General Broadcasting System?

 

Red Blanchard's Old-Time Radio Reminiscing (Keep Scrolling!)

Flaming Bully Man

A 2010 Christmas Message!

A Thanks from Red Blanchard!

Wow He's now 90!

Red's Air Corps Uniform - Two Decades

Check Here Daily For New Videos

"Here's What I Think"

January 19, 2011 "The Airplane Ride"

January 18, 2011 "Internet Dating"

January 19, 2011 "The Travling Musician"

5 free Domains with Select Hosting Plans. Get yours!

 

Just a Quick Shot Sept 26, 2010

Red and a Pair of Great Grandchildren

 

Kathleen Gay Blanchard 12/17/46 - 11/29/98

 

Hear audio clips of Red's programs from San Francisco and Los Angeles!

?         1. Audience interviews and skits

?         2. Red's novelty records, both by himself and others

Click any of these links to hear Old Time Radio Shows in streaming Audio:

It's 1948, and Red Is Announcing Remote Broadcasts of Really Good Musicians!

Bulletin Flash!!

From the Frank Knight Collection at The Bay Area Radio Museum:

A Complete Show From 1953!

                      Here's Another Great Old Time Radio Site!

                               ( For when you are through here...)

      

Wow! Here it is June 2009, and another lost show segment found!

Just unearthed: The Red Blanchard Original Theme by Jolly Coburn!

One of Many "Tombstone Bogardus" episodes!

Tombstone Bogardus Rides Again!

The Junk Box Jury Sketch!

A typical Red Blanchard Show opening

One of Nervous Norvus's Blanchard Tributes!

Red's version of Mr. Moto, Famous Japanese Detective

Loveable old Doctor Christian Bogardus!

Red's Multi-Track Pagan Love song. He did all parts!

Things are Mighty Dimph in So. Pahrump!

The Late Alice Ghostly's Tribute to Boston: "The Boston Beguine!"

Captain Hideous!

Zorch!

The Paris Sister's first Record!

Red Actually Plays a Little Piano

Another Lovable Episode from "Liver's Ennnnd!!"

Sample of Red's DJ Program

Another Red Blanchard show, 1957

And, yet another 1957 DJ Program

Another Day, another Red Blanchard Show

Later that same year...

The 1957 Saga Continues!

Another Exciting Episode of Tombstone Bogardus, Scourge of the West!

And, Yet Another Spine-Tingling Episode From the Old West

Red's Final Tombstone Episode!

Red's First Collaboration with Nervous Norvus: "Transfusion!"

Liver's End has a New Problem for Dr. Christian Bogardus

A Temperance Lecture that went over BIG on Red's show; (Thanks to the Actual W. C. Fields)

Kindly Old Dr. Christian Bogardus Solves Another Baffling Case!

Nervous Norvus Sings of the "Wild Dogs of Kentucky"

Red's Tribute to Edward R. Morrow! You....are There!

Red's 1953 Hollywood Studio Songfest: It's ZORCH!!

This Time Dragnet Solves a case like never before!

#

The Bay Area Hall Of Fame Award!!(Click)

                                                   

                                                       (The Lapel Badge)

            

Click here to E-mail Red Blanchard  

Be sure to check out this site, for lot more old-time Show Biz Photos and Bios:

www.coutant.org

 

The latest Gathering; 38 descendants 11/27/08:

Everybody in this picture is named Richard Bogardus Blanchard:

 

(Below) How about these ten geezers, all about the same age? (90-91):)

 Who will be next to go??? Bwaahahaha!!

 

In 1989 Red took the GBS remote unit to Placerville and recorded 77 Minutes of the great Eliot Daniel at his home Steinway. Click to hear it Eliot was a radio ham, and Red?s best friend. He was a top Hollywood composer and arranger; known for many movie sound tracks, TV themes, etc.??????????
????????????????????

Eliot Daniel 01/07/08 ? 12/06/97

Guess who?Placerville appx. 1975

Buddy Alvernaz, organ; and Bob Ringwald, piano. Two blind guys who really know their way around a keyboard!

Speaking of keyboards, check out this 9-year old piano prodigy?s .mp3 files on gbs.bz!!!

While we 're at it, Attention, Veterans: This MP3's For You!!

 

And now, for some history!

The Heywood-Wakefield Co. Band; Gardner, Mass 1938

AND SOMEWHAT LATER:

Red went into the army at age 23, when everybody else in basic training was about 18,

so they made him a DRILL INSTRUCTOR, (probably due to his loud voice)

U.S. Army Air Corps 1943-1945: Greensboro Basic Training Camp:

Air Corps Salute to Greensboro (to tune of "Let's Remember Pearl Harbor:")

Let's remember Greensboro, as a concentration camp,

Let's remember Greensboro, where they treat you like a tramp, (Just like a tramp!)

We will always remember, how we died for a three-day pass,

So remember Greensboro; You can shove it up your HUP-HOOP-HREEP-HAWW!

 

                                                                                                                             

Then, War Over; Out of the Army----

Red's very first broadcasting job, Riverside, Calif., 1945!

Next it was KCBQ in San Diego, (1950) 

We found this letter to the station, dated that year....(Wonder if she is still alive?)

Ads for: Lakeside  CA Cabrillo Speedway:

                                

Found! The KCBQ "Show of the month award!!

(Sorry about the 50-year-old clipping's condition)

 

And, here is the only record of the next job in Las Vegas at KLAS: (Hard to believe we were so naive!)

( News Report of Yucca Flats A-Bomb tests: Click here )

Then, on to San Francisco:

Two Bay Area Important Web Sites:

Legends of Radio and Radio Museum

Lowell Thomas visits Red's Show at KCBS, in 1953, and reads Red's prepared imitation of him...

Later, at KNX in Hollywood, Lowell Thomas and Red Remimisce: Click here

At the main desk during the show...

After a show, by the palace door:

Flash: New Nervous Norvus article!


NERVOUS NORVUS
Stone Age Woo: The Zorch Sounds Of... (Norton)

Reviewed by DJ Johnson



If you pop the radio dial over to the classic rock AM station now and then you might luck into a novelty song by Nervous Norvus, most likely "Transfusion," the 1956 top ten hit that got the ball rolling for this most unusual artist. It was a song with a horrific body count, accompanied by the sounds of skidding tires and crashing cars that ushered in a bizarre sub-genre of more subdued tragedy tunes, but this one was all tongue-in-cheek.

Nervous Norvus was the performing name of Jimmy Drake, the other Memphis truck driver to hit the scene in 1956. Drake's passion for music and his twisted sense of humor collided in a most non-lucrative way, but ol' Jimmy was all about having fun, so he built a makeshift recording studio in his kitchen and started his own business making demos for songwriters. For those who've never heard about that world before, the gig is that some songwriters can't play or sing, so they take their songs to someone who can, and that person makes a tape that they can send around to recording artists in hopes of making a sale. Drake made very simple recordings, usually featuring only his voice and his baritone ukulele or tenor guitar, both of which he played just well enough to do the job. Listening to those demos today you can't help but notice that, despite his limitations, there was something genuinely engaging about his performances. Or, at least, most of them.

Norton Records once again proves to be a label dedicated to preserving the things people long ago forgot were cool, and as usual they do it up big. Stone Age Woo, The Zorch Sounds of Nervous Norvus, collects not just the six singles you may possibly know, but 33 tracks on a single disc, accompanied by a ten-page booklet with a detailed track list and the well-told story of Drake's life. As Weird Al had his Dr. Demento, Jimmy Drake had Red Blanchard, a bandleader and disk jockey who did a program that included novelty songs. Drake would send his homemade recordings and Blanchard offered encouragement. In fact, when Blanchard received Drake's recording of "Transfusion" in '56, he liked it but decided it needed a li'l something, and it was he who added the sounds of screams, skids and crashes before putting it on the air and causing a stir. "Zorch," by the way, was one of Blanchard's words, as was "Nervous," though not the way we mean it. To Blanchard and his followers, it meant "Cool." "Zorch" and many other bits of Blanchardspeak would show up in Drake's tunes over the next few years, and now, of course, you realize he was actually "Cool Norvus." One of those nervous but little-known stories from the history of pop music.

Is 33 tracks of mostly demos from a novelty artist something you're going to want to listen to? Probably not all at once, but taken in just a few bites, it's a worthy listening choice. It's funny, clever, sometimes annoying, but almost always charming in a way that's hard to nail down. Knowing the full story (or as full a story as you can know in 10 pages) of Jimmy Drake makes it still more entertaining. If you don't know the history between Drake and Blanchard, "I Listen to Red in Bed" makes no sense.

Odd little song, that. Drake sings the first half in a high falsetto, in the character of a little boy who listens to the Red Blanchard show on a radio his mother doesn't know he's hidden in his teddy bear. He sings the second half in his own voice and tells of listening to Blanchard's show late at night on a radio his wife doesn't know he's hidden in his Belfast (whiskey) jug. Can't be autobiographical, though. Ol' Nervous was 40-somethin' by the time he ever heard Red Blanchard. A clever little middle-aged boy.

Track List:

Transfusion * Dig * Ape Call * Wild Dogs of Kentucky * The Fang * Bullfrog Hop * Stoneage Woo * I Like Girls * Does a Chinese Chicken Have a Pigtail? * Noon Balloon to Rangoon * Kibble Kobble (The Flying Saucer Song) * The Lean Green Vegetable Fiend (From 'Tuther Side of the Moon) * Little Cowboy * The Blackout Song * Kangaroo Hop * I Listen to Red in Bed * Sparks * I Hate Bugs * The Clock Shop * I'm Waitin' Up for Santa Claus * Boris the Blue Nosed Baboon * When I Hear the Honkin' of the Diesel Train * Ape Call ("No Ape") * The Bully Bully Man * Elvis You're a G.I. Now * Stop Your Foolin * Pony-Tail * I'm Comin' Home My Baby Federer * The New Beat and Step * The Clock Shop * The Evil Hurricane * The Plaster Song * Sparks

[Note: Songs listed in red are known as the Dot Six, the six songs released on Dot Records under the name Nervous Norvus.]

? 2004 - DJ Johnson



 

Then on to KPOP; (then KFVD,) KABC,  KFWB and KNX in L.A:


Paul Anka joins Red and group of other Hollywood DJs for lunch at the Brown Derby in 1957.

(L-R) Red, Joe Yocum, Al Jarvis, Paul, Lee Palmer, Art Laboe, and Jay Lowy

A first for Red:  For the first time, a proposal to ban tobacco advertising!

(Naturally, it fell on deaf ears, but BROADCASTING mag published it:)

Just Resurrected: The 1970 "Clio Award"

 

Back in San Francisco-- Red often told of his "1916 Jaguar Pickup." Here it is, parked behind the "Cow Palace Hotel?

Found! The long-lost "I Dread Red" badge. (Courtesy Roy Trumbull)

                                                                                                                       And, Linda Morris sent in this one!

                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                 

The lost pictures just sent in by Jerry Plemmons! (The girl is Margaret Bertrand, from Manitoba)

Thanks again to Roy Trumbull for these tickets!

                                                                      Another one from Linda Morris

 

Red, on left, with Arthur Hull Hayes, CBS Radio President, and eager fans getting their 1953 TIME magazines autographed. (Can anyone identify them?)

The big studio in the "Cow Palace Hotel" during an actual show.

 

Even famous cartoonists listened!

After San Francisco, to L.A., and CBS, (Again!)

Another great hobby !!

 

Yes, he also was an actual musician... 

           Piano wasn't really his instrument, but here he is anyway!

Here is Red's Ham Radio QSL card.

The Amateur Radio Relay League's Award for 60 Years of service:

Here shows the actual red hair; with wife Phyllis (1970)

And now - 2009 in GBS Studio

  Well, well - -  Look what happened in 1920!

 

 Here is Red Blanchard, the Fifth, born June 12, 2004; (One day off Red's birthday!)

Just for fun, here is his back yard in Escondido:

 

Click here to hear a novelty/record one-hour show MP3

 

A note about General Broadcasting System/GBS:

Red was syndicating radio shows to various stations and decided to invent that name; and registered it with the U.S. Patent office back in 1957. The name, and GBS logo have been in continuous use since that time, and any other use of the name "General Broadcasting" or "GBS" constitutes an illegal use of copyrighted property.

 Updated Feb 14, 2011
(Website Established 1911) ?MCMXI--MMXI  (Our Centennial Year)