McCormick, Dave

‘Big Daddy’ Dave McCormick
Born on June 6, 1936

He's among the most venerable personalities on Vancouver airwaves today, a Disc Jockey's ‘DJ’ whose love affair with radio goes back to the last days of big band and the dawn of rock 'n' roll.

McCormick has been in the game since he was a teenage radio operator working after school and weekends at CHML in Hamilton.

"That was a trip, running a station for eight hours, a 15-year- old kid. This is before rock 'n' roll came along. I was into country roots and the blues stuff, what became rock 'n' roll. The Crows, Hank Sr., I was a Bob Willis freak -- I was a stone country fan in the early '50s."

McCormick lost the job when his father was transferred to the coast though he never lost his enthusiasm for radio. After high school and a stint at University of B.C., including working on the campus station, he became part of local radio history at CFUN.

"They weren't very old; they weren't a rocker yet. The station was all over the place in those days. I turned it around and started rocking a little bit there and got some ratings and in the summer of 1960 a whole bunch of us turned that station into a rock 'n' roll station. Brian Lord, Brian Forst, Al Jordan and myself. We were the Good Guys at 1410. We were a really fun radio station, you ask anybody who remembers. I had 100,000 members in a thing called the Hi-Fi Club.

That led to a 10-year radio stint in Fresno, interrupted with a year in Seattle, before McCormick was lured back to Canada and sister stations CKNW/CFMI, where McCormick helped develop his ‘Discumentary’ idea.

These were hour-long shows focusing on particular artists or themes using music, research material and bits of interviews.

"We borrowed stuff, we traded stuff. When you think back, a lot of them didn't have interview clips in them. You just don't get Eric Clapton. In the beginning we did everybody, Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, Marvin Gaye, whatever. I was quite flattered – the format was stolen left and right all over the place. We did hundreds of those shows."

After 14 years at CKNW/CFMI there was a general firing -- not unusual in radio -- that included McCormick. He followed that with 21 more years at JR Country and CKBD in Vancouver.

Credit the province 1993 John P. McLaughlin - edited

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CHML Hamilton ON 1954-56; UBC Radio Society 1956-57; DJ, music director & co-program director CFUN Vancouver 1958-62; middays/music director with legends Ron Jacobs and Robert W. Morgan, KMAK Fresno CA 1962-65; drive/MD original Boss Radio KYNO Fresno 1965-66; middays/PD KOL Seattle 1966-67; evenings/PD/MD KMEN San Bernardino CA 1967-72; CKNW evenings & CFMI-FM Vancouver; created and hosted 1,000 award winning and world-wide syndicated documentary series ‘Discumentary’ 1972-86; first hire CJJR-FM Vancouver/PM drive 1986-96; CKBD Vancouver midday host 1996-current; BC Broadcaster of the year award early nineties; four times BC Country Music Association Country Broadcaster of the Year; 1998 inductee BC Country Music Association Hall of Fame; Inductee BC Entertainment Hall of Fame.

Biography assembled by Jack Bennest

http://www.bcradiohistory.com