CARLTON FLETCHER: On the air: The gift of a lifetime

“I am the morning DJ, at WOLD.”

— Harry Chapin

My wife is the world’s best at giving gifts – my last birthday she gave me 69 cool gifts, one for each year, and I had to draw a number that corresponded with each gift before I could open it.

She’d also given me the gifts of flying in a helicopter along the Gulf of Mexico, swimming with dolphins and my first (and only) trip to a strip club. She’s a very creative woman.

But probably the greatest gift Tara gave me was the opportunity to work, for a time, as a radio DJ.

Anybody that knows me even a little bit, knows that next to family and friends, music is the one great pleasure in my life. There were no real musicians in our family growing up, but my brother and I developed an enduring love for music by listening to the radio.

There was, of course, WSIZ in Ocilla (“Where your friends are!”), WBHB in Fitzgerald and WWGS in Tifton. But FM radio had not made its way into the boonies — or even the mainstream — during my teen years, so in addition to listening to the local stations, we listened mostly to WLS in Chicago at night and WAPE in Jacksonville during daylight hours.

It had something to do with the power utilized by AM stations at the time, but in Ocilla we could listen to WAPE (and The Grease Man, who was the absolute best) from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and at 6 p.m., we could listen to John Landecker and WLS until 6 a.m.

The music during that era was, I would argue, the best ever made, but what made it even better were the DJs who kept us up to date on new music and kept us informed about musical goings-on. (For those of you who are kids of the ‘80s, ‘90s, 2000s and beyond, a little explanation: DJs during the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s actually sat in a studio and played records on turntables, no pre-recorded shows with phony “live” reports.)

Growing up, I wanted, first, to be a pro baseball player, but that didn’t pan out. My next ambition in life growing up was to be an on-the-air DJ, someone who got to select what songs listeners would hear and to introduce others to what I considered the best music ever made.

Tara gave me a chance, albeit a short-lived one, to realize that dream, and that’s something I’ll always cherish.

It started with a Saturday-night program we did at the excellent Tifton rock station that’s since moved on. She allowed me to pick an album each week and play it in its entirety on the station’s turntable – which, amazingly, was still hooked up to the control board despite the use of computer programs that controlled the content.

I remember the first night on the air, scared, me playing Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” – and that part was easy because it’s a great album from start to finish. It was when I had to introduce and tell a bit about each song that my nerves made me sound like some hick who had no business taking up space on the airwaves.

After I played the album each week, Tara and I would spend the next couple of hours playing some of our favorite songs and taking calls from listeners. I don’t have a good radio voice – I sounded like the goober I am and I refused to do one of those fake DJ voices – and I was nervous as hell. But that was some of the most fun I ever had.

When Tara was asked to open the radio station in the now-defunct Pretoria Fields Brewery (the Queen Bee), she did so as a labor of love. She saw to the construction of the control room from the floor up and had her engineer friend Buddy Mitchell hook up the equipment. (Buddy, by the way, never got paid a penny for all his complicated work, one of the primary reasons the Queen Bee buzzed out of business, but that’s another loooooong story. Sorry, Buddy.)

When the local station went on the air, Tara was like a proud mom, and I felt like a phony, doing something I was never good at … and never would be good at. But here’s the deal: In the days, weeks and months leading up to the Queen Bee’s kickoff, I got to work with Tara to select the music that would be played on the station. That was my wheelhouse.

I selected album cuts that were hardly ever heard on the radio — no matter the format — and I chose songs that got only rare – if any – airplay.

And it was a blast. My radio voice never got better, and I still had my issues with the space-age equipment that had nothing to do with turntables. But I got to introduce songs like “Warmth” (Incubus), “Savage” (Eurythmics), “Southern Band” (Henry Gross), “You Just May Be the One” (The Monkees), “Tie-Dye on the Highway” (Robert Plant) and “You’re So Good for Me” (Humble Pie) to music fans, most of whom had never heard these great songs before.

I added nothing to the profession, but I got to live out a dream, and that’s something I’ll always treasure. As I said, my wife’s the best gift-giver ever.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected].