1917 ~ 2017
San Diego has lost a cherished member of its Radio Disk
Jockey family. Jack Vincent (right), who
started as an engineer for KCBQ in
1955, passed away over the weekend. Before he retired from KCBQ in 1982, he also
helped pioneer its DJ Rock and Roll glory days. (San Diego Radio)
I was fortunate and thrilled to interview Jack in Shotgun Tom Kelly’s (left) infamous pool room, for the BFYP books. Below is the excerpt from Book 1, The First Five Years
1954-1959 (published). I will post his story from the 1960s (Book 2) manuscript
(to publish in February), this Friday.
“It never acted like a
job. It seemed like I was on vacation all the time.” Jack was a sweet man
who will be missed by many.
Excerpt from: Blast from Your Past! Rock & Roll Radio
DJs: The First Five Years 1954-1959
Stoke
those memories with the Jitterbug, the Lindy, and bend your body to The Twist! ♪
With a tug of his mustache and a pound
of panache, he puts the cool in cat and the deb in debonair …
Jack
Vincent
Best
known at KCBQ/San Diego, California
He could have been Scarlett’s Rhett, dreamy
actor Clark Gable, or the suave Errol Flynn, with his trademark pencil-thin
mustache.
Jack Vincent is an anomaly in radio. He
beat the historically transitory medium and proclaimed himself the “old man” of
the radio on KCBQ, San Diego. Jack got his foot in the door in 1955 and never
left.
Unlike some DJs with a burning desire
to work radio, Jack labored through his youth before setting his sights on the
airwaves.
“I was working in heavy construction,
about thirty-four years old at the time, and I hurt my back. I thought, well, I
can’t do this work anymore, why don’t I find something easy?” Jack and I began
his interview side-by-side on a sofa at the home of his good friend, Shotgun
Tom Kelly (you’ll meet him in the Sixties).
At ninety-one, the strong, vibrant
timbre of his voice belied his age. “Years ago in school, my high school
English teacher had a half interest in a radio station. He’d let us go down on
weekends and sit in for the guy who was on duty; he’d go downstairs and drink
beer while we did the ETs.” (Disks that held commercials and jingles.)
He validated the engineer’s
disappearing act as students learning the radio ropes and “it was all public
service so it didn’t make too much difference.”
Nursing his back, Jack remembered his
brief radio experience as a kid and figured that would be easy enough. He put
his Marine Corps G.I. Bill funds to work and enrolled at Frederick H. Spear
Radio School in Hollywood. (It’s a different
Frederick’s of Hollywood!)
In any new job you have to work the bugs
out of your routine. That took on new meaning in Jack’s first radio gig after
graduating in the early Fifties. He was hired over the phone by a station in El
Centro (California, near the Mexican border), thanks to a tip from his
brother-in-law.
Either of those two events—hired over
the phone or tip from your brother-in-law—would send most of us running the
other way. But winter in the warm southern desert sounded OK to Jack and more
of an announcer than a DJ, the work, as he promised himself, was easy.
“I worked until summer time at KXO,”
recalled Jack. Come summer, though, El Centro’s agricultural needs required
non-stop irrigation, which created a rather unpleasant scene at the studio.
“You couldn’t see through the screen
door because it was full of crickets,” Jack recalled. Obviously not the kind
often considered a culinary delicacy.
So Jack picked up another gig—over the
phone. See what a great voice will do for you? This time he spent a couple of
years learning the DJ ropes in a San Bernardino (California) station. Gene Lee
at KFXM, hired Jack based on his likability by the office staff. I’ve heard
dumber reasons to hire someone!
By the mid-Fifties, much to the chagrin
of many women, I’m sure, Jack was married to a lovely lady and they looked
wistfully back at San Diego. They needed to go “home.”
You know how sometimes you want
something soooo bad, you wish it into reality? (Some business gurus call it
“believe and achieve” philosophy.) “Be careful what you wish for,” is a popular
admonition that often accompanies the wishful thinking stage.
Jack’s determination to return to San
Diego led him to promise the KCBQ program director, “If you need a guy, don’t
hire the first guy that comes in. Call me and I’ll be here the next day.”
Wellllll, you know what happened,
right? Two weeks later he got the call, “Can you be here Friday?” That was on
Wednesday.
“We packed up all of our stuff and
moved back to San Diego, with the prospect of getting a job at KCBQ; but I
didn’t know if I had the job or not, yet.”
Who could resist jaunty Jack? The PD
knew a good thing when he heard Jack’s sample airchecks, and his hiring marked
the first of a twenty-seven-year mutual admiration society for
Jack and KCBQ.
“This was 1955,” said Jack, “right
before Elvis Presley with ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ and ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ and all
that.”
Hired as an engineer, he learned the
ins-and-outs of KCBQ, just as it was preparing to step into the broadcasting
spotlight. Providing the lights are on …
“We had a big generator,” Jack said,
“which we’d use if we lost city power [more common back in those days]. One
night after I finished my engineer shift the boss said, ‘I have to congratulate
you, Jack, for how quickly you got us on the air after we lost power.’ I said,
‘Well, I’d have got us on the air a lot quicker, but my pipe was out.’”
Accidental DJ …
Originally a “network station,” KCBQ
broadcast the syndicated shows and Jack’s initial role was that of an extra
engineer. But that same year KCBQ was acquired by Bartell Family Radio, adding
it to the already infamous Bartell brothers’ broadcast and publishing empire.
Everything soon changed for Jack and the Bartells.
With vision, foresight, and more than a
little moxie, general manager, Lee Bartell, switched to the Top 40 music
format, severing formerly lucrative network ties. The new Top 40 radio broadcasting,
the brainchild of Todd Storz with refining by Gordon McLendon, was catching
fire throughout radio and proved to dominate KCBQ’s heyday years.
Jack’s jock break came when the night
guy who regularly broadcast remotes, took a vacation. Now you and I both know
that’s a vulnerable time for any employee. But if you’ve been screwing up
anyway, well, chances are your “temporary replacement” won’t be. Temporary that
is.
Pat’s Drive-In on El Cajon Boulevard
learned what a difference a DJ makes. Jack’s suspicions that the other DJ
hadn’t been doing a great job, were confirmed when he showed up and no one was
there! The whole purpose of a radio remote is to attract listeners to the site.
Otherwise, why spend the advertising bucks?
He hopped on the air and began inviting
his listeners to “come on down.” “I had movie stars, and all kinds of people
coming out there. By the time the two weeks were up and the other DJ returned,
“Pat” didn’t want any part of him. She wanted me to stay on the remotes. The
waitresses [carhops] were making more in tips than I was
making.”
Lee Bartell was no dummy. His
advertiser was happy. He kept Jack on the night shift—and at thirty-eight years
old, Jack became a Rock & Roll Radio DJ for one of the most popular
stations in Southern California.
“When I first started out, everything
was 78 rpm. 45s came in, and I thought, gee whiz, these little
teeny things, how’re we going to cue them up? We didn’t have good turntables to
start with. Finally got used to them, then liked them, ‘cause they weren’t so
heavy and cumbersome.”
We’ll hear more from our Clark Gable of
the airwaves as the Sixties unfold. Trust me, you will want to stay tuned for
more Jack Vincent stories … like the naked gal on his studio sofa with the
bottle of booze …
