Jerry Blavat Finds the Fountain of Youth
He’s 67 but still rockin’, with a new WXPN audience for his doo-wop oldies. Our writer spent an exhausting week together drinking wine, learning about Indians, meeting Connie Francis, watching him hang upside-down on an inversion board — and finally figured out what keeps the Geator with the Heator snappin’ away
Tuesday
Back in Philly. Back at Modo Mio, where we first had dinner a week ago. Back with the three bottles of red wine, back with “the guys” (well, one guy, WPHT-AM’s finance expert, Steve Cordasco, who manages Jerry’s portfolio), back with the generous plates of agnolotti and pine-nut torte. The Geator’s piling food on my plate, asking after my pregnant wife, catching me up on the stuff in Florida I missed. When you’re back in with the Geator, you’re really back in. “You’re part of my family now. You understand? I think of you as a little brother.”
I don’t think this is insincere. He really means it. It’s just a delicious sort of impossibility. Jerry can befriend a mobster, Jerry can befriend your grandma, he can get close to kings and king-high scumbags alike, he can live to be 115 years old — but only Jerry can do that. You can’t. That’s his power. He goes where no one else can go and comes back with a story that lets you feel like you’ve been there too. But you haven’t. That’s how much he loves you. He loves you enough to create a fantasy of deep and timeless togetherness even though he knows that when he dies, and when you die, you’ll both go your separate ways — you to wherever, and the Geator to Sammy’s secluded table in the sky.
