Bob Middleton, who spent nearly 60 years on New Orleans radio as a disc jockey and talk show host known by the nickname “Bo Mid,” died July 20 at East Jefferson General Hospital. He was 86.
For close to 20 years beginning in 1979, Middleton’s smooth baritone voice was heard spinning records, sharing jokes and bantering on WWIW, the AM radio station later rebranded as WBYU. Both stations, where Middleton also worked as program director, played the music of the big bands and standards from the Great American Songbook.
“The music is predictably pleasurable – Vikki Carr to Glenn Miller to Count Basie to Sam Cooke – and Middleton’s voice is the perfect bridge between tunes,” wrote Benjamin Morrison in a 1983 Times-Picayune profile. Middleton started on an afternoon shift and then built a following in the mornings, a time slot which perfectly suited his relaxed, easygoing style. He also made personal appearances and emceed big band concerts sponsored by the station.
His former co-worker Roy Quady, who worked under the name Dan Valentine on WWIW, said Middleton had an almost-encyclopedic knowledge of popular music and a lifelong love for radio.
“Nobody loved being on the radio more than Bob,” Quady said. “We loved to talk about the great days of radio and announcers from the past. We were like brothers.”
A New Orleans native, Middleton first dabbled in radio as a student at Beauregard Junior High School on Canal Street. He and his classmates created WBEH, an early FM radio station with just 10 watts of power and a signal barely audible beyond the school’s Mid-City neighborhood.
In 1953, when he was just 17 and a recent graduate of Warren Easton High School, Middleton got his first professional job at WWEZ. The radio station had its studios in the Hotel New Orleans on Canal Street.
“Bob Middleton has the distinction of being the city’s youngest radio announcer,” wrote New Orleans Item columnist Ted Liuzza in January 1953. “Bob is heard over WWEZ on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 5:15 p.m., handling news, spinning platters and making the commercial station breaks.”
In a 1998 interview, Middleton said he landed the job after an audition with WWEZ’s program director Ken Elliott, better known as popular disc jockey “Jack the Cat.” Elliott asked Middleton to read a Maxwell House coffee commercial, liked his voice and hired him.
After graduating from Warren Easton High School and working for a few years at WWEZ, Middleton left for Atlanta, where he worked at WQXI-AM. Homesick, he returned to New Orleans after a few years for an early morning job at WSMB-AM. It was there that local legends Roy Roberts and Jeff Hug, whose “Nut and Jeff” show followed Middleton’s, gave him the “Bo Mid” nickname.
Later, Middleton worked at WDSU-AM and in the 1970s was operations manager and an on-air personality for WEZB-FM, the station now known as B-97. At the time it had an easy listening format and studios in the Jung Hotel. Middleton survived a station format change to adult contemporary music and even tried hosting a disco show for about a month before decamping to WWIW.
There, he became friends with many of the vocalists whose music he played, often doing interviews with stars such as Rosemary Clooney, Helen O’Connell, Frankie Laine and John Gary when they performed in New Orleans, including at the Roosevelt Hotel’s Blue Room.
In 1998, Middleton was inducted into the New Orleans Broadcasting Hall of Fame by the Greater New Orleans Broadcasters Association. The video below, featuring an interview with Middleton, was produced to mark the occasion:
After 21 years at WWIW and WBYU, he flirted with retirement but returned to the local airwaves in 2001, hosting an afternoon talk show on WTIX-AM.
“I just loved everything about the business,” Middleton said in 1998. “I loved the artists, the people I’ve met, the people locally I’ve worked with. It’s been one great big highlight for me.”
His first wife, Adrienne, died in 1994. A second marriage, to Arlene Bondi, ended in divorce.
Survivors include a son, David Middleton, of Metairie. A private funeral service was held.
