Bob Fass: From Midnight To Exhaustion

One night in early 1966, I fell asleep as usual with my radio on...

Bob Fass was a true radio genius.  He was on WBAI in NYC, a listener sponsored network.  His show ran from midnight to exhaustion which meant whenever he felt like signing off he did.  He would never announce a song, but somehow you knew what he played.  It was true late night radio and he would do these incredible sound collages.  I listened to him from sometime in 1965 until I moved back to Philly religiously.  He would for instance during the height of Vietnam play a Johnson speech and during it you'd hear bombs dropping, storm troopers marching and so on.  Virtually every musician around at the time with the exception of the Stones and the Beatles and the Kinks appeared on his show.  You never knew what was going to happen until you tuned in. 

One night in early 1966, I fell asleep as usual with my radio on.  It was during midyear exams.  I awoke at 3:30 in the morning to hear Fass saying, no, plug it in there Bob.  Dylan just after either recording or mixing One Of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later) had stopped by with Kooper and Robbie and other people, all using fake names.  As soon as I reached consciousness, I leapt out of bed, ran into my brothers room (midyears be damned - I knew what was important) and said get up, Dylan's on BAI.  He took phone calls from highly political up all night New Yorkers for an hour!  It was very, very funny.  And remember this was when he was a huge rock and roll star.

Fass, a friend of Dylan's also had lots of unreleased stuff which he'd play long before bootlegs, like Percy's Song and I'll Keep It With Mine. 

One night Jerry Jeff Walker, then basically unknown came up to the studio with the also unknown David Bromberg.  They sang Mr. Bojangles.  It remains THE version.  When Walker finally got signed and recorded the song two years later, the version with strings, New Yorkers were aghast, so much so that Walker put the Fass version on his next album, Five Years Gone.  That one little recording pretty much made David Bromberg.  Another night, Arlo Guthrie came up with some guy named Geoff Outlaw and recorded Alice's Restaurant.  Again THE version, long before and way better than the eventual recorded version.  It might have been that same night, he also recorded another version of the song Rainbow Roach Massacre.  The kind of roach you rolled.  :)

The list on people who appeared on the show is endless, the Mothers, the Fugs, the Incredible String Band, jazz musicians, Ochs.  All the songwriters.  Endless. 

Fass had this soothing quiet voice and would address his audience as the Cabal.  Occasionally he'd organize this fun freak events.  And just say wouldn't it be nice if everyone went out to the International Arrivals at JFK and welcome arrivals.  And hundreds maybe a couple of thousand would show up.  It was the Fly In at JFK.  Another one happened at Grand Central and there was the Sweep In of the Lower East Side. 

If someone got busted, someone would call up and Fass would say maybe someone should go down to whatever precinct it was and bail this guy out. I remember one night Jose Feliciano did this hysterical immitation of Walter Brennan doing Girl From The North Country.

It was also highly political.  One night I heard Emmet Grogan of the Diggers talking about what was happening in San Francisco.  This was months before the summer of love.  Abbie Hoffman and all kinds of people were frequent guests.  The entire Chicago protests of '68 were pretty much planned live on the air on Fass' show! 

So that's who Bob Fass was.