How One Volunteer is Helping End a Family Cycle of Alzheimer’s
January 24, 2019
TAKE FIVE HANNAH KIDDER
January 24, 2019
For 40 years, I was a part of the recording and radio industry. A small.minor, minuscule part but a part never the less and records were and still are the life Hood of radio.
It started with Edison cylinders, than 10-inch shellac 76 rpm disks with a large hole to 7-inch 45 rpm discs with alarms hole to 12-inch 33 rpm L.P. vinyl albums to 1 and 6 tract cas-settes to compact discs with a medium size hole. Now tell toe. who else can tell you the history of an industry in one paragraph?
Vin Bruce (who passed away recently) and I were “partners in crime” in bringing forth some of those recordings and he left me stories to tell.
Until recently-when his legs. like mine, gave out, he would Ring when invited, often, at an elder persons birthday party or public functions, and even funerals. Gratia of course. Recently he sang a hymn far a Mend’s funeral and a lady told me about it.
“I got “frissons’ as be sang and Ma voice was as good as it was twenty years ago,” she said.
I told Vin about it and he said, “Lee, I had laryngitis and couldn’t sing a note, but I had promised SO I took an old cassette, put it in the church P. A. and lip synced into a dead mike”.
Yes. MB voice should have been as goods & it was 30 years ago because she was listening to him sing 20 years ago.
K.TIB. had bought a studio on wheels far remote broad-cart which contained an all-inclusive studio with a board, turntables AND ALL equipment necessary to broadcast from anywhere, along with an audience-friendly back window through which we could stare and be stared bade at. It sure was more fun and offered more pride and dignity.
A lthough it was part of it. money was not the main reason I stayed in radio SO long. Having five hours of radio time every week to plug your dance jobs, mine and my friends’ records, and keep my TUT™ in public politically made it worthwhile. since I was now a two-label Jin/Swallow recording artist. Cajun records on Swallow and Swamp Pop an Jin, and I was Chief Deputy Assessor of Lafourche Pariah with, aspiration to move up.
(It happened in 1&53 when my boss Assessor Hubert Robichaux, after 30 years in office, retired. I ran to succeed him I von and served 16 years and retired.)
Back to radio. Roy Vicknair was a fellow announcer at KTIB who has also passed away but left many Cajun stories to tell Like this one:
The remote I remember most was one Saturday afternoon at the animal Thibodaux Firemen s Fail and my co-host was Roy Vicknair. Broadcasting from the %n, it was the big public affair of the year in Thibodaux and I had been the first to broadcast it lire in 1955.
Mother Nature enters. It started to rain and by fair time it was pouring down. From inside the Van, Roy and I ignored the rain and try to convince our listener” to “Come on. Down”
I clicked the mike and opened with: “This heavy dew we’re going through will soon be “gone pa-con The con is popping, bat dogs hopping, come and have some fun!”
Horrorst I had unleashed my poetic dog!
Roy rolled his eyes and cupped his ears.
I continued: “Ignore the dew. we Cajuns do. Just pop-a top again. The Firemen need us one and all, Give all the help we canl”
By tins time Ray had MB hand on the doorknob choosing the rain over my poetry. To keep him dry, I leashed back my poetic dog, but a song ran through my mind.
“It started to rain and itrained for a long, long time Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline. They’re trying to wash us away. They Ye trying to wash us away.” (Randy Newman’s sang “Louisiana”).
“Finally, the rain did stop, tie gun came out and people flooded (no pun intended) in. The venders vetted, ‘come and get it’. Let the fun begin The fair was a big success. Down! Poetic dog. Down! BYE NOW!
‘Finally the rain did stop, the sun came out and people flooded in.’
