Culture

We’ll miss you, Paul Harvey

Those of us who love radio love the human voice. Few, if any, voices were as beautiful as Paul Harvey’s.

I can remember listening to him when I was a kid in Detroit. His voice came out of a small radio my grandparents had on a chair in the corner of the dining room. Before cable TV, that radio was always on, either playing news or this kind of piano music that mimicked, badly, popular tunes in the lowest register. I didn’t know a piano had that many keys below C0.

A little older and a lot farther north, we still had Paul Harvey, though only when the skies were clear because the station that carried him was back in civilization.

Harvey was even in Okinawa, broadcast over the a-farts—that is, Armed Forces Radio & Television Service—network.

He was on WABC here in New York, on during the old Curtis & Kuby show.

Every five- and fifteen-minute show was tight, and flowed beautifully. Never mind his editorializing. It was a small price to be able to hear the rest of the show.

The way he was going, you’d think he would have lasted forever—especially if his advertisers got their way. Nobody could sell like Harvey.

We’ll miss him because he was one of the last distinctive voices left in radio.

Chicago Tribune obit here.

Most shows ended with a groaner, like this one:

Categories: Culture

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