Daniel Trombley Ingram (September 7, 1934 – June 24, 2018) was an American Top 40 radio

disc jockey A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include Radio personality, radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music f ...

with a 50-year career on radio stations such as WABC and

WCBS-FM WCBS-FM (101.1 FM) is a radio station offering a classic hits format licensed to New York City and is owned and operated by Audacy, Inc. The station's studios are in the combined Audacy facility in the Hudson Square neighborhood in lower M ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

Career

"Big Dan" started broadcasting at WHCH Hofstra College, Hempstead;

WNRC WNRC-LP (97.5 FM) is a radio station licensed to serve Dudley, Massachusetts. The station is owned by Nichols College. It airs a college radio format, 24/7 in stereo. The station was assigned the WNRC-LP call letters by the Federal Communication ...

, New Rochelle; and

WALK-FM WALK-FM (97.5 FM) is a hot adult contemporary radio station licensed to Patchogue, New York, and serving Long Island. The station is owned by Connoisseur Media, with studios and offices located at Airport Plaza in Farmingdale, New York and it ...

, Patchogue, all in New York State. Ingram was one of the most highly regarded DJs from his era. He was noted for his quick wit and ability to convey a humorous or satiric idea with fast pacing and an economy of words, a skill that rendered him uniquely suited to, and successful within, modern personality-driven music radio. He was among the most frequently emulated radio personalities, cited as an influence or inspiration by numerous current broadcasters. One of Ingram's unique skills was his ability to "talk up" to the lyrics of a record, meaning speaking over the musical introduction and finishing exactly at the point when the lyrics started. Ingram was well known for playing doctored versions of popular songs. The

Paul McCartney and Wings Wings were a British-American rock band formed in 1971 by former Beatle bassist Paul McCartney, his wife Linda McCartney on keyboards, session drummer Denny Seiwell, and former Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine. Wings were noted for thei ...

lyrics "My Love Does it Good" from " My Love" became "My Glove Does it Good". The stuttering title refrain of

Elton John Sir Elton Hercules John (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight; 25 March 1947) is a British singer, pianist and composer. Commonly nicknamed the "Rocket Man" after his 1972 hit single of the same name, John has led a commercially successful career a ...

's " Bennie and the Jets" went from three or four repetitions to countless. In the same vein, the distinctive refrain added to " Hooked on a Feeling" by Blue Swede, "Ooga-chucka-ooga-ooga" would start repeating and listeners would never know when it would end. Paul Simon's "

50 Ways to Leave Your Lover "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Paul Simon. It was the second single from his fourth studio album, '' Still Crazy After All These Years'' (1975), released on Columbia Records. Backing vocals on the sing ...

" became "50 Ways to Love Your Leaver" and "49 Ways to Relieve Your Liver", and Ingram "rearranged" the spelling of "S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y" on the Bay City Rollers' "

Saturday Night Saturday Night may refer to: Film, television and theatre Film * ''Saturday Night'' (1922 film), a 1922 film directed by Cecil B. DeMille * ''Saturday Nights'' (film), a 1933 Swedish film directed by Schamyl Bauman * ''Saturday Night'' (1950 fil ...

". He had a daily "Honor Group of the Day" (for example, cops on the beat), and a "Word of the Day" (such as humdinger). His longtime closing theme song was "Tri-Fi Drums" by Billy May. An edited version of the song was used for broadcast.

TV commercials A television advertisement (also called a television commercial, TV commercial, commercial, spot, television spot, TV spot, advert, television advert, TV advert, television ad, TV ad or simply an ad) is a span of television programming produce ...

Ingram narrated include a 1970 promo for free cut-out records of Archies songs on the backs of Post

Honeycomb A honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal prismatic wax cells built by honey bees in their nests to contain their larvae and stores of honey and pollen. Beekeepers may remove the entire honeycomb to harvest honey. Honey bees consume about of honey t ...

and

Alpha-Bits Alpha-Bits, also known as Frosted Alpha-Bits, was a brand of breakfast cereal made by Post Consumer Brands, which contained frosted alphabet-shaped multi-grain (whole-grain oat and corn flour) cereal bits. Post Cereals also started producing "Mar ...

cereals. Ingram also worked for cable channel HBO in the mid-1980s, mostly as the off-camera host of ''HBO Coming Attractions'' (a monthly show featuring previews of HBO's upcoming programming; occasionally he would co-host with another HBO voice, Joyce Gordon) and various voiceover roles, though he did occasionally appear on camera in early 1986 as part of the ''HBO Weekend'' interstitials of the time. Ingram was also featured prominently in his son Chris's book, ''Hey Kemosabe! The Days (and Nights) of a Radio Idyll'', a fictionalized account of the Musicradio WABC era.

On air history

* 1958: WICC, Bridgeport, Connecticut (under the name Rae Tayler) * 1958: WNHC,

New Haven, Connecticut New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,023 ...

* 1959: KBOX,

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

, Texas * 1959-1960: WIL, St. Louis, Missouri * July 3, 1961-May 10, 1982: WABC,

. He and Ron Lundy were on-air as the station switched to TalkRadio. * April 1984-December 1986: Hosted CBS Radio's ''Top 40 Satellite Survey'' (aired on 118 stations across the United States as of March 1985). * 1984-June 1985: WKTU (92.3 FM), New York City * 1986-1987: announcer for ''

Nightlife Nightlife is a collective term for entertainment that is available and generally more popular from the late evening into the early hours of the morning. It includes pubs, bars, nightclubs, parties, live music, concerts, cabarets, theatre, ...

'', a late-night TV talk show hosted by David Brenner * 1987-1988: ''The Weekend Music Review'', a weekly Adult Contemporary radio program that counted down the top 20 AC records today, and highlighted what was going on 20, 15, 10, and 1 yr ago that weekend. JAM Creative Productions, Dallas produced and syndicated from 1987 to 1988. Julie Sizemore handled affiliate relations. Dan Ingram was host of "The Weekend Music Review" 3 hour AC show. * October 1991-June 2003, September 16, 2007: New York Radio Greats on

, New York City * June 1998: KRTH,

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the wor ...

. One week as "guest DJ," ostensibly a tryout for the morning drive spot previously held by Robert W. Morgan, who had died a month earlier. The job went to Charlie Van Dyke. * February 8, 2004: Fab-40th Weekend on WAXQ, New York

Personal life

Ingram had been diagnosed with

Parkinsonian syndrome Parkinsonism is a clinical syndrome characterized by tremor, bradykinesia (slowed movements), rigidity, and postural instability. These are the four motor symptoms found in Parkinson's disease (PD), after which it is named, dementia with Lewy bo ...

in 2014, and died after choking while eating. Upon his death, Ingram was survived by his wife, Maureen Donnelly. He also had five sons (Christopher, Daniel, David, Robert, and Phillip), four daughters (Patricia, Michelle, Christina, and Jacqueline), two stepdaughters (Laura and Linda), 26 grandchildren, and 12 great-grandchildren. His brother was

John W. Ingram John W. Ingram (April 6, 1929 – January 27, 2008) was the President of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad in its final years, from 1974 to 1979. Career Ingram was Federal Railroad Administration(FRA) Administrator from 1971 to 1 ...

, who was the final president of the

Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad (CRI&P RW, sometimes called ''Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway'') was an American Class I railroad. It was also known as the Rock Island Line, or, in its final years, The Rock. At the end ...

when the company went bankrupt on March 31, 1980.

References

External links

Musicradio77.com

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ingram, Dan 1934 births 2018 deaths American radio DJs Radio personalities from New York City Hofstra University alumni People from Oceanside, New York Deaths from dementia in Florida