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too. It was here that he met

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76

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1988

the woman who was to
become his wife.
Still in his 20s, Roberts was
making major moves in his
field. After one year at
KVLC, Roberts went to CBS-
owned KTHS, where he was
the evening announcer, after-
noon disc jockey and senior
announcer. He also was a
booth announcer for its sister
TV station. lb Roberts, life
was grand.
"These were super days
because here I was romanc-
ing a beautiful redhead and
I had just gotten a tremen-
dous job at a new radio sta-
tion and you can't ask for
much more than that."
Roberts was having a great
time playing great music —
Ray Anthony, the Four
Freshmen, Nat King Cole,
George Shearing, Woody Her-
man and Stan Kenton. He
also had a program called
"Silhouettes in Music," in
which he told a love story
through the songs he played.
He said he used it as a vehi-
cle to romance JoAnn, his
future wife.
His biggest break, however,
came as a fluke. While in his
native Detroit, visiting aunts
Ethel Kaufman Stone and
Mabel Alvin, Roberts had
wanted to see radio stations
WWJ and WJR. Prior to his
visit, he wrote to 'JR's chief
announcer Charlie Park, who
invited him to audition. Park
gave him the standard
15-page CBS audition, which
Roberts said he completed
with flying colors. "I went in-
to the other room, I read the
damn thing and it was the
first and only time I ever
went through 15 pages of
copy without one goof!"
Parks told him to call back
in an hour, but Roberts was
on his way back home. He
called Park from a pay phone
and learned he had gotten
the job of early morning an-
nouncer at double his current
salary. The show was
country-western, a type of
music with which he was un-
familiar. He did some
research and became a pro.
"It wasn't hard (to learn the
music and artists)," Roberts
remembered. "In those days
you had your country swing
music?' And with that coun-
try music morning show, he
made his mark in the morn-
ing drive time radio.
When the overnight disc
jockey left the station,
Roberts auditioned and got
his job. The "All Night Show"
became "Nightflight" and
Roberts became the "cap-
tain," sounding just like an
airplane captain, giving
flight altitude, the time,infor-
mation about cities that he

Roberts' career in Detroit radio spans more than 30 years.

pretended to be landing in,
all with the sound of the take-
off in the background.
Station ownership changed
and Roberts was told to
develop his show into a
classical music program, a
situation which made him
very unhappy. If he had to
listen to classical, he was go-
ing to do it his way, he ex-
plained. "I didn't care for the
music the (programming) guy
in New York was scheduling.
He was scheduling col-
oraturas at 3 a.m. with
Wagner. You know what that
does to a person who's left
the radio on all night long?
"I took and developed a Top
40 of classics. I took the
movements that had been
translated to the popular
songs (like "Thnight We Love"
from Tchaikovsky's First
Piano Concerto) and then I
played the entire work?'
For this show, "Music Till
Dawn," Roberts received the
George Foster Peabody Broad-
casting Award. He also won a
Clio Award for a Cadillac
commercial he had done, but
his greatest accomplishment
is winning the Movie Mirror
magazine distinctions of disc
jockey of the month, disc
jockey of the year and election
to its disc jockey hall of fame.
He's also very proud of his
daughter, Cynthia Ann, an
artist, whose paintings are in
the family's Windsor, Ont.,
condominium and Missouri
home. Roberts, too, is a bit of
an artist. He studied oil and
water color painting and once
drew a cartoon for Stars and
Stripes. He also was a writer
for the Associated Press, a
director of local theater in
Jonesboro, Ark., and adjunct
professor of communications
at the University of Detroit
and at St. Mary's College in
Orchard Lake and has been a
free-lance announcer.
He's not a fan of interview
or talk shows, but does some

interviewing on his CKLW
show. However, he will only
interview persons doing
"good deeds," not those with
something to sell. "This is
performing a function of ser-
vice for the community," he
said. "You talk about a mitz-
vah. This has been a wonder-
ful business to me and this is
one way that I can give back."
Roberts said that by leaving
the stage, where he was only
able to entertain a few hun-
dred, becoming a disc jockey
was a good move. "My singing
pleased me, pleased my wife
and my friends. But what I
put on that record machine
pleased hundreds of
thousands and so another
mitzvah?'
Roberts has no favorite
music; he likes anything as
long as it's not "unhar-
monious or brashly loud." He
still has an affection for
country-western. "It's kept
its beauty, it's kept its sor-
row and it's certainly kept its
beautiful voices."
The best part of his job is
sharing the music, Roberts
said. He gets feedback from
his listeners who call him to
say thanks. Outside of owning
a radio station, Roberts said
he feels his current position is
a plum job.
His only disappointment is
what he calls mankind's ac-
ceptance of mediocrity,
especially in music. "We now
have an enormous library of
music all over the world and
we have audiences galore
screaming their heads off in
great hallelujah praise for
nothing of quality, nothing of
substance, nothing of beauty,
nothing of value and this isn't
what it's all about. We've
taken 10,000 years of civiliza-
tion and we've turned it right
back to the barbarians who
grunted." This attitude,
Roberts said, not only affects
people's taste in music but in
life and society as well.

