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Do you remember Mario? Well, sure, it's been 35 years now, but Mario was such a character. And didn't he keep you coming back to the same market, month after month? Didn't the months turn into years? Could you ever really forget him? Mario the produce man. If Mario put a cantaloupe or green pepper out for sale, it was better than good. It was fit for the president or the pope. And you wanted it for your family's table. Mario could spiral slice a Golden Delicious apple right before your eyes with only his paring knife and unbelievably nimble fingers. At the same time, he'd have you in stitches with an impromptu tale about how he became a fruit and veggie man. True, Mario's name may really have been Stanley or Jack. No matter. He was at the top of his game, what we today would call a 'people person'. And as the store manager knew so very well, this guy could sell asparagus and broccoli all day long, every day to a confirmed vegetable hater.

In the zany 1960s, your favorite big time radio station had it's very own Mario on staff. Maybe you recall listening to WLS, WABC or KRLA. Or was it KOMA? Perhaps WCFL? Stations of this impact had a secret weapon that all but impossible to conceal. This person was sometimes loosely known as a 'produce man'. He was a key ingredient in the mix that went into crafting the station's on air image.

This was a broadcaster hand-picked by management because he had:

1) A voice or 'pipes' perhaps even better than any of the regular personalities, and distinct from everyone else on the air.

2) Prov-en ability to amaze, mystify and dazzle with his editing of tape at 15 IPS using a single edge razor blade.

3) The savvy to write and whip up demo commercials that a station sales rep could take out for a 'one call close'.

In the top 10 radio markets back then, there must have been 3 times that many world class production directors. To name only 2 is to slight none of the others. We are talking about studio producers of such talent that their peers and their bosses considered them geniuses. If God had a human voice, it would be tough to distinguish from that of Richard Ward Fatherly. The latter, a prime mover who drove KXOK to undisputed dominance of the St. Louis market in the mid 60s. My other personal favorite is one Bruce Miller, WXYZ's theatrical-sounding produce man, imported to Detroit beginning in 1964. Miller's in retirement today and we'd love to know where. Both stations would have been sadly lacking something in the stew, absent their production studio mavens.

Wasn't it ironic? The voice that was purposely never identified on the air was the same one so many of us came to recognize as the very spirit and soul of the station. Whose voice was that? Well, it was your favorite produce man.

Learn more about this author, Jay Bacchus.
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