Tom Clay

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Tom Clay
Clay in 1964 at the time he left CKLW
Born	Thomas Clague (1929-08-20)August 20, 1929 New York City, U.S.
Died	November 22, 1995(1995-11-22) (aged 66) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupations	Radio personality disc jockey

Tom Clay (born Thomas Clague; August 20, 1929 – November 22, 1995) was an American radio personality and disc jockey.

Clay was born in New York, and in the 1950s he was popular in the Detroit area on WJBK-AM both as a DJ, and for his on-air comic characterizations; he became a local celebrity. In the early 1950s Clay, using the pseudonym "Guy King", "The Clay" or "The magnificent Tom" worked for WWOL-AM/FM in Buffalo, New York; on July 3, 1955, he conducted a stunt in which he played "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets repeatedly from atop a billboard in Buffalo's Shelton Square, an incident that led to his firing and arrest (Danny Neaverth later repeated Clay's stunt but did not suffer the same consequences).^[1][2] In the mid-1950s he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and was equally popular.

He was caught up in the

According to the book Rockin' Down the Dial, a history of Detroit Top 40 radio of the 1950s and 1960s by David Carson, Clay became friendly with Marilyn Monroe during his time in Los Angeles in the early 1960s. Clay's daughter, Kimberly, told Carson that her father never revealed much about his friendship with Monroe, but would only say that she seemed very lonely.

Riding the wave of early Beatlemania he again rose in popularity, met and interviewed The Beatles. He was fired over a scheme in which he invited listeners to send in one dollar for membership in a "Beatles Booster Club", an essentially non-existent organization which had no benefits beyond a promised membership card or decal. According to fellow CKLW DJ Dave Shafer (also now deceased), Clay also promised each listener who sent in a dollar a personal item used by one of the Beatles; these "personal items" turned out to be items such as cigarette butts and used tissues, and other listeners claimed to have received nothing. However, since over 80,000 fans responded, Clay was able to live comfortably for a time on the cash that appeared in his personal post office box. Dave Shafer told David Carson in Rockin' Down the Dial that Clay skipped town in the wake of the Beatles Booster fiasco, leading to Shafer's being briefly jailed on charges of international fraud. Clay eventually returned to work at other Detroit area radio stations, including WWWW-FM, and also worked at WCBS-FM in New York. In 1984, he played pop standards at KPRZ, Los Angeles.

External image
The cover of Tom Clay's 1971 LP What the World Needs Now.

Clay is best remembered for his

Clay died of stomach and lung cancer at the age of 66, in Valley Village, Los Angeles, California on November 22, 1995.^[5]

See also

• List of 1970s one-hit wonders in the United States

References