who may have been her counterpoint for a quarter of a century.
Her berth and vantage point .. in her role as Danny Siles engineer for twenty five years...a quarter of a century may not transcend the sismic tragedy in Japan.....but the post World War2 era of 65 years captured her attention on FDR’s own March 12 1933 fireside chat....
II
A quarter of a century as a “d.j” what Martin Block called “The make believe ballroom”: . But Danny Stiles record spinning into his eighties seemed to Annie Bergen of WQXR... a classical
music station taking three- four minutes to acknowledge the impact he had on her odyssey in the musical landscape of radio.
Even as Japan reels in its 65 years...hard to imagine this disaster happening....but the mantra
of Martin Block’s “Make Believe Ballroom” on Sundays was akin to Uncle Don on reading the comics...Mayor LaGuardia chasing fires...Arthur Fiedler with his Boston Pops...
The Jersey born platter maven....an artist in his own right...host of dances in the Big Apple and New Jersey whirled a nostalgia and spell of a magician and his engineer playing out their lives.
III
Their chemistry and bonding was right out of Hansel ands Gretyl” , Danny Stiles like my father’s own Wbbc weekly radio stint. The Court Street Borough Park tirf.
Esoteric yes but Danny Stiles and Annie Bergen challenged their listeners into a deja vu state of mind...
A “swish” from “downtown” Newark and lower Manhattan.
Long before websites and 50 gigs of memory, Danny Stiles weaved his own web of nostalgia and dance rhythms. Before Bing Crosby, there was the string instruments...the nucleur uranium and their “meltdown”
Jean Goldkette and Isham Jones. Before Paul Whiteman Glen Miller, Duke Ellington the Dorsey brothers. Harry James’s “trumpet” rhapsody.
IV
No crunching of numbers vis a vi his accounting degree but the New Jersey radio caugfht his preordained fate.
.”My mother’s eyes” sung by George Jessel. Connie Francis “My Yiddishe
Momme” Shirley Temple”s “Goodnight my love” at the age of eight.
SophieTucker belting out “Mister Siegal make it legal”
Could she have known that Danny Stiles would endure the 65 years since in his love feast with his identifying fans..
An orbit of some 20 radio stations: Wevd Wnyc Wnsw Wjom Wpat but a few..
He came down on the side of his fans. “Midnight Dan” and the
“The Kit Catt Club”
Subsequent “enchiladas” spinning his “deja vu”.
Wasn’t his passage God’s way?
V
A seismic consciousness of a Wqxr classical music host giving her own living breathing intelligence on what Danny Stiles’s quarter of a century meant to her career.
How many pilgrimages can find that karma in their “make believe ballroom?”
A post World War2 odyssey playing until Danny Stiles’s exit two days ago.
VI
Transcending the marketplace .not from age 13 but from the time his fans responded to his Saturday night art deco studio and its high mahogany door. Emulating the “Inner Sanctum creaking door and “the make believe ballroom”
Playing his “oldies”... finding his listeners.
An incarnation of “to know is no less to feel”
May his legacy of spinning “oldies” endure forever. To make us more sensitive while the planet
“shakes and bakes”.
Man against nature. Man against man. Wherever conflict and antagonism are playing out their desperate shocks, Danny Stiiles will endure.
“Goodnight dear sweet Barbara,” (his wife) ,the mahogany door closing at his art deco penthouse .
March 14r, 2010. Lower Manhattan’s “make believe ballroom”
