Rick Dees is an American comedic performer, entertainer, and radio personality, best known for his internationally syndicated radio show
The Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 CountdownRick Dees' Weekly Top 40 is an internationally-syndicated radio program created and hosted by American radio personality Rick Dees. It is currently heard on over 200 radio stations worldwide and the American Forces Network. It is distributed domestically by Citadel Media Networks and...
and for the novelty song "
Disco Duck"Disco Duck" was a satirical disco novelty song performed by Memphis disc jockey Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots. It became a number-one hit on the Billboard Chart for one week in October of 1976 . It also made the top 20 on the Black Singles chart, peaking at number 15...
." He is a People's Choice Award recipient, a Grammy nominated performing artist, and Broadcast Hall of Fame inductee. He wrote two songs that appear in the film
Saturday Night FeverSaturday Night Fever is a 1977 film starring John Travolta as Tony Manero, a young man, coming of age, whose weekend activities are visits to a local Brooklyn discothèque and Karen Lynn Gorney as his dance partner and eventual girlfriend...
, plus performed the title song for the film
MeatballsMeatballs is a 1979 Canadian comedy film. It is noted for the first film appearance of Bill Murray in a starring role and for launching director Ivan Reitman into a distinguished career of financially successful comedies including Stripes and Ghostbusters. The film also introduced child-actor Chris...
. Dees also is co-founder of the E.W. Scripps television network,
FINE LIVINGFine Living is an American specialty television network owned by Scripps Networks Interactive. Founded in 2002 in Los Angeles, California, it was announced in October 2005 that its headquarters would move to Knoxville, Tennessee to be with sister network HGTV...
, and was the former host of the Rick Dees Morning Show at
Movin' 93-9 FMKXOS is a Spanish AC station serving Los Angeles and the surrounding area. The station is owned by Emmis Communications and operated by Radio Centro, which owns several stations in Mexico....
in Los Angeles.
Born
Rigdon Osmond Dees III in
Jacksonville, FloridaJacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida, and is the county seat of Duval County. Since 1968, as a result of the consolidation of the city and county government, and a corresponding expansion of the city limits to include almost the entire county, Jacksonville became the...
on March 14, 1950, Dees was raised in
Greensboro, North CarolinaGreensboro is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the third-largest city, by population, in North Carolina and the largest city in Guilford County and the surrounding Piedmont Triad metropolitan region. As of the 2000 census, Greensboro was home to 223,891 residents...
. He graduated from Greensboro's
Grimsley High School
Grimsley High School is one of the oldest institutions of public secondary education in Greensboro, North Carolina. It was founded in 1899, and it is currently part of the Guilford County Schools system. The school has an enrollment of around 1,800 students in grades 9-12...
, and the
University of North Carolina at Chapel HillThe University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States. The university is the oldest in, and flagship of, the University of North Carolina system...
with a Bachelor’s Degree in Radio, TV and Motion Pictures, where he was a member of the Tau chapter of
Pi Kappa AlphaPi Kappa Alpha International Fraternity is an international secret social Greek-letter college fraternity. It was founded at 47 West Range at the University of Virginia in the United States on Sunday evening, March 1 1868.-History:...
.
Radio career
Mr. Dees began his radio career at
WGBGWKEW is a radio station broadcasting a Gospel music format. Licensed to Greensboro, North Carolina, USA, the station is currently owned by Truth Broadcasting Corporation.-History:...
, a Greensboro
radio stationRadio broadcasting is an audio broadcasting service, broadcast through the air as radio waves from a transmitter to an antenna and a thus to a receiving device. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast common programming, either in syndication or simulcast or both...
, while still in high school. He worked in various radio stations throughout the southeastern United States, including WSGN in
Birmingham, AlabamaBirmingham is the largest city in the state of Alabama in the United States. It is the county seat of Jefferson County and includes part of Shelby County. According to a 2007 estimate, the city had a population of 229,800 The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, as of the 2008 census estimates,...
.
His introduction to the international entertainment arena began while working at WMPS-AM ("The Great 68") in
Memphis, TennesseeMemphis is a city in the southwest corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. Memphis rises above the Mississippi River on the 4
th Chickasaw Bluff just south of the mouth of the Wolf River....
, during the
discoDisco is a genre of dance music that that had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, psychedelic and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and early 1970s...
craze of the late 1970s when he wrote and recorded "
Disco Duck"Disco Duck" was a satirical disco novelty song performed by Memphis disc jockey Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots. It became a number-one hit on the Billboard Chart for one week in October of 1976 . It also made the top 20 on the Black Singles chart, peaking at number 15...
", the award-winning runaway hit that sold more than six million copies. The song can be heard in the movie
Saturday Night FeverSaturday Night Fever is a 1977 film starring John Travolta as Tony Manero, a young man, coming of age, whose weekend activities are visits to a local Brooklyn discothèque and Karen Lynn Gorney as his dance partner and eventual girlfriend...
in a brief scene in which a group of older people were learning to "move their feet to the disco beat". While this platinum recording earned him a People's Choice Award, and the BMI Award for record sales in one year, Dees was expressly forbidden from playing the song on the air by station management (rival stations refused to play it for fear of promoting their competition). He was later fired on-the-spot simply for talking about the song on the air one morning—the station manager claimed conflict of interest. After a short hiatus, he went on to WHBQ-AM, also in Memphis, where ratings quickly soared following his arrival..
In 1979, Mr. Dees moved to
Los AngelesLos Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the municipality of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123.445 inhabitants...
and did mornings on
KHJKHJ Radio in Los Angeles, California broadcasts Spanish-language entertainment programming as La Ranchera. It was also one of America's most formidable Top 40 radio stations in the 1960s and 1970s as 93 KHJ before changing its format in 1980....
(which was at the time WHBQ's sister station) during its final years as a Top 40 station. When KHJ flipped to a
countryCountry music is a blend of popular musical forms originally found in the Southern United States and the Appalachian Mountains...
format, Mr. Dees left the station.
Mr. Dees became the hottest property in radio when he began hosting the top rated morning radio show in Los Angeles on
KIIS-FMKIIS-FM is a Los Angeles, California, USA-based radio station with a rhythmic-leaning Top 40 musical format. It is owned by Clear Channel Communications. KIIS is also simulcasted on KVVS in Rosamond, at 105.5 MHz. Known as "102.7 KIIS-FM" and as one of the United States' highest-rated top 40...
in July 1981. In a short time, he turned KIIS-FM into the #1 revenue generating radio station in America with an asset value approaching one-half billion dollars. With unprecedented ratings success, Dees garnered many accolades, including Billboard Radio Personality of the Year ten years in a row.
He began his Weekly Top 40 Countdown, still currently in syndication, in September 1983; the show was created after Dees' station, KIIS, lost
American Top 40American Top 40 is an internationally-syndicated, independent radio program created by Casey Kasem, Don Bustany, Tom Rounds and Ron Jacobs. Originally a production of Watermark Inc...
to a rival station over the playing of network commercials.
The Rick Dees' Weekly Top 40 is now heard each weekend in over 200 cities worldwide and the Armed Forces Radio Network. It is distributed domestically by
Citadel BroadcastingCitadel Broadcasting Corporation is a Las Vegas, Nevada-based broadcast holding company. Investment house Forstmann Little & Company owns 27% of Citadel and is its largest shareholder....
and internationally by Radio Express. In December 2008, the Weekly Top 40 became the first English speaking radio show to air in China. The Countdown is available in two different versions:
Hit Radio (for contemporary hit radio stations), and
Hot Adult (hot adult contemporary radio stations, both of which are accessible for online streaming on his
official website, RICK.COM.
After 23 years on KIIS, Rick was replaced in 2004 by
Ryan SeacrestRyan John Seacrest is an American media personality, television producer and entrepreneur. He is the host of the Fox reality show American Idol, and of two other television programs: E! News on E!, and the annual Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve broadcast on ABC.-Biography:Ryan Seacrest was...
. Rick returned to Los Angeles radio in
AugustAugust is the eighth month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of seven Gregorian months with a length of 31 days.This month was originally named Sextilis in Latin, because it was the sixth month in the original ten-month Roman calendar under Romulus in 753 BC, when March was the first...
2006 on Movin 93.9, hosting the morning show along with Patti "Long Legs" Lopez and Mark Wong. On April 15, 2009, Movin 93.9 changed format, dismissing its radio personalities and changing the format to
SpanishSpanish or Castilian is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that originated in northern Spain and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile, evolving into the principal language of government and trade in the Iberian peninsula...
Contemporary or Spanish Hits. Rick continues his Weekly Top 40 show each week.
Throughout his long and highly successful career, Dees has garnered many accolades, including the Marconi Award, the National
Radio Hall of Fame-History:Although no physical building currently exists to house it, the National Radio Hall of Fame and Museum is a project of Bruce DuMont, CEO of the currently homeless Museum of Broadcast Communications, and is a museum dedicated to recognizing those who have contributed to the development of...
, and his induction into the
National Association of BroadcastersThe National Association of Broadcasters is a trade association representing the interests of for-profit, over-the-air radio and television broadcasters in the United States...
Hall Of Fame. In 1984, he received a Grammy Award nomination for his comedy album
Hurt Me Baby - Make Me Write Bad Checks and has since received the Grammy Governor’s Award. His other comedy albums -
I'm Not Crazy,
Rick Dees’ Greatest Hit (The White Album), and
Put It Where The Moon Don’t Shine have also enjoyed worldwide success. He is an inductee in the North Carolina Broadcast Hall Of Fame, has received the People's Choice Award and has been awarded a star on the
Hollywood Walk of FameThe Hollywood Walk of Fame is a sidewalk along Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA, that serves as an entertainment museum...
. Rick is regarded one of the most listened to and influential entertainers of his era.
Movies and television
In television, Dees hosted his own late-night show on the
ABCThe American Broadcasting Company is an American television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. It first broadcast on television in 1948...
television network in the early 1990s,
Into the Night with Rick Dees. He has guest-starred on
RoseanneRoseanne is an American sitcom broadcast on ABC from 1988 to 1997 starring Roseanne Barr.The series reached #1 in the Nielsen Ratings becoming the most watched television show in the United States from 1989 to 1990, and remained in the top four for six of its nine seasons, and in the top twenty for...
,
Married... with ChildrenMarried... with Children or Married with Children is an American sitcom about a dysfunctional family living in Chicago that lasted 11 seasons. The show, notable for being the first prime time television series to air on Fox, debuted on April 5, 1987, and aired its final first-run broadcast on June...
,
CheersCheers is an American situation comedy television series that ran for eleven seasons from 1982 to 1993. It was produced by Charles/Burrows/Charles Productions in association with Paramount Television for NBC, having been created by the team of James Burrows, Glen Charles, and Les Charles...
,
Diagnosis: MurderDiagnosis Murder is a mystery/medical/crime drama television series starring Dick Van Dyke as Dr. Mark Sloan, a medical doctor who solves crimes with the help of his son, a homicide detective played by his real-life son Barry Van Dyke. The series began as a spin-off of Jake and the Fatman...
and many other hit shows. In addition, Dees hosted the popular syndicated series,
Solid GoldSolid Gold was an American syndicated music countdown television series which aired from 1980 to 1988, usually on Saturday in the early evening time slot...
, from Paramount Television, and his voice has been enjoyed on numerous animated features, including The Flintstones where he starred as Rock Dees, and
Jetsons: The MovieJetsons: The Movie is a 1990 animated science-fiction feature film produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions and released to theaters by Universal Studios...
, where he played Rocket Rick.
In feature films, Rick Dees had a leading role in
La BambaLa Bamba is an American biographical film written and directed by Luis Valdez. The picture features Lou Diamond Phillips, Esai Morales, Rosanna DeSoto, among others...
, portraying Ted Quillen, the young man who helped launch Ritchie Valens's career.
Further interests
While his ingrained sense of the absurd and his fervent love of comedy have earned him top ratings in every city in which he has performed, Dees also has become a consummate businessman and entrepreneur outside the radio world. He is the co-founder of
FINE LIVINGFine Living is an American specialty television network owned by Scripps Networks Interactive. Founded in 2002 in Los Angeles, California, it was announced in October 2005 that its headquarters would move to Knoxville, Tennessee to be with sister network HGTV...
, the lifestyle cable and satellite network in partnership with E.W. Scripps Networks. FINE LIVING is now in over 50 million homes. He is also the founder of DDN - The Dees Digital Network, the online engine that drives RICK.COM with advertising powered by Ronning-Lipset Radio.
An avid outdoorsman, Dees is passionate about preserving the open land in America. He is also a farmer, raising both crops and cattle in central
KentuckyThe Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. Kentucky is a Southern state situated in the Upland South, although the state is infrequently placed, geographically and culturally, in the Midwest. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a...
. He loves water skiing and golf, and has a handicap of 6 on the links. He even caddied at the Masters in
Augusta, GeorgiaAugusta is a consolidated city in the U.S. state of Georgia. The City of Augusta and Richmond County governments merged operations in 1996; as of September 2008, the Augusta-Richmond county population was 192,851, not counting the unconsolidated cities of Hephzibah and Blythe.Augusta is the...
for Mark O’Meara. Rick is also an ardent pastry chef, who loves to bake anything with chocolate.
Active in
Young LifeYoung Life is a non-profit, Christian non-denominational, incarnational, parachurch ministry. Young Life consists of many branches of ministry but most commonly the name "Young Life" refers to the outreach arm of the organization directed towards high school students...
, an organization committed to helping youth in their formative years, Rick also is a proud participant in the
Boy Scouts of AmericaThe Boy Scouts of America is one of the largest youth organizations in the United States, with over four million youth members in its age-related divisions...
, having earned the rank of
Eagle ScoutEagle Scout is the highest rank attainable in the Boy Scouting program of the Boy Scouts of America . Those who attain this rank are called an Eagle Scout or Eagle. Since its introduction in 1911, the Eagle Scout rank has been earned by more than 2 million young men...
himself at age 15.
Rick Dees currently resides in Los Angeles, with his comedienne/impressionist wife
Julie McWhirterJulie McWhirter is an Indiana-born voice actress and impressionist best known for her work as Kanga in "Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore". Her voice acting also includes numerous Hanna-Barbera cartoons, such as Jeannie, Jabberjaw, Casper and the Angels, Drak Pack and The Smurfs...
. Rick and Julie have a son, Kevin.
Controversy
In 1984, Dees (and his record company) made a request of Marvin Fisher, the owner of the copyright in the music of the song "When Sonny Gets Blue," for permission to use the song in a
parodyA parody , in contemporary usage, is a work created to mock, comment on, or poke fun at an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
of the performance by
Johnny MathisJohnny Mathis is an American singer of popular music.One of the last in a long line of traditional male vocalists who emerged before the 1960s, Mathis concentrated on romantic jazz and pop standards for the adult contemporary audience through to the 1980s...
. Fisher refused to grant permission for the use. Dees decided to go ahead and do a parody even without the permission of the copyright holder, using about 29 seconds of the song in a parody album titled
Put It Where the Moon Don't Shine.
Fisher sued Dees for
copyright infringementCopyright infringement is the unauthorized use of material that is covered by copyright law, in a manner that violates one of the copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.For electronic and audio-visual media,...
. The trial court found that the
parodyA parody , in contemporary usage, is a work created to mock, comment on, or poke fun at an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
, titled "When Sonny Sniffs Glue," was clearly intended to "poke fun" at the style of singing for which Johnny Mathis was well known, and thus was not infringing. The decision was upheld on appeal.
Fisher v. Dees 794 F.2d 432 (9th Cir. 1986)
Discography
- 1977 - The Original Disco Duck
- 1983 - Hurt Me Baby, Make Me Write Bad Checks
- 1984 - Put It Where the Moon Don't Shine
- 1985 - I'm Not Crazy
- Rick Dees' Greatest Hit (The White Album)
- 1996 - Spousal Arousal
External links