by jon » Fri Apr 10, 2015 1:14 pm
CHQM was an interesting place when Jurgen worked there. He switched from Librarian to Writer on January 1, 1972. As Librarian, he picked the music. Maurice Foisy was Program Director. There was no Music Director. Bill Bellman, Maurice and Jurgen worked together to carefully define "The Sound", but it was up to Jurgen to actually pick the music that was played. By the time he left his Record Librarian job, the station was playing almost 15% Latin-inspired -- mostly Brazilian (as we spelled it in those days) -- music, including a fair bit of CanCon. Tommy Banks' "Samba Del Sol" being the best CanCon piece in that genre at the time.
I considered Jurgen a friend as well as a co-worker. He must have liked me, too, as he offered to get me any LP I wanted for $1.50, the price the station paid record companies for the albums in their library.
For all of us at the station, he was available 24/7. The only time I had to bother him was when an entire weekend classical program was composed of a new double album, and the only copy had been warped by someone who dried it for too long after washing. Jurgen told me to pick the same selections from other albums in the record library, even though they were different orchestras, so the voice tracks would not sound too obviously wrong. And it worked. It went too short, but I did the standard CHQM classic music fill: "play anything by Vivaldi".
After Nick Frost left CHQM in August or September 1971, to help launch CKIQ Kelowna, there was no one to do the Saturday night all night show. Less than a year earlier, the AM and FM stations were off the air Sunday night after midnight for weekly maintenance on the AM transmitter, so the all-night announcer also did Saturday nights. After Nick left, Jurgen was always Plan B for Saturday nights if no one else was available. No matter who it was, after Nick left, it became a Jazz show, and nothing else. And no one did it better than Jurgen, whose Jazz collection was several times the size of the station's Jazz section in the Record Library.
I tried to see Jurgen when he came in Edmonton to do Disc Drive in November 2007. But he did not have time to talk as he was so occupied during the selections he was playing, discussing the details of the rest of the program with the CBC staff involved, both on-site and elsewhere.
I listened to a lot of Disc Drive on CBC over the years that Jurgen did it. And so did many of my friends.
Only mystery that remains is his Medicine Hat days, before coming to CHQM. Did he work in Radio there?