[Dixielandjazz] Pete Smythe

[Bill Gunter]

When I was a kid I used to go the the Saturday matinees at the local movie 
theater to follow the latest installment of Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers or 
somebody.

Anyway, they often ran a one reeler called Pete Smith specials which were 
really clever comic bits. You don't suppose there's a  connection here, do 
you?


>From: "Ed Danielson" <mcvouty78 at hotmail.com>
>To: dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
>Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Pete Smythe
>Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 14:51:00 -0700
>
>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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