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Lew Wade: A Lifetime of Music Memories
Frederick News-Post, August 26, 2007
If you're interested in music history, there are plenty of places you can go to increase your knowledge. Libraries, archives, and museums document the evolution of music and the life and times of popular artists. But if you're in Frederick and want to learn a little something about music, then your best bet is to have a chat with Lew Wade, a local resident who has spent his life working as a disc jockey and musician.
As I sit down with Wade, he flips through a folder full of music memorabilia and pulls out a list of artists he worked with during the course of his career. Some he hosted on his radio programs, some he played with. Many of them are big names in the music world: Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, June Carter, Roy Rogers, Hank Snow, Tex Ritter, Minnie Pearl...the list goes on. And although not written out like the list, Wade has a story about almost each of them.
Early Years
When Wade tells you that he was born in 1915, you think he's telling you one of the jokes he scatters throughout his conversations. His sharp wit, healthy physique, and easy sense of humor belie his age, but when he starts recounting his many adventures, you realize he must have been around a good while to have accomplished so much.
A "natural-born musician," Wade was born in Pennsylvania to a mother who played the piano and a father who played the violin, although as he puts it, it was just "for their own amazement." Learning from his parents and teaching himself, Wade took up the ukulele, and then added the mandolin, piano, guitar, and bass to his repertoire.
After starting out with performances at school assemblies, he and two classmates were soon playing house dances. In fact, Wade first met his wife Laura at a house dance at which her mother hired him to play. They were both mere adolescents, and as Wade recounts, he "didn’t see her after that for a long, long time." Eventually they'd meet again--neither can remember exactly where but both think it must have been a dance or club--and marry in 1940.
With a taste for performing, Wade decided at about sixteen that he "was going to play music for a living," so he set out with a buddy on a trip from Pittsburgh to Baltimore. "We hitchhiked from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania clear to the coast. We only had about $7 a piece...but we'd stop and play music and they'd give us something to eat."
"I was always brave," Wade offers as explanation. "I was never shy about asking for anything."
A Music Career
Wade's fearless pursuit of his passion continued as he moved into the world of radio. When asked how he got his first job as a disc jockey, Wade responds, "I’d just go in and ask. I happened to be there at the right time." And apparently he also had the right stuff, because he turned his ability to perform into a career.
He was successful as a disc jockey and enjoyed being on air, but when he was presented with an opportunity to go play music on the road, Wade snapped it up. Picked up by Country Music Hall of Fame singer Hank Snow, Wade and his band spent three years traveling throughout Canada and then settled in Hollywood for another three years. Five or six nights a week, Wade would be on stage alongside Hank Snow, not only playing music but also performing comedy sketches. As Wade's wife recalls, they enjoyed those years "very much."
However, when Snow decided to make the move to Nashville, Wade decided he'd had enough. "Hank Snow coaxed and begged me to go to Nashville, but I was tired of all the travel." Plus, Wade now had a son, Paul, and he didn't want to continue to move him from school to school. Turning back to radio seemed like the best choice.
On Air at WFMD
"I’d never heard of Frederick," Wade admits, but when his manager told him of an opening at WFMD and promised him that he could "get [him] on there with a good deal," Wade made the move. It was 1949.
"I've been on so many radio stations, I can't count 'em," Wade states as he runs through the station letters of some of those where he served as disc jockey or played as a guest. He can, however, count the number of years that he was on air on Frederick station WFMD: 19 years. Clearly, the town and the station were a good fit.
"When I came, Major Leonard owned the station," Wade recalls, speaking fondly of the man and the many picnics he'd host for his employees. In fact, Wade made such good friends at the station that he stills get together three times a week with some of the "fellows" he worked with at WFMD.
Unlike most of today's disc jockeys, Wade did more than spin records and host interviews with music stars such as Patsy Cline. He and his band would also play on air from the studio and from nearby towns to which WFMD sent them. One of the photographs Wade has kept shows him and his band playing atop a flatbed trailer, a WFMD banner strung across the front, and a crowd dancing in the street. Wade was also a fixture at sock hops, American Legion dances, and stages all around town. "I've played most every club in the area," he says.
Always ready for the next adventure, Wade left WFMD after 19 years in order to move to Pittsburgh and start his own station with a business partner. His venture was successful, but when he tired of doing all the managing, he and his partner sold the station, and Wade returned to Frederick in 1982. Although he'd "seen a lot of country," he decided he wanted to be near his son, Paul, who had stayed in Frederick. And, as he says, "I just love Frederick."
A Life's Passion
Although he's no longer in the business, Wade's love of music is just as strong as it was when he was filling the airways with it. He has a radio next to his favorite chair and another that he built himself just a room away. He's loathe to pick a favorite artist or even type of music, but he does note that he doesn't like rap and he isn't fond of the way some of today's artists dress. "I was always funny about dress when you went on the stage," he says. "You should look nice." But Wade's not one to dwell on the negative, especially when it comes to a subject he holds so dear. "I like the music best," he says, summing it up simply.
Then he pulls out a few more pictures. One shows him hamming it up in his comedy outfit. Another captures him in front of the station microphone. There's a baby announcement from Patsy Cline and a couple of "cowboy books" in which he's profiled. He pauses to tell a story about stealing a joke from Minnie Pearl, finishing it off with a big laugh.
"I really had fun with it," Wade says, thinking back over his career. And you have no doubt that he most certainly did.
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