Dick Golembiewski, a self-volunteered historian of Milwaukee culture, died Sunday of an apparent heart attack. In recent years, Golembiewski emerged as the leading expert on early Milwaukee television, maintaining a remarkably thorough Web site about the many low-budget, local horror programs that have killed airtime over the decades, and last year releasing a book Milwaukee Television History: The Analog Years, which he was promoting as recently as this March on WUWM's Lake Effect. Its hard to imagine anyone else dedicating themselves as completely to documenting such an esoteric subject, but if Golembieski hadn't, much of that information might have been lost to history.
I suspect that Golembiewski's more enduring legacy, however, will be his involvement in the local music scene. As Dick Nitelinger, his long-held pseudonym, from 1984 to 1992 he hosted WMSE's "Folk City," where he had a more liberal idea of what was considered folk than some of his peers might have (his WMSE days also included a stint hosting the primitive talk show "Milwaukee's Talking" for a period in the '80s). He also maintained strong ties to The Coffee House.
Throughout the week I'm going to try my best to compile remembrances from friends and acquaintances of Golembieski in this spacefeel free to add your own via comment of e-mail if you'd like (there are also some nice remembrances here, in the comments of Tim Curprisin's early coverage of Golembieski's death). I'll start with one e-mailed from Golembiewski's fellow WMSE alum Peter Rohde:
[Dick] did a Sunday night show for many years on WMSE call "Folk City," Where he featured lots of local folk musicians live. He also expanded the boundaries of Folk music on his show by including elements like Country, Reggae or Irish Punk (Bob Marley and the Pogues for example). He could always find a way to justify introducing harder edged selections, such as the "Oil Tasters", by reminding everyone that they were just "Folks". As far as I know, he introduced the term "Folk Off" to the Milwaukee airwaves. To illustrate Dick's "biting" sense of humor; Folk City was followed by a program called "Women's Music Radio" which, as you can imagine, featured many women artists with an alternative lifestyle choice ... One week Dick ended his show, quite deliberately, with the country classic "Stand by Your Man". As you can imagine, they blew a gasket. Dick was thrilled, based on their reaction, it was the funniest joke he'd ever made. He started ending Folk City with that song regularly. He never got tired of the joke, even when everyone else did. Eventually we talked him out of it, but he was reluctant to give up the prank.Dick also ran a talk show for WMSE in the 80's ... We did live call-ins with our rickety tape delay. Two reel-to-reel tape decks mounted side by side, recording the live stream on the left deck and playing out to the air from the right deck. And there was me, constantly adjusting the speed of each drive to maintain the proper tension on the tape. When we were lucky, it worked for the whole show, when we weren't, we stopped taking callers. I remember two of those shows vividly, the first was Frank Zeidler, already frail, mind sharp as a whip. He assured us that no matter how small our radio station was, there were at least 3000 people listening at all times, and therefore we mattered.
Sandy Weisto reflects on Golembiewski's role at The Coffee House:
I first met Dick in the '80s when he came back to Milwaukee joined The Coffee House board. He could always be counted on to be a calm, reliable, detail oriented presence and often helped to mediate disputes at meetings.In recent years he especially enjoyed helping to emcee shows at The Coffee House. He had a great memory and was always full of stories about performers. He could be counted on to give interesting introductions. After the intermission he liked to say that now he was going to give us the rundown of acoustic music events coming up just like he used to do on his radio show, "Folk City". He helped to organize and emcee our big 40th anniversary celebration concert which was recorded Wisconsin Public Radio's Simply Folk. I think Dick missed having the radio show and sometimes talked about the possibility of doing one again.
He took the initiative to compile and write up the history of The Coffee House for our 40th Anniversary celebration. He approached the project with the same industry and attention to detail that he put into his recent book. We printed the history to hand out at the event and also posted it on our website. I especially appreciated his work on this as I feel it added a great deal to the Anniversary and is invaluable in documenting The Coffee House.
At our December 15, 2008 Coffee House board meeting we brought a tv in and some pizzas and gathered as a group to view Dick being interviewed about his book on Channel 10's show "I Remember". Dick was there with us. It was a memorable evening. We were all so very proud of him and are glad he got to enjoy the fruits of his labor.
The last time I saw Dick he was the door volunteer for Bill Camplin's recent show at The Coffee House on Friday, Mar 20th. He was training a new volunteer and doing his usual thorough job. He had many good qualities, but I will especially miss his attention to detail and reliability. He was warm, friendly and accepting. As Jym said, he was a great friend to the local folk & acoustic music community. He will be deeply missed by The Coffee House.
Musician Jym Mooney shares his memories:
Dick always opened his show with Pete Seeger's recording of "Die Gedanken Sind Frei (My Thoughts Are Free)," and his musical choices reflected that clearly. Dick's definition of folk music ranged from Seeger to Billy Bragg, from Joni Mitchell to Camper Van Beethoven. Most importantly, Dick was a staunch and active supporter of local acoustic and folk musicians, frequently bringing them into the studio for live performances on his show, as well as playing their recordings in rotation with national artists. I was lucky enough to appear on his show many times, performing live or debuting my latest recordings. Dick's support and encouragement meant a great deal to me, as it has to many other musicians who passed through his studio.In later years Dick became a loyal and regular volunteer at The Coffee House, working the door, doing background chores, organizing events, and emceeing shows. His good humor and steadfastness earned him many good friends, and he will be missed terribly by very many people.
Dick was a man of many interests. In addition to his interest in local TV history, he was a fanatical race car enthusiast (on his radio show he would read a few sports scores perfunctorily, then announce, "And now for the REAL SPORTS news" before going into all the latest from the world of race cars).
And veteran WMSE host weights in on Golembiewski's legacy:
Dick was very active with the Coffeehouse. I believe some of WMSE's first official benefits happened there, thanks to Dick ... He was very proud that WMSE's first local live performances took place on his Folk City show. He was a huge supporter of folk music but wasn't afraid to joke about it, i.e. "Remember the great folk scare of the sixties? That stuff almost caught on!" His wit was always a great pleasure back in the eighties. He led us down a well worn path to Tony's Tavern after our music department meetings. And recently at our monthly Sunday brunches we enjoyed his wealth of information and knowledge of history.In the early days of WMSE his input was invaluable and helped set the direction that the station still goes in today.
