"SuperJock" & KJR/WLS Legend Larry Lujack Passes

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"SuperJock" & KJR/WLS Legend Larry Lujack Passes

Postby LITTLERIC » Wed Dec 18, 2013 9:04 pm

Original Title: KJR & WLS Legend Larry Lujack Passes

We lost Uncle Lar' today (12/18/2013) to a battle with cancer.
As many know, he left quite an impression as evening jock @ KJR in the early 60's, and achieved significant fame at ABC's WLS, later WCFL and WLS again.
He has been living in New Mexico for several years.
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Re: KJR & WLS Legend Larry Lujack Passes

Postby jon » Wed Dec 18, 2013 10:30 pm

Long out of print, Larry's autobiography Superjock is a great read.

Image

He was actually at KJR until late 1966 or early 1967 before departing for points East, including a legendary brief stint at Boston's WMEX as Johnny Lujack. That name is significant, as that is name of the football player that inspired Larry's "Lujack" air name. Fairly early on, he legally changed his name to Lujack. He was born Larry Lee Blankenburg in a small town of 400 people in Iowa in 1940.

I'm hard pressed to name anyone who listened to KJR during Larry's tenure there who doesn't still remember him. Rightly so, hiring Larry is one of Pat O'Day's proudest accomplishments.

In Chicago, I always respected the way he tried, on air, to encourage his young listeners not to run away from home and come to Chicago.
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Re: KJR & WLS Legend Larry Lujack Passes

Postby radiofan » Wed Dec 18, 2013 10:40 pm

From All Access: According to FEDER, "his wife told the TRIBUNE late WEDNESDAY. JUDITH 'JUDE' LUJACK said her husband had been in hospice care for three days and died of esophageal cancer."

We lost Lan Roberts to cancer in December of '05 ... now Lar (at 73). There's not many of the "All Americans" left.
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Re: KJR & WLS Legend Larry Lujack Passes

Postby Bongwater » Thu Dec 19, 2013 9:31 am

Very heartbroken and sad to hear this news.

RIP Superjock.....

(The radio dial of the hereafter must be amazing....)
If you're happy and you know it, share your meds.....
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Re: KJR & WLS Legend Larry Lujack Passes

Postby jon » Thu Dec 19, 2013 9:45 am

Larry had a way of coming up with funny sayings that, as you thought about it, or grew up a bit, you realized were truisms.

One I had to be reminded of yesterday: to choose between two companies for your next job, check out the washrooms. Go with the one with the cleanest washrooms.
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"SuperJock" Larry Lujack passes

Postby pave » Thu Dec 19, 2013 12:39 pm

I have been impressed by a lot of on-air guys over the years, and I mean: A lot.
Lujack was the only one I admired.
http://www.radioink.com/Article.asp?id= ... spid=24698
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Re: "SuperJock" Larry Lujack passes

Postby skyvalleyradio » Thu Dec 19, 2013 1:06 pm

lots of great memories listening to Larry on KJR Channel 95 as a kid and what an inspiration. See ya "Superjock" :rockon:
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Re: "SuperJock" & KJR/WLS Legend Larry Lujack Passes

Postby radiofan » Thu Dec 19, 2013 9:56 pm

Thanks to Larry "Firedog" Morton, we have a July 1966 aircheck of Larry Lujack at KJR ...

Larry Lujack at KJR July 1966
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New York Times treatment for Larry Lujack

Postby jon » Wed Dec 25, 2013 5:14 pm

Larry Lujack, a Cranky Radio Voice That Carried, Dies at 73
By MARGALIT FOX
New York Times
Published: December 23, 2013

Larry Lujack, a Chicago disc jockey who nearly half a century ago replaced the unctuous ooze that defined his calling with a crusty cantankerousness that influenced present-day radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern, died on Wednesday at his home in Santa Fe, N.M. He was 73.

The cause was esophageal cancer, his wife, Judith, told The Associated Press.

Before Mr. Lujack hit the Chicago airwaves in 1967, Top 40 D.J.s were known for rapid-fire patter, velvet sonorities and inexhaustible cheer. Mr. Lujack was laconic, sandpapery and curmudgeonly — and, to judge from the one million listeners he garnered at his height, delightfully so.

In 2000, The Chicago Sun-Times called him (approvingly) “a crabby coot dropping PG-rated acid bombs at a snail’s pace.”

First at WCFL-AM and later at WLS-AM, a clear-channel station that could be heard far beyond Chicago, Mr. Lujack — known on the air as Uncle Lar’ or Superjock — spent 20 years spinning records and spouting opinions.

Frequent targets of his opprobrium included the very albums he was playing, the very stations he was working for and various rival D.J.s. (Mr. Lujack once stormed a competitor’s show and threatened, on the air, to ram the man’s head through a wall.)

He became famous for regular features including “Klunk Letter of the Day” and “Cheap and Trashy Showbiz Report.” His best-known feature, done in collaboration with his longtime on-air partner Tommy Edwards (“Li’l Snot-Nose Tommy,” Mr. Lujack fondly called him), was “Animal Stories.”

Growing directly from the farm reports Mr. Lujack had to give early in his career, the feature involved his reading comic news reports about animals — among them the tale of a chicken who lived on despite having parted company with his head days before — to an astonished Mr. Edwards.

“Animal Stories” prefigured the “Stupid Pet Tricks” television segments of David Letterman, on whom Mr. Lujack was an acknowledged influence.

Mr. Lujack’s style, which also included strategic pauses, audible paper-shuffling and grandiloquent references to himself in the third person, demonstrably shaped that of Mr. Limbaugh, who in 1990 told The New York Times Magazine that Mr. Lujack was “the only person I ever copied.”

That influence by all accounts made Mr. Lujack even crankier. “His appeal escapes me,” he once said of Mr. Limbaugh.

Larry Lee Blankenburg was born in 1940 in Quasqueton, Iowa, and reared in Caldwell, Idaho. At 18 he joined KCID-AM in Caldwell, adopting the surname of his idol, the Chicago Bears quarterback Johnny Lujack.

After working at stations in Idaho and Washington State, Mr. Lujack joined WCFL in 1967 and moved to WLS four months later. Except for a four-year stint back at WCFL, he remained with WLS for the next two decades.

In 1984 WLS gave Mr. Lujack a 12-year, $6 million contract, making him one of the country’s highest-paid radio personalities. (“I am not the least bit excited,” he was reported to have said.) But in 1987, amid declining ratings, the station’s corporate parent, Capital Cities-ABC, bought out his contract.

Mr. Lujack’s marriage to his first wife, Gina, ended in divorce; a son from that marriage, John, died in 1986. His survivors, The AP reported, include his second wife, the former Judith Seguin; two children from his first marriage, Anthony Lujack and Linda Lujack-Shirley; a stepson, Taber Seguin; and two grandchildren.

His honors include membership in the Illinois Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame (“It’s not Mount Rushmore,” he said on learning of his induction) and the National Radio Hall of Fame.

Broadcasting from Santa Fe, Mr. Lujack made occasional comebacks on Chicago radio in recent years. But on balance, he said, he was relieved to be retired.

“I did rock ’n’ roll radio for 30 years,” he told The Sun-Times in 2008. “It got to the point if I had to play ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’ one more time, I was gonna puke.”
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Re: "SuperJock" & KJR/WLS Legend Larry Lujack Passes

Postby Mike Cleaver » Wed Dec 25, 2013 8:05 pm

Good thing he wasn't legislated to play "Seasons in the Sun," the world's greatest lunch loser.
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Re: "SuperJock" & KJR/WLS Legend Larry Lujack Passes

Postby jon » Thu Dec 26, 2013 10:13 am

At first, I was going to wonder out loud why the New York Times would write about Larry, especially "at length", by asking the rhetorical question: "How many people in New York City who read the New York Times have even heard the name 'Larry Lujack', let alone have listened to him on the Radio?"

Then I realized that the New York Times still takes one of its mandates fairly seriously: to bring new and interesting information to its readership.

Now the (publishing of the) article makes sense.
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Re: "SuperJock" & KJR/WLS Legend Larry Lujack Passes

Postby Neumann Sennheiser » Thu Dec 26, 2013 10:32 am

Of course, The New York Times, being the printed record and voice of the "center of the universe" waited five days to report on something that happened in America's "second city".
"You don't know man! I was in radio man! I've seen things you wouldn't believe!"
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Re: "SuperJock" & KJR/WLS Legend Larry Lujack Passes

Postby jon » Wed Jan 22, 2014 1:31 pm

Neumann Sennheiser wrote:Of course, The New York Times, being the printed record and voice of the "center of the universe" waited five days to report on something that happened in America's "second city".

"Lives Lived" and similarly titled lengthy obits in "big newspapers" like the Globe & Mail typically take up to 3 weeks to get published, simply because they hire a decent author and give him/her the time to actually research fully. For example, Max Ferguson's death saw one of the Toronto newspapers think about who would be a good freelancer to write it, and then the freelancer actually went out and found Max's out of print autobiography, read it from cover to cover and added material from other sources, too.

Just stumbled upon a short piece by our own Tom Jeffries from 1997 on Larry Lujack. It was addressed to Richard Irwin on reelradio.com's comments section for a Larry WCFL 1973 aircheck:
From: Tom Jeffries KISS FM Vancouver Wednesday, March 5, 1997 at 20:47:05

Ricky: MAN....does this bring back memories. I was toiling on the CAMPUS CLUB for COCA COLA on CFRA in Ottawa...while the Lar was plying Chicago. I would sit with my buds and we would listen to CFL fading in and out....and then we would try and catch WLS. Those cold winter nights made bearable...
I would LOVE to get a hold of JOHN RECORDS LANDEKER checks......any vibes on him.

Bless yer heart Rick....man...I will be back...with some airchex for you.

Jeffries

ref. - http://reelradio.com/comment/comment.cg ... ml#llcfl73
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