F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said American life is lacking in second acts, but Adam Wade may have single-handedly disproven the great wordsmith.
Wade, who died on July 7 at age 87, counted among his professions lab assistant to Dr. Jonas Salk, silky-smooth, chart-topping vocalist, trailblazing network game show host, commercial pitchman, and small- (and big-) screen actor. Although Wade never achieved huge, generation-spanning fame, if you watched television or listened to the radio at any point since the early 1960s, you might recognize his likeness and remember his voice.
Wade achieved his most widespread visibility when, for a spell in 1975, he hosted the CBS game show Musical Chairs. The fact that he was the first African American to host a game show is notable in and of itself, but perhaps no more so than the fact that he was surely among the very few hosts, past or present, who could credibly belt a tune. The format of the show called for snippets of songs to be performed by musical acts on the set, including Wade. When the music ceased midsong, contestants were then asked to choose from a selection of possible next lines, including the actual next line.
Musical Chairs lasted a single season, but its central gimmick wears better than many of the goofy game shows of that era thanks in no small part to Wade’s bona fide vocal chops, easygoing manner, and obvious familiarity with the music scene. If only The Masked Singer had all of that going for it.
Wade, whose name at birth was Patrick Henry Wade, was born in Pittsburgh in 1935. He worshiped at the altar of Nat King Cole, whose overlaps with his own life Wade itemized in a 2014 interview on Connecticut Public Radio. “He was my idol since high school,” Wade said. “Nat and I were both born on March 17, St. Patrick’s Day. Nat’s mother’s name was Perlina. My mom’s was Pauline.”
His gifts on the basketball court took him to Virginia State University, which he exited without receiving a degree — coincidentally, he later voiced characters on the animated series The Super Globetrotters, about the Harlem Globetrotters. Back home in Pittsburgh, however, Wade became a part of history, actual history, not showbiz lore, when he was employed as a lab assistant to Salk, then at work on a vaccine for polio at the University of Pittsburgh.
Wade faced a crossroads when a record audition in New York netted the offer of a contract from Coed Records in the famous Brill Building. After Wade approached him for career advice, Salk was supportive of his assistant trading the lab for the recording studio. “I told him he must search his own soul to find out what is in him that wants to come out,” the conqueror of polio told the New York Times. As it turned out, what was in Wade’s soul would soon be ringing in the public’s ears. Right out of the gate, no fewer than three of Wade’s recordings, “As If I Didn’t Know,” “Take Good Care of Her,” and “The Writing on the Wall,” wound up in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1961.
When his popularity as a vocalist waned, Wade reinvented himself once more. In the early 1970s, he found work as an actor in the Blaxploitation genre, including the classics Shaft and Gordon’s War. By the end of the decade, he had steady work on episodic television series, including Kojak, Good Times, and Police Woman. In between came Musical Chairs, conceivably the perfect job for the genuinely multitalented performer and one that should have been long-lasting — but one foreshortened by racial animus in some in the viewing public at the time. The network received nasty letters from some viewers, Wade told Connecticut Public Radio, including one expletive-filled missive from a viewer who said he “didn’t want his wife sitting at home watching the black guy hand out the money and the smarts.”
Wade rebounded from this reversal, too. He co-established with his wife, Jeree, Songbirds Unlimited, a company that put on musical theater productions. Then, for an encore of sorts in the late 1990s, Wade resumed his abandoned collegiate career, receiving bachelor’s and master’s degrees in theater. How many entertainers who have long since “made it” embark on such a venture?
Wade’s was a uniquely American life, filled with many chapters — all of them admirable and many of them tuneful.
Peter Tonguette is a Washington Examiner magazine contributing writer.
