It was announced on Hogmanay that DJ Johnnie Walker has died. He was one of the original pirate DJs and eventually joined the BBC when the pirate radio became untenable.
I remember listening to his lunchtime show on Radio 1 back in the day, indeed it was on that show I first heard Barclay James Harvest’s I’m Over You, one of my favourites of that band’s songs.
He was too much of a rebel to last at the BBC and moved to the US for a few years.
When he eventually came back to the UK he finally settled in at Radio 2 with the show Sounds of the Seventies, taking over as presenter from Steve Harley and also took the helm of The Rock Show. He had a short stint presenting Sounds of the Sixties in the aftermath of Brian Mathhew’s departure from that show before Tony Blackburn took over the slot. His increasing health problems saw him give up broadcasting only a few months ago.
His voice is missed.
This Duane Eddy track was so beloved by Walker that it became his signature tune. No excuses for featuring it again:-
Duane Eddy: Because They’re Young
Peter Waters Dingley (Johnnie Walker;) 30/3/1945 – 31/12/2024. So it goes.
Annie Nightingale, the pioneer for women DJs on the radio, has died. She was the world record holder as the longest serving female radio presenter.
Female radio DJs were beyond rarity in 1970 when she joined the BBC’s Radio 1, but she carved out a thoroughly respected niche for herself including presenting the Old Grey Whistle Test for eleven years and provided inspiration for all those female presenters who came after her.
Annie Avril Nightingale: 1/4/1940 – 11/1/2024. So it goes.
Again speaking of Stuart Henry, he must have had a soft spot for Barclay James Harvest. In his Saturday morning show on Radio 1 he later began to use the, “So goodbye, pleased to know you. We had some laughs along the way. But I have to be leaving and there’s nothing you can do to make me stay,” refrain from this song – in its second iteration at 2.23 to 2.48 minutes in – as a jingle when he was about to hand over to the next broadcaster.
This Roy Wood song was originally planned as a single but ended up as the B-side of Flowers in the Rain famously the first song to be played on Radio 1, fifty years ago this week
There’s a great rhyme in the lyric: plans/underpants. Not to mention cider/beside her.
The Move:- (Here we go round) The Lemon Tree
Jeff Lynne (of ELO fame)’s first group The Idle Race also recorded it as a single but it was only released in Europe and the US.
