KFRC Dr. Don Rose passed away in his sleep

Just hearing about it now. The best radio talent I ever heard, any format any style.

Here's the Radio and Records story.

Seems his domain was let go. http://www.drdonrose.com/ doesn't work. Try archive.org's version here.

Ahh there is a new domain that works:

http://www.doctordonrose.com



When Live 105 moved from the funky 9th street studios to our shiny new home near 3rd and Harrison we moved in as soon as possible. In fact so soon that our engineer Ted Levin didn't have enough time to finish all the wiring. He had enough done so that we were on the air but hired some extra help. In the first few weeks while I was on the air at the new place there was a really nice guy doing some wiring in the on air studio.

I have always gotten along with radio engineers, and can say I have liked all that I have worked with. So this guy and I hit it off and it turned out he spent time working with Dr. Don Rose as his engineer during the morning show. Wow.

Of course I told him how much I loved the show and how I would be late for class waiting for Dr Don to toss to his news guy while "Roscoe" would chew on his leg.

This engineer (I'm not using names) told me it was as much fun for him and Dr. Don as the listeners. When I asked about the sound effects on the show I wondered what "package" they came from. In radio and film you can buy lots of sfx and "back in the day" Top 40 dj's used a lot of them on the air.

So he tells me no they weren't part of a package of radio sfx. At some point in Dr. Don's career he interviewed one of the guys from the Spike Jones (not Jonez) Orchestra. It was the guy who did the sfx with just his voice. Don and he hit it off and after the interview the guy recorded a bunch of these barking dogs, cats, and whatever for Dr. Don.

I asked what happened to them and from behind our big beautiful console the guys says only he and Don had copies and had agreed to never let anyone else have them.

He loved working with him and only had good things to say. That seemed true to me. I never heard a whisper of what an a** about Dr. Don. I asked how many shows he had airchecked and he said between he and Don, not many at all. It is that way, you never seem to record the shows, or keep them. Many a radio guy has had to ask around for copies of their show.

You can find some airchecks here if you do a search for Dr. Don.

I first met him when I was in high school. In the East Bay a group of the catholic schools were in the Catholic Athletic League, I went to Salesian in Richmond and Dr. Don's kids went to De la Salle. I was on the track team so were his kids, I think they were long distance runners. When we went to De la Salle Dr. Don would be there, big smile, walking with a cane, and as nice as could be. I talked to him a few times in-between my events. He wasn't bugged by it at all. I'm sure lots of people out there knew him off the air.

He was so popular that when he had his leg operated on KFRC set up a studio in his house so he could do his show. And of course he sounded great! Pretty easy to do now, not so easy to do in the 70's.

He was the best Top 40 jock I ever heard, and one of the best ever of any format. He understood the simple thing about good music oriented radio shows: Make it fun for people to listen to music they like. All parts of that in one package makes for great radio. Radio is really hard to do well. As somebody on the air you are like a waiter at a fine restaurant. Everything behind the kitchen doors has to be good or what you do might not work. You also need listeners. Many a good station has gone away not because they weren't good, but because nobody listened. You have a good show and its gone, you do it again the next time. No reruns, no test pilots, no rewrites. It is all live as the clock ticks the minutes and seconds away of every hour.

And as good a job as you do other media pretty much ignores you.

Dr. Don more than anybody deserves a Pink Section cover story.

I sent this post to the SF Chronicle Datebook editor. I'd love to see that big silly grin of Dr. Don on the cover in the coming weeks.

Dr. Don was the Jim Otto, Joe Montana, Francis Coppola, Willie McCovey, Reggie Jackson of the Bay Area Radio world. He was that good, and had that much influence over everyone who heard him and grew up to be on the air. There are always other names mentioned about radio here and this is not to exclude or discount them or what they did. They too would say the same about Dr. Don Rose.