I listen to Internet radio stations both near and far. One that isn’t too far from here is WATD-FM, based in Marshfield, MA.
The station’s call letters stand for “We’re At the Dump.” Its founder and owner is a gentleman named Ed Perry, who has some stories to tell.
This Perry anecdote reminds me very much of what happened to me on August 16, 1977.
“One Sunday morning in February 1959, I was playing rock and roll when the teletype started printing furiously from The Associated Press,” he recalled. “It was about the plane crash in Iowa that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. I read the news over the air, and the rest of the day I only played music from those three guys.”
I was freshly graduated from college and working as a DJ at a small AM radio station in Western Massachusetts, when the AP teletype started printing furiously. Elvis Presley was dead.
