Carmon DeLeone's show canceled on Warm 98

Warm 98 will air Carmon DeLeone's final show, Sunday Morning Music Hall, this Sunday morning, from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. "Sunday Morning Music Hall" debuted on Easter Sunday, March 31, 1991, with top ratings ever since. We are waiting for news on why this decision was made. For now, Carmon has e-mailed to let us notify listeners, with the wish "We hope that SMMH might someday find a new home on the air in Cincinnati."

In honor of Carmon, I'm printing the opening to a story I wrote 10 years ago, when he invited me to sit in and talk about Dave Brubeck. It was Christmastime -- I remember I brought him and his sidekick Jeff Davis (pictured) a plate of my homemade Swedish cookies, and we nibbled and chatted until maybe 2 a.m. Of course, listeners weren't supposed to know that we were taping the show at midnight, and not live on Sunday morning.

The story ran Feb. 2, 1997 in the Enquirer. Back in those days, we used courtesy titles:

It's midnight on a midweek winter night. Downtown Cincinnati is still and frozen. But on the 12th floor of the Textile Building at Fourth and Elm streets, Carmon DeLeone and his producer-buddy, Jeff Davis, are getting ready to roll.

"Good morning!" Mr. DeLeone booms into the microphone, as Mr. Davis listens at the controls. Mr. DeLeone looks distinguished in his tweed jacket, but there is a mischievous glint in his eye. He twists on his stool, saying, "This is Carmon DeLeone, your host of Sunday Morning Music Hall, and I taught Little Richard how to scream."

Mr. Davis grins.

"People like to think we're sitting here in the morning, doing this show," says Mr. DeLeone, sipping bottled water, his drink of choice. But chances are, when the show airs from 8 to 11 a.m., he'll be tuning in at his North Avondale home - the same time as the 22,300 listeners who have made the WRRM-FM (98.5 MHz) show No. 1 in Greater Cincinnati.

Mr. DeLeone, 54, has been an important part of Cincinnati's music scene for more than three decades. Dependable. Dashing. Competent.

When he walks into a room, heads turn. Although it's now salt-and-pepper, his dark brown, curly hair was a familiar, thick mop on the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra podium for 12 years, leaving in 1980.

"People still think I'm with the orchestra," he says with an easy smile and a shrug of his shoulders.

Although Mr. DeLeone doesn't have the high profile of Erich Kunzel or Keith Lockhart, he is one of the busiest conductors around: 27 years with Cincinnati Ballet, 23 years conducting The Nutcracker, 15 years heading the Middletown Symphony, 11 years directing the Illinois Philharmonic, on the air at WARM-98 for 300shows. ...