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Chuck Adams
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Chuck (Charles Henry) Adams was originally from Highland Falls, NY and served as an Army telegraph operator during World War II. After the war, he married and, in 1948, settled in Clearwater, where he became sales manager for WTAN.
In 1959, he and former WTAN PD and chief engineer Gene Allen Robinson founded a new Clearwater radio station, WAZE. With studios in a corner of the Gray Moss Inn on Fort Harrison Boulevard, they aired a winning format of easy listening and later jazz.
For three years in the early 1970s, the pair brought in some of the biggest names in jazz to the old Fort Harrison Hotel’s ballroom, performers like Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Harry James, and Buddy Rich, who played for audiences of only a few dozen business folks that paid $350 for a table of ten in the hotel's ballroom. In 1974, they sold WAZE to Carl Marcocci, a former Pittsburgh disc jockey, who switched the music format to MOR and then oldies.
After having made Clearwater his home for 65 years, Chuck Adams passed away October 13, 2013, several months after suffering a fall. He was 90.
Station History
1948 - 1959 Other Tampa Bay Area Stations (Sales)
1959 - 1974 Other Tampa Bay Area Stations (Management)
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