Red Robinson has sent word that former SuperCountry CKWX afternoon show host Elmer Tippe died yesterday.
John McLaughlin’s column in the Province on March 5, 1993, quoting Elmer at first:
“I started on the all-nighter, 12 to 5:30 a.m. I had quit the station in Langley and I was going to try music full time, but an advertising agency I was with, McDonald/Farey, had CKWX as an account. Mr. Farey was invited to their Christmas party and he and (‘WX program director) Tom Peacock got talking. They had switched to country and Tom said he was looking for a good all-night man. Mr. Farey said, ‘Why don’t you talk to Elmer Tippe? He knows country music.’ So I have Tom a call and that was it.
Elmer was let go on his wife’s birthday in spring 1991. He told McLaughlin he wouldn’t go back into radio if he had the chance.
“No, not the way it is today. I like looking at records and now they say they’ve got a computer sitting in the control room; and a mike switch for you and a mike switch for the newsroom or something. And a list. That’s it. You know, I liked how Laurie Thain could walk in and I just played the record. Now, no way. You’d be fired out the door. ‘Cause the guy in Toronto said you couldn’t do that.”
cArtie.