Syracuse University alumnus and free-form radio pioneer Bob Fass is dead at 87.
The New York Times reports Fass died Saturday in Monroe, North Carolina. His wife Lynnie Tofte said he had been hospitalized with Covid-19 earlier this month but he died of congestive heart failure.
According to NPR, Fass was a popular voice of the 1960s counterculture scene, helping found the Yippies and hosting the influential radio show “Radio Unnameable” on New York’s non-commercial, listener-supported Pacifica Radio station WBAI-FM for more than 50 years. He featured interviews with Youth International Party activist Abbie Hoffman, poetry by Allen Ginsburg, and early performances by dozens of major folk artists like Bob Dylan, Richie Havens and Arlo Guthrie.
“I’d put anyone on, because the idea was if you didn’t like what I was doing, three minutes later I’d be doing something else,” Fass once said, according to the Times.
He began each broadcast with the greeting “Good morning, cabal!” — a reference to his “cabal” of “conspirators” who opposed the Vietnam War and marched for civil rights.
The show aired five nights a week for five hours, but did not follow a traditional format like Top 40 radio stations. He mixed records, tapes, live musicians and phone callers, sometimes several at the same time, and staged community events like a “fly-in,” where 3,000 loyal listeners showed up at JFK Airport in 1967 simply to greet people arriving after midnight.
Larry Josephson, another WBAI radio personality who followed in Fass’ footsteps, told NPR that Fass “more or less invented what we call live radio.”
“No structure, no script, all improvised. And there was nothing like Bob’s program on the radio at the time,” Josephson said.
Fass graduated from Syracuse University in 1955.
“The brothers of Tau Delta Phi at Syracuse University mourn the loss of our beloved frater,” an obituary notice said.
The Times reports Fass briefly pursued an acting career after college, appearing in the original Off Broadway production of “The Threepenny Opera” in the 1950s. But he fell in love with radio while serving in the Army, listening to a transistor radio in his bunk; his friend, poet Richard Elman, helped him get a a job as an announcer in the early 1960s. He eventually became the overnight host at WBAI from midnight to 5 a.m. and spent most of his career there.
According to NPR, Fass left New York in 2019 but continued doing a show from his home in North Carolina once a week.
A documentary about Fass, also called “Radio Unnameable,” was released in 2012.