“On the Beach”, with Charlie Brown will be slowing down:Ed Weiss(Charlie Brown) passed away at age 80, back on Saturday[John Hook says Brown/Weiss wrote the book, on Beach Music]

from WRAL.com, and by way of AOL.com, and CLICK HERE to read more from Teddy Rosenbluth….

Ed Weiss, a longtime radio DJ credited with helping to bring Beach music into the mainstream, died at home Saturday night, his wife posted on Facebook.

Weiss, better known by his on-air name “Charlie Brown” (a 1959 hit by the R&B group The Coasters) was 80. His radio show, “On The Beach,” was syndicated on about 40 stations across the Southeast, making him one of the most well-known voices in Beach music radio.

Beach music, R&B music largely recorded by Black artists, started gaining traction among young, white North Carolinians in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Because the music industry was still heavily segregated at that point, teenage Carolinians could only hear the music on jukeboxes in beach towns like Atlantic Beach and Myrtle Beach.

In the late 1960s, Weiss convinced Atlantic Records to put out two albums of Beach music, “Beach Beat” and “Beach Beat Vol. 2”. Weiss was given the responsibility of picking out the collection of songs on the albums.

His contribution was noted in small print on the back of the album: “Atlantic Records gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Eddie Weiss in the selection of tunes on this album.”

Those albums helped validate a genre that was still on the fringes of popular music, said John Hook, who runs several Beach music radio syndicates.

“He legitimized this redheaded stepchild subculture called beach music,” he said.

The records also helped beach music spread beyond the Carolinas, said Parke Puterbaugh, a music critic who is writing a history of Beach music for UNC Press.

“That was the first time that the word ‘beach’ appeared in an album title, referencing this sort of beach music phenomenon that was getting traction in the Southeast and especially the Carolinas,” he said.

GSOSports.com notes…
**********”On the Beach”, could be heard locally on 1150 AM WBAG, in Burlington, and on WZOO Radio at 700 AM Asheboro and 106.1 FM Greensboro, and on 98.1 FM/WBRF, in Galax, Virginia….And on 101.7 FM, in Greensboro, as well….**********

More on Charlie Brown/Eddie Weiss, from www.wikipedia.com:
As a teenager, Eddie Weiss worked as a DJ on various stations playing songs for teens. In 1961, Weiss while working at a radio station in Norfolk, he was told “Eddie Weiss” would no longer be his name. Instead, he would be “Charlie Brown”, after the song by The Coasters. After graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1963, Brown worked at a station in Charlotte, where he interviewed Stevie Wonder; Diana Ross brought the singer into the room.

Brown became one of the “KIX Men of Music”. From 1964 to 1970, Brown was evening host on top 40 WKIX in Raleigh, North Carolina. After leaving his on-air job, Brown worked in sales and later served as WKIX general manager. He also helped to produce the first beach music records with Atlantic Records. Later, as a partner in Beach Beat Records, he was one of the first to sell beach music records advertised on TV.

In 1996, Brown was the first DJ named to the Carolina Beach Music Hall of Fame.

On the Beach is a three-hour show heard on about 40 stations as of 2015, with about 50 songs from a playlist totalling 650. Artists include Chairmen of the Board, The Embers and The Temptations. In 2010, On the Beach won the Syndicated Radio Show award at the Carolina Beach Music Awards for the fourth year. Brown also won for best AM radio DJ in the years 2004 through 2008 and On the Beach has been named favorite syndicated show every year since 2010.

Tom Taylor says, “His reputation is such that he could be in the middle of the Arctic and still be an important player in beach.”

Brown worked at WPCM in Burlington, North Carolina and retired in 2014, except for On the Beach and his weekly show Tuesday afternoons on WHUP-LP/104.7 at Hillsborough, North Carolina.

Brown died at his home on October 8, 2022, at the age of 80.