Late Peter Tripp will be best remembered for marathon broadcast

Peter Tripp, a disc jockey who rode the Top 40 wave from Kansas City to New York in the 1950s before crashing on the shoals of the 1960 payola scandal, died Jan. 31 in Northridge, Calif., at the age of 73. Tripp, a native of Port Chester, N.Y., arrived at the old KUDL-AM in 1953. The next year he was hired by Todd Storz at WHB to be host of the station's first countdown show. Storz developed the widely copied rock 'n' roll format known as Top 40, according to Dick Fatherley, a Kansas City, Kan., announcer and radio historian who worked for Storz-owned stations in the 1960s. Top 40 was Tripp's ticket to the big time. He joined New York's WMGM in late 1955 as host of the station's countdown show, "Your Hits of the Week." The station hired him to counter the threat of another fast-rising DJ, Alan Freed, on rival WINS. Tripp's popularity peaked in January 1959 when he stayed on the air without sleep for more than 200 hours, broadcasting from a booth in Times Square. The stunt, supervised by a team of doctors, made national news and raised money for the March of Dimes. According to Peter Tripp Jr., the medical records taken at his father's marathon "became required reading in the behavioral sciences at colleges and universities from coast to coast." (One of the doctors by Tripp's side noted, "There has been a progressive disturbance in his thinking and feeling He is vacillating between belligerence and submissiveness.") But glory turned to shame in May 1960, when Tripp, Freed and six others were indicted by a federal grand jury for accepting bribes from record companies and distributors in exchange for radio airplay. Freed may have been the best-known victim of the payola scandal, but it ruined Tripp's career as well. He lost his $900-a-week job at WMGM and eventually ran up a $50,000 legal bill. A three-judge panel found Tripp guilty in 1961 of accepting $36,050 in bribes. He was fined $500 and given a suspended six-month jail sentence. At the time, Tripp called himself "the fall guy for what hundreds have done and are still doing" and professed his innocence until his death. Fatherley, who interviewed Tripp last year for a book he is writing on the Storz company's invention of Top 40 radio, said Tripp told him flatly, "I never took a dime from anybody." Tripp stayed in the radio business until 1967 before moving to Los Angeles to sell physical fitness equipment. He later became a motivational speaker and retired to Palm Springs, Calif. To reach Aaron Barnhart, phone (816) 234-4790 or visit the TV Barn Web site at www.tvbarn.com @ART CAPTION:Tripp @ART:Photo