Steve Goss is stepping back from the daily grind of radio after 36 years but will continue as a contributor for 90.1/WABE-FM after Sept. 4. CREDIT: Rodney Ho/rho@ajc.com
By RODNEY HO/ rho@ajc.com, originally filed Saturday, August 29, 2015
Since Steve Goss announced his pending retirement from Atlanta radio after 36 years, he said his emotions have been all over the map.
“It’s gone between euphoria and ‘Is this the right thing to do?’ ” Goss said last week. “I’ve always been the type of person who likes to have everything under control. To move into a phase in your life where things are deliberately unknown is kind of different.”
Goss, 63, has been a model of controlled consistency since 1979, a silky, calming presence that worked on both music radio and talk radio. Fans have dubbed him “the velvet voice.”
He spent 27 years at 94.9, which began as Peach, a beautiful music station that morphed into a soft pop station spinning copious amounts of Celine Dion, Elton John and Rod Stewart. After that station disappeared a week before Christmas 2006 and went country, Goss quickly landed a job at NPR-affiliated 90.1/WABE-FM as local host of “Morning Edition.”
Steve Goss with Mara Davis. Her “Mara’s Music Mix” is heard every Friday on WABE-FM. CREDIT: WABE-FM
“He is one of the all-time greats,” said Mara Davis, a former Dave FM rock jock who co-hosts a weekly music WABE segment with Goss. “I’ve never worked with anybody who is more professional, more prepared, more enthusiastic.”
At the same time, Davis loves his quirky off-air personality and does her best to tease that out of him during “Mara’s Music Mix,” which has aired every Friday morning for two years. “It allows him to really be himself, to break away from being the straight guy. He binge watches ‘Nashville.’ We talk about that. He loves people’s real names. If I come to the table and say, ‘Sting is in concert,’ he’ll say, ‘Gordon Sumner!’ ”
While discussing a Boyz II Men concert at Chastain with Davis this past Friday, Goss noted wryly that he spun that group’s biggest ballads quite a bit on Peach, but management prohibited him from uttering the name of their monster hit “I’ll Make Love To You.” Too risqué!
” ‘On Bended Knee’? No problem. ‘Water Runs Dry’? Got it! But not that other one. I couldn’t say that on Peach!” he said, with a chuckle.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV8vB1BB2qc&w=420&h=315]Davis said she loves to tease Goss but he’ll give it right back, noting how a cheesy Rick Springfield concert is right up her alley. But she said given his level of enthusiasm, “It sounds like you want to go to this more than I do!”
“I’ll wear dark glasses,” he cracked. “Nobody will notice me.”
Denis O’Hayer, host of WABE’s afternoon news show “A Closer Look,” said Goss’ sense of humor is “not vaudevillian. He’s somebody who just makes the place better, smarter and more fun every day. There is no replacing Steve Goss. Class is an often overused word. It certainly applies to him and you can see in the [two-month] notice he gave. He gave the station time to work through it and gave listeners time to get used to the idea.”
A New England native, Goss graduated from Monmouth College in Illinois and moved to Atlanta to get his masters in history at Emory University. He wanted a doctorate but ran out of money so he landed a job teaching history at Woodward Academy. After four years, he realized teaching wasn’t his career calling. Radio was.
In the summer of 1978, he interned at news/talk station 640/WGST-AM writing copy and cobbling sound together using eight-track carts. (Fellow interns included now Fox 5 investigative reporter Dale Russell.) Management at sister station Peach 94.9 heard him do sports stories and asked him to do fill-ins.
At the time, Peach played mostly instrumental orchestral pieces by acts such as Mantovani and Henry Mancini with a bit of vocal flavor from the likes of Anne Murray and Johnny Mathis. “I don’t think we were even playing Barry Manilow,” Goss said.
By the fall of 1979, Peach gave him a full-time job and he left his teaching career for good. He learned production, voiced commercials, even taped a series of two-minute vignettes about Atlanta in the mid-1980s. He eventually became program director.
“The format is so laid back,” Goss said. “It’s tough to excel at as an announcer. My mentor told me it’s not what you say but how you say it – with very few words. You have to sound like an actor without acting, to sound as natural as you can.” This also meant two-second pauses between every element, anathema in today’s faster-moving world.
In 1990, Peach changed format to soft pop, a nod to modernity to a degree with tunes by Billy Joel, Whitney Houston and Michael Bolton. The station always stayed lighter than rival B98.5 and skewed older. By 2006, management decided country could bring in younger listeners and more ad dollars. Goss was the last jock on air for what was then called Lite 94.9 and he got to pick the final song by his favorite group: “Your Wildest Dreams” by the Moody Blues.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmmPFrkuPq0&w=420&h=315]“It was quite a run,” he said. “I have really only fond recollections of that whole time.”
Soon after, Lois Reitzes, the doyenne of 90.1/WABE-FM, informed him the station was seeking a morning host. “I guess I passed the audition,” Goss said.
John Weatherford, former WABE chief operating officer, said hiring Goss was a no brainer. “He did exactly what I envisioned he’d do. He never missed a shift. Talk about being a Swiss watch. This guy is incredible,” he said.
Rose Scott, O’Hayer’s co-host on “A Closer Look,” considers Goss a mentor and a friend. “He’s been my cube mate the last eight years,” she said. “It’s going to be weird not turning around talking to him about sports or music. Even race. We’ve had some really deep conversations. That’s what makes him a great host. He’s worldly and he can talk about anything. And he’s an educator at heart. He talks to you, not at you.”
Goss said public radio took some adjustments after 27 years in commercial radio. “It’s like stepping into a looking glass,” he said, “a whole different mindset. It’s content driven, not ratings driven. And a bulk of our funding comes directly from listeners. That’s true love!”
And being in news, he felt more connected to the community, having interviewed everyone from former Atlanta mayor Sam Massell to President Jimmy Carter.
While he enjoyed navigating “Morning Edition,” the early morning hours were rough and facilitated his desire to retire. He and his wife Karen had to turn down evening invites and longed to have a normal social life again. “For the last eight years, we really only see each other on the weekends,” he said.
Goss, a long-time Stone Mountain resident, won’t disappear from the station completely. As a contributor, he said he will continue to tape segments with Davis and a monthly history piece with Georgia State University associate history professor Cliff Kuhn.
A replacement for Goss has yet to be named. For now, they will use their existing staff to sub. He will toss to traffic his final time Friday, Sept. 4 during the 9 a.m. hour. Given his sense of modesty, don’t expect a long, overly sentimental farewell. But classy? That’s a given.
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