Many thanks to a number of SWLing Post contributors, including The Professor, Patrick Stenbacka, and Larry W, for sharing a link to this opinion piece in the New York Times by author Erin Aubry Kaplan:
LOS ANGELES — Like many people who grew up in the 1970s, I came of age with AM radio. Everybody I knew — the black kids on my block, the white and Asian kids at my junior high school — followed the Top 40 and discussed the merits of the newest releases by Elton John and Eddie Kendricks.
[…]At home, the kitchen-counter radio was always tuned to KABC. It aired restaurant shows, call-in psychologist shows, news shows, all featuring sophisticated discussions of things I had only vague ideas about. My mother listened while she ironed or cooked or sat at the table paying bills. The radio was her company, and because I admired her (but didn’t quite know how to talk to her), it became mine, too.
To my ears the hosts — people like Michael Jackson, Dr. Toni Grant, Geoff Witcher — sounded like my mother: impassioned but thoughtful, often witty, opinionated but not obnoxiously so.[…]
