Sandy Deanne w/Jay & the Americans – Excerpt #3 from Book 1, Blast from Your Past! Rock & Roll Radio DJs: the First Five Years 1954-1959
Your Rockin’ Rochelle at BFYP-FM is stroking the clock for
timely tunes. I’m tickin’ down the decade’s end with a tuneful tale from the
other side of the microphone. Listen up, m’friends!
Mixing business with
pleasure can be nice, but heed my advice, keep your cool, don’t be a fool, “Is
That Too Much to Ask?”
Sandy Deanne
of Jay & the
Americans
with bandmates Howie
Kane and John Reineke (Jay #3)
BFYP trivia alert! Do you know that before Jay & the
Americans, original member, Sandy Deanne, first wrote and released songs as
founding member with the Harborlites in the late 1950s? And it was a friendly
radio disk jockey who helped the teen trio hit the airwaves in New York City.
“Cousin Brucie and I
were dating sisters,” said songwriter Sandy, in his palpable New York inflection.
“I knew he was a DJ and he knew I had a band.” But until their record “Is That
Too Much to Ask” was released in 1959, conversations were a fleeting “hi” in
chance meetings at the sisters’ home.
“When the record came
out,” Sandy continued, “Cousin Brucie stepped up to the plate. He really liked
it, I guess, ‘cause he played it a lot. It was a turntable hit for us and got
us started.”