The Long Island History Project Tuning in to Ray Adell
Longtime radio broadcaster Ray Adell of Ray Adell Media, WGSM, WBAB and more. Photo by Tom Hoffman.
Ray Adell is a radio man, from his early days broadcasting down in Virginia to his arrival at WGSM (World’s Greatest Suburban Market!) in Huntington in the early 1950s. But perhaps you’ll remember him best as the voice (and mind) behind “About Long Island,” the long-running radio spot sponsored by the Grumman Corporation. For over twenty years Ray and his staff at Adell Media served up snippets of Long Island history in morning drive time to educate and entertain.
In this interview Ray looks back at the people he’s met (Jack Ellsworth and Edmund Hillary to name just two), stations he’s worked at (WCAP, WEST, WKBS, WGSM and WBAB to name just five), and answers the question: is radio dead?
Leave a comment if you have memories of Ray or any of the old Long Island stations. And special thanks to Thom Hoffman for arranging this interview.
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http://wwwx.dowling.edu/library/new/RayAdell.mp3Stream in the player above or download audio.
Further Research
- More samples of “About Long Island”
- Ray Adell Media
- Long Island Radio History
- Weyman “Sandy” Jones (former Grumman VP of Public Affairs)
- Jack Elsworth Memories in Melody on Facebook
- The Airwaves of New York: Illustrated Histories of 156 AM Stations in the Metropolitan Area, 1921-1996 (find in a library via WorldCat)
- Then We Set His Hair on Fire by Phil Dusenberry (find in a library via WorldCat)
- Huntington History (blog of Huntington Town Historian Robert C. Hughes)