Veteran Philadelphia DJ Harvey Holiday is Retiring from Radio

After nearly 30 years at 98.1 WOGL and a career that has spanned over 50 years, Philadelphia Radio Personality Harvey Holiday will retire from radio on December 12.

Harvey Holiday has been with WOGL since July 1989 soon after it flipped to an Oldies station. Before moving over to WOGL, Holiday had been the long-time host of the Sunday Night Oldies Show on WDAS-FM. After Holiday's departure, the Sunday Night Show was hosted by Joe "Butterball" Tamburro until his death in 2012. That show continues as The Wide Wonderful World of Butter with host Patty Jackson from 7-midnight. 

As for Holiday, he spent most of his career, which dates back to the mid 1960’s, in Philadelphia radio where he worked at 560 WFIL, 1340 WHAT, 102.1 WIOQ and as mentioned earlier WDAS Radio. 

In 1970, Harvey Holiday worked at both stations WDAS AM and FM. He was Program Director of WDAS-FM and later became Research Director for both AM & FM. It was at that time, he started his famous Sunday evening broadcast on WDAS-FM from 7 pm until midnight. 

Holiday was best known to mainstream audiences for the Doo Wop “Street Corner Sunday” program that aired on WOGL on Sunday evenings from 1989 until this past January. Holiday was eventually hired to fill the regular Monday to Friday midday shift at WOGL where he has been ever since. 

The music he played is called Doo Wop today, but back then it was simply known as Rock 'N Roll. However over the years of course, Rock 'N Roll has come to mean something quite different. Hear a sampling of it with Holiday's interview with the legendary Doug "Jocko" Henderson from 1999 in the video below.

Holiday with Smokey Robinson

WOGL will give Holiday a long farewell as the first twelve days of December will be billed as “The 12 Days of Harvey Holiday” allowing him a chance to say farewell to the audience.

Here's more of Harvey Holiday from Broadcast Pioneers website.