Richard Bogardus "Red" Blanchard, Jr. (June 11, 1920 – June 16, 2011) was an American radio show personality in California markets from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s whose shows were novelty- and comedy-oriented. He was also a musician and record producer and released a few novelty songs of his own in the early 1950s. Blanchard also added his voice to novelty songs written and performed by recording personality Nervous Norvus, and to radio commercials. In 1965 Blanchard became the technical director of the Los Angeles station KHJ-TV until he retired in 1978.
Early life
Blanchard was born in Gardner, Massachusetts, to Richard Bogardus Blanchard, Sr., and Dorothy Rolfe Follett Blanchard. The family moved to California in 1921 but back to Gardner in 1935, where Blanchard attended Gardner High School for his sophomore through senior years. During that time he became a member of the Haywood-Wakefield Furniture Company Band, sponsored by one of the biggest furniture factories in New England at the time. Also, from 1935 to 1939, Red, who got his sobriquet from his bright red hair, played the trombone for a big band.
In 1940 he moved to Schenectady, New York, and started working for a defense plant.(GE) Three years later, in 1943, he volunteered for the United States Army Air Forces and was sent to the Greensboro, North Carolina, Basic Training Camp. According to his Website, "Red went into the army at age 23, when everybody else in basic training was about 18, so they made him a drill instructor (probably due to his loud voice)." After a few months the Army decided it had enough cadets at Greensboro and transferred Blanchard to March Field in Riverside, California.
While at March Field, Blanchard met his future wife, Phyllis East from Colton, California, and at about the same time the Army Air Corps transferred him again, this time to engineering school at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, where he remained for the rest of his military service and was discharged early in 1945. Phyllis East was also waiting there for him and they were married on July 12, 1945 in San Francisco. (Later one of Phyllis's sisters married one of Red's brothers.) Phyllis died of breast cancer June 1, 1986.
Broadcast career
As a young man Blanchard was interested in radio. In 1938 he got his first ham radio license, W1LDI, and in 1968 the call sign, W6AG was issued by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC). He became a lifetime member of the Amateur Radio Relay League and was awarded a certificate for 60 years of service in 1999.
After the Army, Blanchard went to the west coast and worked for the rest of his career for various radio and TV stations in California and Nevada:
In radio as an on-air personality: KPRO, Riverside: 1945–January 1950. KCBQ, San Diego: February–December 1950. KLAS (now KLAV), Las Vegas: January–March 1951. KCBS, San Francisco: 1951–1955. GBS, San Francisco: 1955–present. (GBS, or General Broadcasting System, is a name owned by Blanchard. When he left KCBS he started syndicating radio shows and sometime within the next year registered the name General Broadcasting System with the U.S. Patent Office.) KFVD/KPOP, KABC, KFWB, and KNX, Los Angeles: 1956-1965.
In TV as Technical Director: KHJ-TV, Los Angeles: 1965-1978.
On-air personality
By the time he got to KCBQ in San Diego, early in 1950, Blanchard had developed a formula of "...puns, parodies and gross-out gags, much of it delivered in a jive patois he called Zorch, with the occasional novelty record thrown in, [he] became a huge hit..." An article in the San Diego Daily Journal gave Blanchard the "Show of the Month" award and wrote, "Blanchard['s]... zany, screwball disk jockey show [was] quite funny. And rather catchy."
Over the years, Blanchard had collected a record library of around 3500 disks of bebop, jive/swing and unusual novelty numbers, plus a hundred or so disks of film stars in one-way interviews that were made for syndication so that the DJ or announcer had only to ask the written questions and let the disc give the impression that the stars were being interviewed live. On air, he would mix and match songs, interrupt to add the voice of a celebrity, put in recorded sound effects, and otherwise enhance the experience for his listeners.