Non­fic­tion

Up All Night: My Life and Times in Rock Radio

Car­ol Miller
  • From the Publisher
April 30, 2012
Grow­ing up in a tra­di­tion­al, intel­lec­tu­al eth­nic Jew­ish house­hold in Queens, New York, Car­ol Miller was sup­posed to be a doc­tor or, at the very least, a lawyer. But hear­ing a doo-wop trio in the alley under her win­dow changed the direc­tion of her life: she fell in love with pop­u­lar music. Dur­ing the late 60s, as rock explod­ed and rebel­lion hit Amer­i­can col­leges, includ­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia where she was a biol­o­gy stu­dent, Car­ol joined the under­ground air­waves of pro­gres­sive rock.

Car­ol pur­sued radio with the dogged inten­si­ty and ambi­tion that made her an excep­tion­al stu­dent. But mys­te­ri­ous symp­toms that she devel­oped as a young woman seemed to grow more intense and painful by the year. She and her fam­i­ly were haunt­ed by an unnamed and nev­er dis­cussed ill­ness that claimed most of her rel­a­tives long before old age. Car­ol knew that she might be as cursed as her elders and it drove her to make the most of what she always feared might be a short life. She land­ed increas­ing­ly high pro­file radio jobs in Philadel­phia and New York, even­tu­al­ly ris­ing to the top to work along­side Scott Muni, Cousin Bru­cie, and oth­er leg­endary per­son­al­i­ties she admired grow­ing up. As one of the nation’s top DJs, Car­ol intro­duced the music of Bruce Spring­steen to New York radio, was on a first name basis with Sir Paul McCart­ney, shared vit­a­mins with Lily Tom­lin, and dat­ed Steven Tyler. She changed the busi­ness itself, cre­at­ing an on-air style that has been imi­tat­ed and adapt­ed by sta­tions nation­wide.

In Up All Night, Car­ol spins the enter­tain­ing, mov­ing, and reveal­ing sto­ry of her life and times. A star-stud­ded ros­ter of rock and roll roy­al­ty, Carol’s mem­oir is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly a col­lec­tion of snap­shots of the ever-chang­ing panora­ma of pop cul­ture: from the arrival of tele­vi­sion to JFK and The Bea­t­les, the March on Wash­ing­ton, the death of John Lennon, 9/11 and beyond. Car­ol has either been there, next door, or on the air. But hers is also a tale of guilt, dis­ap­point­ment, and alien­ation, of a bril­liant, charis­mat­ic pio­neer who believed she’d failed her Jew­ish par­ents, of a trend­set­ter who felt out­side the main­stream cul­ture she helped shape. And it is the sto­ry of the biggest chal­lenge she has faced, her ongo­ing bat­tle to beat the breast and uter­ine can­cer that ulti­mate­ly came to claim her at as it had all the women in her fam­i­ly before her.

Told in her inim­itable voice, Up All Night is a unique­ly Amer­i­can sto­ry that will res­onate with read­ers and make them laugh, break their hearts, and leave them want­i­ng more.

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