"Burning Up The Air" - About the Book

Almost everyone who ever talked to Jerry Williams at length and heard the tales of his life in radio said, “You oughta write a book!” Jerry always demurred. In 1985, during one of Jerry's great on-air monologues, when his producer Alan Tolz brought up the subject, he said, “I can't write, so how can I write a book?”

Tolz, who not only produced shows for the Dean on WWDB-FM in Philadelphia and WRKO in Boston but was also a close friend, made The Book a kind of personal crusade as Jerry aged, in what time he could find while working as Executive VP of Marlin Broadcasting. When he visited Jerry, he'd pick through the memorabilia moldering in his barn, asking, “Don't you want to keep this stuff?” Gradually, he put a trove of Jerry's letters, files, pictures, and tapes away for safekeeping. In 2002, knowing that Jerry was failing physically, he asked WBZ host Jordan Rich to conduct some not-for-broadcast interviews to fill in some of the missing pieces in Jerry's story.

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