Talking about Jerry Williams

A biography of the late Jerry Williams, written by two of his producers, chronicles the life of the "dean of talk radio." (GILBERT E. FRIEDBERG FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE)

Jerry Williams was called the "dean of talk radio," but there was nothing scholarly about him. Instead, a new biography by two of the late talk host's producers reveals the flawed and passionate man behind the microphone.

"There's nobody who knows a performer better than his or her producer," says Steve Elman, coauthor with Alan Tolz of "Burning Up the Air: Jerry Williams, Talk Radio, and the Life in Between," published this month by the Beverly-based Commonwealth Editions.

With their experience augmented by copious research, the two have produced a 384-page tome (with many extras available online at jerrywilliams.org) chronicling the radio star's life from his earliest years, as Gerald Jacoby of Brooklyn, through a career that took him from a tiny station on the Virginia-Tennessee border to Philadelphia and Chicago. He also worked several stints in Boston - at the now defunct WMEX, as well as at WBZ-AM (1030) and WRKO-AM (680).

In addition to recounting such public events as Williams's successful crusade against the mandatory seat-belt law, they reveal a driven man who sacrificed his marriage and subsequent relationships to connect with complete strangers on air in what Tolz calls a "warts-and-all" biography.

Williams, who died in 2003, was a great talent at a great time, say the authors. Coming along just when technology was making it possible for listeners to participate by phone with radio hosts, Williams took to this new possibility like a natural.

"He was a musician," says Elman, who served as Williams's producer from '72 to '73 at WBZ and then went on to help manage WBUR. "In the way in which he controlled space, the way he used the upper and lower parts of his voice. It was artful. He could take a subject that seemed as slight as a 12-bar theme and improvise on it."

Williams rose in what Tolz calls radio's "golden age." In 1946, when Williams first went on air, "television signed off at midnight," notes Tolz, who was hired by Philadelphia station WWDB to produce Williams in '79 and later worked with him again, from '83 to '87, at WRKO. It was a tiny Bristol, Tenn., station called WCYB that first took a chance on the young Army veteran, the authors recall.

But even then, Williams seemed to have a talent and before long was serving as the morning host, broadcasting news and playing records. By 1951, when he launched a show called "What's On Your Mind?" at New Jersey station WKDN, the idea of talk radio was catching on. It wasn't that Williams invented talk radio.

"It's all in the air," says Elman, quoting radio historian Donna Halper. But when he came to Boston, for a job at WMEX in 1957, says Elman, "he was the guy in Boston with the tools."

What happened next is history, with Williams joining the pantheon of Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding ("Bob and Ray") and Gene Burns, repeatedly building and rebuilding a career as stations were sold and formats changed. Looking at radio today, the authors see Williams's influence everywhere. "He wrote the playbook as to how people interact with callers," says Tolz.

But the openness that made Williams great, they say, is gone. For one thing, notes Tolz, Williams would keep talking with callers for 20 minutes or more, a duration unheard of today. Also, adds Elman, "he actually welcomed callers who disagreed with him."

"That's one of the things I personally miss most," says Elman. "If you listened, you knew what people were thinking, not just because Jerry was good at capturing the Zeitgeist, but [because] he left the door open."

Spinning the dial

José Massó's "Con Salsa!" on WBUR-FM (90.9) is now airing slightly earlier, from 10 p.m. Saturday to 3 a.m. Sunday.