Remembering Johnny Dark

September 19, 2016 Michael Olesker

Johnny Dark was the voice on the radio when Perry Como and Patti Page were losing air time to Elvis Presley, Little Richard and the Beatles. And Dark was still there at the microphone, half a century later, still playing rock ‘n’ roll from its joyful primordial days, almost until the very end of his life.

When the news arrived the other day that he had died, at 82, it brought sweet memories back for a few generations of listeners in the Baltimore area.

Johnny’s best years were the Dark Ages of Baltimore AM radio.

Today, if a radio station gets a 10 percent share of the listening audience, it’s considered a powerhouse. In his day, Dark was topping 50 percent shares.

When rock a’n’ roll was first becoming a cultural earth force, and WCAO was a ratings monster, his was the voice teenagers heard when they crammed into cars and went cruisin’ to Ameche’s on Reisterstown Road for a powerhouse, or to Gino’s on Liberty Road for a 15-cent burger.

It was the voice teenagers secretly heard on their bedroom radios when they were supposed to be doing their math homework.

That voice was also a voice of healing.

Half a century ago, Baltimore was a mosaic of rigidly separate communities: the Jews strictly in northwest Baltimore, blacks ghettoized on the west side, Poles and Germans and Italians on the east side.

Rock ‘n’ roll drew a generation together.

Here’s just one example: a Baltimore Jewish kid named Jerry Leiber grows up and teams with a fellow named Mike Stoller. They write and produce the great crossover hits of that era — for black groups.

Those groups were The Coasters, The Drifters and The Clovers, and the songs included “Charlie Brown” and “Poison Ivy” and “Yakety Yak” and “Stand By Me” and “Spanish Harlem” and “Love Potion No. 9.”

At a time when the public schools were first integrated, the disc jockeys like Johnny Dark were playing this music – and playing it despite intense pressure from those who sneeringly called it “race music” – and, for millions, in schoolyards and dance halls and neighborhoods, it helped bring down walls dividing races and religions.