He had an imaginary crew and offered in-flight movies (he once announced "Exodus" and listed as its stars some DJs who'd left KYA). At 4 AM, he had imaginary flight attendants handing out "after-crash mints."
It started during a period when an AM alarm clock was the height of teenage cool. To sneak in late listening, kids kept transistor radios under their pillows. They were rewarded by antics such as Mr. Syracuse suddenly deciding he was sick of an overplayed hit - say, "Stop! In the Name of Love" - and bomb it with sound-and-voice effects until the music came to a screeching halt. The record would just die, and he'd laugh and go on to the next thing...
Russ at KYA on May 24, 1964. [ LISTEN ] (12:50)
Syracuse, a native of Rochester, New York, loved little rhyming quotes like "a terse curse from your grandfather's hearse." He helped pen the true beginnings of free-form radio.
The date is July 13, 1965 and Russ is playing records on KYA. [ LISTEN ]
The aircheck is scoped but contains more zany Russ at the mic. This is classic KYA in the mid-60's. (19:55)
And another show from KYA with no specific date that aired some time during 1965, [ LISTEN ] (12:55) that finds Russ being his normal banty self!
In a lilting, laughing voice, he got away with sayings like, "May the bird of paradise eat your face." And he gleefully attacked sponsors. His biggest advertiser was Mayfair supermarkets, which used a jingle sung by "Bob and Penny Mayfair." One night, The Moose bombed the bouncy couple.
A gifted singer, he imitated a trumpet and tooted along with Bert Kaempfert songs. When he read or heard something he didn't quite get, he'd quick-glide into a falsetto "whaaat?" that fans soon adapted into their daily lives.
A DJ at another station told Russ that when he turned his radio on at 2 AM everything was bland. But when he hit Moose's show, and it was like "punching into a circus".
All this was before FM and "underground radio." In fact, long before Tom Donahue hooked up with KMPX Russ was a hero of what came to be known as the counterculture. When some radio people discuss the true beginnings of free-form radio, they talk about the Moose.
But he wasn't what a lot of people thought he was. When psychedelia took hold, Mr. Syracuse developed a spacey voice that was so convincing, he was hired as the emcee for the first Family Dog, the hippie commune turned production company, dance concert at San Francisco's Longshoremen's Hall in 1965. Family Dog assumed he was part of the drug culture. But he was a straight family man that "got high on pizza, hamburgers and chocolate milk."
Mr. Syracuse was born and raised in Rochester, N.Y. He became a schoolteacher and served in the Navy during the Korean War. He started in radio in Syracuse in 1956, then moved to WKBW, a Top 40 station in Buffalo. One day he was late and barged into the studio half-dressed. A co-worker said he arrived with all the grace of a moose.
The Moose is loose at WKBW in 1962.The graveyard shift, Syracuse said, “was always regarded as a prison. And I figured, if I’m already in prison, they can’t do anything more to me, so I’ll do whatever I feel like doing. … In Top 40, you have no creativity whatsoever. As soon as I got on the all-night show, it was like letting a wild lion out of a cage … and that’s when I had the fun.”
And once there, Syracuse went wild, concocting odd contests and characters, and, two years before "The Dating Game" premiered on television, he was conducting "The Love Line" over the phones at KYA, interviewing singles (typical question: "How do you like your steak done?") and connecting them with others. "There was one couple who met on 'The Love Line' at KYA, got engaged when I went to KNBR, and got married in the studio here at KSFO," he recalled.
Syracuse fit perfectly with Top 40. He could talk a record up and hit the post with his ears closed, and he worked the phones with the best of them. But he also slid easily into other formats, making adjustments to his shtick as necessary, and shrugging off the uncertainties of the business.
In 1986, he looked back at 24 years in San Francisco. He'd worked at KYA four different times, at KSFO three times, at KFRC twice, just before and just after its peak Top 40 years, and at four other stations.
Russ and Tom Saunders on KUSF’s Jive Radio, as part of the continuing “Jive Radio” series on San Francisco’s KUSF (90.3 FM), host Ben Fong-Torres welcomes in Russ and Tom to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their arrival at KYA. [ LISTEN ] (12:30)
The company-issued biography from 1260 KYA, detailing the career history of popular disc jockey Russ "The Moose" Syracuse, was included in the station's sales and marketing packets in 1982. KYA and sister station KLHT ("K-Lite 93 FM") were owned by King Broadcasting at the time.
Syracuse died on April 18, 2000. He was elected to the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame in 2008.
Russ The Moose: A Retrospective. [ LISTEN ] (13:19)
Produced by Bobby Ocean, John Catchings and Ben Fong-Torres to commemorate the life and career of a radio legend. Includes recordings of Russ on WKBW/Buffalo, as well as Bay Area snippets from his stops at KYA, KFRC (as “Frisco Radio” and “Magic 61”), KSFO, KNBR and KMPX (“Big Band 99”).
WHERE DID RUSS WORK? Here is the list: WNDR, WKBW, KYA, KFRC, KNBR, KSFO, KMPX, and KFRC.
Some materials found on this page were originally published by the following: SFGATE, Bay Area Radio Museum.
