Steve Cannon: Anything But Mundane

In the sea of mediocrity that was (and still is) radio in the Twin Cities, Steve Cannon (with a little help from Morgan Mundane, Ma Linger and Backlash La Rue) stood out as an island of originality.

Cannon, who died at his Minneapolis home Monday at 81, had been on WCCO radio for 26 years (ending in 1997), running one of the most successful afternoon-drive shows in the country. Given 'CCO's reputation for blandness, it's a wonder how the station and Cannon put up with each other for so long. He was named to the Minnesota Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2002 and, according to Neal Justin of the Star Tribune, was rewarded with two plaques: one for himself, and the other for his characters.

Of the "Little Cannons", Morgan Mundane sounded like a Damon Runyon-type who usually called it right on his sports predictions, Ma Linger fancied herself as a sex symbol of a certain age, and Backlash La Rue (though his sexual preference was never spelled out) was an effeminate-sounding bon vivant.

Cannon spent several years after leaving his native Eveleth bouncing around the Upper Midwest in radio and TV jobs (he was "Wrangler Steve", an early-TV kids show host on Channel 11), and a stint at KGO in San Francisco before landing at KSTP-AM radio (which he referred to as the "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"). There he lasted for 13 years before being dropped by the station in the early 1970s. Fan reaction prompted WCCO to take on Cannon a few weeks later.

Cannon did his show from what he called the "basement studio", usually alone, so no one could see him change into his characters. Oh, station management tried to pair him off with someone else, most notably Ruth Koscielak. None of those attempts worked.

There are darn few individualists of Cannon's ilk working anywhere in radio these days. One of them is T.D. Mischke, who is currently plying his trade at citypages.com after getting fired by KSTP-AM, which meant that he and Cannon had something in common.

I've made no secret of my disdain for the way WCCO became nothing more than a 24-hour sandwich board with shows to fill in the gaps. But Steve Cannon was the only reason, besides news, sports and weather coverage, why listening to WCCO was a worthwhile experience. Is there anything like that now?
-----------------------

For those of you who miss hearing Cannon's voice, or if you're just curious, there is an excellent collection of airchecks from his years in Twin Cities radio.  It's on RadioTapes.com (http://radiotapes.com/) , and they have just added material from Cannon's early years at WLOL (where he was a Top 40 deejay, which is hard to believe) and KSTP-AM, as well as from WCCO.  Stick with the site, and you'll find many more airchecks from Twin Cities radio of the past to historic broadcasts of major news events.