So Long, Jay Jarrell

First of all, total thanks to Bill Reid for sending me the CDs.  As an act of pure kindness, he responded to someone (me) who went to Bill's online domain and asked to be transported back into the past.  For several years, Bill was an engineer at WKAZ radio in Charleston WV.  As a teenager in Charleston from the mid 1960s until I left for college in the fall of 1967, I was a constant listener to WKAZ.  In particular, I was a fan of the evening show and its DJ, Jay Jarrell.  Jay was the Daddio of the Raddio, and he pushed the platters and took our dedications when we called  him on the dingwa (Japanese for telephone and most certainly a remnant of his military days overseas).  Every Friday night, a black limo pulled up to the Virginian Theater on Lee Street, and out climbed Jay Jarrell to host the Battle of the Bands.  I never called in for a dedication, and I never went to a band battle, but I hung on his words nonetheless.  

Mirabili dictu, I came to find out that Bill had two soundchecks of Jay Jarrell on CD.  Each was a little over an hour long, and each had originally been recorded in January 1970 by Johnny Gowen's family.  Johnny was a short lived DJ at the station, and improbably Jay had called Johnny's parents in Houston and played the show over the dingwa.  The Gowens taped the call and there we are -- to my knowledge, the only remnant of Jay Jarrell in the Known Universe.

I am certain I had not heard these segments before.  By 1970, I was living in upstate NY and listening to music that was a million miles in the other direction from this stuff.  And there was something a bit tired and shopworn about Jay taking yet another call from the Nitro Jr High Wildkittens to play Jam Up and Jelly Tight for Bob and Mary and Ted and Mr and Mrs Means and all the gang in HR 210.  The ads were even more poignant -- for clothing at Silver Brand Clothes and The New Girl and luggage at the Diamond (special thanks to all the elevator operators at the Diamond) -- stores long ago relegated to the dust of commerce.  The Seven Seas have not played at the Fraternity House in Kanawha City for 40 years, and that bar is long long gone.  And little did I know at the time that Jay was a shallow imitation of the legendary Porky Chedwick of Pittsburgh, the real and genuine Daddio of the Raddio.  But it was so good to hear that voice again, and be lying on my belly across my bunkbed in my tiny bedroom that I shared with my little brother, with the sound turned down low in the darkness as the music and talk poured relentlessly on one lonely night after another, as the wind blew tree limbs hither and thither outside the window of my bedroom that looked out into the dark night woods.

Because I really know how to navigate the Web, I now know that Jay died on May 25, 1995 at Charleston General Hospital.  He was 59 years old, and had been ill with heart and cancer stuff for ten years.  We all suspected that he had blown into town from someplace exotic, like New Jersey, but in fact he was totally homegrown West Virginian.  He came out of the southern coal fields and went into the military and learned his trade there.  Yeah, he did the Porky thing, but you know, after a while it became Jay Jarrell.  He was always laughing and cutting up with Bob Turley, the station manager and a legend in his own right.  Bob would be Granny now and then, and they would do impromptu stand up that was pretty funny, I suspect even now.

So, so long Jay Jarrell.  Rest assured that two hours of your work still live on somewhere.  It was not your best work, but some of it was pretty representative and it means that your voice has not gone totally silent.  You are not a Hall of Famer, but you deserve to be remembered a little bit.  

And you may have saved my life for two years, back there when it was hard to grow up and stand up for yourself at the same time.  You helped me be different, and I can never repay that debt....

gary