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So you want to be a DJ
by Chuck McCoy
Fifty years ago yesterday, July 1, 1965, my boyhood dream from 10 years earlier became a reality. Even in the fourth grade I just knew that somehow I was going to be on the radio. Miss McCauley, my teacher at the time, asked, “Now, Mervyn (the name I used back then), what do you want to be when you grow up?”
“When I grow up,” I said, “I want to be a radio DJ.”
Wise beyond her 18 years, Miss McCauley looked down at me and said, “Well, son, you can’t have both.”
She was right. I’ve been a DJ and growing up is still a work in progress.
But why radio?
Early on, I was a goofy Winnipeg kid who’d go to the library and take out books on broadcasting, bring them home, hide them under my mattress and read them late at night under the covers with a flashlight. Playboy didn’t have pictures of DJs to look at.
I followed radio station remote broadcasts whenever I could. One day, on my way home from school for lunch, the new IGA store on the corner was having a grand opening. Sitting in the parking lot was a real radio station in a big trailer surrounded by glass. The station’s sound through the speakers was so loud that I could hear it at home where I was wolfing down my sandwich. With that accomplished, I raced out the door and zipped back to the corner.
With 40 minutes before the bell and a 10-minute walk to school, that gave me a half-hour to just stand there and watch, awestruck by these very cool, smooth-talking men reading commercials, doing the weather and introducing music. I was eight years old trying very hard to look cute and it worked. The radio men asked me if I wanted to come into the trailer.
Were they kidding me? Of course I wanted to go into the trailer!
This was going to be my first visit to a real radio station and I jumped at the chance, peppering them with questions and saying that one day I’d be just like them on the radio. One announcer asked if I’d like to read a commercial live on the radio.
Oh my God, would I!
But if I stayed to read the spot, I’d be late for school. Easy decision; I read a 30-second commercial for Swift’s Premium Franks. My head was in the clouds. I was actually on the air.
My mother, besieged with calls from her friends spilling the beans about hearing me on the radio when I should have been in school, was waiting when I got home. I was sent to my room to consider my error in judgment. But all I could do was dream about the wonderful moment that afternoon and how I knew then that this was only the beginning.
Like so many radio veterans, I started by playing radio with a record player, a tape machine, a microphone and a speaker. Two of my friends across the street were into it as well and we’d play with equipment set up in their garage with a speaker hanging on the door sending our fake radio station out into the back lane. The two kids who played fantasy radio with me also went on to broadcasting careers. John McQuaker was with CBC farther west and Roger Currie had a long and successful career in morning radio at CJOB Winnipeg.
I grew up with 58 CKY Winnipeg, 50,000 watts of great Top 40 music and I didn’t think there could possibly be a station better or more exciting. But then, on a summer trip to Toronto with my family during my teenage years I heard 1050 CHUM, Toronto’s big Top 40 station, and it was like nothing I’d ever heard before. I fell in love.
“This Is Where I Have to Work, I Just Have To!”
I asked my parents to drop me in front of CHUM on Yonge Street and pick me up later. I just stood there on the sidewalk staring in the window that went through to the announce booth where the DJ was doing his show. I had a transistor radio and I listened to this very cool guy playing great CHUM music and jingles for about 30 minutes. To my shock, surprise and delight he waved me into the building, took me into his announce booth, introduced himself and gave me a quick rundown of how they did it at 1050 CHUM. I was able to stay for 15-20 minutes, watching him cue the operator for the music, open his mike and do some CHUM music intros, chat with listeners on the phone and simply do his DJ thing. God, this was so glamorous. This was a life changing moment for me. Now I KNEW I just had to be a CHUM DJ. My future was now in focus.
I should thank that kind DJ who took this kid off the street into CHUM and put the stars in my eyes. I do thank you, Duff Roman.
While waiting for my big break I sold aluminum windows door-to-door, drove a half ton truck and sold shoes for Agnew Surpass at Winnipeg’s Polo Park. All the time I was trying to connive my way into any radio station. I even took a broadcasting course in a local radio announcer’s basement.
As luck would have it, a friend had a connection at CKY-FM which, at the time, played show tunes and classical music. It’s now CITI-FM. A good word was put in for me and bingo, I snagged a part-time job. Unlike CKY-AM, there was no talking over the music intros. Our entire DJ yak was limited to a twice-hourly insert: “CKY-92.1 FM time”. For variety we added “CKY-92.1 FM temperature”. While I couldn’t do my best rock jock chatter I could watch through the glass across the hall at Daryl B playing the Fab 50 while I did my boring FM shift. But hey, I was getting closer. I had a real radio job (part-time) and getting paid a buck an hour.
On July 1, 1965 I got first broadcasting pay-cheque, $5 for five hours work. I never cashed that check and for the past 50 years I’ve kept it close by at my desk.
Working at a classical music FM station in 1965 when Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones was rockin’ the 50,000 watt AM airwaves meant I still had a long way to go. I sent out tapes and resumes to every station in existence. Most didn’t reply. Those which did weren’t interested in hiring an inexperienced kid. But I was encouraged by the rejections. Imagine, people who worked at legitimate radio stations in such places as Kitimat and North Battleford were actually putting a stamp on a response and mailing it to me!
I was on my way for sure.
In 1965 a man named Bill Grogan was appointed program director of CKY-AM. He’d been working at CKY on-air, had seen me around and knew I worked at the FM station. So I thought he’s new to the PD position, why not hit him up for a job? All he knew was that I was in the building and that I was blessed with a decent radio voice. I took advantage of one of my off days from the shoe store and scheduled a time to meet with him.
Training, experience, hard work and talent are the cornerstones to success. But, you also have to be a bit lucky. I wrote down some of the stations that rejected me and told Grogan I was looking at some job offers from them.
Hey, these stations had been in contact with me and who knows? A job offer could be coming.
Here’s where I got lucky. There’d been a fire at the AM transmitter and the engineers were heading out there every weeknight from 1:00 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. and the station had to be off the air while they worked. Someone had to sit with an off-air station for five hours in the middle of the night. The only live portion was the hour after Midnight and a half-hour before the morning show. Grogan asked me to do it. “I’ll be listening, he said. “I have an opening for an all-night DJ in September. You can consider this your live audition.”
The next day I was nervous, worrying about how bad I sounded, how green and inexperienced I really was and hoped the PD would let me down easy. I went to the station after lunch knowing that Grogan would give me a lengthy critique. But before even sitting down he surprised me with, “I liked what I heard this morning; the all night show is yours in September if you’ll work for $350 a month.”
How good is that? My first time on the radio and he said he liked what he heard. I sometimes wonder how much he really heard. I was 18. I was about to be full-time jock on CKY Winnipeg beginning in September. Life was good!
Between my hiring and September I was given some weekend summer shifts which allowed me to become a bit of a hero to my teenage pals at the lake. They’d call from the pay phone up there and I’d play their songs and give them shout-outs (called dedications back then).
And so began my 50-year journey of love for the magical medium of radio.
Chuck McCoy of Chuck McCoy International Media Services can be reached at Chuckmccoy@rogers.com