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