I discovered the joys of Top 40 radio in 1970, and right out of the gate my favorite deejay was Jim Scott, the morning drive-time jock on Cincinnati's WSAI-AM. Scott was still relatively new in town at that point but had already become the # 1 deejay on the station. Soon enough he would be the # 1 deejay in town.
The cliché of a disc jockey is that the talk fast and they're loud but Jim was neither. He spoke quickly, I suppose, but not fast. He was always very precise. The reason Jim Scott became as popular as he did was...he was nice. Super-nice! It's literally what he was known for for more than half a century in this town.
Even rival disk jockeys liked Jim Scott.
Jim came to Cincinnati from a one year stint in Buffalo in 1968. He was the eleventh person hired to fill that spot on the venerable WSAI. Even he expected to move on quickly, from town to town, up and down the dial." It was the nature of the job that no one stayed in the same town very long.
After a few successful years, in fact, Jim got an offer to make a crazy amount of money as ab afternoon man at WNBC in New York City. It was an offer he couldn't refuse. Like much of the rest of the city, I was heartbroken, but moved on to sexy-voiced Robin Wood on WEBN-FM for my wake up music.
It wasn't easy to replace an act like Jim, of course, so they had weeklong trial stints, eventually settling on Dick Biondi, considered one of the great deejays of '60s radio!
Poor Dick was out just a year later, though, when Jim--unhappy in New York--was enticed by a new station manager to return to Cincy and literally take back his old job.
Jim Scott stayed with WSAI despite format changes up until the station was about to be sold. He switched to the smaller WYYS and soon after to WLW, at one time one of the greatest and most powerful radio stations in America. Jim would remain there until his retirement about 25 years later.
Despite the fact that Jim Scott was always doing personal appearances around the area, I only ever ran into him once and that was in 2008, when I was working at the Airport. It was on the tram that passed between Concourse B, where I was based, and Concourse A, where our second store was based. Other than losing his hair over the years, he looked and sounded exactly the same so I instantly recognized him but he was already speaking with someone else who had also spotted him so I didn't interrupt.
Jim Scott died last night. Rest in Peace, old friend.
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