Alison Steel, the Night Bird at WNEW-FM

Alison Steele (born Ceil Loman in Brooklyn, NY on *26 January 1937 +27 September 1995) was an American radio personality, writer, television producer, correspondent, and entrepreneur who was also known by her air name, The Nightbird. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Alison Steele, the Night Bird of WNEW-FM, is the most successful female disc-jockey in the country according to Sunday News, 17 February 1974.

Current ratings show that, in any given quarter-hour of her show more than 100,000 people are tuned in to the station. Why do so many people stayed tuned into her ‘nightly excursions’ (Monday through Saturday, 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.) ? One listener said: ‘She has some sort of irresistible quality about her. You can easily fancy her to be something larger than life.’

How did she get where she is? ‘You just don’t become great overnight. You’ve to work at it. If what you want  is tough to get, you have to fight for it. It has taken me 7 years of hard work to get where I am right now. However, I don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied. Each night I try for a higher plateau and I think my audience responds to my trying.’

Her deep, resonant voice is distinctive. She has been called a temptress, and a writer has asserted that she could make a commercial for gym socks sound sensuous.

Finding the bright side

‘I have an optmistic philosophy,’  Alison said. ‘I’ve always gone by the idea that there’s something fine in life, but you have to make the effort to find out what it is.

‘I’m tired of people bitching and moaning that they can’t get a break. I abhor negativism. I’m positive about everything I do. We’re so used to the negativism that has crept into our daily lives, all we can do is put down others who are honestly trying.’

Where did Alison Steele get the nerve to challenge this tough, competitive industry?

‘It was my mother’s influence actually ,’ Alison said with a smile. ‘She taught me a very simple rule: if I wanted something, all I had to do was go and get it. She helped me get self confident when I was 14. There was an ad in our local paper  for a tall good-looking girl to fill a part-time slot. I was neither tall nor pretty, but my mother told me to go and get it anyway. I went down, bluffed my way in, then worked hard until I got it right. I was off to a great start.’

Now, aside from her radio excursions as ‘The Night Bird’, Alison does one other rock radio show, syndicated to 600 stations, a radio show for women, and a TV talk show broadcast over the Sterling Cable TV network that is seen by 55,000 viewers in the New York area.

Happy where she is

Can success spoil Alison Steele? ‘Not really,’ she replied. ‘I have a lovely job, which is most gratifying, and I love making a lot of money.’ Alison declined to say just how much money she makes. 

Alison does quite a bit of work for local charities. She’s a member of the board of the New York City Chapter of the Epilepsy Foundation, gives a lot of time to the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation and is on the credit committee of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

Her days are busy. She has to listen to the new albums, takes care of personal errands, auditions for commercials and still finds time to answer each fan letter.

‘I’ve hundreds of letters at home I still have to answer. My biggest regret is that I’m 6 to 8 months behind in my replies. But I’ll catch up, I promise.’

‘People call me because they’re lost or upset,’ Alison said. ‘I try and point them in the right direction of self-help and love for oneself. I stress the idea that if you’re positive about things, you’ll enjoy what you have all the more. People call me when they have nowhere else to turn and I’m glad I can help. When I do hear from someone who’s troubled I’m patient and understanding. I listen, ask no names and just give my particular brand of advice. I usually hear from those I’ve spoken to a while and they thank me. God, that makes me feel good! It’s fine to know you’ve helped somebody, somewhere, sometime.’

SUNDAY NEWS 17 February 1974

By K. Michael Blumberg

Alison Steele, disk Jockey, dies; the pioneer 'Nightbird' was 58

By David Stout for The New York Times
augmented by Wikipedia information

28 September 1995

Alison Steele, whose sultry voice and iron will helped her become one of the first women in the country to be hired as a disk jockey, died yesterday, 27 September 1995, at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. She was 58.

Ms. Steele, who lived in Manhattan, died of cancer, her family said.

She was widely known to late-night radio listeners as "the Nightbird." Her most recent perch was WXRK, a classic rock-and-roll station at 92.3 FM. She was on Monday through Friday from 2 to 6 A.M.

Ms. Steele loved to work hours that most other people find good for sleeping. "I'm a night person," she said in 1971, when she was with WNEW, where she worked on AM and FM for about 14 years. "I think it has a mysterious quality. I never get lonely up here."

She usually received 25 to 30 telephone calls a night; in her early years, she also had her champagne-colored French poodle, Genya, to keep her company, chewing on a bone in the studio as Ms. Steele talked to listeners.

Alison Steele with Jack Beeb.

Ms. Steele also worked for WPIX radio and often did voice-overs for radio and television commercials, according to her sister, Joyce Loman. Her syrupy voice was not affected by a flirtation with miniature cigars that she indulged in her early days on radio but gave up years ago, her sister said.

Ms. Steele and her sister operated Just Cats, a feline boutique on East 60th Street in Manhattan, but Ms. Steele was fond of dogs as well.

She is a member of the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and in 1976 became the first woman to receive Billboard Magazine's "FM Personality of the Year" award.

Ms. Steele was born Ceil Loman on 26 January 1937, in Brooklyn, New York. In one interview, she had wished for a career in show business at three years of age. At 14, she landed a job running errands for a NYC television station, and opted not to study at university as she was "too impatient".

In the 1950s, Steele had worked on her career to become a production assistant and associate producer for various New York City television and radio stations. Among them was Ted Steele's television show, The Ted Steele Show, on WOR-TV, where she hosted interviews and performed fitness routines that encouraged viewers to take part in. Ted was still married to his second wife Doris at the time.

She married orchestra leader and radio and television host Ted Steele who was 20 years her senior. The marriage ended in divorce. The couple had a daughter, Heather.

1966–1979: WNEW

On 4 July 1966, Steele landed her first radio job when she became a part of the new line-up of disc jockeys for the newly launched rock station, WNEW. The station wished to only hire female air staff at first as part of its middle-of-the-road format it marketed "sexpot radio", with Steele chosen as one of the final four selected out of the 800 women that applied. Steele worked the 2:00 - 7:00 p.m. slot, Sunday through Friday.

When WNEW abandoned the format after the 18-month-trial to the increasingly popular progressive rock format, Steele was the only host that was asked to stay at the station.

"I've never called in sick; I've worked hard and built my own following," she once said, to explain her popularity.

On 1st January1968, WNEW placed Steele in the overnight "graveyard shift" which granted her more creative freedom, leading her to develop her on-air personality and rapport with her listeners. "I thought there must be a lot of people ... that need something to relate to in the middle of the night, and if I could create some kind of camaraderie, a relationship between myself and the rest of the night people, then it would be more than just music". She thought of a new air name, based on the gender ("bird" being slang for a girl while 'teddy' was slang for a boy, following the 1964 British invasion) and her night owl hours of work, and chose The Nightbird.

Steele would begin her night show by reciting poetry over music, before introducing her show in her distinctive soft and sultry voice, aided by her preference of smoking small cigars. She often hosted with her dog, a French poodle named Genya. Her regular introduction was: "Hello night bird. How was your day? Did you visit the gods in the valleys far away? What did you bring me, in your visit from the sea?"

The flutter of wings, the shadow across the moon, the sounds of the night, as the Nightbird spreads her wings and soars, above the earth, into another level of comprehension, where we exist only to feel. Come, fly with me, Alison Steele, the Nightbird, at WNEW-FM, until dawn.

She then transitioned to recordings of some of the more exceptional and experimental music being recorded at the time, as well as featuring the best of the familiar favorites of her audience. As well as music, she recited texts and poetry over music.

Almost every morning, to fill in the minute before the end of her show and the start of the next, Alison Steele would play the Beatles’ “Flying”: a two-minute instrumental from the Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack, a deadpan Mellotronism, a piece of marshmallow. Steele would deliver the morning’s final benedictions and vocal nuzzlings over the music, kiss you goodbye before leaving you to your day. And the first time I heard her play her show out with it, a faint but decisive thonk!! sounded in my skull. The sound came from a small paragraph I’d never forgotten, hidden in the center of a book I’ve mentioned before on this blog - 'The Beatles Forever' by Nicholas Schaffner.

By 1971, Steele had acquired approximately 78,000 nightly listeners, the majority being men between 18 and 34.

She was a supporter and promoter of the English rock bands Yes, Genesis, and the Moody Blues. By 1974, she had more than 100,000 listeners at any given average quarter hour of her show, and hosted a syndicated rock radio show to 600 stations nationwide, a radio show for women, and a cable television talk show.

According to Jimi Hendrix's manager Michael Jeffery, the song "Night Bird Flying", recorded by Hendrix and released posthumously on the album The Cry of Love (1971), was inspired by Steele's show. Steele became known as "The Grande Dame of New York Night".

At one point, she served as the station's music director. In 1976, Steele became the first woman to receive a Billboard Award for FM Personality of the Year, and the magazine also named an award in her honour, The Alison Steele Award for Lifetime Achievement, which was first awarded to Casey Kasem in 1997.

1979–1984: Television and writing work

After her departure from WNEW, Steele focused her career around television and writing. From 1982-1984, she was the announcer for the daytime soap opera 'Search for Tomorrow', and was the producer, writer, and correspondent for Limelight on CNN.

1984–1995: Return to WNEW and WXRK

In 1984, Steele returned to radio on WNEW–AM which lasted until 1986. For a number of years, Steele was also the disc jockey for the pop/rock in-flight audio entertainment channel on board Trans World Airlines.

Steele's final radio job was working overnights at WXRK from 1989-1995. She also did some work for VH1, as well as running the cat boutique Just Cats with her sister Joyce in Manhattan.

Steele did much voice-over work for radio and television commercials, and she provided the narration for one of Howard Stern's popular radio bits, "Larry Fine at Woodstock", featuring impressionist Billy West.

Steele also did charity work and was a member of the board of the New York City chapter of the Epilepsy Foundation, worked for the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation, and was on the credit committee of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

In June 1995, Steele was forced to leave WXRK due to illness from stomach cancer. She died on 27 September 1995, at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, aged 58.

In addition to her sister Joyce, of Manhattan, she is survived by a daughter, Heather Steele, of South Dakota; another sister, Emalie Daniel, of Houston, and a granddaughter.

Steele at NYC Public Access TV show 'Beyond Vaudeville' on 15 September 1992.

Alison less than 2 years before her death. 

Steele & 'Beyond Vaudeville' host Frank Hope on 15 September 1992.

Alison Steele & William Brown at 'Beyond Vaudeville' that was aired by NYC Public Access TV up to the time MTV scooped it up as 'Oddville, MTV'.

My 1977 high school newspaper interview with Alison Steele. I was editor-in-chief of Archbishop Molloy's (Queens, NY) newspaper The Stanner when Alison granted me a meeting at the WNEW-FM studios. Very nice, kind and classy lady.

Mark Bradford Barbour posted this article at Facebook's "Alison Steels: the Nightbird" page on 17 August 2020: My 1977 high school newspaper interview with Alison Steele. I was editor-in-chief of Archbishop Molloy's (Queens, NY) newspaper 'The Stanner' when Alison granted me a meeting at the WNEW-FM studios. Very nice, kind and classy lady.

Mark: What do you think about the punk rock scene in England?

Alison: Well, I realize that there has to have their own property as far as music is concerned. And musically, there are some good punk rock groups. The only ones I'm not too thrilled about are the ones that brag about the fact that they only know two chords. I think it's kind of an insult to the music industry and to the people who studied and really tried. If the record companies can reject the punk rock that's bad musically, then that's great because it's exciting. It's a new form which we need. Music has been very dull in the last couple of years. 

Mark: What are your own musical preferences? 

Alison: It depends on my mood. I like all music. I love rock, and I like folk music and middle-of-the-road music. I also like classical music. If there isn't a good old movie on when I go home, I might listen to some classical music.

Mark: What about classical rock?

Alison: I suppose I have a soft spot for classical rock, for ELP (Emerson, Lake & Palmer), for Yes, the Strawbs, ELO (Electric Light Orchestra) and Pink Floyd. It's very hard to say what my own preference would be. As I say, it depends on my mood. 

Mark: What sort of things you enjoy besides music?

Alison: I like sports, I enjoy hockey, football and all participation sports. I like to swim. I like all forms of exercises. I'm a movie freak. I also like to cook. 

What kinds of food do you like to cook?

Alison: Everything, especially spicy food. I'm a really good cook. I like to cook for people, and I like to entertain. 

Mark: Do you always enjoy working, or are ever days when you don't feel like coming in?

Alison: Yeah, I get a lot of days when I don't feel like coming in, but the minute I get in, I'm fine. It's like going into cold water. 

Mark: Where do you get the poems that you use?

Alison: From a variety of places, anything from greeting cards to the Bible. 

Mark: Do you ever write your own?

Alison: Oh yeah, sure. And then a lot of times listeners send them in. I have just always been a poetry buff. Then I started collecting books. I've got hundreds of books and I look through them. Sometimes I'll get a card and there'll be a pretty rhyme on it. It can just be from anything. I don't draw the line any place. 

Mark: Can you tell us about some of the things WNEW will be doing in the future?

Alison: Well, you know about the Emerson, Lake & Palmer concert. The Christmas concert is coming up too. They're deciding now who's going to be playing. 

Mark: Did you always want to be a deejay?

Alison: No, I never thought about being a deejay, as a matter of fact. I started out in television and hadn't the slightes thought about being one. So when WNEW was looking for girl deejays, it was the only thing I hadn't actually done yet. The only thing I had to do was to cue the record, and I figured it couldn't be very hard. It wasn't.

1971.

hear Ms Steele's voice at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LUqqueEy-4&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR1gYIhACDszXKNq69Vd_KLDvgx-Yig6_F6Duo2VtCPNqDxxDcYMJ8RcJ_o

Alyson Steel's interview.