Radio legend Georgie Woods dies at 78

Legendary radio broadcaster Georgie Woods, "the Guy With the Goods" who was a Philadelphia leader in both entertainment and civil rights, died early yesterday morning.

Mr. Woods, 78, who moved to Florida in 1996, is believed to have suffered a heart attack at his Boynton Beach home, said his longtime companion, Doris Harris. He died shortly thereafter at Bethesda Memorial Hospital, according to staff at the Boynton Beach medical facility.

After he came to Philadelphia from New York in 1953, Mr. Woods used the airwaves of WDAS-AM (1480) and WHAT-AM (1340) to bring the city the music of emerging talents such as the Temptations, Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson. He also brought James Brown, Aretha Franklin, and other top acts and Motown shows to the Uptown Theater, introducing them in his smooth baritone voice.

Then in the 1960s, Mr. Woods would sometimes stop the music for hours on WDAS to talk about the civil-rights movement and the work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said Joe "Butterball" Tamburro, former general manager of WDAS.

"He had the ear of the African American community. Whenever there was an injustice, we would talk about the issues rather than play music," Tamburro said.

Mr. Woods marched in the streets of Selma, Ala., with King and helped charter 21 buses to bring Philadelphians to King's historic March on Washington in 1963.

Mr. Woods' outspoken support of civil rights made a deep impression on U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, a Democrat from Philadelphia, who as a young man once saw Mr. Woods host the Jackson Five at the Uptown Theater.

"He was a fixture in Philadelphia. He was the voice of the community," Fattah said yesterday. Mr. Woods, a leader in the fight to desegregate Girard College, rallied people to vote, Fattah remembered, and in 1969 marched in support of teaching African American history in Philadelphia schools. (Beginning with this September's freshman class, all Philadelphia School District students will be required to take an African and African American history course in high school.)

Former Mayor Wilson Goode recalled first tuning in to Mr. Woods on the radio in 1954.

"In the 1950s and the 1960s, he was it - the person everyone listened to," Goode said. "As a young man in the city, I remember the positive impact he had . . . as someone who was simply a hero, an idol, who lived a life many people wanted to emulate.