Celebrating A 60-Year Milestone

On November 12 I will have completed 60 years on radio. I was always a dreamer as a kid. If in my teen years you were to tell me that I would be on the air for the next  60 years I wouldn’t have believed it. Life is a blink. It all passes so quickly. However, all the dreams I had gazing out the window at King Edward High school have come true and then some. I loved being on the radio then and I do now.

I was a guest on Jon McComb’s CKNW show Friday and the subject came up: 

It all began the day after Remembrance Day, 1954 when CJOR program director Vic Waters told me the afternoon show I appeared on might not continue as host Al Jordan had left for greener pastures. He felt I could carry the program, even though I was still in high school. Vic said I had to audition “live” on the air at 4 pm.

I hit the air as a bundle of nerves but was able to play some of my favourite R&B songs. I can remember the first song I played on my show: Marie by the Four Tunes. It had been a hit in the 1940s for the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. I got the job because the switchboard at the station lit up!

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Vic recalls the early days, I behave like a kid on the radio, Chuck Berry ponders career options, Fats Domino speaks French, and LaVern Baker has a secret!

And here are some highlights of those first couple of years at CJOR:

In those days I could buy Rhythm & Blues records in a store but they came wrapped in brown paper as if I was buying pornography. They were mostly songs by black performers and were called “race records”. In that time I played the pop hits of the day mixed with R&B, which morphed into rock and roll. I interviewed the Crew Cuts, The Paris Sisters and many other recording artists.

In the coming months I moved the show from the main studio in the Grosvenor Hotel to the CJOR radio theatre across the street. CJOR deejay Monty McFarlane referred to it as the “Theatre Under the Stairs” as the station was located in the hotel basement. The small studio only held 100 people and it was always crowded. The first fans were from King George High, just blocks away from the station. I noticed many of the girls were cheerleaders, and this gave me the idea of running a contest for the best cheerleaders in the Vancouver area. The audience grew so big that teenagers would line up down Howe street and interfere with traffic. Vancouver Police asked CJOR management to move me back into the main studios.

This meant losing a “live” audience so I decided to take the show to the Kits Showboat at the beach. I could not believe my eyes when 10,000 teenagers showed up to see me playing records. I knew right then and there that rock and roll was here to stay. All this happened within six months and just grew from there. I will never forget the excitement of those times with the new music and the largest number of teenagers in history.

As I look back at a wonderful and rewarding career, I never set  out to win awards or become famous, I have always wanted to entertain. You accepted that and I thank you. Dick Clark once said to me “Red, I know you will agree,  the greatest compliment we can receive is when someone comes up to us and says “Thank you for being a part of my life”.

Dick thanks you and I thank you.