BACKGROUND:

Hy Lit and Jerry Blavat were popular radio DJ's in Philadelphia in the 1960's & 1970's. During the 1980's, they both hosted live oldies radio shows at different clubs in the Philadelphia & South Jersey area.

On June 29, 1995, the New Jersey Commission of Investigation (SCI) released a report about mob influence in Jersey bars. It quoted Phil Leonetti (state-informant & former underboss of "Little Nicky" Scarfo - Boss of the Philadelphia crime family in the 1980's), who was in the Witness Protection Program, as having recalled Blavat's request to Scarfo to murder Hy Lit in 1984.

"Scarfo told Blavat that he was crazy, and he couldn't just kill Lit because he was competing with Blavat," the report said.

Jerry Blavat's "hanger-on" association with the mob goes back many years and includes his friendship with both Nicky Scarfo & Scarfo's predecessor Mob Boss Angelo Bruno. In 1981, Blavat was having dinner at a South Philadelphia restaurant with Greek mob boss Chelsais "Steve" Bouras and several other guests when Bouras was shot dead in a contract killing.

The week after the SCI report was released, on July 3, 1995, Blavat sat face-to-face with Lit for this interview on Channel 6's AM/Philadelphia with Wally Kennedy.

One of the best exchanges in this interview is Blavat saying, "I've been in this business 35 years," to which Wally Kennedy replies, "The record business or the mob business?"

At the time of this interview, Hy Lit was suffering from the early stages of Parkinson's disease. He passed away in 2007 of kidney failure.

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