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Legacy Inductees/1:
 | Lester Arthur Benson
Lester Arthur “Eddie” Benson was literally a part of the radio business in St. Louis at its inception.
In 1920 he was commissioned by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to build a transmitter at its downtown headquarters. In 1922, KSD, the city’s first commercial station, began its experimental broadcasts with this transmitter.
But he had preceded that accomplishment on November 6, 1920, when he personally broadcast the results of the Harding-Cox presidential election, using a transmitter he had built in the basement of his home.
He was 20 years old, having entered Washington University to study electrical engineering at 16. His obituary in the local paper said he had first begun broadcasting from the basement of his home when he was only 14 years old.
He put his own station, WEB [later to be WIL] on the air in 1922, eventually running it from his radio store. Two years later he built a transmitter for KFVE [which later became KWK].
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 | Buddy Blattner
Buddy Blattner made a very big impression on basketball fans with his play-by-play work for the St. Louis Hawks professional basketball team, but he had begun his broadcasting career in the late 1940s and did 26 years of baseball broadcasts. He covered the St. Louis Browns and Cardinals, the Kansas City Royals and California Angels.
He was also a television pioneer, having worked in the booth with Dizzy Dean in the early 1950s for the first 8 years of the nationally televised “Baseball Game of the Week.” He and Dean also paired for radio’s “Game of the Day,” and he did baseball recreations on the Gordon McLendon Radio Network.
Blattner was the lead announcer on the first 800 games for the St. Louis Hawks, becoming the first announcer to travel with his team and broadcast home and away games. He was twice elected to the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame and received the St. Louis Browns Historical Society Award for Distinguished Broadcasting in 1989.
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 | Nellie Booth
While Nellie Booth was working as an actress in St. Louis in 1937, a group of people in New York was organizing AFRA, the American Federation of Radio Artists (later to include television by becoming AFTRA). As the organizational activity spread west, Nellie was contacted by one of the people organizing the Chicago local.
She agreed to be one of the founders in St. Louis, and she and six other people organized the St. Louis AFRA. Nellie Booth became the first president and executive secretary in 1937, and she served as the executive director until the 1960s.
In 1968, Ms. Booth received the George Heller Memorial Award, AFTRA’s top honor. She had been recording secretary of the national office since 1937, and the St. Louis local of AFTRA established an annual award in her honor following her death.
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 | Robert BQ
Robert BQ (Burris) came to St. Louis from a radio job in Jacksonville, Florida.
He was the morning disc jockey at KATZ in 1964 when he was promoted to the job of program director. In that position he hired and supervised some of the station’s most popular personalities, gaining a national reputation for KATZ as a power in Black radio.
His radio career began at the short-lived WBBR in East St. Louis, where he worked as an engineer. It was that talent that led him to his later innovations in multiple track audio recordings, which he used to record some of the area’s most popular R&B groups.
He was the owner of a record store in East St. Louis and, along with his wife Shirley, he promoted local R & B concerts.
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Jack Buck
For several generations of baseball fans, Jack Buck’s voice was permanently linked to the St. Louis Cardinals. He came to St. Louis to be a play-by-play announcer for the team in 1954.
While working in the booth for the Redbirds, he held many more radio jobs. At KMOX, listeners heard him doing play-by-play for St. Louis Cardinals football, University of Missouri basketball and football, and, for a short time, St. Louis Blues hockey.
He also did Monday Night Football for CBS Radio and broadcast numerous Superbowls and World Series games. For several years in succession, he logged over 200,000 air miles annually. He is a member of the broadcast wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame and was given the Pete Rozell Award by the National Football League.
Jack Buck also established himself as a strong team member at KMOX. He was a disc jockey in the late 50s, and was the host of the first “At Your Service” program February 29, 1960. He hosted Christmas morning programs from his home every year, and, in the ultimate indication of community involvement, was known to host up to 250 civic and charitable events a year.
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 | Spider Burks
Spider Burks was one of St. Louis’ first black disc jockeys, and he is remembered as a champion of jazz. He had graduated from Hampton Institute and began working at KXLW here in 1947. During his stint at that station, which lasted until 1956, Spider became a huge moneymaker for the station and himself.
He got the job initially when a radio shop owner on Easton Avenue sponsored a half-hour block of time and used Spider as his disc jockey. Things went so well that the station hired him, and he would sell advertising to supplement his income.
He’d bring in his own records, and his two shows, “After School Swing Session” and “Down the Alley Behind My House” were huge favorites of the high school set. The record companies soon realized Spider Burks’ show could really “sell” their product.
Burks also worked as a disc jockey on KSTL, KADY/KADI-FM and KATZ, leaving the business in 1969.
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 | Harry Caray
Harry Caray (Carabina) hit town in 1944 as an announcer at the St. Louis Star radio station, KXOK. While his strength was in sports broadcasting, which he put to good use that year doing play-by-play for the Cardinals/Browns World Series, he was a jack-of-all-trades back at the station. Caray would write his own copy, conduct news interviews, and write and present editorials on the station, and he had a regular sports talk program as well.
It was said he sought a job at KMOX in 1943 by sending a personal letter to the home of the station’s general manager, Merle Jones, who granted him an interview and then told him to get some experience and come back.
He did his first game as a Cardinals’ announcer April 17, 1945. Years later, in 1955, Caray would be teamed in the Cardinals’ broadcast booth with Jack Buck and Joe Garagiola, and the three were heard throughout the Midwest over the vast Cardinals’ radio network.
Harry Caray’s colorful announcing and antics endeared him to radio fans, whom Caray felt were the people to whom he was responsible. When players became perturbed at his description of their work, Caray swore he was telling it the way he saw it.
After 25 years in the St. Louis broadcast booth, Harry Caray was given his walking papers by his employer, Anheuser-Busch.
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 | Jack Carney
Jack Carney is legendary for his KMOX morning program, both for his ability to entertain and for his live commercials. His time slot on the station varied over his career, but the common block was always 9 - noon, and he owned it.
Carney’s career began in 1951, taking him through small markets in Texas and New Mexico, and larger cities like Phoenix, Galveston, Milwaukee, Atlanta and Boston. He arrived in St. Louis in 1958 to work as a rock disc jockey on WIL.
Two years at that station, which rocketed to the top of the ratings, was all Carney needed to get a job offer from WABC, and he was off to New York. That was a bad move for Carney, who left after a few months and went off, in his words, to find himself.
After a West Coast stint, he was back in St. Louis in 1971 at KMOX, where he worked until his death in 1984.
Local broadcast critic Eric Mink, writing in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, said, “The effectiveness of Carney’s commercials was due to his mastery at weaving them into the fabric of his program. The two elements were so intimately intertwined that often it was impossible to tell where the program stopped and the commercial began.”
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 | Ed Ceries
Ed Ceries was a man who followed his dream. After working as an engineer for 20 years with the Pulitzer stations, KSD and KSD-TV, he invested his life savings and his considerable engineering efforts in building his own FM station, which he called KSHE.
He literally built some of the equipment himself, and on February 11, 1961, the station signed on from the basement of the Ceries’ home in suburban Crestwood. The station called itself “The Lady of FM,” and had a classical music format. For awhile, all the announcers were women.
Most of the basement was used for the station operations, with the Associated Press teletype installed next to the clothes washer. The record library room doubled as an administrative office where Mrs. Ceries also did her ironing.
Listener loyalty was strong. At times they would come to the station with copies of classical selections they thought were better than the ones being played on KSHE. Unfortunately for Ed Ceries, advertisers were not convinced FM radio, particularly classical music on FM radio, had much of an audience.
After a year-and-a-half, the format was adjusted to contain about 90% middle-of-the-road music and 10% classical, with nine daily news broadcasts. In 1964, the station was sold to Century Broadcasting.
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 | Leo Chears
Leo Chears was affectionately known to his listeners as “the man in the red vest,” a nickname given him by one of his main sponsors, Anheuser-Busch. They were looking for an identifying phrase, and Chears showed up at a client meeting wearing a vest he “didn’t even like because it was red,” he said. But they liked it, so he ended up filling his closet with the vests.
Chears’ name has always been associated with jazz on St. Louis radio, on WBBR, KADI, KSD, WMRY and WSIE, usually holding down a nighttime slot. As was the case in the 1960s, radio managers paid a pittance to many announcers, especially Negro announcers.
Chears held down a full-time job during the day in a lab at Barnes Hospital and then did a six-hour air shift at night.
When Leo Chears went to work for a radio station, management got more than just an announcer. He used his record library, which consisted of thousands of jazz albums, to supplement the station’s library.
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 | Bud Connell
Bud Connell’s name is not well-known among St. Louis radio listeners, but his influence was certainly felt. He came to KXOK in July 1961after working in other major markets. Storz Broadcasting brought him in to program its largest property, which was drawing only 4% of the market’s listeners.
Within three months he had changed the sound of KXOK with new announcers and a completely new image. By the time the November-December 1961 ratings were published, KXOK was tops in the market. In the mid-1960s, Pulse, Inc. placed KXOK in the top five stations in the country for its high ratings.
His influence was felt throughout the station, from his creation of the “Johnny Rabbitt” character popularized by deejay Don Pietromonaco, to his conception and organization of the station’s many contests and promotions. In 1966 the station was host for the Beatles’ concert at Busch Stadium.
It is a tribute to Connell that his staffers all credit him for the station’s success through the decade of the 60s.
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Mort Crowley
Mort Crowley spent 14 years in St. Louis radio with stops at KWK, KXOK, KSD, KMOX and KMOX-FM. As with many disc jockeys, he moved around a lot, working first in Philadelphia.
After his job at KWK in 1958, Crowley was on stations in Cleveland, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Detroit, Flint and Chicago before returning to St. Louis.
His on-air creativity and sometimes acerbic wit endeared him to many of his listeners as he zeroed in on newsmakers with lampooning and mimicry. He was on the air on all five stations but also served as program director, operations manager and morning drive announcer.
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 | Russ David
Russ David will always be associated with his long-running music show, “Playhouse Party,” which was heard on KSD for 16 years and WEW an additional 10 years.
But his career spanned much more. He worked briefly in the music department at KMOX and was a studio musician and program host on KSD prior to Playhouse Party. His live network music show on NBC originated from the KSD studios.
Russ attended the St. Louis University School of Commerce for a couple years at the insistence of his parents but then left to become a professional musician.
During his stint at KSD he hosted Alpen Brau Time, and he wrote all the scores and conducted the orchestra for the acclaimed Land We Live In program. He also served as music director for KSD even after most of the live music shows were dropped.
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 | Rex Davis
Rex Davis began his career in Cincinnati as Frank Zwygart (his real name), but management there awarded him the nom de air of Rex Davis, and that’s how he came to St. Louis in 1946. He was immediately thrown into action here as an aggressive newsman at KMOX.
His biggest success, in terms of ratings, came in 1974 when station manager Robert Hyland teamed Davis up with Bob Hardy for a two-person morning drive program called “Total Information AM,” a show that, during its peak, pulled a 33 average share of the listening audience.
He was the consummate newsman, felt by many listeners to be the true “Voice of St. Louis,” which was the motto associated with the station since its inception.
Davis also had a humorous side, which began to come out in 1973 with his regular appearances on the Jack Carney Show, another KMOX ratings phenomenon. Carney would regularly set up Davis, alternately giving him the punch lines or making him the target of jokes. Listeners responded with delight, hearing their authoritative newsman as a human being.
Rex Davis retired from KMOX in 1981.
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