Larry Josephson
Born
Norman Lawrence Josephson

(1939-05-12)May 12, 1939
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
DiedJuly 27, 2022(2022-07-27) (aged 83)
New York City, U.S.
EducationUniversity of California, Berkeley (BA)
Occupations
  • Radio presenter
  • producer
Spouses
  • Charity Alker
    ​
    (divorced)​
  • Valerie Magyar
    ​
    (divorced)​
Children1

Norman Lawrence Josephson (May 12, 1939 – July 27, 2022) was an American public radio producer. From 1965, he worked in the field of public broadcasting as a producer, host, station manager, engineer, teacher, writer, and consultant. His first show at listener-supported radio station WBAI in New York was influential in developing the free-form radio style of the 1960s and 1970s.[1][2][3]

Early life

Josephson was born and raised in Los Angeles,[3] where he attended Alexander Hamilton High School. He once claimed his high school major was "existential calisthenics".[4] He attended the University of California at Berkeley where he received a BA in Linguistics with a minor in Mathematics, which he did not complete until 1973.[3][5] He was a systems analyst and programmer with IBM from 1962 to 1964.[3]

WBAI

Unhappy with his lonely life as an engineer in a cubicle at IBM, he volunteered at WBAI – a listener-supported radio station in New York City. By 1966 he was the host of In the Beginning, the "grumpy" morning program.[6] He had become one of the station's most popular personalities.[2] His morning shows, like those of late night's Bob Fass and Steve Post, became the archetypes of the station's free-form style, which became the precursor to much of the alternative FM radio programming which started in the 1960s and 1970s.[2][7] Audience members would wake up to whatever caught Josephson's fancy each day. For example, after the release of The Beatles' "Lady Madonna" in March 1968, Josephson liked the song so much that he played it over and over for two hours.[8]

Josephson became the Assistant Manager of WBAI, and oversaw the design and construction of the station when it moved to a new location in 1971. He was the General Manager of the station from 1974 until 1976.[9] In the Beginning continued until 1972. Another of Josephson's shows Bourgeois Liberation ran on WBAI from 1979 to 1984.[5]

Between 1972 and 1974, Josephson hosted a program on KPFA in Berkeley, California, where his shows on Little People of America helped to win him first prize in the Major Armstrong Radio Awards, administered by Columbia University, in the category of noncommercial community radio.[10]

After a five-year absence from New York City airwaves, Josephson returned in 1989 with Modern Times, a two-hour talk show on WNYC that also aired in California and Iowa and ran to 1993.[11][12]

Bob & Ray

Josephson worked to revive the careers of Bob & Ray.[13] He developed and produced 26 half-hour public radio shows called Classic Bob & Ray which surveyed their entire career.[14] He also developed and produced The Bob and Ray Public Radio Show from 1981 until 1986.[15] This show was broadcast on 250 stations and received several awards, including a 1982 Peabody Award.[16] The show, was later nominated for three Grammy Awards after it was released on cassettes.[17] In 1984 Josephson produced Bob & Ray: A Night of Two Stars at Carnegie Hall in New York City.[18] Both performances were sold out, and an audio cassette produced from the performance was nominated for a Grammy.[19]

Teaching, seminars, consulting, and writing

Josephson taught radio production at NYU and The New School. With funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts, he co-produced the Airlie Seminars on the Art of Radio four times between 1977 and 1983. He is also the editor of Telling the Story, NPR's Guide to Journalism published in 1981. He has also served as a consultant to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public Radio, NTIA and individual public radio stations.[5]

With the help of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts, Josephson amassed a large recording-tape library of 1970s and 1980s "talking machine sounds" such as phone services like The Big Apple Report and The Story Lady as well as other kinds of recorded voices, which Josephson found so disturbing that he titled his project Vox Inhumana.[20][21]

Personal life and death

Josephson was married to, and divorced from, Charity Alker and Valerie Magyar. He had one daughter, Jennie, a radio and TV producer.[3][22] He died from complications of Parkinson's disease at a care facility in Manhattan on July 27, 2022, aged 83.[3][23]

Radio productions

  • In the Beginning – WBAI, 1966–72[3]
  • The Colgate Human Comedy Hour – KPFA, 1972–73[24]
  • The Little People or Think Big – KPFA, a documentary about a visit to a dwarf convention. Received an Armstrong Award.[10]
  • Bourgeois Liberation – WBAI, 1979–84[5]
  • Classic Bob & Ray[14]
  • The Bob and Ray Public Radio Show – 1981–86[15]
  • Modern Times – KCRW, WNYC, American Public Radio 1988–93[3]
  • BRIDGES: A Liberal/Conservative Dialogue – CPB 1994–1999.[25]
  • Bloomsday on Broadway (with Isaiah Sheffer) – live marathon readings of James Joyce's Ulysses. 1981–91.[26]
  • What Is a Jew? 1999 [27]
  • Only in America – a 6-hour history of Jewish-Americans[28]

References

  1. ↑ "A Brief History of Freeform Radio". WFMU. Retrieved September 24, 2009.
  2. 1 2 3 Fisher, Marc (2007). Something in the air: radio, rock, and the revolution that shaped a generation. Random House. pp. 146–153. ISBN 9780375509070.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Sandomir, Richard (July 31, 2022). "Larry Josephson, Champion of Free-Form Radio, Dies at 83". The New York Times. Retrieved July 31, 2022.
  4. ↑ McDougal, Dennis (July 16, 1988). "Return of the Native". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved September 23, 2009.
  5. 1 2 3 4 "Biography of Larry Josephson". WhatIsaJew.org. Retrieved September 23, 2009.
  6. ↑ Gould, Jack (November 22, 1966). "Radio: Satirical Relish for Antisocial Breakfasters; Larry Josephson Is a Boon to the Grumpy WBAI Offers a Relief From Cheerfulness". New York Times. Retrieved September 23, 2009.
  7. ↑ Land, Jeff (1999). Active radio: Pacifica's brash experiment. U of Minnesota Press. pp. 116–117. ISBN 9780816631575.
  8. ↑ Mitchell, Sean (March 1, 1992). "RADIO — Gotham Grump — Larry Josephson is the host of a public-radio show. He's liberal, in an old-fashioned way, politically incorrect—and really angry". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved September 23, 2009.
  9. ↑ Adams, Val (February 22, 1976). "Radio Roundup". New York Daily News. p. TV-8. Retrieved July 31, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. 1 2 Mockridge, Norton (March 22, 1974). "Little people of America". Redlands (California) Daily Facts. p. 12. Retrieved July 31, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. ↑ Kalish, Jon (May 14, 1989). "He's as 'Bad' as Ever". New York Daily News. p. City Lights-30. Retrieved July 31, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. ↑ Mitchell, Sean (May 11, 1992). "The Trouble With Larry". New York Newsday. p. II:48-49. Retrieved July 31, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. ↑ Ollove, Michael (December 28, 1996). "New York man seeks to keep torch lit for comedians Bob and Ray". Reno Gazette-Journal. Baltimore Sun. p. 5C. Retrieved July 31, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. 1 2 O'Haire, Patricia (January 3, 1993). "Bob & Ray Redux". New York Daily News. p. City Lights-22. Retrieved July 31, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  15. 1 2 "From mikeside, it's Bob and Ray". The Times-Herald (Port Huron, Michigan). Associated Press. February 9, 1984. p. 1D. Retrieved July 31, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. ↑ "Bob and Ray on public radio". Sun-News (Myrtle Beach, South Carolina). July 22, 1983. p. 2C. Retrieved July 31, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  17. ↑ "Good ol' days of radio: Bob & Ray routines preserved". The Republic (Columbus, Indiana). February 13, 1993. p. A6. Retrieved July 31, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  18. ↑ McDougal, Dennis (February 21, 1984). "Bob & Ray: Tuned In To Gentle Comedy Again". Los Angeles Times. pp. V-1, V-9. Retrieved July 31, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  19. ↑ Hinckley, David (March 20, 2008). "Bob & Ray's comic capers live on". New York Daily News. Retrieved September 23, 2009.
  20. ↑ Collins, Glenn (October 2, 1980). "The Depersonalization Of America Via Talking Machines". The Tampa Tribune. New York Times Press Service. p. D1. Retrieved July 31, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  21. ↑ Schwartz, Jerry (November 5, 1980). "Radio personality collects the voices of inhumanity". Pensacola (Florida) News Journal. Associated Press. p. 6D. Retrieved July 31, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  22. ↑ "Jennie Josephson Producer", marketplace.org. Accessed 11 February 2023.
  23. ↑ Josephson, Jennie (July 28, 2022). "Larry Josephson 1939–2022". WBAI-FM.
  24. ↑ "KPFA Folio". Berkeley : KPFA : Pacifica Foundation. June 1973. Retrieved August 2, 2022.
  25. ↑ Goodman, Walter (July 29, 1994). "TV-RADIO WEEKEND;A Quest for a Long-Buried Truth About a U.F.O". New York Times. Retrieved September 23, 2009.
  26. ↑ Smith, Dinitia (June 16, 2001). "Time for Bloom to Resume His Everlasting Odyssey". New York Times. Retrieved September 23, 2009.
  27. ↑ "What Is a Jew?; No. 1; A Conversation Between Rabbi Ismar Schorsch and Larry Josephson". American Archive of Public Broadcasting. 1999. Retrieved August 2, 2022.
  28. ↑ Hinckley, David (September 15, 2007). "Radio series offers 6-hour history of Jews in 'America'". New York Daily News. Retrieved September 23, 2009.
  • RadioArt.org – a division of the Radio Foundation, Inc., a not-for-profit radio production company founded by Larry Josephson
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