R.I.P.: Jerry Lubin, Pioneering Detroit FM Broadcaster

Jerry Lubin

Jerry Lubin, a pioneer of underground radio best known for his years at Detroit’s freeform WABX-FM, died Thursday morning in Los Angeles. 

He was 80, reports The Detroit Free Press.

Lubin had been hospitalized since Jan. 25 with COVID-19 although a cause of death has not yet been officially declared.

The Detroit native made his name as one of the progressive station’s “Air Aces” from 1968 through the early '70s, part of a local radio career that included stints at WRIF-FM, WWWW-FM and again at WABX, before wrapping up at WLLZ-FM in the 1980s.

As part of the early 'ABX crew, Lubin was a preeminent on-air voice during a fertile, explosive chapter in Detroit rock, as music, politics and activism swirled in a hip, heady brew.

Lubin and his colleagues struck an antiestablishment tone, taking the word-on-the-street to the airwaves while forging a sense of community on the Detroit scene.

Like his fellow “Air Aces” at WABX — Dave Dixon, Dan Carlisle, Larry Miller and others — Lubin had plenty of freedom, making his own playlist choices and operating with just one programming rule: Listen to the guy right before you, so you’re not transitioning shifts with the same songs.  

While rock was the station’s core, Lubin delighted in straying far outside assumed lines. The WABX library had 8,000 records, he said, “and all of them got played on the air.”

Lubin left WABX by 1972 and took up with the station that would become WRIF. But he soon became disenchanted by that outlet’s evolving direction — too restrictive for his taste — and watched dismayed as the library was abruptly winnowed down to a selection of commercially acceptable records.

After a short time in San Diego, Lubin returned to Detroit in 1974 for a gig at the rock station known as W4. He returned to WABX from 1977 to 1979 and worked at WLLZ in the 1980s.

His time in broadcasting ended as he took a job with the U.S. Postal Service.