Dan Ingram

Dan Ingram

Daniel Trombley "Dan" Ingram (born September 7, 1934 in Oceanside, New York) is an American Top 40 radio disc jockey with a forty-year career on radio stations such as WABC and WCBS-FM in New York. "Big Dan" started broadcasting at WHCH Hofstra College, Hempstead, New York, WNRC, New Rochelle, New York, and WALK-FM, Patchogue, New York.

Ingram is regarded by many as the best Top 40 DJ of all time. He's noted for his quick wit and ability to convey a humorous or satiric idea with quick pacing and an economy of words--a skill which has made him uniquely suited to, and successful within, modern personality-driven music radio. He is among the most frequently emulated radio personalities, cited as an influence or inspiration by numerous current broadcasters. One of Ingram's unique skills was his ability to "talk up" to the lyrics of a record, meaning speaking over the musical introduction and finishing exactly at the point when the lyrics started.

Dan was well known for playing doctored versions of popular songs. The Paul McCartney & Wings song My Love Does it Good became My Glove Does it Good. The stuttering title refrain of Bennie and the Jets went from three or four repetitions to countless. In the same vein, the distinctive refrain added to Hooked on a Feeling by Blue Swede, Ooga-ooga-ooga-chucka would start repeating and listeners would never know when it would end. (Other examples include Paul Simon's 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, and "rearranging" the spelling of "S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y" on the Bay City Rollers' Saturday Night.)

Dan's longtime closing theme song was "Tri-Fi Drums" by Billy May. An edited version of the song was used for broadcast.

Dan is not related to Clarke Ingram, another top 40 radio personality in New York City who worked at Z-100 during the early 1990s. Clarke has said that he was reluctant to use "Ingram" (his real name) because of Dan's prominence, but that Z-100 encouraged him to do so because at the time Dan was not on the air at any station. About six months later, Dan returned to the air, doing weekends at WCBS-FM, and the two occasionally competed in the same time slots. Some listeners mistakenly assumed that Clarke was Dan's son, or another relative. (A photo of Dan and Clarke meeting each other for the first time appeared in the radio trade publication FMQB in 1997.) However, Dan's son, Chris, is currently a DJ at WVOS-FM in Monticello, NY.

Dan commented occasionally about the pronunciation of his name: jingles often are heard pronouncing his last name as "Ing-ram," but Dan has said it is correctly pronounced "In-gram." As a tribute to Dan in later years, ESPN's Chris Berman would do the same when saying the name of New York Giants wide receiver Mark Ingram, pronouncing it "Marrrrrk In-gram".

Dan was interviewed about his career by Mark Simone on WABC Post-Rewound show on May 29, 2006. While discussing a lawsuit filed against him by another person who used his name, he said "shit". While the dump button managed to erase that profanity from the air, his second profanity ("fuck") accidentally went on the air due to a delay problem.