Charlie Boone: Part of the Radio Neighborhood

English: WCCO Radio Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Charlie Boone, who died over the weekend at age 88, was part of an Upper Midwest radio powerhouse that had its best years from the 1960s to the 1980s.  No other station could match what WCCO-AM 830 was doing then with its mix of news, personalities and entertainment.

Boone came to WCCO in 1959 when it was transitioning out of its dependence on CBS Radio network programming, then retiring in 2010 as a Saturday-morning host on what became a CBS-owned news-talk station.  Thirty-seven of those years in between were spent in an on-air partnership with Roger Erickson.

As "Boone & Erickson", they spent many a morning interviewing guests, reading school closings during winter storms, and updating folks on whatever else was happening.  They were also well known for spoofing some of those personalities and events in segments such as "World Wide News", "Minnesota Hospital" and "Worst Jokes".  Boone often played the straight man to Erickson's characters, but sometimes contributed some of his own voices in the skits.  Boone also had a long-running late-afternoon feature called "Point of Law", in which he described the details of a court case and the sometimes-unusual verdicts.

The partnership extended onto the Old Log Theater stage in Excelsior, where they performed in Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple".

WCCO was the kind of station that mostly avoided rock and roll music in those days, so it might surprise some of you to learn that Boone was a Top 40 DJ in Fargo before moving to the Twin Cities.  As legend (and the Minneapolis Star Tribune) tells it, Boone was the one who enlisted a 15-year old Bobby Vee (then known as Robert Velline) and his band The Shadows to play a show on a February night in 1959.  Vee and The Shadows were the emergency replacement for Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper.  They all perished when their plane crashed into a cornfield outside Clear Lake, Iowa.  From there, Vee went on to have a big music career of his own.

Morning radio in the Twin Cities and elsewhere has a harder edge now than it did when Boone and Erickson ruled the local airwaves, singing the closing line of the "Good Morning" song shortly after the 6 a.m. news to begin another day.  When they sang "it's grand to be on hand", they meant it.  This is why people in Minnesota and elsewhere have fond memories of the Good Neighbor to the Northwest.  And of Charlie Boone.