Forget Dick Clark, Wolfman Jack and Casey Kasem.
Saturday Night Live at the Oldies with Shadoe Steele makes these long gone disc jockey legends look like nerdy crew cut-wearing clerks peddling Beach Boys albums in a ‘60s record store.
In today’s high-tech broadcast business Shadoe Steele remains alive, well and invincible.
Celebrating 45 years on the air, you can hear the iconic show on iHeartRadio and other internet radio platforms such as Audilous Radio (www.audilous.com) during its Saturday night broadcast from 7 p.m. to midnight ET on The Cube that replays the entire show Wednesday night at 7.
Nobody knows life’s vintage soundtrack better than 69-year-old Shadoe Steele who stepped behind the mic in 1973 but took over the Oldies show in 1986. With his mother Lucille’s Aqua Net sprayed on his hairdo to keep the straight part razor sharp and Aqua Velva Redwood splashed on his innocent baby face, he started spinning records when he was 15 and a half with “working papers” his parents signed to give the underage boy wonder a clear runway for takeoff.
During a decades-long coast-to-coast career as a Renaissance man, including working for NASA and as an engineer for major television networks in New York and Los Angeles, America’s astronaut of the airwaves blasted off early and often. He interviewed and befriended some of the greats in the pop music industry. As a radio personality’s personality and a beloved fixture on local Northeastern Pennsylvania radio he drew countless listeners to shows to which they would normally never tune in.
Like the song says, Shadoe Steele did it his way. Casually cruising in a blue button-down shirt, blue jeans and white sneakers, America’s avant-guardian of airplay takes to revved-up 21st Century internet transmission the way Ronny and the Daytonas took to their little GTO looking fine with three deuces and a four-speed and a 389.
Playing neglected hits like “Convoy” by CW McCall and obscure teen tragedy songs like “Run Joey Run” by David Geddes, Shadoe Steele spins songs so surprisingly familiar you’ll be tempted to disturb the peace by throwing open the window and warbling the lyrics to your neighbors whether they like it or not. Drawing tunes mostly from the ‘60s and ‘70s, Shadow Steele plays good old AM radio music that jumpstarts your brainstem, restarts your soul and hotwires your heart strings.
Young hip listeners will equally enjoy blasts from the past to spark their auditory DNA with cool refrains that made their rocking grandparents and parents part of a unique and vocal into-nation, energizing new generations with what they missed as they tune in to flash back and make up for lost time.
Shadoe Steele’s exhaustive knowledge of hits strikes nostalgic chords that reverberate in our psyches making everyday people’s heptatonic scale go peptatonic as we sing and dance to the music.
I’m part of the show, too.
Every other Saturday night (for now) the Corbett’s Corner show segment highlights my personal reflections on oldies “records” that played a rocking and rolling part in my life. To my Boomer comrades these songs likewise comprise the background music to your life and times, Shadoephonic sounds that still make us feel better when life sometimes seems to get worse. We’ll hang together on Corbett’s Corner as I tell you my personal stories that go with the songs you already know so well.
Music helped save my life when I wore Cuban heels on my Flagg Brothers shoes, slicked back my greaser hair with Vaseline petroleum jelly and smoked my first cigarette as a 12-year-old in 1963 listening to Louie Louie at the VFW dance. Music planted harmonic seeds in my head that took root, grew and blossomed into rhythmic strains of flower power, peace and love. Music still soothes the savage Corbett. But I stopped chain-smoking cigarettes 35 years ago and even stopped oiling my locks when I decided to let my mane grow. Here baby, there mama, everywhere, daddy daddy hair!
So you better listen to the beat that keeps on beating, the pulse that keeps on pulsing, keeping time to music that molded our lives and still provides the shape of things to come.
“Thanks for dialing by,” as Shadoe Steele says, “They don’t make records like that anymore.”
