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Spiegel & Grau
November 2010
On Sale: November 2, 2010
304 pages ISBN: 1400069556 EAN: 9781400069552 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
One of pop culture’s great enduring unsung heroes: Gary
Dell’Abate, Howard Stern Show producer, miracle worker,
professional good sport, and servant to the King of All
Media, for the first time tells the story of his early years
and reveals how his chaotic childhood and early obsessions
prepared him for life at the center of the greatest show on
earth. Baba Booey! Baba Booey! It
was a slip of the tongue—that unfortunately was heard by a
few million listeners—but in that split second a nickname, a
persona, a rallying cry, and a phenomenon was born. Some
would say it was the moment Gary Dell’Abate, the
long-suffering heroic producer of The Howard Stern Show, for
better or worse, finally came into his own. In They Call
Me Baba Booey, Dell’Abate explains how his early life
was the perfect training ground for the day-to-day chaos
that comes with producing the most popular radio show on
earth. Growing up on Long Island in the 1970s, the
youngest of three boys born to a clinically depressed
mother, Gary learned how to fend for himself when under
attack. Obsessed with music, he listened with
religious intensity to Casey Kasem's Top 40 every Sunday
morning, compulsively bought 45s of his favorite songs, and
nerdily copied the lyrics into a notebook. Music became an
ordering principle to his life, even as the chaos at home
got out of hand. Dell’Abate’s memoir sketches the trajectory
from the obsessive pop-music trivia buff to the man in the
beekeeper’s mask who handily defeats his opponents playing
“Stump the Booey.” We learn about the memorable moments in
his life that taught him to endure epic bouts of humiliation
and get his unique perspective on some of his favorite Stern
show episodes—such as the day he nearly killed the Mets
mascot while throwing out the first pitch, or the time his
mother called Howard’s mother and demanded an apology.
Hilarious, painful, and eye-opening, it’s Gary as
you’ve never seen him before, telling a story that even
Stern show insiders can’t begin to imagine.
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