Still Shakin’ After All These Years
By Mike Costanza
Veteran radio DJ Mike Murray remembers how he felt 40 years ago, when he sent his voice out over the airwaves for the first time.
“Whoa, this is really cool, but it’s kind of nerve-wracking at the same time, because it’s the first time,” the 64-year-old said.
After that first volunteer gig as a co-host at WITR, the Rochester Institute of Technology’s college station, Murray went on to co-host or host music shows or work as an engineer at several radio stations around the Rochester area and beyond.
As the longtime DJ of “Whole Lotta Shakin’,” he treats audiences to an eclectic mix of music from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, along the works of a smattering of contemporary artists, every Saturday.
Tune in to the two-hour show and you might hear rock hits by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and The Troggs, rockabilly pieces by Jerry Lee Lewis or Carl Perkins, surf music by groups like the Beach Boys, the raw energy of garage rock and blues rock by groups like the Blues Magoos.
“Then, I’ll play artists that imitate those particular styles, like the Chesterfield Kings,” Murray said.
The Chesterfield Kings are a local rock band. Though he puts his playlists together at home, Murray always does his show live.
“I prefer to be live because there’s that connection with my listeners,” he said.
Almost all of Murray’s gigs have been as a volunteer.
Murray developed an in interest in music while listening to his older cousins play Top-40 tunes on their radios and watching “Where the Action Is,” the late Dick Clark’s nationwide television rock show, at his family’s home in Greece. When he received a transistor radio on his sixth birthday, he gained easy access to the music he’d begun to love.
“I’ve been hooked on the radio ever since,” Murray said. “I constantly flipped the dial between local stations like WBBF, WSAY, WAXC and WHFM, as well as WKBW and WGR in Buffalo, WHEN in Syracuse.”
He enjoyed listening to the DJs as much as the music they played.
“That’s sort of, like, where the magic was,” Murray said. “‘Here’s the latest from so-and-so,’ or you hear something that just blows you away.”
At that time, almost all music was recorded for sale on long-playing record albums (LPs) or smaller records that bore only one song on a side, called “45s.” As Murray grew older, he headed off to local stores like the Record Archive or the House of Guitars to look for discs by the artists and groups he’d discovered, and talk his finds over with the sales staff.
“You build the relationship with people in the record stores, and it’s all good,” the Webster resident said.
Pop music eventually lost some of the spontaneity that Murray valued, and his interest waned. Then the music of the 50s enjoyed a revival. He began hearing great songs he’d never heard before, and developed a keen interest in music from the 50s and 60s.
“I began buying Chuck Berry 45s, and not long after I bought the Beatles Red Album, and that sent me into hyperdrive,” Murray said. “I began to collect and listen to 50s and 60s LP’s, 45s every chance I got.”
At the same time, he headed out to local clubs where bands like the Ramones, New Math and the Chesterfield Kings were playing with the style and energy of early rock-and-roll.
“The Chesterfield Kings looked like they popped out of ‘The Time Tunnel’ [a 1960s science fiction television show] from 1966,” Murray said.
He was at Scorgies, a now-defunct Rochester club, when he met Mick Alber, who was too young to drink at the club, and had sneaked in only to listen to the band playing that night. Alber shared Murray’s passion for the music of the ‘60s, and was volunteering at WITR as the DJ of the radio show “Friday Night Filet.”
Despite their age difference—Alber is seven years younger than Murray—the two hit it off and Alber invited Murray to co-host “Friday Night Filet.” Since it was 1984, the 20th anniversary of the Beatles arrival in the US, they decided to do a show that focused entirely on the music of the British invasion. It was a hit.
“A gentleman called and said, ‘I was in Vietnam. I missed all this. Listening to you guys brings back a lot of memories, and some things I missed,’” Alber said.
The show did so well that WITR decided to give the pair a one-hour weekly spot on Sunday afternoons. They decided to call it “Psychedelic Sundae,” though it wasn’t all that psychedelic.
“We mostly played raunchier British acts like the Stones, Pretty Things, Troggs, etc., and what was known as 60s punk,’ along with local acts,” Murray said.
Alber and Murray continued co-hosting at WITR and became good friends while their show morphed into “Whole Lotta Shakin’.” The name is from a rock hit from the 1950s.
“I like to think that Mike’s, like, my older brother. He turned me on to stuff I’d never heard of, like ‘The Pretty Things.’” Alber said. “We complemented each other when we did the show.”
After 13 years of doing a radio show with Murray, Alber stepped away from the microphone to attend to his job and family matters. He and his former co-host have remained good friends.
“I kind of think of the two of us as Sonny and Cher,” the 58-year-old Brighton resident said. “I’m Sonny, went so far and just said ‘I’m done.’ Cher is still popular after all these years.”
Murray hosted “Whole Lotta Shakin’” by himself at WITR until 2010, when he was invited to take the show to WRUR, the University of Rochester’s college radio station. The station partners with WXXI, the local NPR station, to broadcast across the Rochester area over the FM dial. The show can also be heard in Ithaca over radio station WITH.
Recording and broadcasting have changed dramatically since Murray became a DJ. He can draw from the thousands of records, cassette tapes and CDs he’s gathered down through the years when programming for his show, but no longer has to cart them to a station to do his show. Instead, he digitally records his selections on a thumb drive and plugs it in at the studio, which doesn’t even have a turntable. Though the electronic device represents a vast change in technology from his first days before a microphone, Murray still DJs in his personal style.
“I have not had to compromise at all,” he said. “Frankly, that’s the only way I can do it.”
That’s not to say that Murray’s passion for broadcasting has not required a few sacrifices. Though he has a Bachelor of Science degree in communications from the SUNY Brockport, but for a few brief periods in commercial radio he was not paid for his time in broadcasting until recently. WRUR began paying him for doing “Whole Lotta Shakin’” three years ago. Instead, the married father of three worked other types of full-time jobs down through the years to support his family. Murray recently retired from the accounting department of the American Packaging Corporation, but still works for the company as a contractor. He credits his wife for supporting him as he’s given his time and energy to creating a radio show week- after-week.
“I’m thankful that my wife Linda appreciates the fact that this is a huge part of who I am, and is very supportive of the radio show,” Murray said.
In addition to broadcasting the works of local musicians, Murray supports them out in the community. On Oct. 12, he and Alber joined Greg Prevost, who was doing a book and album release at the House of Guitars, an Irondequoit fixture that sells guitars, CDs, DVDs and other items. Prevost, one of the founding members of the Chesterfield Kings, has known Murray since 1980, and considers him a friend and a pioneer of radio.
“There’s all these people now copying him for what he did now, coming out on the Internet with their shows, and Mike’s been doing it for 40 years,” Prevost said. “He’s just a good guy.”
Prevost left the Chesterfield Kings in 2011, and began performing solo. A large crowd gathered at the House of Guitars to talk to the well-known musician, and buy signed copies of his new book and album. The book, “On the Street I Met a Dog,” is an autobiography, and the album, “After the Wars,” brings blues, folk and country music together to present a theme.
“It’s about, basically ‘war is something that nobody wins,’” Prevost said.
Asked what he plans to do during the coming years, Murray said he intends to continue treating his audiences to the music he loves.
“I really love the music, but I really enjoy the connection with bringing it out and showing other people,” he said. “If I know you’re having fun listening to it, I like that.”