‘Uncle Ricky’ Signs Off
• Late last week we learned that multi-talented industry pro Richard W. Irwin, also known as “Uncle Ricky,” the founder and curator of the Reelradio aircheck site, died last week in Sacramento due to a number of medical afflictions. He was 67 years old.
Irwin was born in Flushing, NY in 1951 but his family moved to Concord, NC when he was five. It was there, at the age of 14 when the radio bug bit him. As Irwin stated in his online bio, “Before I finished high school, I had already worked at four radio stations and one TV station: WPEG-FM and WEGO in Concord, WCTU-TV(Channel 36) in Charlotte, WMAP and WIXE in Monroe.” That’s Irwin, pictured here at the age of 16, while working at WEGO.
Over the course of his lengthy radio career, Irwin went on to serve as OM of WQXA/York, PA; was APD at WJAR-AM/Providence and he also programmed KAFY/Bakersfield; he most notably spent 16 years as Operations Manager for KROY-AM & FM/Sacramento, CA. After teaching himself to write computer code, Irwin also developed the Musicminder music scheduling software that was designed to run on those classic Commodore 128 systems.
Russ “Famous Amos” DiBello worked for Irwin at KROY back in the day, and shared his thoughts, telling RAMP, “Richard was a total audio quality freak; one of the first. He brought order and method to processing chains from WJAR to KROY and he quality-controlled every aircheck on Reelradio, which was the first comprehensive historical website for airchecks, ‘Uncle Ricky’s Top 40 Reelradio Repository.'” The site officially shut down earlier this year, but the URL remains active, so Irwin’s many fans can still enjoy the fruits of his labors posthumously.
