George Jacob "Porky" Chedwick (February 4, 1918 – March 2, 2014) was an American radio announcer known to generations in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as "The Daddio of the Raddio", "The Platter Pushin' Papa", "The Bossman", "Pork the Tork", and a host of other colorful nicknames.
He began his career at WHOD in Homestead (which took the call letters WAMO — an acronym for the Allegheny, Monongehela and Ohio rivers — in 1956), when the low-power AM signed on, August 1, 1948.
When he responded to an ad in a local paper, advertising for on-air talent at the new radio station, his popularity as a play-by-play announcer won him a 10-minute Saturday sports and music show.
WHOD, known as "The Station of Nations," was created to serve the diverse European and eastern bloc immigrant population that worked the Pittsburgh area mills.
[4] For much of his life, Chedwick was plagued with impaired vision, which led him to the practice of wearing prescription eyeglasses with dark lenses, which also aided in hiding his crossed left eye.
Friends including Little Anthony, Hank Ballard, Lou Christie, Wolfman Jack, Johnnie and Joe, Bobby Comstock, The Marcels, The Vogues, and Bo Diddley organized a benefit concert to help shoulder the huge medical bill for the operation from which he fully recovered.
On October 26, 2011, Chedwick announced to his audience that management had told him that unless his radio show could secure some sponsors, the following week would be his last on WEDO.
Lee, who became one of Pittsburgh's top DJs in the mid-1960s by playing ballads he called "Music For Young Lovers" and hosting "Bandstand" style local shows in the 1970s, was appalled at the way Chedwick's situation at WEDO had been handled.
At 4 p.m. (EST), November 11, 2011, from his Brookline home, Chedwick made his internet radio debut, beginning his show with "Breaking Up the House" by Tiny Bradshaw (1950).
[1] Chedwick has been recognized on the floor of the United States Senate for his pioneering contributions to radio and rock and roll, and countless times around Pittsburgh, including a day-long 50th anniversary oldies concert called "Porkstock" in 1998 at Three Rivers Stadium and another in 1999.
Chedwick was among a group of radio disc jockeys honored in the "Dedicated to the One I Love" exhibit at Cleveland, Ohio's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in 1996.