Forgotten Buffalo: Historic & Hip...An Urban Explorer's Guide to the Buffalo-Niagara Region: Unique Landmarks, Historic Gin Mills, Old World Neighborhoods, History, Nickel City Oddities, Tours and More!
Click logo for another 1970s Flashback...Buffalo Style!
If you grew up in Buffalo during the 1970s, you were a Sabres fan. The team, only with a few seasons under its belt, went all the way to the Stanley Cup playoffs in 1975. To celebrate, the late Tommy Calandra wrote the classic Sabres spirit song "We're Gonna Win That Cup." Sung by Donna McDaniel, the song makes a comeback every time the Sabres get close to capturing Lord Stanley’s allusive trophy.
Public Affairs Records 45" single - Side A
Performed by: Donna McDaniel
Written by: Tommy Calandra
Year: 1975
Thanks to Steve Cichon's www.StaffAnnouncer.com for this Kolpinski Ad from 1954.
Do you remember Kolipinski's? After many year's on the Eastside, the popular store moved to its final location on Clinton Street near Harlem in Cheektowaga. I am looking for pictures, ads or information on the store. Please e-mail me at DyngusDay@aol.com.
Click link below to listen to a classic radio jingle for Kolipinski's from the 1940s.
During the 1970s, the NickelCity lost much of its shine. High unemployment, a miserable football team and poorly planned downtown urban renewal projects had Buffalo in the doldrums. To combat the negativity, advertising executive Alden Schutte produced the Talkin’ Proud campaign. Anyone who grew up in Buffalo during that time can remember the chorus of singers dancing through the streets singing loudly, “Buffalo's got a spirit, talkin' proud, talkin' proud!"
Who would you consider to be the voice of Polonia? Jan Pitass? Fr. Justin? Msgr. Gabalski? Without a question, radio host Stan “Stas” Jasinski could contend for that honor. For over 50 years, Jasinski’s radio programs provided the background for many Polish-American homes. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Stanley was a native of DetroitMichigan who began his broadcasting career in 1934. In the early 1940s, moved to Buffalo where he worked at WBNY and WHLD before he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1945.As a serviceman based in Germany, Stanley wrote, produced, and directed a variety of programs for the American Forces Network Radio Stations.
In 1947, Stanley returned to Buffalo, but this time to supervise the construction of Radio Station WWOL in Lackawanna, New York.While he served for three years there as manager and program director, he paid very close attention to the many-faceted physical and entrepreneurial aspects of organizational growth and development.Why?It has always been Stan’s dream to build and operate his own radio station. This dream would be realized, but not for almost 14 years.During those interim years, however, at WKBW and then WWOL, he developed an incredibly large listening audience and established amazingly high station ratings that remained unchallenged until the rock ’n roll era that took the air waves by storm. In 1964, after a lengthy but rewarding application process, Stan Jasinski built Radio Station WMMJ (now WXRL) and became its first President, General Manager, and majority stock holder.
Stanley J. Jasinski, a legendary Buffalo broadcaster and a leader in the Polish-American community for many years, died Friday in a Scottsdale, Ariz., hospital after a long illness. He would have been 90 later this month.
Mr. Jasinski put the area's first UHF television station - WUTV, Channel 29 - on the air in 1970 and founded the radio station that is now WXRL.
His passion, however, was bringing news and music to Polish-American listeners, which he did for 60 years before signing off his weekend "Polka Party" show for the last time in 2000.
Mr. Jasinski also headed the committee that arranged a visit to Buffalo in 1976 by Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, whom he met during a visit to Krakow in 1969. He led the group of local Polish-Americans who went to the Vatican two years later when Cardinal Wojtyla was installed as Pope John Paul II.
Born in Detroit, he began his broadcast career at WEXL there in 1934 and served in the Army during World War II with the Armed Forces Radio Network.
He came to Buffalo after the war and became assistant general manager and producer of Polish programs on radio station WWOL. He resigned in 1964 when he gained FCC approval for his own AM radio station, WMMJ in Lancaster. Now WXRL, he sold the station to Ramblin' Lou Schriver in the 1970s.
Mr. Jasinski headed the group that founded WUTV, saw the station through a lengthy application process, and served as its president in the 1970s. In the 1980s, he bought radio station WUFO.
Through all his endeavors, he maintained his polka shows with Polish language news - daily through the 1950s and 1960s - then on weekends after WUTV went on the air. His Sunday show included live broadcasts of the Polish language Mass from St. Stanislaus Catholic Church, the home church of Buffalo Polonia, where he was a parishioner.
His show went from WXRL to WNYS in 1986, then to WHTT-AM and eventually to WMNY.
He also served in the 1970s and 1980s on the Erie County Alcoholic Beverage Control Board and was a member of the board of directors of the Polish Community Center. He also led and supported many fund drives to assist the Polish people.
A longtime Williamsville resident, he maintained a home in Scottsdale for several years before retiring there in 2000. His wife of 49 years, the former Chestress Fiddler, who was his business partner in some of his radio and television ventures, died in 1986. He married the former Dorothy Partyka in 1989.
In addition to his wife, survivors include two daughters, Dr. Michelle J. Marinello of Williamsville and Dr. Marie J. Tapparo of Arlington, Va., and Perugia, Italy; three brothers, Edward, Alex and Teddy, all of Detroit; two sisters, Eleanore Wozniak and Dorothy Roach, both of Detroit; and two grandchildren.
Sandy Beach broadcasting from the famous studios of WKBW in the early 70s.
Sandy Beach has made a career of straddling the line of the conservative tastes of Buffalo, and has never let office or city hall politics get in the way of a good show. It's that desire for great radio, no matter the cost, that has allowed Sandy to be a Buffalo radio fixture for 35 years with only a few interruptions. Sandy came to WKBW from Hartford in 1968. His quick wit and infectious laugh have been a part of Western New York ever since at KB, WNYS, Majic 102, and now afternoon drive on WBEN (2005). A native of Lunenberg, Massachusetts, Sandy's made his impact for over a third of a century in Buffalo radio as a jock, in programming, and now in as a talker, and always as a wise-guy friend just a dial twist away. The attached Buffalo sound is from Friday, March 15, 1974. Interesting features include a promo for a "Money In The Bank" game, a :60 second Lowblaws and Schaffer commercial.
A shift in consumer consumption in part to the Atkins diet craze took its toll on Buffalo’s “Jolly Little Baker” in 2004. After almost 67 years of operations, Stroehmann Bakeries Ltd., shut down its Kaufman’s Bakery sighting slumping sales of breads, rolls and other carbo based products. Kaufman’s Bakery was founded in 1937 by Sam Kaufman and was sold to the Freedman family in 1938. Sam Freedman and his brothers grew it from a small neighborhood operation to a company that at its peak had more than 330 employees and was grossing more than $27 million in annual revenues.
Thank JF for the use of this photo
As late as 2003, the bakery employed 109 and had sales of $7.5 million. They produced a full line of bread, buns and rolls for supermarkets and fast-food chains throughout the region, including Burger King Corp., Wendy’s International and Arby’s. Kaufman's legendary main manufacturing plant at 2381 Fillmore Avenue, a 110,000-square-foot building dated back to 1919 and the days of Hall's Bakery. Kaufman’s moved the bakery to the Fillmore Avenue location in 1969.
Just as famous as their New York rye bread was the company’s radio and TV jingles that featured their mascot the “Jolly Little Baker.” Click below to enjoy a carb free, yet full of taste, trip back in time….
Sausage Rivalry Ends with Wardynski's the Winner as Company Buys Rights to Szelagowski Name
It's as though the Montagues bought out the Capulets - but instead of Venetian aristocrats, the opposing families are lords of Buffalo's sausage business. F. Wardynski's & Son Inc. has bought the rights to the logo of its longtime rival A. Szelagowski & Sons, with plans to revive the largely dormant "Shelly" brand of hot dogs and bologna, the company said.
"That was always a great name . . . it's like an old friend," said Raymond "Skip" Wardynski, president of the meat processing company his family founded in 1919. The rival maker of sausage and cold cuts was founded several years earlier, in 1889, by Arthur Szelagowski. It was for many years the city's No. 1 name in lunch meats, Wardynski says.
From their plants on the city's East Side, the competitors vied for shelf space in Buffalo stores and kitchens, along with names like Malecki and Frey's. Shelly's fleet of maroon delivery trucks was part of the city's landscape, and longtime residents can still hum its polka-style jingle, "Shelly brand meat products - really grand meat products!" (Out of use commercially, the ads are still heard sometimes on nostalgia-oriented WKBW radio. Wardynski's marketing rejoinder, still in use, is: "Don't give me that baloney, I want Wardynski's!"
Sausage and lunch meat still sells under the Shelly brand locally, although it's been out of the Szelagowski family's hands for many years, Wardynski said. He said he acquired the rights in December from a local food broker whom he wouldn't name. Before that, his company produced some Shelly-labeled hot dogs under license. "For a good period of time they were the biggest player in Buffalo, but they had to compete with the big guys," Wardynski said.
The Szelagowski family sold the business to a Rochester company in 1957, according to press reports, although competitor Wardynski remembers the brand staying in local hands for years beyond that. In 1980s the brand was kept alive by Shelly Foods Co. in Buffalo, a unit of Paul Snyder's Snyder-Darien Corp. In 1983 the company announced plans for a reduced fat "Shellylite" line of cold cuts. "We developed that; we just stopped producing it because it wasn't profitable," Snyder said. His company, which owned the former Szelagowski plant on Bailey Avenue, stopped production sometime in the early '90s. He said he wasn't certain what happened with the brand after that.In recent years the marketing of Shelly meats has been low key, mainly in independent groceries, Wardynski said. Now his plant on Peckham Street, a few blocks from the Broadway Market, expects to ramp up higher volumes of bologna and hot dogs, perhaps increasing production 20 percent. "To get that product in our facility is a good thing for us," he said. "It'll still be 50 people, but they'll be 50 really busy people.”
During the political campaign season of 2004, West Seneca, NY Supervisor Paul Clark ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Congress. In a creative move to court Buffalo's Polish-American vote, Clark produced a polka radio commerical. Click link below to hear the Paul Clark for Congress Polka.
Located at 881 Broadway, Lucki Urban was an icon of the Broadway Filmore Shopping District. The famous radio jingle for the store can be sung by any Buffalonian who grew up in Polonia or listened to one of Stan Jasinski's polish radio programs. Enjoy this collection of jingles from the orginial 1957 master tape from the collection of Mark Wozniak.
The song "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" is from 42nd Street. The story goes that Julian Marsh, an sucessful Broadway director, produces a new show, inspite of his poor health. The money comes from a rich old man, who is in love with the star of the show, Dorothy Brock. But she doesn't reply his love, because she is still in love with her old partner. At the night before the prmiere, Dorothy Brock breaks her ankle, and one of the chorus girls, Peggey Sawyer tries to take over her part.
DAN LESNIAK created the last of the Buffalo radio stations spotlighting the Golden Era of American Music. WADV-FM was the groundbreaking station that became a touchstone for lovers of classic pop music through the 1960s and '70s. Lesniak instituted an outstandingly smooth and intelligent on-air presentation that featured genuine personalities instead of bloodless automation. On the technical side, WADV also was Upstate New York's first FM stereo station in 1962. Dan Lesniak died in 1982. This audio clip spotlight's Lesniak's Polka Ballroom Show during the 1970s.
