Last Wednesday November 8th marked the 54th anniversary of my first radio show. Back in 1963 it was a Friday and I walked into the production studio of WUSC AM just before 2 in the afternoon to record my show that would run from 11PM until 1 AM later that evening.
Left: Ampex 770 Reel to Reel Tape Recorder I loaded that big 12 inch reel of tape onto that Ampex 770 recorder and queued it up just past the white leader tape, loaded up my first two album cuts on the turntables, put the commercial copy on the copy stand behind the RCA Type 77-D microphone, set the timer to 2 hours and 10 seconds and started it and the tape recorder. I sat there with excitement building with every second ticking off the clock. At 5 seconds, I put my finger on the edge of the album queued up on turntable number one and started it. When the second hand of the clock reached zero, I turned the potentiometer (we called them pots) up and released the record which was slipping on the felt cover of the turntable which now had come up to speed. It was on; my first honest to goodness radio show. Next, over the instrumental playing, it was time for me to turn on the microphone and introduce the show and me. Here goes…
…What came out of me in no way resembled a human voice speaking English.
Sheesh! Stop the tape, re-cue the record, reset the clock and start again. To say that it was a good thing this was on tape and not live was a major understatement. Five minutes later it all came off without a hitch and my life had changed forever. I found my happy place; the air chair in a radio studio. I queued up the sixty second Coca Cola commercial on the Ampex 770 that I would be playing in my next stop break coming up in 15 minutes. Till then I gained mastery of the mechanics of segueing records on the radio.
Looking back on it, whoever figured out that the first shows of the new DJs on WUSC would be pre recorded was a genius. These taped shows allowed for our first mistakes to be private instead of out there in front of everyone. The second function of these two hour shows was to extend our broadcast day from 11 PM when the Russell House closed and everyone had to be out until 1 AM in the morning when the tape would run out. The idler arm would fall and stop the tape machine and turn the transmitter off.
By time that I would be starting my first live show the following January, I had completely mastered the mechanics of doing radio and gained the confidence to do the live DJ patter, not without a little nervousness but a lot more comfortable. By the time I left campus that summer to go to Annapolis to board the USS Little Rock for my Midshipman Third Class Cruise to Cherbourg, Amsterdam, Portsmouth England and back to Norfolk, I was completely at ease and was looking forward to coming back to the station in the fall. Even though I was playing “Middle of the Road” music such as Frank Sinatra, Debbie Reynolds, Mantovani and his orchestra, Frankie Laine and Charles Aznavour instead of Buddy Holly, Elvis, Brenda Lee and Ricky Nelson, it was still radio, and in my mind’s eye, it was cool.
I anticipated a summer without radio but I was wrong on two counts. The first full day at sea, at 4 PM, the end of the normal work day for everyone not standing evening or mid watches, I was astounded to hear a radio station playing over the 1-MC. I immediately searched for WCLG the radio voice of the Little Rock. I found her on the main deck just inboard of one of the watertight hatches on the port side. It was just a pair of turntables, a microphone and an audio board. The sailors who acted as DJs each brought their own 45 RPM records. When the sea was calm enough to play records, the station was “on the air” for a couple of hours every afternoon. I was welcome in the control room enough to fill in for sailors who were assigned a watch during the time they were scheduled to do their shows. I was grateful for that opportunity to play their records and read from the “Orders of the Day” in between. The little stateside news we had from “Stars and Stripes” was a couple of days late.
On days when the seas were too rough for a needle to stay in the groove, the DJs and I would be out on the fantail, sitting between the Talos missile launcher and the Sikorsky helicopter firmly tied down to the helo pad. A small party was held that involved a multi band transistor radio. At sea there would be plenty of short wave signals to hear in multiple languages. But when we steamed into the English Channel the medium wave band would come alive. We were not too interested in the BBC offerings, they were a little too subdued for us. There was some rock and roll coming off the coast of Europe but it was mainly unfamiliar to our American ears.
Early one afternoon, with whitecaps foaming all around us and 10 foot swells breaking across the bow, I approached our little radio group and heard their excited chatter before I could hear the radio. OMG, it was in English and playing American rock and roll and the British invasion tunes that were missing from the BBC broadcasts. The signal at 1520 kHz was almost off the end of the dial of our American built radio. It was faint and faded in and out on a regular basis. Finally, we heard a station id! It was Radio Caroline "The Boat That Rocked" whose story is featured in the 2009 movie “Pirate Radio.” As it turned out the unusual fading in and out of their signal was caused by the boat rocking back and forth in the waves causing their antenna to heel over. We were some of the first Americans to hear the station live over the air since it began broadcasting in March, just a couple of months before we stumbled across it in early June. I felt right at home with Radio Caroline because it reminded me of WAPE and WPDQ the stations I listened to in high school. I was in heaven.
Hearing Radio Caroline inspired me to bring rock and roll to WUSC. At the time WUSC’s broadcast day ran from 4 PM until 1 AM only. During the fall of 1964 I lobbied station management for a rock and roll show. They were reluctant to add rock and roll programming adjacent to their normal middle of the road programming in the evening so we compromised and I was allowed to do a weekday rock and roll show in the mornings between 6 AM and 8AM. January of 1965 saw the kickoff of “The Dawn Patrol,” a show name that I shamelessly stole from Adrian Cronauer who was just starting a show by the same name on the Armed Forces Radio Network in Vietnam. Yes, THAT Adrian Cronauer who was portrayed by Robin Williams in the movie “Good Morning Vietnam!” By the way, Cronauer attended the University of Pittsburgh, where he helped found the forerunner of the university's college radio station WPTS.
Adrian once told me that I was not the only one who used the show name “The Dawn Patrol” for morning drive at a rock and roll station. At least I was in good company.
The Dawn Patrol on WUSC lasted only a short while because I left at the end of the semester for my Midshipman Second Class cruise to Corpus Christie Texas for Naval Aviation training and Little Creek Virginia to learn how to storm beaches in some of the same landing craft that were used to invade Normandy 21 years earlier. Shortly after I returned to campus that fall, I landed my first job in commercial radio at the top 40 rocker WCOS. During the brief period when I was on both stations, I would occasionally give the station ID live on the air for the wrong station. Finally, I was told to make up my mind and I left WUSC for full time work at WCOS.
Eventually, I left on air work for the engineering side, earned my degree in Electrical Engineering and filled in on the air occasionally when needed. During those infrequent shows, the first few minutes were a bit shaky, just like that very first show in ‘63. But it is like riding a bicycle, a few minutes to get the mechanics and the thought process down and I would “become one with the air chair.”
Left: Shure RE 27 used in today's radio, and RCA 77-D the microphone from my first broadcast. So tomorrow morning, I will begin the 55th year since my first show. Co-incidentally, it also is the beginning of my tenth year doing a weekly show somewhere on the air or online. As I sit down, queue up my first song, liner and jingle, and wait for the clock to reach zero, there is no nervousness, just excitement at being in my happy place, doing radio on my own terms (mostly) and having fun. Life has come full circle and it is good! Oh MY!
No comments:
Post a Comment