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Beginnings Journey Archiving Project Collection

Hello. I'm Don Robertson, an American composer an author currently living in Nashville, Tennessee (Music City).

Because I have spent my life discovering music and sharing it with others, I consider Musical Kaleidoscope to be my ultimate music-education project.

This is the Musical Kaleidoscope story.

I was born in Denver, Colorado on April 4th, 1942. According to my Baby Book, I was playing rumba and jazz records by age 3. My main love was classical music, however. “Listens to symphonies and operas by the hour,” Mom wrote.   


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"Dr. Brico"

Because of my unusual interest in music, in February, 1946, my mother took me to the famous symphony conductor Antonia Brico who agreed to teach me. We called her Dr. Brico. Dr. Brico told Mom that I would be a great composer someday, and that summer, Mom took this photo of Dr. Brico and me. Dr. Brico was going to Finland to conduct the Helsinki Symphony Orchestra and wanted to give it to Jean Sibelius, the great Finnish composer. Meanwhile, Dad, convinced that "this Brico dame" turning me into a child prodigy would ruin my life forever, forbade me to return to her for lessons after she returned from her trip. The damage had already been done, however: Dr. Brico had already gotten me started on my love for European classical music.

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"Antonia," The 1974 documentary by Judy Collins
"The Conductor" The 2018 Film


 

 

“The Zenith”

Mom and Dad had a big Zenith phonograph that played 78-rpm records. Because I listened to records all day long, it was soon moved into my bedroom. One day, when Mom was "scanning the dial" on the radio in the master bedroom, she discovered a frequency that when I played my records, she could also hear them on her radio in the master bedroom. I had no idea why or how this happened, but it did. Somehow the Zenith was modulating its signal on an AM frequency wave. I was elated to find that not only could I play music for myself, but for Mom as well, and I began to develop the idea that the Zenith was a small radio station that broadcast my records throughout the house. That's when the idea of my having my own music radio show began.


“KDMC Radio”

Mom and Dad belonged to the Denver Country Club, where there was an ice-skating rink that my sister and I visited in the winter months, and they had a record player that played 78 RCA Victor classical "Red Seal" records for the skaters to skate to. You couldn't hear the music in inside the place where you signed in, where the record player was, but the music played outside. That told me that there was a way that you could connect an extended set of wires to a phonograph, and then play music that would be heard from speakers that could be located far away. Following this logic, I rigged up my own homemade radio station in my bedroom, interconnecting the two record players that I owned by that time, the Eicor tape recorder that Dad had given me for Christmas in 1950, and a microphone. I strung wires from my bedroom to the homes of my neighborhood friends using the telephone poles in the corners of our yards, and gave my friends some intercom speakers that a friend of my Dad had donated to the cause. I called my radio station “KDMC Radio.” My parents were shocked at the apparent dismembering of my "formerly good" equipment, and they were terrified that I would set the house on fire.



“The Transmitter”

Soon, my childhood friend Rob Wilfley joined my interest in operating a small radio station. His father, was a smart guy who loved to tinker, and he built Rob a low-powered AM radio transmitter from drawings and instructions from an article that he had found in Popular Science magazine. This device transmitted a signal over an area of several blocks. Rob named his station KROB, and together we formed a network called the "Western Broadcasting System." I figured that I could build my own transmitter, and I gave the list of electronic parts from the magazine to Mom as my only request for the 1951 Christmas, then after Christmas, we went shopping for parts. I attempted to build the transmitter myself, but I could not get it to work. Mom and I finally took it to a technician to complete. He worked in the transmitter building for radio station KPOF in Westminster, Colorado, just outside of Denver. Once completed, KDMC radio went online, and I began sharing my collection of 45-rpm records, music that I had learned about from my hours of radio listening: Leroy Anderson, Nat "King" Cole, Doris Day, Frank Chatsfields, David Rose, and so on.


“Up on the Rooftop”

I needed an antenna to make my transmitter work, and so I climbed onto the roof of our two-story house at 45 (later 39) Dahlia Street, and strung a wire to one of the chimnies. After Dad found out that I had been walking around perilously on our rooftop, he called a carpenter to build a real antenna for me, running from chimney to chimney. Soon I was broadcasting to our neighborhood. But alas, one evening, probably in 1954, lightening struck my antenna and burned out my transmitter. That was the end of KDMC Radio.

This photo of our house above was taken about 1949. The white house behind us belonged to the Walter Schlegels and the red-brick house next door was the home of the Calvert family. I could get to the roof of our house by first climbing to the top of the garage. Mr. Schlegel had a business selling Philco record players, and was probably the first person to have a LP (long-play) 33-1/3rpm record player in his home. That was in 1948.


“KFEL-TV”

In 1952, Denver got its first TV station: KFEL-TV. I don't remember how I obtained permission to do so, but after school, Mom would drop me off at the KFEL-TV studio, and I just hung out there for hours, watching live TV broadcasts being made. All of the on-air and off-air people at the station seemed to like me, and they let me sit quietly behind the cameras while live television was underway. I used to bring home advertising props and black and white slides that had been used for Denver's first TV commercials.


“A 12-Year-Old DJ”

In 1954, my neighbor, Mr. James Fresques, telephoned to tell me that his friend Paco Sanchez had invited me to do a weekly half-hour program on his radio station – KFSC Radio – Denver's only Mexican-American station. Called "Teen Tunes," my show lasted about six months.

Excerpt from "Teen Tunes"

I have occupied my life with music, and my love of music is epitomized in the collection of recordings that I have gathered along the way. Always in the back of my mind was the thought that I would someday produce a radio show, from which I could once again share my musical discoveries.

“The Birth of Musical Kaleidoscope”

Finally in 1980, when I was living in Santa Rosa, California, I co-produced a radio show called Night Flight, broadcast on KSUN at Sonoma State College. It was on this show that I first experimented with the musical kaleidoscope idea – bridging the gap between musical cultures and eras. This show was on the air for about six months. My co-producer was "Jerry Jupiter."

Excerpt from "Night Flight" Nov 29, 1980

I continued to collect music over the coming years, as I always planned to begin broadcasting again. In January 1997, Mary Ellen Bickford and I conceived of the name “Musical Kaleidoscope” for the still-planned radio show. However, with the advent of internet technology, Musical Kaleidoscope grew beyond the scope of "radio" and into a full-fledged internet project.

Beginnings journey Archiving Project Collection

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