February 13, 2000, Sunday

Metropolitan Desk

Peter Tripp, 73, Popular Disc Jockey

By NICK RAVO

Peter Tripp, a popular disc jockey in New York in the

late 1950's whose career peaked when he stayed awake for

more than eight days as a stunt but later plunged when

he was found guilty of accepting thousands of dollars in

payola, died Jan. 31 in a hospital in Northridge, Calif.

He was 73.

The cause of death was a stroke, said Richard W.

Fatherley of Kansas City, Kan., a friend.

Mr. Tripp's career was indelibly tarnished by the 1960

payola scandal, in which the better-known Alan Freed and

several other disc jockeys and radio station employees

were indicted on charges of accepting money from record

companies in exchange for playing their records.

Mr. Tripp attracted just as much national attention,

though, for his sleepless promotional gimmick a year

earlier.

He spent 201 hours and 10 minutes awake, much of it

sitting in a glass booth in Times Square, spinning

records and bantering into his microphone three hours a

day.

When Mr. Tripp began to fall asleep, nurses shook him;

doctors joked with him, played games with him and gave

him tests to take. After a few days, he began to

hallucinate, seeing cobwebs, mice, kittens; looking

through drawers for money that wasn't there; insisting

that a technician had dropped a hot electrode into his

shoe.

His last 66 hours awake were spent under the influence

of drugs administered by the doctors and scientists

observing him. Asked at the end of his stunt what he

wanted the most, Mr. Tripp said, not surprisingly, that

he wanted to sleep, which he then did for 13 hours and

13 minutes.

Peter Tripp was born on June 11, 1926, in Port Chester,

N.Y., and started his career in radio at WEXL in Royal

Oak, Mich., in 1947.

In 1953 he moved to KUDL in Kansas City, Mo., where he

called himself the ''Bald Kid in the Third Row,'' based

on a remark one of his parents had made upon spotting

him among the infants in the hospital after he was born.

He later moved to WHB, also in Kansas City, and started

the Top 40 format for the station; he rebilled himself

the ''Curly-Headed Kid in the Third Row.'' And in 1955,

he got a program on WMGM in New York called ''Your Hits

of the Week.''

It was a golden time for rock 'n' roll disc jockeys, an

era when figures like the Big Bopper often reached

greater stardom than the musicians whose records they

played.

It was also a time of quirky publicity-grabbing, like

record-playing marathons and Mr. Tripp's staying-awake

stunt.

In fact, just after he set what was called a world

record for sleeplessness, several other disc jockeys

immediately tried to best him; one of them, Dave Hunter,

in Jacksonville, Fla., reportedly did less than a week

later, not sleeping for 225 hours.

But Mr. Tripp was indicted a few weeks after his stunt

on a charge that he had accepted $36,050 in payola. He

was found guilty of commercial bribery, fined $500 and

given a six-month suspended sentence.

Mr. Tripp left WMGM, all but penniless, his lawyer said,

and bounced around the radio business as a journeyman

disc jockey, taking spots at KYA in San Francisco, KGFJ

in Los Angeles and WOHO in Toledo, Ohio.

In 1967 Mr. Tripp left radio for good, moved back to Los

Angeles and took a national sales training job with Slim

Gym and founded DynaGym exercise products.

He also freelanced as a motivational writer and speaker

and worked as a stockbroker and in investment marketing.

Later, he retired in Palm Springs, Calif.

Mr. Tripp, who spent his last years in West Hills,

Calif., was married and divorced four times. He is

survived by two sons, Peter Jr., of West Hills and

Jeffrey, of Levittown, N.Y.; two daughters, Terri

Lanciault of Guilford, N.Y., and Candi Tripp of

Holtsville, N.Y.; seven grandchildren; and three

great-grandchildren.

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