Mickey Shorr :: history

Often times we're asked about the history of Mickey Shorr
and where the name originated. We came across this article below found
years ago in the local Daily Tribune.
Article published in The Daily Tribune, Royal Oak, Michigan, May, 28th 1984
Mickey Shorr: still riding the airwaves
By Eileen Mattson
Tribune Correspondent

He rode the crest of the fame and excitement as a 50’s disc jockey just when rock and roll was young and now he is a successful local businessman.
In spite of what seemed to peak into overnight sensations for Mickey Shorr, intertwined with fate, he experienced many dark valleys between stardom and success.
Currently, the five Mickey Shorr Car Audio businesses spanning the Detroit Metro Area from Keego Harbor to its newest location on Livonia, employs 60 people and installs 40,000 car stereo systems a year. The flagship store is in Royal Oak.
It all began in 1967, with $1,000 to his name and one installer, Shorr opened a shop on Davidson in Detroit.
He was told $1,000 would not get the doors open. He pulled the deal together and the day before opening he was affectionately greeted by a man saying, “Mickey, my man, how you doin?”
“He said it like I had never been gone and I knew from that moment I was going to make it. We opened the next day and sold 300 tapes,” Shorr said.
Shorr had known success earlier.
His voice directed him to radio when he was 11 years old.
“I was sick and my mother gave me a book of short biographies to read. I entertained myself by reading aloud and was entralled by my own voice,” he explained.
He listened to a popular morning radio show with Joe Gentille and Ralph Bingy and decided he could do the same and began doing assorted radio station jobs at age 14.
“ It was great training and discipline for me,” he said. “I had to get up at four in the morning and take a trolley and bus to Windsor.”
At 15 he opened a downtown disc recorder concession with money saved from a paper route.
Shorr dropped out of high school and worked in several radio jobs including an all night spot he called “Corn ‘til Morn.”
Following an Army tour, Shorr went to New York and worked burlesque. He had two different acts and in one he played the straight man and in the other the comedy.
“There were 20 girls working there, count ‘em 20 girls,” he said.
There was also a man who worked the theatre across the street with Sally Rand and a couple of other big name dancers.
“The guy was a comedian and was held over for 40 years, imagine being held over for 40 years,” Shorr said.
He called Shorr in one day for a pep talk. As he coughed, sputtered and spit, through the pep talk, the comedian told Shorr, “You can make it here.” The image of the man bore into Shorr’s mind an entire week and Shorr said he packed it in and came back to Detroit where he set up a used car lot called “Joe’s Jalopies” in the heart of the used car district of Livernois.
“They we’re junkers and the business didn’t make it,” he said.
Seat covers were an item then too.

An early example
of a Mickey Shorr newspaper advertisment.

Shorr would
occasionly inject
his own brand of humor into the ads.

He bought radio air time on Saturday mornings to peddle seat covers. He introduced the leopard skin and furry models.
“Then you could buy hour air slots so I bought two hours on five radio stations, “ he said. “I did the ads myself. The seat covers led to the first promotional T-shirts and the air time led to an offer of two weeks as a fill in DJ for a vacationing DJ from 6 p.m. to midnight.
The music made me high and I would pound the table to the beat,” Shorr said.
One night Shorr played the upbeat “When You Dance” by the Turbins.
“Overnight I was the top-rated DJ,” he said.
His popularity earned him $100,000 a year in 1959.
During that time he promoted rock and roll. He met Frank Sinatra, knew Sammy Davis Jr., and other people in the recording business.
But Shorr’s success fell as quickly as it rose.
Shorr said he was fired Thanksgiving Day for payola.
“For something I didn’t do,” Shorr added. “ I was blackballed for five years. No one would talk to me.” He moved to a Florida radio station for $160 a week, then to California where he peddled from a car loaded with cookware and tools, did some theatrical productions, even made a hit record that according to Shorr was “a corny take-off on Ben Casey. I lived on that for a year.”
He was approached by a man in Chicago to set up programming for a FM station.
At that time FM was like a 1930’s Saginaw station. There was nothing there. The station became the first FM that made it into the top ten.
His innovations at the Chicago station included 25 female announcers all of different nationalities and accents plus sports done in “street language.”
Tapes were becoming popular and so were car stereos.
So Shorr came home to Detroit and got on the bandwagon with his $1,000. He suffered four heart attacks since, retired for five years and put the business up for sale.
He said he found nine bonafide buyers. It was narrowed to one.
Driving over to sign the business deal he told his wife, “ I can’t sell. I’ll die if I do.” So he didn’t sell.
He said the buyer understood.