[Dixielandjazz] Pete Smythe

[Ed Danielson]

Interesting that someone brought up the late Pete Smythe.  I didn't realize 
he was well known outside of metro Denver.  I had the distinct pleasure of 
working with Smythe briefly back in the early 1970s, as a board operator and 
straight man.  Pete was an awfully nice guy, and quite a good piano player.  
He and a partner had bought the radio station where I was working, with the 
idea of launching a radio comeback for Pete, who had been off the air for a 
number of years.  So Pete worked the morning drive shift from his "general 
store" just as he had when I was a kid.  He was very entertaining, though 
the East Tincup shtick seemed kind of dated.  Johnny Carson once called 
Homer and Jethro the "Smothers Brothers of the stone age;" similarly, Pete 
came across as the Garrison Keillor of the stone age.  Other than Pete's 
show, the day's programming was devoted to a sort of "beautiful music" 
format:  the million-and-one-strings orchestra playing the pre-war great 
American songbook.  (I used to sneak a Ralph Sutton record on now and then.)

Did I say this was the 1970s?  You can imagine how Pete's folksy charm went 
over in the disco era -- particularly in Denver, at that time full of 
boomers who had moved here in the 1960s and 1970s because they thought the 
city would be more sympathetic to the counter culture than other places.  He 
bombed, unfortunately.  Although he maintained co-ownership of the station 
for a few years, the partnership struggled to find a format that took off.  
I suggested they turn it into a jazz station -- after all, the ratings were 
already the lowest of any Denver FM station at the time, so what did they 
have to lose?  Management demurred, but, after all the staff were replaced, 
myself included, the station did became a jazz station -- the first KADX, 
call letters eventually appropriated by Dick Gibson for the jazz station he 
later operated -- playing bebop, fusion, soul jazz and everything else but 
trad or swing.  Ultimately it was sold, and became a country-western 
station, but that's another story.  That frequency is now Denver's oldies 
station.

"You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward."
-- James Thurber

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