Bobby Bennett, rollicking DJ in the District, dies at 72 - Washington Post Obituary

Bobby Bennett in the late 1970s. (Washington Post File Photo/The Washington Post)

Story by Washington Post Obituary
Written by Marc Fisher
Link: http://kirktanter.blogspot.com/2015/09/bobby-bennett-passes-at-72.html

Bobby Bennett, who as the Mighty Burner fired up the airwaves in Washington and beyond for more than four decades with jive-talking patter and a deep playlist of soul sounds, died Sept. 8 at his home in Punta Gorda, Fla. He was 72.

The cause was respiratory failure, his wife, Connie Payne, said.

Starting out in 1968 as the overnight DJ on the District’s most popular black-oriented station, WOL, and continuing until 2008, when he retired from XM Satellite Radio, where he headed the Soul Street channel, Mr. Bennett was a rhyming, ad-libbing advocate for local and lesser-known artists and was a distinctive, clarion pitchman for local businesses such as Cavalier Men’s Shop and the former Dimensions Unlimited concert promoters.

“Brother Bobby here in a disco inferno, cooking all over your radio, burnin’ a hunk of funk,” he said in a typical riff introducing a record on WOL in 1977. “I got my hammer jamming, got my pedal to the metal, got a hold on my soul. Let’s roll.”

Mr. Bennett, who was born Marshall Stanley Payne III on July 20, 1943, adopted his broadcast name as a young man in his home town of Pittsburgh, where he launched his career while in high school.

He grew up in the projects — “I mean the sure enough ’jects,” he once told The Washington Post — and fell in love with radio. He showed up at Pittsburgh’s WAMO and volunteered to do a Saturday night show playing classic R&B. He parlayed that into a paying job after he completed broadcasting school; he quit his $165-a-week job as a telephone-booth distributor for Western Electric to make $75 weekly at WAMO.

In 1968, when few black voices were in media and the District was seared by racial tension and street riots, Mr. Bennett was recruited to Washington’s WOL, a low-powered AM station that was both the entertainment soundtrack and a vital information source for the city’s majority-black population.

Mr. Bennett joined a staff of DJs who were beloved by many for leading a round-the-clock street party, playing music that white stations wouldn’t touch, and who were trusted for reflecting the frustrations and anger of many of their listeners. Voices such as Petey Greene, Bob “Nighthawk” Terry and Sunny Jim Kelsey played the hits and served as a community bulletin board, getting the word out about political forums, black theater and blood drives.

Within days of arriving at WOL’s storefront studios on H Street NE, Mr. Bennett, alone in the building in the middle of the night, left his microphone to open the front door for the janitor, and promptly locked himself out.

“I could hear the record going cha-choom, cha-choom,” he told The Post. “I said, ‘Oh, Lord, I’m going to be sent back to Pittsburgh on waivers.’ ” A WOL newscaster who lived nearby heard the stuck record on the radio and hurried over to unlock the door.

Mr. Bennett survived that incident and stayed on with WOL until 1980, mainly in the afternoon drive-time slot. He spent the ’80s bouncing around the local radio scene. He did a sports talk show on WTOP (103.5 FM) for a few years and served as program director at WHUR (96.3 FM) from 1987 to 1992. He also worked for record companies and in 1988 wrote “The Ultimate Soul Trivia Book” with co-author Sarah Smith.

His piercing voice remained a constant on black stations across the nation, through the commercials he recorded, mainly for nightclubs and concerts.

“Tonight! One show only! Together on one stage!” The concert might be the Chi-Lites or the Marvelettes, but the tight, intense, bracingly loud voice was unmistakable.

“Everybody else is cool and quiet in those concert spots,” Mr. Bennett said in a 1997 interview with The Post. “I hit you like a ton of bricks. When I say Tina Turner’s coming to town, you know she’s going to be there.” His ads were so compelling that Mr. Bennett was sometimes asked to perform them in concert.

In the mid-1990s, he co-hosted the morning show on WXTR, first with Johnny Holliday and then with Jack Alix — a rare pairing of black and white DJs in the highly segregated world of commercial radio.

Later, he worked as a volunteer host of a popular soul classics show on Saturday afternoons on WPFW (89.3 FM), the listener-supported station that allowed him the freedom to “play what I want and say what I want,” as he put it. “You hold them with the familiar music, and then you smoke ’em with the surprises.”

Mr. Bennett was founder and primary on-air voice of Soul Street, the soul channel on XM Satellite Radio, where he remained until it merged with Sirius and much of its programming was moved to New York. He was a deacon for 25 years at the evangelical Immanuel’s Church in Silver Spring, Md., and gradually retired to Punta Gorda from his home in Olney, Md.

Besides his wife of 51 years, survivors include two children, Eric Payne, an Army sergeant major stationed in Landstuhl, Germany, and Ami Richardson of Bowie, Md.; two brothers; and seven grandchildren.

In a long radio career, Mr. Bennett developed a loyal, devoted audience, to which he bade a good night on each of his WOL shows with this rollicking sign-off: “Brother Bobby cockin’ on outta here,” he once said. “Y’all be good like ya should, ’cause if I could, I would, but I can’t so I ain’t.”

And then he kissed his listeners farewell: “Ummmsmaaack-POW.”