Don Imus dead at 79: Shock jock’s career forged in Sacramento, was betrayed by his mouth

Disc jockey Don Imus, whose career was made and then undone by his acid tongue during a decades-long rise to radio stardom from Northern California to New York and an abrupt public plunge after a nationally broadcast racial slur, has died. He was 79.

Imus died Friday morning at Baylor Scott and White Medical Center in College Station, Texas, after being hospitalized since Christmas Eve, according to a statement issued by his family. Deirdre, his wife of 25 years, and his son Wyatt, 21, were at his side, and his son Lt. Zachary Don Cates was returning from military service overseas.

Imus survived drug and alcohol woes, a raunchy appearance before President Clinton and several firings during his long career behind the microphone. But he was vilified and eventually fired after describing a women’s college basketball team as “nappy headed hos.”

His April 2007 racist and misogynist crack about the mostly black Rutgers squad, an oft-replayed 10-second snippet, crossed a line that Imus had long straddled as his rants catapulted him to prominence. The remark was heard coast to coast on 60 radio stations and the MSNBC cable network.

Despite repeated apologies, Imus – just 10 years earlier named one of Time Magazine’s 25 most influential Americans – became a pariah for a remark that he acknowledged was “completely inappropriate … thoughtless and stupid.”

His radio show, once home to presidential hopefuls, political pundits and platinum-selling musicians, was yanked eight days later by CBS Radio. But the shock jock enjoyed the last financial laugh when he collected a reported multimillion dollar settlement of his five-year contract with the company.

Imus’ unsparing on-air persona was tempered by his off-air philanthropy, raising more than $40 million for groups including the CJ Foundation for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. He ran a New Mexico ranch for dying children, and often used his radio show to “solicit” guests for donations.

A pediatric medical center bearing Imus’ name was opened at the Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey.

Imus’ California connection

Imus, born on a cattle ranch in Riverside, was the oldest of two boys – his brother Fred later became an “Imus In the Morning” show regular. The family moved from Southern California to Flagstaff, Arizona, where Imus joined the Marines before taking jobs as a freight train brakeman and uranium miner.

Only at age 28 did he appear on the airwaves. His caustic persona, though it would later serve him well, was initially a problem.

Imus joined KXOA in Sacramento in the late 1960s and was known for his on-air “satirical hijinks.” Notably, one time he phoned a McDonald’s while on the air, and ordered 1,200 hamburgers. The stunt led the Federal Communications Commission to order disc jockeys to identify themselves when making on-air calls.

The hamburger stunt, which earned him Billboard’s “Disc Jockey of the Year,” was memorialized in an album Imus released in the 1970s after leaving Sacramento, called “1,200 Hamburgers to Go.”

Les Thompson, who hired Imus at KXOA, said he was “crazy as a loon. We couldn’t hold him down. A very talented individual but sometimes, we thought, not all there.”

He said he hired Imus after he’d been fired by a radio station in Stockton after running a mock on-air “look-alike contest” involving Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panthers activist.

“He was just a wild man,” Thompson said. He would sometimes call elected officials and badger them with offbeat questions, Thompson recalled.

Thompson, now retired and living in the Sacramento area, said Imus lasted about 18 months in Sacramento before leaving for Cleveland. By 1971, he was doing the morning drive-time show on WNBC-AM in New York, the nation’s largest and most competitive radio market. Imus brought along a destructive taste for vodka, along with a growing reputation for irascibility.

National rise and fall

In 1977, Imus was ignominiously dismissed by WNBC and dispatched to the relative anonymity of Cleveland. Within two years, though, he turned disaster into triumph, returning to New York and adding a new vice: cocaine. While his career turned around, his first marriage (which produced four daughters) fell apart.

Imus struggled with addiction until a 1987 stint at a Florida alcohol rehabilitation center, coming out just as WNBC became the fledgling all-sports station WFAN – which retained Imus’ non-sports show as its morning anchor.

Imus’ career again soared. Time Magazine named Imus one of the 25 Most Influential People in America, and he was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame. His show began simulcasting on cable’s MSNBC in September 1996.

In the decade before his “nappy headed hos” debacle, Imus redefined his show by mixing his comedy segments with A-list guests: politicians (Sen. John Kerry and Sen. John McCain), journalists (NBC-TV’s Tim Russert and The New York Times’ Frank Rich, musicians (Harry Connick Jr. and John Mellencamp).

A book plug on Imus’ show guaranteed sales, and authors were soon queuing up for a slot on the show.

But he rarely missed a chance to get in trouble, even in the good times. He engaged in a long-running feud with shock jock Howard Stern, who usurped Imus’ position as the No. 1 morning host in New York City.

And he outraged guests at the annual Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner in 1996, cracking wise about President Clinton’s extramarital activities as the first lady sat stone-faced nearby. “We all know you’re a pot-smoking weasel,” Imus said at another point about Clinton.

A White House spokesman called Imus’ bit “fairly tasteless.”

One year later, he was sued by a Manhattan judge after ripping the jurist on air as a “creep” and “a senile old dirtbag.” Critics carped over the show’s content, with Imus’ claim that he was an all-inclusive offender deflecting most complaints – although one show regular was fired in 2005 after a particularly vile crack about cancer-stricken singer Kylie Minogue.

A February 2006 profile in Vanity Fair contained the quote that might best serve as Imus’ epitaph.

“I talk to millions of people every day,” he said while riding home in a limousine after one show. “I just like it when they can’t talk back.”

Imus remarried in December 1994, to the former Deirdre Coleman. They had one son, Wyatt.