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Cordic
Good Company - Always
By
Vince Leonard
It
is said about some big people in the business .that once off camera or off
mike they wouldn't give you the time of day.
Not so, Rege Cordic.
Rege
gives you the time of day every couple of minutes from 6 to 10 a. m.
Monday through Saturday on KDKA Radio. "You can't blow the little
things," he said.
And,
in person, Rege gives you a little of himself.
"Hi,
Rege," some might yell from a passing car to Cordic in Market Square.
"HI,
Dad," Cordic sends back, immediately … instinctively. Cordic is
modern. Hip, if you will.
He
gives the time of day - and some of himself - to everybody: salesmen (they
say he's a pushover), beatniks, the rock 'n' roll set, the college crowd,
barbers and bankers, old-timers and youngsters, the swingers and the
staid.
His
ratings prove it.
Cordic
and Co. claims 70 per cent of the morning listeners. Twenty-one other
radio stations divide the remaining 30 per cent. They all know it and can
do nothing about it.
"We
only try to be a solid second behind Cordic," one radio publicity man
said recently.
A
Bearded Artist
Rege
Cordic is not a disc jockey but he spins records. He is an artist He wears
a beard. But he is also probably the best darn radio humorist in the
country.
If
he’s so good, you ask, why doesn't he go to New York?
Because
KDKA pays him enough to keep him in Pittsburgh.
Rege
Cordic needles, punctures, kids and jibes Pittsburgh but he loves the
city. He is not mean. He never really hopes for the city to fix the
potholes as long as his listener gets a laugh out of his “editorial”
on potholes.
“I'm
on the side of the listener," Cordic said. “I'm with them.”
That's where his success lies.
“I
start my program at six a. m. Anyone up at that time will be yawning and
not in the mood for anything too hard to take."
His
listeners are yawning and probably scratching early in the morning.
Rege
Cordic will yawn into the mike, He's probably scratching, too, but you
can't know for sure. He's not on television.
Radio
is Numero Uno with him. He loves the broadcasting business. And he loves
movie making.
Using
borrowed equipment, Market Square and a down town hotel he turned out two
short subjects. They may be released nationally with a first-run picture.
Rege
also loves Carmen Monoxide and Louie the garbage man, two of his many
morning characters.
"Sure
Carmen's a pain in the neck but he’s lovable. You really can't hate him,
And Louie is a Pittsburgher. He's South Side, East Liberty, wherever the
nationalities are."
And
Louie is part of Rege's own background. He's Croation on his father's side
and Irish on his mother's.
"I
tell anyone who might object to Louie he's from my own background."
Cordic said.
Cordic,
the humorist, admits two things: "I'm a straight man" and
"I steal." Everybody steals ideas for comedy, he says, Maybe not
verbatim, but situations, ideas.
Comics
Inspire Others
"Comedy
people," he says, "know other comedy people. You can't help
being inspired by someone else's stuff. It doesn't vary that much in the
racket. I watch a comic situation develop and I wonder how I would write
my out of it."
He
used names like Carl Reiner, Dick Van Dyke, Sid Caesar when speaking of
comedy.
Personally,
Rege Cordic gets up at 5 a. m. every day (he has been for 16 years); he
uses three writers in addition to himself (Bob Trow, Carl Hardman and Bob
McCullly). He writes on Mondays and Tuesdays and records on Wednesdays and
Thursdays; he wears a heard “because I despise shaving and and I thought
it would help me in the short subjects. The barber trims it; I don't have
to look at it. I keep on because after listening to all the jokes about
growing it, I wouldn't want to go through the same routine again if I
shaved it off."
What
is a Cordic show?
It
is three parts - characters, production (Cordic research laboratory) and
wide open, "kind of a junk category, a guy washing windows."
It
is also three minutes of solid alliteration-“the explosive words like
the p's and t's are tough.” It might be the voice of Dick Galuppi or
Stefanie Diamond; it is the acting and material of Trow and Hardman; it is
a tight tape job done by Bill Stefan.
Above
all it is Rege Cordic. On Labor Day, after a month's vacation, Rege will
begin his 10th year of Cordic and Co.