If you're of a certain age, you probably listened to 77 WABC. Practically everyone of that age did. And if you listened in the mornings, chances are you heard Herb Oscar Anderson, aka The Morning Mayor Of New York. Herb was a one-of-a-kind DJ. The housewives loved him. The teenage girls exchanged socks because he told them to. And he sang. Every hour on the hour, he'd sing, "Here's my best to you/Are your skies gray? I hope they're blue."
HOA sang well enough to record an album in 1967, toward the end of his reign on WABC. You could tell it was going to be a great album just by the names behind it: produced by Creed Taylor. Most arrangements by Don Sebesky. A couple of the songs were recorded in Nashville (and they were arranged by Bill McElhiney), but most were done in New Jersey, most likely at Rudy Van Gelder's famed studio in Englewood Cliffs given the Creed Taylor connection.
Some people might also have been able to discern that there was a dichotomy in play: HOA was playing the latest and greatest on one of America's biggest stations...but he had little knowledge, or even appreciation of it. Rick Sklar, WABC's ace program director, had to coach him on the songs and artists. In fact, that's what led HOA to leave WABC in 1968: he just didn't like the music, instead preferring the type of music here on this album. It's an interesting mix of standards like Pearly Shells and Long Way To Tipperary and country-flavored songs, with maybe a little folk squirted in here and there. It's a comfortable mix.
HOA's rendition of I'm Movin' On. He's having a lot of fun here with the scatting:
The title track, What Would I Be. An interesting question for sure, in this context:
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