Dick Biondi, an exuberant, fast-talking High 40 radio character, nicknamed “the Screamer,” who within the early Sixties grew to become considered one of Chicago’s hottest disc jockeys and, because of the power of his station’s sign, was heard properly past the town, died on June 26 in Chicago. He was 90.

His loss of life was confirmed by Pamela Enzweiler-Pulice, the director of a forthcoming documentary, “The Voice That Rocked America: The Dick Biondi Story.”

Mr. Biondi was a yeller, although not a shock jock, at WLS-AM, which had simply modified its format to rock ‘n’ roll when he was employed for the late night shift in 1960 for $378 every week (about $3,900 in in the present day’s {dollars}). The station’s attain into 38 states and Canada supplied Mr. Biondi with a platform that made him a significant media character as rock music’s reputation surged.

Mr. Biondi, who was inducted into the Radio Corridor of Fame in 1998, rapidly established himself as a Chicago star. He referred to as himself “the Wild I-tralian”; hosted document hops and charity occasions; and recorded a novelty track, “On High of a Pizza,” a parody of “On High of Previous Smoky” that in 1961 grew to become a neighborhood hit.

“No person got here near his character,” Ms. Enzweiler-Pulice mentioned in a telephone interview. “He was wild, outrageous, goofy and uplifting. He was like a giant child — he was considered one of us. He spoke our language.”

In 1961, The Gavin Report, an trade publication, named him the High 40 disc jockey of the yr. His night rankings ultimately rose to the best in Chicago radio.

Regardless of “working within the shadowland of the night-time disk jockey, the place the glare of nationwide publicity and the adulation of the fan magazines seldom penetrates,” Roger Ebert, the long run movie critic, wrote in late 1961 in The Day by day Illini, the coed newspaper of the College of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, “Biondi has managed prior to now two years to turn into probably the most well-known males within the Midwest.”

The Chicago Tribune has reported through the years that Biondi’s present attracted as a lot as a 60 p.c share of all listeners within the Chicago market. In 1962, The Tribune mentioned that the majority of his native viewers consisted of youngsters.

Ms. Enzweiler-Pulice was considered one of Mr. Biondi’s younger followers. She began a Biondi fan membership and wrote a publication. She was 13 when she met him for the primary time at a shopping mall, the place a whole lot of individuals watched him arrive in a helicopter.

“Wherever he went,” she mentioned, “followers mobbed him.”

WLS grew to become a vital a part of the hit-making machine for document corporations, and Mr. Biondi was a big participant in that equation. He was particularly essential to the 4 Seasons, whose label, Vee-Jay, was primarily based in Chicago.

One other group that was on Vee-Jay, at the very least for some time, was the Beatles. And it’s potential that when Mr. Biondi performed their Vee-Jay single “Please Please Me” in early 1963, it was the primary time a Beatles track had been heard on a station in the USA, mentioned Mark Lewisohn, whose guide “Tune In” (2013) is the primary of a projected trilogy referred to as “The Beatles: All These Years.”

However Mr. Biondi’s time at WLS resulted in 1963 after solely three years. He was fired when he complained concerning the quantity of commercials on his present in contrast with that of a competitor, Dick Kemp, often known as “the Wild Baby,” on a rival station. Mr. Biondi mentioned that his carping angered the gross sales supervisor; in a single confrontation on the studio, Mr. Biondi, armed with a letter opener, needed to be restrained by two engineers.

This was, Mr. Biondi mentioned, considered one of 25 instances he was dismissed from varied jobs over the course of his profession.

Quickly after his dismissal, Herb Lyon, a gossip columnist in The Tribune, reported: “Ex WLS Dee Jay Dick Biondi, nonetheless the teen’s hero, trotting ’spherical city, pushing his personal new album, ‘Biondi Talks to Youngsters,’ an actual twist.”

Richard Orlando Biondi was born on Sept. 13, 1932, in Endicott, N.Y., close to Binghamton, to Michael and Rose Biondi. He first carried out on radio when he was 8, and, as he stood exterior a studio in Auburn, N.Y., the announcer he was watching requested him to come back inside and browse a industrial for a girls’s clothes retailer.

That began his love affair with radio. As a teen he labored as a gofer at a station in Binghamton, the place one of many announcers tutored him on his diction. In 1950, after graduating from highschool, he acquired a job in Corning, N.Y., as a sportscaster.

For the subsequent decade he labored at stations in Alexandria, La. (the place he performed R&B and referred to as highschool soccer video games); York, Pa.; Youngstown, Ohio; and Buffalo.

He hosted a document hop in 1957 starring Jerry Lee Lewis, who was on the apex of his fiery fame however was upstaged on the occasion by the actor Michael Landon, who talked his approach by way of his single “Gimme a Little Kiss (Will Ya, Huh?).”

“The women went nuts,” Mr. Biondi mentioned in an interview on the tv present “Chicago Tonight” in 2003. “You understand how handsome he was.”

Mr. Biondi grew a beard, which he dyed from week to week to match the official colours of the excessive faculties the place he repeatedly hosted document hops. He sat on a flagpole for 3 days and nights on a listener’s dare.

And he mentioned he met Elvis Presley backstage in Cleveland and persuaded him to autograph the white shirt he was carrying; Mr. Biondi then wore it to a hop, the place followers shredded it so badly that he needed to go to a hospital emergency room to deal with his badly scratched again.

After leaving Chicago in 1963, Mr. Biondi spent the subsequent half-century bouncing round. He moved to KRLA in Los Angeles in 1963; hosted a nationally syndicated present on Mutual Radio from 1964 till it was canceled in 1965; after which returned to KRLA, the place in 1965 he and his fellow D.J.s, together with Bob Eubanks and Casey Kasem, launched the Beatles on the Hollywood Bowl. He got here again to Chicago in 1967, at WCFL.

“You realize, the day I left Chicago, I began wanting to come back again to it,” he instructed The Tribune in 1967. “It’s the one place I’ve ever been that’s made an impression on me.”

However in 1972 he left for a station in Cincinnati. He later moved on to Boston and North Myrtle Seashore, S.C., earlier than coming again to Chicago for good in 1983, most importantly because the host of a present at a brand new oldies station, WJMK-FM, for 21 years. He returned to WLS (this time on the FM dial) from 2006 till the station ended its affiliation with him in 2018.

His survivors embody his spouse, Maribeth Biondi, and his sister, Geraldine Wallace.

A lot of Mr. Biondi’s encounters with rock luminaries remained vivid many years later.

For instance, he recalled that after Michael Landon, who was then starring within the movie “I Was a Teenage Werewolf,” wowed the gang of a number of hundred followers in 1957, Jerry Lee Lewis went onstage for his second set and carried out 14 songs.

“He goes loopy within the second present,” Mr. Biondi mentioned. “He walks off and right here’s Michael Landon. He says, ‘OK, fairly boy, prime me this time.’”