food restaurant on Route 1 in Saugus, which promoted the "Ginsburger" [3] According to the car-hop's owners, Ginsburg's radio commercials brought as many as two thousand teenagers to his restaurant on a typical summer night. Ginsburg was also known for his ability to create hits by giving them radio exposure on his show. One good example was a novelty song by British vocalist Lonnie Donegan, "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight." It had been a hit in England, but when released in the United States for the first time in 1959, it was not successful. Then, in 1961, Ginsburg received a copy from a listener and began to play it, and after several days of heavy airplay, the song took off and became a hit in America.
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