Danny Stiles, Radio Host Who Kept the Oldies New, Is Dead at 87

[no_hypocrisy]

Danny Stiles, who brought back the music of yesteryear, spinning records for more than six decades on New York-area radio, died Friday in Manhattan. He was 87 and lived in Short Hills, N.J.

The cause was a respiratory ailment, said Gene Heinemeyer, a public affairs programming official for Multicultural Radio Broadcasting, whose station WPAT carried one of Mr. Stiles’s programs. Mr. Stiles was also broadcasting at New York Public Radio’s WNYC.

“I started collecting records when I was 13, and even then I was nostalgic,” Mr. Stiles once told The New York Times. “I went for Jean Goldkette and Isham Jones, and even then they were out of style.”

Mr. Stiles, who proclaimed himself the King of Nostalgia and the Vicar of Vintage Vinyl, unearthed gems from his collection of 200,000 or so recordings going back to the big band era of the 1930s and sometimes the Roaring Twenties. His personal odyssey took him through more than 20 radio stations, stacks of sometimes scratchy 78 r.p.m. records and countless standards from Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, the Dorsey brothers, Bing Crosby, Harry James and Paul Whiteman.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/arts/music/danny-stiles-radio-host-who-gloried-in-golden-oldies-dies-at-87.html?hpw

Tonight will be strange with Danny doing his show.