CARLTON FLETCHER: Bucket list bonanza … being the ‘bright good-morning voice that’s heard but never seen’

“And he won’t play what they say to play. And he don’t want to change what don’t need to change. There goes the last DJ. Who plays what he wants to play.”

— Tom Petty

For everyone else involved — the radio stations, their officials, their listeners — my participation was filed away in the Not That Big a Deal” drawer. But to me, it was a huge bucket-list check-off that will stay with me ‘til I sign off for good.

For the better part of the past couple of years or so, I got to play DJ on a couple of radio stations. Anybody who knows me even a little bit knows that that was a big deal for me.

I would have been satisfied to just sit in, read off someone else’s copy and listen to the songs that were playing. But I actually got to pick the songs, make whatever comments I thought appropriate (or semi-appropriate as it turned out, me being me), and interact with the stations’ listeners. I literally had my own show. And I even played a pretty significant part in deciding what music would make the stations’ playlists.

I’ve always been fascinated by radio. From the time I was a little boy and my parents made it clear that music was an important part of life — but did not insist, as many parents do, that my siblings and I listen to the music they liked, which was the classic country that remains imbedded in my DNA … and is why I really find little to like about modern country — I’ve sat amazed while listening to the DJs and the music they played.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want to act like modern radio is deserving of my wonder. When you’ve got computer-generated “DJs” — with very small playlists picked by some suit-wearing guy at a corporate office in Chicago somewhere — and no personal interaction with the community (the “hometown DJs” who talk about local events are in Cleveland or Rapid City and have never even been south of Indiana so don’t let ‘em fool ya) … well, let’s just say 90-97% of radio these days is worthless.

But the stations I was allowed to work at (thanks, Tara) had playlists of some 6,000-7,000 songs and played obscure songs and album cuts that you don’t even hear on satellite radio. (The greatest compliments I got while doing my show were calls from people who said they canceled their satellite radio service after hearing the music that was being played on the stations.)

Being on the air was not an ego thing for me. I just found it mind-boggling that a guy — say Ron O’Quinn in Ocilla, the “Grease Man” in Jacksonville, Fla., “Spiderman” in Nashville, Tenn., or John Landecker in Chicago — could sit in a small control booth, play selected music, and I could hear it wherever I was … in my home, my car, my office at work.

I remember calling Howard’s morning swap meet show on WSIZ and pretending to be a school official and telling folks that I was giving away bushels of beans that I’d picked because I had too many to shell and put up and, a few moments later, hearing a terse voice say, “Take me off the air” and Howard coming back on and apologizing for the crank call. I remember asking my mom (as a very little boy, one of my earliest memories, in fact) if we had to say “Hi” back when the DJ she’d called greeted us on the air.

I remember a local DJ bringing Bobby Bare out to our land to fish in our cypress pond one day and then him staying to have dinner with us. (He later sent us a bunch of his records as a thank you, including his hit version of “Miller’s Cave,” which was a favorite.)

I got to do those things my early DJ heroes did; I got to pick out and play songs people wanted to hear and send out messages from callers to their special others. And through this interaction, I met some wonderful people (the four “musical wise men of Tifton” — Brian, David, Lonnie and Earl — come to mind).

Now that my DJing career is officially over, I can really reflect on what a cool and amazing thrill it was to get to have this experience. Yeah, radio may pretty much suck now. But, boy, was it something special for a little while.