Georgie Woods, 1927-2005

Georgie Woods -- The Guy With the Goods

At that time, in the late seventies, the ratings for music stations switched from AM to FM. While WDAS-FM numbers were climbing (the number one music station, general market, in Philadelphia by 1980), WDAS AM’s ratings were tumbling. “Management thought that a talk format for George would do the trick,” said Wilkinson, and it did. Georgie Woods saw his talk-show ARB numbers double. Before leaving WDAS, Woods would end up the AM station’s Program Director.

In the fall of 1979, the WDAS stations were sold to Unity Broadcasting of Pennsylvania (owners of the “National Black Network”). Bob Klein, WDAS’ General Manager for 3 decades retired and his assistant, W. Cody Anderson, took over the reigns as GM. Ten years later, Cody purchased WHAT (Bob Klein was a consultant for Anderson) and Georgie Woods moved back to radio 1340, WHAT on Monday, September 10, 1990.

George was on 10 am to 1 pm following Mary Mason who returned to WHAT just the week before from WCAU. He left WHAT in 1994 and started playing music again on WPGR, Geator Gold radio when Jerry Blavat owned the station. But Woods wasn’t just a radio personality; he also hosted his own dance party TV show for several stations in town, first starting with Channel 17, WPHL-TV in 1966. A couple years later, the program moved over to WIBF-TV, Channel 29. It lasted for another several years after Taft Broadcasting took over, re-naming the call letters, WTAF-TV.

During the late sixties, Georgie Woods ran for Philadelphia City Council and won, only to have it taken away from him in a recount. However, it wasn’t just a run for political office; it also meant no radio income for the best part of a year. He had to go off the air because if he remained, the radio station would have been required to give free equal time to his political opponent even though George was just playing music.

However, Woods was an activist much earlier, and was very much involved in the civil rights movement. George was one of the first broadcasters to have the controversial Malcolm X appear on his program. During the hectic sixties, he led 21 buses of area residents southward to March with Dr. Martin Luther King in Alabama and later Washington, DC.

One of the bus captains on that trip was a young 23-year old college student from Cheney State College, Ed Bradley (of 60 Minutes fame). Bradley had previously met Woods when Georgie visited the mostly black school. Georgie Woods allowed Bradley to “hang around” the station and run errands. Later, Bradley was doing news for WDAS until 1967 when he moved to New York City.

A few years ago, Bradley said, “I remember the first time I heard Georgie Woods on the air as a teenager…. I heard him say same time tomorrow and I set up the radio the next day at the same time and waited to listen to Georgie Woods…. Many years later I went to work there…. It was my first experience in broadcasting. I cut my eyeteeth as a journalist at WDAS and I think in many ways if WDAS hadn't been there for me, I wouldn't be on 60 Minutes today.”

Georgie also hosted so-called “Freedom Shows” at Philadelphia’s Uptown and Nixon Theaters to raise money for civil rights activities. George became well known hosting great shows at the Uptown -- on one show one could see: Stevie Wonder, Martha and the Vandellas, Deon Jackson, the Monitors, Tammi Terrell, The Artistics, The Poets and more.

On Wednesday, July 21, 1993, the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network dedicated a mural featuring Georgie Woods. It’s located at 5531 Germantown Avenue (at the corner of Germantown and School House Lane). Just a few months before, on Friday, May 14 th, the City of Philadelphia proclaimed “Georgie Woods Day” to honor the broadcast legend.

Georgie Woods was also very supportive to the Philadelphia community. For decades, every year WDAS and their air personalities would collect donations of thousands of turkeys for the city’s poor at Thanksgiving and Christmas time. George was part of the WDAS Charities organization, which put on charity shows to aid the area.

Georgie Woods 'The Guy With the Goods'

Many people in the city have credited Georgie Woods and WDAS with directly being responsible for preventing rioting in the streets of our city after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Woods and WDAS constantly reminded our residents of Dr. King's non-violent philosophy and aired his speeches. In 1969, George and WDAS urged the population of the area to turn in their guns. Many hundreds did so and Woods was credited with making Philadelphia a safer place to live.

Gerry Wilkinson said, “I vividly remember George’s morning drive program. He had his signature cowbells (long before Dr. Don Rose) and just acted crazy.” Jerry Wells, Production Manager for WDAS, thinks back to his early days at the station a quarter century ago. He says: “George once told me, you gotta do whatever you have to so that at the end of the day, people remember you, even if it means acting like a nut.”

“George loved to sing the old spiritual, Oh, Mary Don’t You Weep every morning. It was always done differently, sometimes in harmony, depending on who was around the studio at the time. It was the best part of the show for George was the star, not the records” Wilkinson remembers.

In the 1960s, he would sometimes stop the music for hours on WDAS to talk about the civil-rights movement and the work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., recalled Joe "Butterball" Tamburro, the station's former general manager.
"He had the ear of the African-American community. Whenever there was an injustice, we would talk about the issues rather than play music," Tamburro said.

Gerry also recalls: “I remember the era and ‘solid’ was in common usage. One morning, George said ‘salad’ instead of solid. He immediately came back with ‘potato salad.’ Somehow, it stuck and became part of the show. I was in the air studio one morning when Broadway Eddie (of Broadway Eddie’s in Camden) was there. He said to George that Woods should make a recording called ‘Potato Salad.’ He did and it became a top ten record at the station. Eddie produced it and writing credits were given to both Eddie and George and arranged by Vince Montana (of Philadelphia International fame). I clearly remember one of the rap lines, ‘don’t eat chicken on Sunday! It'll put a hole in your soul!’”

Almost two decades later, in 1988, Georgie Woods marketed his own line of Potato Chips through a South Philly company, C & S, Inc., which claimed to sell over 3 million bags a year. Whether there is any connection to the “Potato Salad” craze of two decades before is subject to debate.

Georgie Woods, The Guy With the Goods, died in the early morning of Saturday, June 18th, in Boynton Beach, Fla., where he had lived since 1996.