"Burning Up The Air" - About the Book

The Story behind the Story

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.

Alan had no idea that Steve Elman, who had produced Jerry on WBZ in the early 1970s and gone on to free-lance writing and his own radio career with WBUR, had been thinking about a Jerry Williams book for decades, collecting clippings, listening to Jerry's shows, and holding on to his own memorabilia from the BZ days.

But there still was no book when Jerry died in 2003. Elman started doing intensive research. Tolz began looking for someone to bring together all of the material he'd collected. Their mutual friend Clark Smidt, an experienced radio entrepreneur, told each of them that the other person was working on the same idea. They met, realized that their efforts were perfectly complementary, and started working together.

For more than a year, they did nothing but organize and chronologize the huge quantity of stuff from Jerry Williams's barn. He had kept almost everything, from a tiny clipping of his brother's obituary to press releases from WMEX, to memos he'd gotten while at WRKO. The story of his life, which he'd sketched in so many on-air monologues, became clearer and clearer, and Tolz and Elman realized they'd unearthed something great – not just a radio yarn, but a fascinating picture of an American broadcaster's life in the second half of the twentieth century.

By 2005, they began circulating some samples of the manuscript they had in mind to agents around the country. Bill Littlefield, host of NPR's “Only A Game,” suggested to Elman that he send the draft to Littlefield's agent Sidney Kramer of Mews Books. Kramer read it, spoke to Elman and Tolz, and said, “Why not? I'll handle it.” He urged them to find well-known people who could provide blurbs, and in a relatively short time, Phil Donahue, Michael Dukakis, Gene Burns, and Roger Ebert all agreed to have their sentiments about Jerry appear on the cover.

The rejection letters were polite and encouraging. Most publishers thought Jerry's story was interesting, but it was too local, too narrow a topic. In 2006, the manuscript came to the desk of Webster Bull, publisher of Commonwealth Editions. He liked what he read, and asked Elman and Tolz to complete the draft, which led to a furious six months of work. Elman did most of the actual writing and editing, but Tolz read every word and kept the project going in the right direction. He also inaugurated the website you're looking at right now as a memorial to Jerry and an eventual on-line partner to The Book.

At the end of 2006, when they completed and delivered the original manuscript, Webster Bull was enthusiastic – but he said it was far too long. So Elman and Tolz swallowed hard and cut about a quarter of the text they'd written. The edited manuscript was still long, Bull thought, but he agreed to go forward nonetheless.

The rest you can guess, but it still took another year to complete. Jerrywilliams.org was refined with the help of web designer Jeffrey Elwood and Tolz posted dozens of great Williams clips from every era of The Dean's career. Ann Twombly undertook the editing of Burning Up the Air , in close collaboration with the authors. Elman and Tolz found a great photo among Jerry's papers, and photographer Frank Siteman, who had almost forgotten the shoot, approved its use for the front of the book. John Barnett of 4 Eyes Design built a stunning cover around that shot. Webster Bull helped select pictures for the inside. Twombly put the finishing touches on the interior, choosing the typeface and the graphics. On March 1, 2008, Jerry's Book was finally up on the web and in the stores.