Sunny Joe White
Back in the golden age of radio – when being a disc jockey carried tremendous power and influence and could actually be the lynchpin of an artist’s success or failure – people in and around Boston were fortunate to spend mornings, and later evenings, with Sunny Joe White. As program director for “KISS 108” (WXKS at 108.1 on the FM dial), he became one of the best-known radio personalities of ’80s/‘90s Boston and is widely remembered as an on-air legend.
White arrived on the city’s airwaves in 1977, working at WILD after starting out at tiny WGIV in his hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina. He stayed at WILD for two years before he and a group of colleagues conceived of an all-disco-formatted station. In 1979, they launched WXKS-FM, which had previously been held by several ratings-plagues stations, and promoted it from the outset as “KISS 108,” the only disco-centric station in the area.
ON/OFF-AIR CHARISMA, SWITCH TO TOP 40, KISS CONCERTS
The KISS 108 lobby was often overflowing with people waiting to get a few minutes with Sunny Joe. On any given morning, you could find record company representatives, artists’ agents and artists themselves lobbying for a brief chat, and he always seemed to find the time to talk with them all. I experienced this first hand while crashing the lobby in an effort to land an internship at the station. White struck the perfect balance of insight into what people wanted to hear and a charismatic personality – both on and off air – that was absolutely magnetic. It was that rare balance that allowed him to build many longstanding relationships and be a significant influencer in his chosen profession.
White’s programming instincts were never more apparent than when the disco boom began losing steam rapidly in the early ‘80s. He suggested that WXKS switch to a top-40 pop format, the decision makers accepted the idea and the station wound up setting rating records that hold to this day. Even after the switch, however, White was not afraid to deviate from the format if he felt a song deserved to be played; many of his handpicked tunes went on to be national hits.
White’s close relationships with promoters and record companies also allowed the creation of the KISS Concerts, which wound up becoming the foremost radio-station-sponsored concerts in the US. As the constant changing nature of the radio industry goes, however, he ended his reign at WXKS in 1987, then spent the 1990s programming at WZOU and WVBF.
BOSTON AGAINST AIDS CONCERT, ANTI-AIDS WALK, DEATH, LEGACY
Perhaps the most important contribution that White made was his unrelenting fight against the AIDS epidemic. In early ‘90s, many facts about the disease had not yet been discovered and White fought hard to change that. In 1989, he was among the organizers of the Boston Against AIDS Concert, persuading his good friend Cher into performing at the benefit, and he convinced the WXKS powers that were to sponsor Boston’s first anti-AIDS walks.
Sunny Joe White died in 1996 at age 42 of a heart attack but his legacy lives on in two important ways: first, as an enormously respected radio personality and program director; second, as a caring human being who stood up and fought for those who needed it. He was inducted into the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2008.
(by Mark Turner)
