Before there were motorists talking on cell phones while driving or texting behind steering wheels, there was the danger posed by radio comedy host Gary Burbank making drivers laugh until they cried.

Wilmington publishing house Orange Frazer Press has just released a biography “Gary Burbank: Voices in My Head.” Burbank was at Orange Frazer this week to talk with media, the unofficial start of a series of appearances and book signings in southwest Ohio and northern Kentucky to promote the book’s release.

Reared in Memphis, Burbank’s Southern accent was very pronounced early in the interview. He said within a month of retiring from radio, he took a trip back south.

“When I went into Mississippi, I was speaking in round, pear-shaped tones. When I came out, I had a Southern accent that sounded a little like Jerry Clower,” Burbank said. Now it comes and goes, he said.

Burbank feels his Southern roots were a key factor in his radio career, which saw him win back-to-back Marconi Awards, which are the Oscars of radio. Southerners’ penchant for story-telling, “for putting people on,” rubbed off on him, he said.

“Part of being from the South, I think, is funny sayings, good witticisms and things like that,” he said.

Burbank recalled when he was about 7 his paternal grandfather put one over on him and he “totally believed” it.

His grandfather said he was driving his wagon one time when he heard this buzzing noise. He knew what it was and jumped out of the wagon and jumped in a ditch. Next, his grandfather heard this awful braying noise from the mule but then, pretty soon, things got quiet. From the ditch, the grandfather heard this “clank, clank” sound.

“Those mosquitoes were pitching horseshoes,” Burbank relayed.

Biographer Greg Hoard, who previously wrote a bestselling book on Joe Nuxhall, also was part of the Wilmington interview and said all Burbank’s friends, like Burbank, are “marvelous storytellers.”

Burbank chimed in, “See, what you guys call storytelling, we (Southerners) call conversation.”

Burbank capped his radio career with a quarter-century of hijinks and hilarity at 700 WLW in Cincinnati, where characters such as Earl Pitts and Gilbert Gnarley were among the favorites. He started in radio in the mid-1960s and signed off for the last time at WLW in December 2007.

The book, Burbank said, is a biography but it also tells the story of radio and what’s happened to it the past 40 years.

“Whereas it used to be a lot of fun, now it’s become a lot of business,” Burbank said.

The book jacket describes Burbank, in part, as a social critic and he did not differ with the characterization. He did say he wasn’t consciously a social critic in the beginning when he specialized in dishing out one-liners, but “then I wanted them to mean something.”

One sector of society that was on the receiving end of Burbank’s lampooning was the Fourth Estate — the field and business of journalism. Burbank said he had respect for journalists but there were some things about the news media he and his comedy cohorts “would take on.”

One repeated jab at the news business was the line about “adhering to the journalistic credo, ‘your right to know supersedes your right to exist’.”

What that means, Burbank said, is we don’t need to know about all the things we see and hear on the news. Burbank said he believes “the right to know” sometimes is a cloak or a rationalization for journalists to report in a way that allows them to get higher ratings and make more money by sensationalizing or by needlessly hurting people.

“It wasn’t the catchiest phrase of all time, but I think it was true and on target,” Burbank said.

EDITOR’S NOTE — Burbank and Hoard will be at Books ‘N’ More in Wilmington 7 p.m. next Thursday, Oct. 8, for a booksigning, no ticket required. Books and line numbers are available now. From 5 to 6:30 p.m. Oct. 8, fans can have dinner and converse with Burbank and Hoard at the General Denver. Call the General Denver at 383-4141 for more information.