Chuck Leonard
| Chuck Leonard | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Charles Wesley Leonard |
| Born |
March 30, 1937 Chicago, Illinois |
| Died | August 12, 2004 (aged 67) New York, New York |
| Country | United States |
Charles Wesley "Chuck" Leonard (March 30, 1937, Chicago, Illinois – August 12, 2004, New York, N.Y.) was an American radio personality at WABC (AM) in New York City during the 1960s and 1970s. His deep voice and smoothness resonated across 38 states for 14 years at ABC. During his over 40-year career in broadcasting, Leonard worked virtually every shift and played all styles of music at stations including WWRL, WABC, WXLO, WRKS, WBLS, WQEW, WNSW-AM and WJUX. He has been inducted in the Museum of Television & Radio and is known as the first African-American disc jockey to work on a mainstream radio station.
Leonard began his broadcasting career at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as program director of college radio WPGU, while majoring in journalism.
After graduation, Leonard worked briefly for the Washington Evening Star (his boss was Carl Bernstein), while working part-time at WEBB, Baltimore.
WWRL, New York, April–June 1965 Leonard moved to WWRL (R&B) in New York in June 1965, doing the night shift. Leonard was at WWRL for just seven weeks, before WABC (AM) deejay Dan Ingram heard him and convinced WABC to hire him. He was the first African-American broadcast personality on a major market Top 40 station.
Leonard began at ABC's flagship New York radio station, Musicradio 77 WABC (AM), under program director Rick Sklar in 1965. He broke the color barrier for all who followed — the first African-American to cross over from black R&B radio to (then-mostly white) mass-appeal radio.
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