It's Been 50 Years Since Dan Ingram Started On WABC

The spirit of 77: Ingram helped make WABC an AM radio icon

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From David Hinckley, NY Daily News staff writer:

Ingram w/Ron Lundy 1982

"Almost every deejay in America wanted to be on WABC," wrote the late Rick Sklar, who programmed 770 when it became America's defining music radio station in the 1960s. "Most hoped they would be the next Dan Ingram."

"We had a lot of great guys on the radio then," says Bobby Jay, the veteran jock who worked with Ingram at WCBS-FM in the 1990s. "Dan was the quickest, the sharpest, the fastest."

"Many people in the industry," says Joe McCoy, who programmed WCBS-FM, "feel Dan was the greatest afternoon drive jock ever."

Dan Ingram, now 76 and retired from radio, doesn't volunteer those kinds of remarks himself. But no, he says, he's not about to stop anyone else who'd like to make them.

"I love it," he says, with a laugh familiar to anyone who listened to WABC in the 1960s or '70s, which is most everyone alive then. "It feeds my enormous ego."

Truth is, Ingram has never undervalued himself. He left that to his employers. "I don't think we were ever paid enough," he says. "But that's another story."

The story of broader interest, at the moment, is that today marks 50 years since Ingram did his first show at WABC, then a station still unsure whether rock 'n' roll was a format or a fad.

"I filled in for two days for Chuck Dun away," says Ingram. "I remember being not too sure of myself, so I thought, 'The heck with it, I'll just have some fun.' "

Good plan.

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