The creative genius who gave us redneck commentator Earl Pitts, confused elderly caller Gilbert Gnarley, twins Eunice and Bernice, and the All My Bengals soap opera, has been silenced.
Gary Burbank, the most prolific satirist in Cincinnati radio history, died Thursday after complications from dementia. He was 84.
“Nobody in radio ever worked harder than Gary Burbank, including Don Imus and others,” says Kevin “Doc” Wolfe, Burbank’s longtime sidekick, writer, and producer.
From 1981 to 2007, Burbank filled the airwaves with a crazy cast of characters: Earl Pitts Uhmerican; the Synonymous Bengal; newsman Dan Buckles; former Reds owner Marge "Saint CEO" Schott; Bengals owner Mikey Brown in the daily All My Bengals soap opera; children's host Ranger Bob; blues player Howlin' Blind Muddy Slim; evangelical huckster Rev. Deuteronomy Skaggs; The Big Fat Balding Guy with A Stubby Cigar In His Mouth pitching products and promising "this time I'm being honest with you;" and the hopelessly befuddled Gilbert G-N-A-R-L-E-Y at the St. Pia Zadora Golden Buckeye Retirement Community in Pisgah.
Burbank — born William Purser on July 29, 1941, in Memphis, Tennessee — came to Cincinnati from Louisville intending to stay only one year, until his “non-compete” clause expired, so he could return to Louisville. Instead he stayed here 26 years, longer than his previous radio stints in Louisville, New Orleans, or Windsor, Ontario (Detroit market).
After retiring in 2007, he continued doing Pitts' comedic conservative commentaries for 13 more years in national syndication. The Pitts bits, which always opened with Earl snarling, "You know what makes me sick?" were inspired by his stepfather Raymond Woods, a Memphis fireman.
“I’d call him to see how he was doing, and he’d say, ‘You know what makes me sick?’ And I’d say, ‘Let me get a pencil!' ” Burbank told me.
Burbank created Pitts in 1986 as a counterpoint to news anchor Jerry Springer’s nightly news commentaries on WLWT. Pitts was an instant hit. Within months he was doing Pitts in costume for TV commercials promoting WLW-AM and launching a campaign for Ohio governor.
You know what made Burbank sick? When anyone referred to him as a radio disk jockey. Burbank didn’t spin records and spew witty one-liners. He was a satirist and sketch performer whose humor was inspired by improvisational comedians Robin Williams and Jonathan Winters; the British comedy troupe Monty Python; Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show; and The Simpsons.
Perhaps his most famous bit was in 1993 when Gnarley called Johnson & Johnson about KY Jelly, a lubricant used to intensify sexual relations. Gnarley told the company how much he enjoyed eating the jelly on toast.
“No sir, we don’t make that type of jelly. …. No sir, it’s not meant to be eaten!” he was told. To which Gilbert replied: “Well, pray tell, what do I do with jelly if not eat it?”
Burbank boasted that “we do more material in a week than a stand-up comic can imagine in his life.” We talked before his retirement in December 2007. The “we” referred to about a dozen writers who submitted scripts to him before The Gary Burbank Show was nationally syndicated from WLW-AM in 1995.
“He was an immense talent on WLW. He had terrific people around him to bring out his genius,” says Chris O’Brien, former WGRR-FM morning host with his wife, Janeen Coyle.
“We did 30 minutes of recorded material a day, in addition to the live stuff we did on the air," Wolfe says. "I’d start writing at 6 in the morning, and then we’d get into the studio at 10 and record and edit until he went on at 2 p.m."
Burbank’s rare talents were recognized nationally. He is the only person to win back-to-back Marconi Radio Awards for “personality of the year” from the National Association of Broadcasters (1991 and ’92). He was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2012.
“They changed the rules after he won the Marconi twice. They were afraid that he would win it a third time,” Wolfe says.
As a Memphis teenager he played drums in a rock ‘n’ roll band called the Red Hots. He also met Elvis Presley while hitchhiking with a buddy in 1957, at age 16. “He pulls over, and we get in, and I say, ‘You’re Elvis aren’t you?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’ He just drove us around Memphis and he waved at girls.”
After high school, Burbank played drums with a band called the Mar-Keys for two years. Needing to make more money, he took a radio job in 1964 at tiny KLPL-AM in Lake Providence, as DJ Johnny Apollo. He fell asleep during his debut, but nobody noticed.
“I went on the air at 5 a.m. my first day, put on ‘Wolly Bully’ and immediately went to sleep. Remember, I had been a musician and normally went to bed at 5. I woke up 45 minutes later and the record was still tracking. I was terrified! I didn’t know what to do so I turned on the mic and said, ‘That was Sam the Sham and The Pharohs,’ and went on with my show. And I never got a single phone call! So I thought: I can do anything I want at this time in the morning. So I started doing funny voices.”
He wound up at Louisville’s WAKY-AM in 1968 at the height of Laugh-In’s popularity. His boss gave him a new name inspired by Laugh-In announcer Gary Owen, who said the TV show was “from beautiful downtown Burbank.” He moved to New Orleans, then to powerhouse CKLW-AM in the Detroit/Windsor market in 1974. It was such a blowtorch that Burbank was No. 2 in Cleveland and No. 1 in Toledo. He surprised the radio industry in 1976 by going back to Louisville, for WHAS-AM, to raise his family.
He quit WHAS-AM in 1980 after recording a novelty record, Who Shot J.R.?, about the Dallas TV soap opera cliffhanger involving the attempted murder of oil baron J.R. Ewing. He did a brief stint at a Tampa station, then WLW-AM hired Burbank in 1981 to replace longtime “Morning Mayor” James Francis Patrick O’Neill.
When Randy Michaels took over WLW-AM, Jim Scott was hired for mornings in 1984 and Burbank moved to afternoons. Michaels also gave Burbank a 10-year contract.
“It's hard to find the superlatives to apply to Gary. Cincinnati has a rich radio heritage, unequaled in any market outside of New York or Chicago, and Gary is one of the reasons,” says Michaels, the former Jacor, Clear Channel and Tribune executive.
“Most of the best radio personalities work for an hour or two before an air shift to prepare. Gary worked all day producing material, often writing late into the night before. I learned a lot about radio watching Gary make call after call to get just the right reaction for a phone bit. He might spend 45 minutes on the phone to get what he wanted for a four-minute on-air segment.
“We loved Gary on the air, for good reasons. He was creative, talented, and he worked hard at his craft. That hard work made the end result sound effortless. There has never been anyone like him. I was in awe of his talent, and will miss him terribly,” Michaels says.
Afternoons were liberating for Burbank. He was freed of the repetitive news, traffic, and weather “service elements” and could make evening commutes a joy ride for his listeners. And unlike mornings, winter afternoons couldn’t be hijacked by long school closing lists.
In the 1980s his afternoon show was followed by Bob Trumpy’s Sports Talk. Trumpy and sports director Andy MacWilliams began popping into Burbank’s studio at 4 p.m. to answer a sports question, which grew into the Sports or Consequences sports trivia show 4-4:30 p.m. Most calls ended with the studio experts — Burbank called them the “Sufficianados” — correctly answering the question, followed by a chant first uttered by Trumpy: “We don’t! We don’t! We don’t mess around!”
I was a small part of his show in the 1990s. Burbank asked me to call every Monday afternoon to discuss the week in TV. Burbank would go off on tangents, into a thousand different directions. He was one of the quickest wits I’ve ever encountered, and it was difficult to keep up, like when I’d interview Jonathan Winters. My five-minute segment was very humbling. I also interviewed Burbank and Wolfe for a four-part WCET-TV series, Burbank on Burbank, which aired in March 2008.
His love of Memphis-style barbeque led him to open a restaurant, Burbank’s Real Bar-B-Q, in Sharonville in 1989, followed by others in Fort Mitchell, Eastgate, Forest Fair Mall, and Mount Lookout.
But television success was elusive. He shot two sitcom pilots, Eugene in 1987 and It’s The Pitts in 1989. Neither were broadcast. WCPO-TV aired two half-hour Broadbank Burbcasting Corp. sketch shows produced by Jim Friedman in 1990 with Burbank in costume as Pitts, Gnarley Rev. Skaggs, Ranger Bob, and the Big Fat Balding Guy. Channel 9 didn’t do more. The BBC shows caught the eye of former NBC Entertainment President Brandon Tartikoff, who told me in 1994 he wanted Earl Pitts for Guffaw, a pilot for a syndicated Nashville-based comedy sketch show. Again, nothing happened.
In his final year at WLW-AM, Burbank created Play It Forward, a charity to help local musicians with medical or financial needs. He also wrote songs and played guitar with Noah Hunt in a band called Blue Run.
He retired in December 2007, at age 65, because he “wanted to see what it’s like not to have this kind of pressure to be funny every day,” he told me. He and his wife Carol split time between homes in Northern Kentucky and Florida. He loved to ride his motorcycle and play music before experiencing memory issues in recent years.
“I don’t want to sound like ‘poor Gary,’ but you know, there have been days I’ve gone on the air and had nothing. I’m a comic. It’s very difficult to stay fresh. Some days I sit down and my brain is empty," he told me in 2008.
“In fact, that’s my official reason for retiring: My brain is empty!”
William Lawrence, a longtime friend and contributor whom Burbank called “Banker Bill,” said that Burbank fans will always remember their favorite bits and characters.
“Billy Purser passed today,” says Lawrence of Villa Hills. “But Gary Burbank will be with us forever.”
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