Once upon a time, on a tiny island six hundred miles to sea---a jazz singing disc jockey jumped off the bandstand and invited me into the radio business. That's oddly put, but true. And truth be known, most announcers stumble into radio. Not where I did, though, and that makes all the difference. It was on a tiny, charming island poking out of the Atlantic Ocean known the world 'round as....Bermuda.
This event happened long ago, before the confusion of modern life--at a time when the air was still clean, the waters pure and, believe it or not, rock and roll didn't rule the world.
Balmy Bermuda evenings were spent with a group of eclectic regulars at the Little Venice Cafe, in its original incarnation, where we discussed life, literature, and the unseen cosmos. With my own little radio program, and the perfect meeting place to discuss Picasso and the Goon Show, it was the best of all possible worlds for a curious kid from Detroit.
The intimate atmosphere of 1950s Bermuda was a revelation to the young me, with its beautiful landscape and Bermudian-British style. It was a place of transformation, really--from teenage question mark into actual personhood. Good things happen in such rarified air. Far more than a fortunate stumbling into broadcasting, those two years were the best of my life.
"Last of the Red Hot DJs" is a tongue-in-cheek reference to myself, of course, but it's also an affectionate salute to those radio heroes of yesteryear--the brilliant disc jockeys of the Forties and Fifties. I had the good fortune to grow up listening to those guys, and eventually to work with some of them.
So...Click your mouse, please, and proceed to the Introduction.
copyright Cliff Morris 1992-2006
