This Week's Inquirer: For more than 60 years, Jerry Blavat helped shape the way we speak

He was a polyglot, fluent in more languages than most of us — the languages of dance, of melody and harmony, of rhythm — and he used them all.

Philadelphia is quieter today, and not talking quite the same.

With the passing of Jerry “the Geator” Blavat Friday morning, we’ve lost more than just the greatest radio DJ our city has ever known (and that’s saying a lot, in a city with as rich and rhythmic a radio history as ours). We’ve lost a uniquely South Philadelphia way of speaking — one that was as much the sound of Philadelphia as Gamble and Huff’s strings, Hall and Oates’ horns, or Questlove’s drums.

Across a more than two-decade journalistic relationship-turned-friendship, I amassed probably dozens of hours of recorded conversations with Blavat. It’s enough to notice things about his patter that were distinctive, and made listeners tap their feet and snap their fingers when he spoke — even if the music wasn’t yet playing.

Read the full column at Inquirer.com.