R.I.P.: Longtime NYC Radio Personality Dan Ingram

September 7, 1934 - June 24,2018

Dan Ingram has died.

Ingram with Ron Lundy, WCBS-FM

Radio's Kemo Sabe died Sunday in Florida at the age of 83.  According to his son Chris, Ingram had numerous neurological problems over the last few years.

He inspired so many to enter the radio business.  Many hoped they would be the next Dan Ingram.

Ingram began his five decade broadcasting career at small stations such as WNRC/New Rochelle, NY, WALK/Patchogue, NY, and WNHC/New Haven, CT, and worked at WICC/Bridgeport, CT as “Ray Taylor.”

He moved on to larger markets and was responsible for huge ratings jumps at both KBOX/Dallas and WIL/St. Louis before returning to New York to create and sell radio contests for Mars Broadcasting.

In 1961, Ingram returned to the airwaves at WABC/New York where he stayed for the next 21 years until it went all-talk. During that period he also did The Other Dan Ingram Show playing jazz on WABC-FM.

He combined humor, an irreverent style, and impeccable timing and established himself as the leading rock radio personality in North America. Ingram was the master of the “talk-up,” speaking over the introduction and finishing his thoughts at the exact moment the lyrics started.

After hosting the CBS Radio’s syndicated Top 40 Satellite Survey and a stint on WKTU-FM/New York, he joined the oldies station WCBS-FM/New York in 1991 where he worked until he retired in 2003.

Dan Ingram was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2007.

He was noted for his quick wit and ability to convey a humorous or satiric idea with quick pacing and an economy of words—a skill which has made him uniquely suited to, and successful within, modern personality-driven music radio.

He was among the most frequently emulated radio personalities. One of Ingram's unique skills was his ability to "talk up" to the lyrics of a record, meaning speaking over the musical introduction and finishing exactly at the point when the lyrics started.

Howard Hoffman, a colleague at WABC, paid tribute, "He was to radio what Johnny Carson was to late-night TV. What Willie Mays was to baseball. What Mort Drucker was to MAD Magazine. He was the gold standard. It can't be described. It had to be heard. When you come across how many people say they got into the radio business because of listening to him growing up, you'll know how powerful his charisma was."

A DJs DJ🎧 Thanks for showing us just how well it can be done Dan. R.I.P. Dan Ingram pic.twitter.com/JAwLJXQIyb

— Broadway Bill Lee (@BroadwayBillLee) June 25, 2018

So devastated. Lost a friend & mentor. Radio icon Dan Ingram passed away. If ya heard him @77WABCradio or @WCBSFM you’d know. Too young? Ya missed the best of the best. To my radio brethren, we lost a stellar communicator & they'll never be another like him. He was 83. #Radio pic.twitter.com/KbOv6TjNrd

— Dan Taylor (@dantaylor) June 25, 2018

Dan was well known for playing doctored versions of popular songs. The Paul McCartney & Wings song My Love Does it Good became My Glove Does it Good. The stuttering title refrain of Bennie and the Jets went from three or four repetitions to countless. In the same vein, the distinctive refrain added to Hooked on a Feeling by Blue Swede, Ooga-ooga-ooga-chucka would start repeating and listeners would never know when it would end. (Other examples include Paul Simon's 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, and "rearranging" the spelling of "S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y" on the Bay City Rollers' Saturday Night.)



Dan's longtime closing theme song was "Tri-Fi Drums" by Billy May. An edited version of the song was used for broadcast.



Dan commented occasionally about the pronunciation of his name: jingles often are heard pronouncing his last name as "Ing-ram," but Dan has said it is correctly pronounced "In-gram."







Click Here for feature story On-the-air with Dan Ingram, NY Times 1993

Remembering Radio Legend Dan Ingram https://t.co/zW5ALQJudi @WCBSFM @dantaylor

— Wayne Cabot (@WayneCabot) June 25, 2018