This is Red Robinson’s town.
Or, at the very least, it’s his day.
The legendary MC, disc jockey and radio host celebrated his 80th birthday in late March. In order to honour Robinson, the city’s venerable music promoter who is often cited as the first person in Canada to regularly play rock ’n’ roll on the radio, the City of Vancouver declared March 30 this year to be Red Robinson Day.
He sounds incredulous about having a day named after himself at first – but then he relents.
“It makes me feel like this is my city. Sometimes I don’t feel like it’s my city anymore. It changed so much, you know,” he says.
But some things don’t change that much. Robinson, for example, still fondly remembers his almost three decades living and raising a family on the North Shore.
And for about 15 of those years, Robinson says, he and his wife, Carole, made Deep Cove their home.
“I miss the outdoors,” he says when asked what he misses most about the old neighbourhood. “I used to take my mountain bike all in behind there in Mount Seymour… you know there’s trails there. I used to love that, I used to love nature, I loved the trees and all of that. You feel more akin to real life.”
Robinson warmly remembers his time in Deep Cove and the North Shore, much like how he warmly remembers many things from the past 80 years, including his storied career as one of early rock music’s enthusiastic young personalities and advocates.
While still in high school in 1954, a young Red Robinson was given the chance to start spinning R&B and rock ’n’ roll hits on Vancouver’s CJOR radio station.
Robinson remembers how nervous he was at first.
“That was one of the sweatiest days I ever had. I went out on the air with no prep and just winged it,” he says.
It worked out for him. Robinson was a natural. His gifts as a radio personality were only matched by his exceptional ear that was able to cut right to the heart of the music his peers were craving – even if they didn’t know they were craving it until they actually experienced Elvis or Buddy Holly blasting over the airwaves.
Prior to those early DJ gigs, he remembers school dances in Vancouver where the music playing was always the music the supervising adults wanted to listen to. Robinson and his friends, however, were enamoured with the new sounds of early rock music and R&B pumping out of jukeboxes in local diners and restaurants.
“That’s what we wanted. So I thought, hey, if I ever get the chance – because I had a dream of being a disc jockey – I said, ‘I’m going to play R&B. This is what we want.’ And I did,” he says.
“And that’s what changed the whole thing in this market.”
Chatting with Robinson is like getting the real scoop when it comes to rock ’n’ roll’s who’s who.
He seems to have encountered them all along the way. Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison – and he’s also one of only two people to ever MC shows for both The Beatles and Elvis Presley in North America.
A lot of people recently have been asking Robinson about Chuck Berry since the American guitarist and singer’s passing at the age of 90 a few weeks ago.
“I MCed his first show in Vancouver in 1956,” he says matter-of-factly of meeting the man widely credited with inventing rock music.
“I got to talk to Chuck backstage and it was an interesting interview because he went on about the fact that he had been a hairdresser. People didn’t know that. I said ‘Well, what if rock ‘n’ roll doesn’t work out?’ And he said ‘I’ll go back to hairdressing.’”
Robinson encountered Berry and many other famous acts multiple times throughout his career.
But a man as congenial and engaged as Robinson still finds time to promote, appreciate and be part of anything he has a passion for me, music or otherwise.
He says, for example, that these days he gets to travel around the province promoting a brand of hearing aids and services, which makes sense given his lifetime in the high-decibel music and entertainment industry.
Last year Robinson received the Order of British Columbia for his lifetime of service to music and his tireless charity work in the province.
Also, he was honoured by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, and elected into the Canadian Broadcast Hall of Fame in 1997 and the Rockabilly Hall of Fame in 2000.
Life has taken Robinson in all kinds of exciting and new directions, but he admits he knew he always wanted to live on the North Shore. He told his wife this more than 30 years ago when they were looking to move from Richmond.
“I said I’ve always wanted to live on the North Shore. When I was a kid living at 25th and Main, I’d look up and see the North Shore and I’d say ‘there’s where we’ve got to go,’” he says.
While Robinson was helming a top-rated morning show at CISL 650 in 1993, he was unwinding at his Deep Cove home in the evenings. Now semi retired, Robinson still gets pulled back in to hit the airwaves and do what he does best. His familiar voice can still be heard Sunday mornings on CISL. He’s not sure how much longer he’ll keep at it, but while he still feels welcome on air he’ll keep doing what he loves. And there’s still plenty of stories to go around.
In 1985, for instance, at a time when Robinson and his wife were comfortable North Shore residents, he says he brought Chuck Berry and a bunch of other acts to town for a gig at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver.
“I didn’t sell the floor because we wanted everybody to get the feeling of a real rock ‘n’ roll concert from the old days, so they could dance and do whatever they wanted,” he says.
Robinson goes on to say that Berry went on stage briefly to tune his guitar and then came backstage.
Apparently upset over something, Berry threatened to not play the show. Robinson was stunned at first, but the veteran MC remained resilient.
“I said, ‘You know Chuck, this is my town. You walked out so everybody in the audience knows that I got you here, and if you don’t play it’s on you.’ And he went out. And next thing I heard, he was playing ‘Johnny B. Goode.’”
