Donnie Simpson returns! Score one for old-school D.C.

After a five-year absence, legendary Washington radio personality Donnie Simpson returns to the airwaves. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post)

Story by Washington Post
Written by Lonnae O'Neal

The most eagerly anticipated hour in Washington radio memory (if not history) began Monday to Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On,” then morphed into the theme from “Welcome Back, Kotter.”

Well the names have all changed since you hung around

But those dreams have remained and they’re turned around

Who’d have thought they’d lead ya (Who’d have thought they’d lead ya)

Back here where we need ya (Back here where we need ya) . . .

Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back
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[Donnie Simpson returns to D.C. radio after a five-year absence: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/donnie-simpson-will-return-to-dc-radio-after-5-year-absence/2015/08/03/d46b53c8-39fb-11e5-8e98-115a3cf7d7ae_story.html]
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Finally came the voice of Donnie Simpson: “Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way. I’m back!” said Simpson, 61, sounding like an old friend. For weeks, Simpson’s return on Radio One’s Majic 102.3 FM after a five-year retirement has had D.C. buzzing. Not official Washington, mind you, or new-transplant Washington (read: young, white). But old-school D.C.

Can you dig it, CC?

Don’t worry if you don’t get the reference. Donnie will catch you up.

Simpson — loved, especially by the ladies, who took ardent notice of his green-eyed soul — had been a constant companion and cultural translator for 33 years as a radio and television host.

“I think he’s going to bring old-school and class back to radio,” gushed Marsha Thomas, a Maryland Public Television producer stopping by the “Donnie’s back” tent outside the radio station’s studio in Silver Spring, Md. “No one is more DMV than Donnie Simpson.”

He also hopes to be back on TV, hosting a show on Radio One’s cable channel, TV One.

Simpson began working on-air as a teenager in Detroit and moved to Washington at 23 to become a night DJ on WKYS-FM (93.9). He hosted BET’s “Video Soul” for 14 years beginning in 1983, and the drive-time morning show on WPGC-FM (95.5) for 17 years. To his fans, his abrupt 2010 departure — he left rather than switch his style to cater to a younger audience — was part of a wholesale change they were on the wrong side of: the corporatization of radio, the homogenization of playlists, the gentrification of neighborhoods.

They saw it as part of the demographic shift from Washington as Chocolate City to a place where what came before often seemed of little value to the new people moving in. (You get Donnie points if you read that as val-ya; double Donnies if now you can’t get Lionel Richie’s voice out of your head.)

His return, then, is a backlash — or perhaps an antidote — to the rushed, the sensational, the loud, the profane, the not-from-around-here radio jocks. It’s a triumph for the cool, the smooth, the back in the day, from around the way, and do you remember the time?

“Once I put on the headphones, it’s like riding a bike,” Simpson said in the studio, surrounded by nearly two dozen radio station staffers, family and friends. His show airs weekdays from 3 to 7 p.m.

Simpson is a voice for Everyman, although some big names called in during Monday’s show, which he co-hosted with singer and reality-show star Traci Braxton: Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, sportscaster James Brown. “I’m just calling you out of respect and love,” said former boxing champ Sugar Ray Leonard, who grew up in the District and Prince George’s County. “You’re back where you’re supposed to be.”

“You’re a voice with some weight, man,” said Terry Lewis, half of the super-producer duo Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.

Simpson’s wife, Pam, his high school sweetheart, urged him to get back on air because everywhere they went people told him how much they loved and missed him. Simpson says that feeling goes both ways. He tells the story of being with a famous celebrity who was standoffish with his fans. “The thing you don’t understand is the blessings you block,” he told the celeb. “People say the most wonderful, the most encouraging things to you, and you block all that when you don’t want to talk.”

He said he wished he had been on the air when the Godfather of Go-Go, Chuck Brown, and mayor-for-life Marion Barry died. He wanted to share that with listeners. But black radio especially carries the promise of hard times to come, and Simpson says that when those hard times hit, “we’ll make that turn. That’s always been my show — we talk about what’s going on.”

At the end of Simpson’s first show in his second act, his producer said it was time to run some commercials, but Simpson vetoed the idea. “We’ve got to go out on some music,” he said. And a few minutes later, all over the DMV, people were singing along with Donnie: “Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby. Ain’t nothing like the real thing.”
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For more by O’Neal, visit wapo.st/lonnae.