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On April 12, 1954 the motion
picture "The Blackboard Jungle" was released containing the never
before heard song "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and his Comets.
This song would spread faster than kudzu to usher in the Rock & Roll
music era. Brother Dave, who was born as David
Vasser on that very same day in Gainesville, Georgia, made a
decent career in radio playing just about all of the Top-40 music that
Haley’s milestone recording sired.
When Dave was about 6 years
old, he got a second hand Admiral AM radio. It would pick up his hometown 1,000 watt WCON AM,
where only eight years later he would begin what has since evolved into a
thirty-five year odyssey of riding the tempest
that is the swirling and ever changing world of commercial radio.
On his tenth birthday
in 1964, his parents presented
him with an AM pocket GE transistor radio with a leatherette case and,
more importantly, one of those little earphones that you stick
into your ear. Unknown to his parents, he began using that
earphone equipped pocket radio to secretly listen to
“The John
R.Show” on WLAC from Nashville late at
night when he was thought to be sleeping. John R. and the R&B music
he played on WLAC would have a lasting impact on Dave.
After a visit with the scout
troop to WCON the very next year, Dave made up
his mind that radio was absolutely and positively the career for
him. He's only 11 years old now, but he started working at home on
talents he thought he'd need in his new career. He was "playing
radio station" using improvised equipment while
the other guys around his age in the neighborhood were more concerned with racing slot
cars. He began reading the front page of
the Atlanta Constitution out loud every day
into his tape recorder and playing it back to work on his diction
and oral reading skills when he was 12. This was an almost
daily ritual for at least two years.
During the daytime he listened
to
WQXI in nearby Atlanta that
brought him the fabulous
Dr. Don Rose Show in the mornings.
(WQXI and the Kent Burkhart era at "QUIXIE IN DIXIE" is rumored to
have actually been the inspiration for the 1970's TV hit show "WKRP
in Cincinnati" and Dave thinks the Dr. Johnny Fever character
was loosely based on Dr. Don Rose.) WQXI also brought John
Leader's incredibly strong voice later. Later he
was listening to WRFC AM and WDOL FM both from Athens along with
WBBQ FM's "Tiger Radio"
from Augusta. Other inspirational influences crept into his life on the AM band at night from 1968 through 1972 including Chuck
Buel, Kris Erik Stevens, Yvonne Daniels,
John Landecker, Larry
Lujack, Harry Harrison, and early 70’s
influences Dick Biondi, and Cousin
Brucie.
A little later of course he
heard
Wolfman Jack who had come east to WNBC
in New York after "AMERICAN GRAFITTI" made him a worldwide celebrity.
Wolfman, who later also moved to North
Carolina, counted John R. as his inspiration too. Wolfman and Dave really hit
it off when they first met in Charleston in 1976 after Dave had signed
up Wolfman to do a custom Saturday night show at WCSC. They continued their
friendship up until Wolfie's sudden and shocking death almost twenty
years later on July 1, 1995. Only nine years earlier
both Wolfie and Dave had been together at John R's funeral in
Nashville and the memories of that sad occasion were surely on
his mind.
Prior to all this, Brother Dave stopped playing
radio station at home and began his radio career for real at WCON AM and FM in his
hometown of Cornelia, Georgia on December 21, 1968 when he was all
of 14 years old. It is not known if he was the youngest
regularly featured commercial
broadcast DJ ever because records aren't kept about that sort of
thing by Guinness, but certainly he was one of the youngest ever.
He also was quite horrible at first he says, but it was a good
training ground. He did the night show from 7 until 10
pm until he finished high school.
The very week he graduated from
high school in 1972 he left WCON. Then he immediately entered
summer quarter at the University of Georgia's journalism school in
Athens with an eye toward a serious broadcast career. However, after landing a
full-time job at WRFC 960 AM in Athens he decided serious
broadcasting and journalism school were for someone else who didn't
already have a paying radio job. Also during this period he was doing some part-time
work at WRFC's sister-station, the
100,000 watt WFOX 97.1 FM in Gainesville/Atlanta, Georgia. "The FOX" would eventually contribute to the
demise of Top-40 music on his once beloved WQXI. "The FOX" blanketed Atlanta with a rock
solid signal playing Top-40 and would become a powerhouse pop & gold station in Atlanta for
three decades to come.
Over the next eighteen years
Brother Dave worked at many other radio stations. So many in fact that
he's unsure on some of the dates. Some of the more notable stations
were:
·
WRKT AM-FM "The Rocks" in Cocoa
Beach, Florida (now moved to Titusville), where he first adopted the name "Brother Dave"
when WRKT music director Merv "Plymouth
Rock" Pilgrim came up with the idea.
·
"The MIGHTY TMA" WTMA in Charleston,
South Carolina where in 1974 at age 20 he established the still
standing record as highest rated night DJ in Charleston history.
·
WCSC "The Rock of Charleston", where he became program director at the age of 22.
·
WQSN in Charleston, where he was
named operations manager at age 25.
·
Dave left the then hyper-competitive
Charleston market in 1980 for the much smaller town of Albemarle,
North Carolina. He worked at WABZ-FM and WZKY-AM during the next 12
years really enjoying small town life.
·
Whenever he wanted a taste of the
"big-time" he would work shifts at stations like the flame-throwing
Z-100, up start WDEX where I first met him, and at WROQ
in Charlotte where he realized a personal goal of working for
the legendary ownership team of Stan and Sis Kaplan.
During these years he mostly
used Brother Dave as his on-air name, but he also went by Dave Derek
at WQSN and by Chris Brothers at Z-100 for reasons that involved
exclusivity contracts he had signed with other stations in the
market.
In 1991 Dave applied at WWMG
Magic 96.1 FM in Charlotte because once he had heard that station,
he just knew it was where he really and truly belonged. He
claims Magic sounded just like WQXI to him, only better because it
was FM.
Dave was a natural fit on the
tight high-energy Magic 96.1 playing music from the early to middle
rock era. Bill Conway, the program director at Magic in those
days, recognized it too. He started doing the
Saturday and Sunday afternoon shows on Magic 96.1 right away.
Dave remained with Magic 96.1 until the station switched to a
rap/dance/urban contemporary format in September 2004 for a nearly
13 year run!
Dave talks about the "Magic
Experience", as he calls it, freely. It usually goes something
about like this when he does.
·
"The Magic audience was all ages and
not just a narrow demographic group. They didn't just like Magic and
they didn't just love Magic. Instead these people LIVED and breathed
and ate Magic. These are people who came out by the thousands to
every live music show or special event Magic ever did.
I've never seen such dedication in an audience anywhere. It
was
amazing!"
A new happy chapter was added
to this story in the Spring of 2003. WQLD Cool 104.3 FM is
another Clear Channel station in Montgomery, Alabama that plays
similar music to Charlotte's Magic. They heard Dave and lined him
up to do the Sunday show afternoon show on Cool and found a way
where it would not interfere at all with his Magic show.
The folks at WQLD didn't know
it, but Dave has significant family in
the area around Montgomery with relatives in Selma, all over Autauga
County and in fact throughout the Cool 104.3 listening area.
Dave's parents were actually married during WWII after meeting at
Montgomery’s Maxwell Army Air Field, which now of course is Maxwell
Air Force Base. So Dave has roots, family, history and knowledge about Montgomery
and the surrounding rural areas and was simply elated when he was
offered the chance to join Cool 104.3 in April of 2003. Dave
did the Sunday afternoon show at the Montgomery station until May
30th of 2004.
The grind of doing two shows in
two states on two consecutive days finally got to be a drag. While
he enjoyed being on the air at Cool 104.3, it was taking up too much
time. Dave says, "It was a crazy thing to do in the first
place. I'd be crazy to keep doing it. It was a great
year!"
|
The whole gang on a visit to Universal Studios-Orlando |
Dave married his wife Nancy in 1987. They
have one son, Jacob. Dave and his family moved to the
village of Badin, NC in May of 2002. |
On weekdays, Dave works at the
Stanly County 9-1-1 Center and has been a volunteer firefighter/first
responder. He is also very active in the Red Cross as a
disaster volunteer, board member and instructor. He likes
golf, going to the movies and playing bass in his oldies band..
As his producer on and off for
over 15 years now, how do I begin to explain this whole 35 year
long Brother Dave “thing”? Where is the place this man goes to
when he's really "on"? It’s impossible for even me to say where that place
is, but you sure know it when he gets there.
Here's about the best angle I
ever came up with to try to give you some idea of what this Brother
Dave “thing” is all about. Dave grew up in a small town which
was, and in many ways still is, a town much like Mayberry on the Old
Andy Griffith Show. Surely everyone can relate to the Andy Griffith
Show! Now, if you were to try to compare Dave to any one
character from that show, it actually wouldn't work. You just
can't do it. However, if you would, please imagine that instead of one solitary
character, we could actually cross two of the Andy Griffith Show characters
and make them into one.
First, let’s take the kind and civic minded Howard Sprague who votes in every election, is very conscientious and
good to his mama and then... mix into Howard an oversized heaping
share of none other than that riotous rock-hurling bad-boy Ernest T.
Bass. This would yield a fun loving, yet totally uncontrollable
and unabashed
wild-man imprisoned inside an otherwise perfectly average Joe.
We are getting closer now. Picture how this little wild-man
trapped inside the otherwise normal guy is always poking randomly at the seams trying to make
a hole big enough that he can jump out at you with all his explosive,
unbounded and joyful energy. Ok, that's pretty much the Brother
Dave "thing".
Friend, there lies the secret
to his 35 years in radio. "The Brother Dave Show" happened
because-and ONLY because for a few magical hours the
Ernest T. Bass-like maniac inside an otherwise perfectly normal guy
managed to burst out and sneak into town without the sheriff knowing
about it. But, instead of bringing a sack of rocks, Dave
brought a really good record collection...and a 100,000
watt jam box.
-Roy Ledbetter, Monroe NC-
Brother
Dave says,
"THANKS
so much for listening! See you next time!
So Long Bubbah!"
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