Gerald “Jerry” Blavat is best known as “The Geator with the Heater”. Summer weekends at the shore are that much better when you spend a little time with “The Boss with the Hot Sauce”.
Blavat was born in South Philadelphia to a Jewish father and Italian mother. He’s been ruling Downbeach nightlife for over 3 decades at Memories in Margate.
For city kids, it starts with a neighborhood. Mine was at 17th and Mifflin in South Philadelphia. The year was 1945. My father was a bookmaker—a Jewish one at that—and my mother was a Joan Crawford look-alike whose family originated in Abruzzi, Italy, making me half-Jewish and half-Italian, neither here nor there, a tough little outsider.
Nothing but stars. Nothing but stars.
Whenever we hear Heatwave by Martha & the Vandellas, Jerry Blavat comes to mind.
The autobiography of Jerry Blavat is called You Only Rock Once. The Philadelphia Daily News says: “Trust us, it’s a page turner…chock-full of family drama, music, business dirt, celebrity encounters, mob connections an even some juicy sex.”
Next door to The Margate Mariner Motel, was a place called The Oar Room. The club had a lot of potential, says Blavat. He imagined spinning records for dancers and inviting artists to perform. The Geator promptly emptied his bank acct and placed an $80k deposit on the corner property at Amherst & Madison.
The sale price was $200,000 with $80,000 up front. Jerry would scrape together enough to pay interest on the balance each month. At the end of each summer, he’d pay down principal until it was paid off. Once $200k was paid, The Oar Room became “Memories”.
Read You Only Rock Once
Listen to The Geator every Sunday on WOND Radio.
How influential has Jerry been outside of music? How many people do YOU know that starred as himself, on a Monkee’s episode?
A Philadelphia radio icon, gaining fame hosting live dances, and thumbing his nose at corporate radio playlists. Blavat knows how to pick the hits. He broke many acts in the 1960s, including the Four Seasons and the Isley Brothers.
A career that began at 13 on the TV dance show ‘Bandstand.’ In the ’60s, he hosted ‘The Discophonic Scene.’
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