Charles Steinmetz, music promoter

Charles F. Steinmetz, a music promoter who booked popular acts at local venues, died of cancer June 30 at Upper Chesapeake University of Maryland Medical Center. The Bel Air resident was 76. Born in Baltimore and raised on Kingsway Road, he was the son of Charles Steinmetz, an accountant for the U.S. Coast Guard, and his wife, Grace.

He attended Roland Park Junior High School and was a 1960 graduate of the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute.

He received a bachelor’s degree from Towson University, and while at college formed a band called the Caravelles. He played tenor saxophone.

“He always went out of his way to help people,” said Milton A. Dugger Jr., a friend since they attended Towson University together. “He was supportive of individual musicians when they needed a hand.”

Mr. Steinmetz worked for the Internal Revenue Service briefly. He opened his own business, Charles F. Steinmetz, on Courtland Avenue in Towson and booked musical acts. He was also a founder of Bay Sound Records.

Among the acts he booked were Chicago, at the University of Maryland, College Park; the Jay Geils Band at Franklin & Marshall; the Grass Roots at Hood College; and Blood, Sweat & Tears, The Association and Chase at Towson University.

He also arranged bookings for local groups The Bleu Lights, Nicky C. & the Chateau and the Full House. He retired in 2015. A funeral will be held at 10:30 a.m. Friday at the March West Funeral Home, 4200 Wabash Ave., Baltimore.

Mr. Steinmetz leaves no immediate survivors. WDAY-TV in Fargo, N.D., where he started his career in the early 1980s. By the end of the 1990s, his conservative politics became more liberal, a transition he attributed to his second wife, Wendy Noack, a psychiatric nurse who worked in a homeless shelter. His program became a liberal alternative for AM radio stations when they became the home of mostly conservative hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.