Baby Face George - RADIO AIRCHECK - WNIB - 1984 - Tape 12

Описание: This aircheck was one of many, recorded by me, in the 1980s and 1990s, off the radio. I prepared a hand-written list to each aircheck, that sat on the outside of a cassette tape, with dates and times and titles and artists.

Baby Face George (Anderson) had an oldies radio program in the early to late 1980s in Chicago. WNIB-FM 91 sold time to djs, late night on weekends. Friday and Saturday nights featured Mr. A from 10PM to midnight, Baby Face George from midnight to 2AM, and then Big Bill Collins All Night Blues Show “til the big hour of 5”! DJs recruited and wrote their own ads, featuring local barbeque restaurants, bakeries, car washes and the like.

George moved to Chicago’s South Side when young, from his birthplace in Holly Springs, Mississippi. He got a job as a sheriff for Chicago’s Cook County and worked many years as a uniformed guide and peacemaker on the main floor lobby of Chicago’s City Hall/County Building, the Blues Brothers’ final destination. George was a very dark-skinned black man, average size with some arm muscles. His hair was turning just slightly gray. He wore rimless glasses and was perpetually grinning and in good humor when working the lobby. His eyes twinkled and he “wore” a toothpick in the side of his mouth that bounced when he spoke. He knew every female county worker by name, and greeted them with great affection, especially the black women, as they came and went to their offices.

I started taping George’s shows in 1983. Then I met him in a strange coincidence. In 1984, I was working for Cook County, judging property tax appeals, and we had a big backlog of cases to work. A female work colleague and I decided we would work together, judging cases, one night until midnight, just to cut down the pile of case files awaiting us. I brought my Walkman, headphones and a Baby Face George tape. I was listening and working until we heard a clunk outside our lighted office in the rest of the darkened County office. We heard voices. Two blue-uniformed sheriff’s deputies turned the corner and shined flashlights on us, although our office was brightly lit. “What’s goin’ on in here?” asked the black man. We showed IDs and said we were working late, but the black man’s voice sounded so familiar! I said “You wouldn’t happen to be Baby Face George, the DJ, would you?” George’s mouthed dropped. “Well, yeah!” he said. “I tape all your shows!” I said. “In fact, I’m listening to one now! Listen!” I handed him the earpieces, he put them on and listened to himself. “See, George, everybody loves you!”, his partner Tony laughed. George handed me the earpieces and just shook his head. “Man, this didn’t really happen. No. No way.” He kept shaking his head and looking back at me as they left.

A couple days later he stopped me in the lobby, and told his partner (not Tony) about our chance encounter. “Yeah, he was working up there, he and his woman was just working late, right!” He and his friend laughed. I said she was a work colleague and we were just friends, which prompted more disbelieving laughter. Then he asked me how many tapes I had. I told him about 30. By request, I made him copies of each cassette over the next several weeks. He worked that County lobby into the 1990s, then I lost track of him and can find no references to him or his family on the internet or in phone books. I would guess his birth year to be around 1940.