Get Down

If there was ever a weekend kickoff that’d was nearly official, it was delivered to Northeast Ohioans by Murray Saul.

The man known for his weekend-starting Friday rants on WMMS/100.7 in its heyday in the 1970s has passed away at the age of 86. Yes, 86.

The Northeast Ohio Media Group’s Cliff Pinkard has more:

Saul became a radio icon in Cleveland with his Friday Get Down rants, in which he talked about about heartless bosses, boring jobs and the screwed-up state of the world. Whipped to a frantic pitch, he’d scream, “Gotta — gotta — gotta — get doooooowwwn!”

“It was a salute to the weekend,” Saul said in an interview with The Plain Dealer in 2008 during a celebration of his 80th birthday. “It was about shedding the workday grind and putting on the party life. Get ready to enjoy the weekend in all the different ways we know about.”

And though Murray Saul was as well known to WMMS listeners as the station’s air personalities, he actually came to WMMS (in his 40s) as a salesman.

And in 2014, long after WMMS’ days as “The Buzzard”, Saul spent his last hours on earth with two friends from those days…former WMMS program director John Gorman and his wife, long-time local radio voice Ravenna Miceli.

The Plain Dealer’s Michael Heaton reports that John and Ravenna went to the hospital while Saul’s stomach aliment was being checked out:

“Murray called me to say he was going to the hospital and thought it best that we get over there to be with him,” said Gorman during an interview at his Bay Village home on Monday.

“I had no idea it would be the last time I would ever see him.”

It’s no surprise to us that the former WMMSers are still connected. Larger than life, successful radio station staff members often keep in touch decades after their time together.

Among those who knew Murray Saul at WMMS was Jeff Kinzbach, who is now morning drive host at Rubber City Radio rock WONE/97.5 in Akron.

Kinzbach and Gorman remembered Murray Saul on Kinzbach’s WONE show on Monday.

You can hear the segment here…