'The Hippest of All Trips': Rosko, NYC's Coolest DJ

‘New York Groove: An Inside Look at the Stars, Shows, and Songs That Make NYC Rock’ Book Excerpt

Photo byVerve Forecast

“Want to take a mind excursion? How ‘bout a little diversion? The hippest of all trips. The return to reality. Well, join me.” With that introduction, William Mercer, or Rosko to free-form radio fans, would open his shows that showcased a broad range of music: rock, soul, folk, and jazz. Mercer, who grew up on New York's 114th Street and Manhattan Avenue, read poetry by Kahlil Gibran and delivered impassioned monologues against the My Lai massacre and the Kent State shootings.

In the mid-1960s, the Federal Communications Commission ruled that major market radio stations could not simulcast the same content on their AM and FM stations. Mercer, born in New York in 1927, worked at stations around the country before returning home for a shift playing jazz at WBLS-FM. When WOR-FM became the first FM station to broadcast rock, Mercer, with Murray the K, Scott Muni, and Johnny Michaels, comprised the station’s first lineup of DJs.

Photo byCourtesy of Tony Lee

WOR-FM was based at 1440 Broadway in Times Square. “Guys like Paul Simon and John Sebastian would come by and hang out in the studio all the time while we were on the air,” former WOR-FM engineer Artie Altro told MTV. “All these guys would come by with records straight from the recording studio because they knew we would play ‘em.”

By 1967, WOR-FM management reined in its DJs with a restrictive playlist. Mercer resigned during his show in October 1967. “When are we going to learn that controlling something does not take it out of the minds of people?” Mercer explained on air. “Usually, when a disc jockey leaves a station, his reasons for leaving are smoothed over, perhaps by time. I didn’t want that to happen. I wanted you to know now.”

Photo byCourtesy of Tony Lee

Later in 1967, Mercer was hired by WNEW-FM, which had picked up the alternative radio programming first developed by WOR-FM. Mercer moved to France in the mid-1970s and returned to New York for stints at WBLS-FM, WKTU-FM, and WBAI-FM. In 1987, Mercer blamed the decline in radio programming on the wave of corporate buyouts. “The people in charge are not radio people,” he told the New York Daily News. “In the past five years, it’s become all yes-men. There is no talk of creativity.”

Listen to a 1970 aircheck of Rosko on WNEW-FM here.

William “Rosko” Mercer, 73, died in 2000.

Frank Mastropolo is the author of New York Groove: An Inside Look at the Stars, Shows, and Songs That Make NYC Rock and Fillmore East: The Venue That Changed Rock Music Forever.