Entertainment

Jerry Lubin, 'air ace' of Detroit's WABX radio, dies of Covid

February 07, 2021, 7:05 AM


Jerry Lubin (center), with fellow radio personalities (Photo: Facebook, by John O'Leary)

Jerry Lubin, one of the original "air aces" of Detroit radio station WABX, has died, of Covid-19 complication, in Los Angeles. He was 80. 

Local media are saluting the former disc jockey for the now-defunct station. Both Lubin and WABX were pioneers in the early era of so-called underground radio of the late 1960s and early '70s. 

The Free Press reports:

As part of the early 'ABX crew, Lubin was a preeminent on-air voice during a fertile, explosive chapter in Detroit rock, as music, politics and activism swirled in a hip, heady brew.

Lubin and his colleagues struck an antiestablishment tone, taking the word-on-the-street to the airwaves while forging a sense of community on the Detroit scene.

“The music, the politics, the dope: None of it is connected without the radio,” Lubin said of those days. “You don’t have the antiwar movement and otherwise without the radio. You don’t have the exposure of the music.”

Lubin also worked as a road manager for Mitch Ryder, and was a regular at the Grande Ballroom scene of the same era. He eventually left WABX for the station that became WRIF. He grew dismayed by the winnowing of the latter station's record library to a far smaller selection of "commercially acceptable records" that couldn't reflect the eclectic nature of a DJ's art. 

Eventually, in need of stability, Lubin took a job at the U.S. Postal Service. He relocated to California to be closer to his children. 


Read more:  Detroit Free Press


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