Weekday afternoons at the KRVM
studio at Sheldon High School are fairly quite after school hours. The
sound of the broadcast fills the studio while the members of the
station’s staff finish out the work day. But the seeming quiet of the
scene is illusory, as the sound of the community radio station can be
heard throughout the southern Willamette Valley by KRVM’s 20,000 plus
listeners.
Eugene residents who’ve tuned into the station regularly anytime in
the past 30 years should recognize the voice of one person in
particular: “Jivin’” Johnny Etheredge, who has been broadcasting as a
volunteer at the station since 1980. Etheredge, the station’s former
program director, has been working in radio since 1970 and says that he
has no intention of stopping now.
“You’re gonna have to pry my fingers off of the command console or change the locks to get me outta here.”
Despite his long on-air career, Etheredge says that he has not become
jaded. His passion for music began when he saw his first concert at
age fourteen. The concert, which Etheredge still has the ticket stub
from, featured The Beach Boys, Chad & Jeremy, and The Lovin’ Spoonful.
“I walked out of that concert hall a different person.”
Over the course of his career Etheredge has managed to interview all
of the performers on that stage, which he considers to be one of his
biggest accomplishments. “At the very heart of the matter I am first
and foremost a fan.”
Etheredge’s love of music caused him to begin a career in commercial
radio in the 1970s. In 1980, Eugene’s 4J school district, which
operates KRVM, hired Etheredge to be the station’s program director. In
addition to his job duties developing the station into a full-time
broadcaster, Etheredge volunteered his free time to host shows on the
station.
Although he left the program director position in 1993 to pursue
teaching, Etheredge has continued to broadcast on the community
station. Etheredge currently hosts three shows
on KRVM, Monday night’s 60s Beat, Saturday morning’s Country Classics,
and Sunday’s Son of Saturday Gold. Etheredge says that being a disc
jockey has kept him “close to the music.”
Current KRVM Program Director Ken Martin affirms Etheredge’s love of music and calls his knowledge of it “encyclopedic.”
In his career Etheredge has witnessed radio evolve from the labor
intensive enterprise it was in the 1970s into the highly automated
format it takes now. Etheredge says that technology has allowed radio
to improve and broadcast more widely, but he says that it has also
become more homogeneous than it was in the past.
“Community stations are the last bastion of local programming.”
Etheredge, and the station’s other volunteer DJs contribute to the
station’s full-time, full-service broadcast. The station’s content is
partially listener-sponsored, and the remainder is underwritten by local
businesses and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Etheredge says that KRVM, and Eugene’s other community radio stations KLCC and the University of Oregon’s KWVA
preserve “local color” that syndicated commercial stations, which often
only have one local show in the morning, cannot replicate.
It’s the impact that community radio can have on people that
Etheredge has found the most rewarding during his time with KRVM. He
recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of his on-air career, and he
met many people who had been listening to him for decades.
He adds that in many ways radio host is a solitary job, as DJs spend
hours alone in a booth, but meeting listeners was a big validation for
him.
“You are really entertaining people, and are in a small way a part of their lives.”
And that’s no jive
Jivin’ Johnny Etheredge celebrates 40 years as a rock jock
By Serena Markstrom
The Register-Guard
Appeared in print: Friday, Dec. 24, 2010
For Johnny Etheredge, it started with an early passion for rock ’n’ roll. The radio career was almost incidental.
As a 14-year-old, he attended a
Beach Boys concert. Since then, he has never been able to get his hands
on enough music or obtain enough knowledge of it.
“I was a hard-core fan,” said
Etheredge, 59. “But having no musical talent, I decided having radio as a
career would be a good way to not really work.”
Forty-five years later, Etheredge is
the host to one of the longest-running radio shows in the Pacific
Northwest. And while he’s no longer a full-time broadcaster, “Jivin’
Johnny” has carved out a life for himself that blends his love of roots
music, education and entertaining.
“I have more fun than probably anybody,” he said. “I’ve just been really lucky in that way.”
On Dec. 16, he celebrated in grand
fashion with an event at Mac’s Restaurant and Night Club. Hundreds of
admirers, friends, former and current colleagues and family members
stopped by to celebrate his 40 years in the business.
“I was just overwhelmed,” Etheredge
said the day after the big event during an interview at the KRVM-FM
office, where he was uploading his shows for the coming weekend. “I was
humbled. People came out of the woodwork I’ve known for 40 years.
“I could hardly talk this morning. It was like being the groom at a wedding, going to every table.”
As the host of “Son of Saturday
Gold,” “Country Classics” and “ ’60s Beat,” Etheredge is familiar to
people as a human encyclopedia of musical minutiae.
The oldest show, “Son of Saturday
Gold,” blends rockabilly, doo-wop, rhythm and blues, and blues — the
roots music that fueled the rock ’n’ roll explosion in the 1950s.
“I make sure there are a certain
number of familiar hits represented and also a good sampling of rarities
that people might not have heard before,” Etheredge said, noting that
he plans to continue the show indefinitely.
Etheredge’s relationship with KRVM
Program Director Ken Martin dates all the way back to broadcasting
school at LCC in the 1970s.
Martin said it’s very unusual for
any local shows to run as long as Etheredge’s have, especially with the
same host. His “Country Classics” program has been on the air for 30
years.
“We do have a couple of shows that
are at their 15-year mark, a couple that are at the 10-year, but in my
mind, in all the time I’ve been in radio, it’s just almost unheard of
for a radio show to continue for 40 years — and most of them hosted by
same person,” Martin said.
Etheredge has hosted “Saturday Gold” for 38 years.
“These kind of shows are a real
community treasure, because so much of this music would never be heard
anywhere else. So many of our shows are that way.”
Rock ’n’ roll high school
In 1993, Etheredge stepped down
after 13 years as program director for KRVM and changed careers. Now a
teacher in the Marcola School District, he most often records his radio
programs at his home studio, where he keeps his impressive collection of
vinyl.
KRVM sponsored the party to honor
Etheredge. It featured a performance by a cappella and doo-wop group the
Tones, for whom Etheredge often serves as emcee.
Dressed to the nines in a black suit
and tie, Etheredge spun some dance tunes that night, just as he would
during one of his many live DJ events.
His mother, Lucille Allsen, moved back to Eugene eight years ago. She was at that event, beaming with pride.
“He really knows something about
everything he plays,” Allsen, 85, said. “I have always admired the fact
that John doesn’t just name the performer and play the record.
“He has made it a point all along —
he even did this when he was younger — of finding out everything he
could about a musician, about the music, about the circumstances of its
writing and publication.”
In 1968, Etheredge moved to Eugene
because Allsen was in graduate school here. By then, he already had
developed a very serious rock ’n’ roll habit, but the junior at South
Eugene High School never could find peers who shared his passion for
music.
“I loved hearing him talking about
it,” said Allsen, who usually catches her son’s Sunday show, but misses
the Saturday country show because it interferes with opera broadcasts on
KWAX-FM. “I ended up pretty knowledgeable.”
Allsen said she has her son to thank
that she connected with her current husband. After he found out her
name was Lucille, which because of her son she happened to know was name
of a Little Richard song, they bonded over talks about music.
From there, romance blossomed.
No future in radio
Etheredge graduated from high school in 1969, moved away for a while, then decided to return to Lane Community College.
An early instructor told him he
“obviously” had no future in radio, but Etheredge soon landed a job as
one of the co-hosts of what at the time was called “Saturday Gold” on
KLCC-FM. In 1971, he became the show’s sole host, and has since
persevered with the show through stints on KZEL, KASH, KRXX, KZAM and
KAVE.
“The only station to drop me was
KZEL,” he said, noting that it was a format change. The other changes
were due to the stations folding.
Etheredge blends his worlds whenever
possible, inviting students into the studio to co-host with him, and
using lessons in rock ’n’ roll history to teach about civil rights and
race relations.
A member of the Rainy Day Blues
Society, Etheredge also participates in the society’s Blues in the
Schools program, which delivers live performances and recordings of and
background on the blues to students.
But the secret to his longevity on the radio is no secret at all. He just loves doing it.
“It’s more fun for me than my listeners, probably,” he said.
JOHNNY ETHEREDGE’S RADIO WORLD
Jivin’ Johnny hosts three shows on KRVM-FM. Here’s a taste for what he has coming up this week:
“Country Classics”: 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Saturdays; this week’s theme is
“A Hillbilly Holiday,” featuring holiday music by Hank Snow, Bob Wills
and His Texas Playboys, Ernest Tubb, Hank Thompson, Buck Owens, Bill
Monroe and His Bluegrass Boys and more.
“Son of Saturday Gold”: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sundays; this week is a
“Salute to Phil Spector,” from his first recording with the Teddy Bears
in 1958 to his “wall of sound” productions in the early and mid-’60s by
the Ronettes, the Crystals, Ike and Tina Turner and more; includes
conversations with the artists and musicians who worked with Spector on
the sessions. “ ’60s Beat”: 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays; this week: the Beatles, the
Stones, the Searchers, the Who, Manfred Mann, the Rascals, and more;
Etheredge hosts the first hour, and one of his students from Mohawk High
School hosts the second hour.
