The grandfather of Philadelphia folk music is retiring from the radio.

Ever since he took over Joel Dorn's slot on WHAT-FM in 1962, Gene Shay has been on the air in his hometown with his Sunday night folk-music show. But on Feb. 1, the DJ who grew up Ivan Shaner in Nicetown will close the book on The Folk Show with Gene Shay, which has aired on WXPN (88.5-FM) since 1995.

To say Shay is a Philadelphia music-scene institution would be an understatement. The influential DJ, who got his start as an intern at Temple University station WRTI while a student in the 1950s, brought Bob Dylan to town for his first Philadelphia show at the Ethical Society in 1963. In 1967, Joni Mitchell performed "Both Sides Now," for the first time on his show, days after she wrote it.

And since cofounding the Philadelphia Folk Festival in 1962, he has served as emcee - and told corny jokes - at all 53 editions of the fest, a gig he has no plans to give up.

"I always tell people how he's the reason I'm doing what I'm doing," says WXPN World Café host David Dye, who first listened to Shay when in high school in Swarthmore in the late 1960s.

"But I've been listening to some of these old tapes, and he had a great non-announcer announcer's voice," Dye says, "and he also had complete command of the subject matter. His interviews were always really casual, informed, and interesting."

Shay, who lives in Wynnewood with his wife, Gloria, and his 55,000 CDs and LPs, will turn 80 in March.

Recently, he says, "I just said, 'Listen, I'm getting pretty old, and I just want to take it easy and do some of the things that I've been meaning to do and have promised people I'm going to do.' Like write my book of jokes. And work on a memoir. A guy asked me to write an intro to a tabletop book about the festival. And I'd also like to travel and spend some time with my [two] grandchildren in California."

On March 1, Sing Out! magazine will put on a tribute concert to Shay at the upstairs Sanctuary at the First Unitarian Church in Center City, with artists including Tom Paxton, Christine Lavin, Julie Gold, and more. For info, go to singout.org/4gene. The Folk Show will continue on WXPN at 8 p.m. on Sundays with an as-yet-unnamed new host, running for two hours rather than the three it did with Shay.

Last Sunday, you played the interview you did with Joni Mitchell in 1967. Tell me about that.

She was hanging out a lot in Philadelphia then, playing two clubs at a time: The Main Point in Bryn Mawr one weekend, and the Second Fret on Sansom Street in Center City the next. She wrote "Both Sides Now" at the apartment of her friend Joy Schreiber, which was walking distance from the Second Fret, and she came and debuted it on my show.

She was always doing something. You'd be talking to her and she'd have her sketchbook open, drawing. She'd use tracing paper and articulate these little lines within the pictures, and when you'd hold them up to the window, they'd look like stained glass. I remember at one time at the Second Fret they billed her as the "Enchanted Lady." And she was, she was enchanted. She wanted to be an original, and she was. She was the most creative person I ever met.

What made you fall in love with radio?

When I was in junior high school, little girls would call you up and not tell you their name, just to flirt with you a little bit. They would never identify themselves. One of them I struck up a friendship with said, "You know, you have a great voice." And I said, "I do?"

My parents had a brassiere store. I used to tell people, "My father's in ladies' pants. He pulls down 250 a week!" They would sell these women's stockings in a fancy package in a silver tube that would get left at the store. And I would take those things and read ad copy into them, to practice my announcer's voice: "Ladies and gentlemen, the living bra!" They made my voice sound great.

And then I would listen to the radio at night. You didn't have a lot of entertainment when you lived on Germantown Avenue in Nicetown. I loved listening to musicals like South Pacific and Pal Joey. Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Rodgers and Hart. [Singing, from "My Girl Back Home," from South Pacific:] "How far are they?/ Philadelphia, P.A.? Princeton, N.J.?"

Who were your radio heroes?

I was into DX-ing, meaning I would listen to long-distance radio signals. All the smooth-talkers, the top voice announcers. Jay Andres, who was out of the Wrigley Building in Chicago, and B. Mitchell Reed, who was known as the "Mad Monk in the Monastery."

That's interesting, because your style is so natural. The late Ed Sciaky, who was your assistant in the 1960s, called you "the father of FM rock radio in Philadelphia." You influenced a generation with your unaffected style.

I listened to local Philadelphia guys like Joe Niagara and George Michael, guys who to me sounded like they were very false. Then I developed this style of just being myself.

Ed always said to me, "You don't sound like you're putting on airs." I just wanted people to think I was an ordinary guy. Which is what I've pretty much turned out to be.

Except for a month in 1982, you've been on the air continuously, going on 53 years. How many stations have you been on?

Let me just check my bobblehead doll. [He consults the box of a Gene Shay Bobblehead Doll, presented to him in 2002 to honor 40 years on the radio.] WHAT from 1962 to 1968. WDAS from '68 to '70. WMMR from 1970 to 1976. Then WIOQ till 1982. Then WHYY. Then WXPN starting in 1995. I also had a show on WXTU in there somewhere. I've done all kinds of things.

You wrote a book in the 1970s called "Gene Shay's Secrets of Magic Revealed: 15 Amazing Mind Boggling Magic Tricks You Can Master in Minutes." You came up with the name for David Dye's syndicated radio show "World Café." What's been most rewarding about your career?

I've had the most unusual and colorful life living among musicians. My real value is how much I know about the music and how much I love the music and the great people I've known through the years. The musicians I've known have all been very kind. Just the honesty and sincerity of music people. And I try to be fair to everybody.

I never met the president of the United States, but I met a lot of wonderful characters. I met Charlie Mingus at a Chinese restaurant in Philadelphia. I was on the board of Sing Out! magazine with Pete Seeger. That's the joy of the music world for me. Music people in general. You couldn't find a nicer group of people. People who love it for the music and not the bounty that stardom brings. I've had the time of my life.

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Gene Shay remembers: Stories of the folk music life in Philly

Gene Shay is a man of a million stories. From his days at WHAT-FM in the early 1960s, when actor Peter Boyle followed him on the air and pianist Nina Simone would hang around the station, to rubbing elbows with Tom Waits, David Bromberg, and Bonnie Raitt at the Main Point in the 1970s, he's a living, breathing folklorist, with many a tale to tell. Here's a selection of his recollections. - Dan DeLuca

Jackson Browne. "The first time he was on my show on WMMR, when the studios were on Rittenhouse Square, he had a big corned beef sandwich with him from the R&W Deli on 19th Street. There was stuff dripping all over his fingers; it was a mess. It looked like solid Russian dressing. I was thinking, 'How's he going to play the guitar?' But he finely got it off, and his playing was so great, so precise. He played 'For Everyman,' and it knocked me out. And I thought, 'Wow, what a talent!'

Bonnie Raitt. Bonnie lived here in Philly for a while when she was really young. She knew I was a big musical comedy fan, so she introduced me to her father John Raitt, [the Broadway actor] who, you know, sang, 'My boy Bill, he'll be tall and as tough as a tree!' [The soliloquy from Carousel.] I had a lot of fun doing that. But she developed into one of the greatest blues players. She just became better and better all the time."

Jayne Mansfield. When Shay was working at local TV station Channel 10 in 1957, the blonde bombshell was in town shooting The Burglar, a movie co-starring Dan Duryea based on a noir novel by local writer David Goodis. Shay has a small part in the film. Mansfield brought her daughter, Jayne Marie Mansfield, also known as Jayne Mansfield Jr., with her on set to scenes that were shot at the TV station. "I worked in the program film department," Shay says, "and while I was in there watching footage, her daughter would sit in my lap. So I'd call up my mother at the brassiere store and say, 'Hey, guess who's siting on my lap! Jayne Mansfield!' And it was true."