▶︎ Thane Russal

Thane Russal's British version of Security (1966), a garage-style pop arrangement of the Otis Redding song, seems to have been popular nowhere except in Australia, where it was quite a hit (#7 Sydney #24 Melbourne #4 Brisbane #8 Perth). In fact, a lot of Aussie Boomers might even know it better than the original.

I left it out of my Only in Oz series, though, because it had already been given the full treatment by Glenn A. Baker in Hard To Get Hits, a CD series from the 1990s with a similar premise to Only in Oz. In fact, it was Baker, in his liner notes to Hard To Get Hits Vol. 1, who finally identified Thane Russal as Doug Gibbons.
Thane Russal's Security even inspired a 1976 dip o' the lid by Australian band Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons, their first single. This gave me an excuse to write about everything I've ever been able to find out about Russal/Gibbons and his Security, over here at the website.

I can't recall seeing a photo of Russal/Gibbons until I saw this New Musical Express ad from March 1966.

Images: New Musical Express, 4 March 1966, p.5

▶︎ Lee Haig

Lee Haig was an announcer at 3SH Swan Hill around 1963. He later worked on-air at 3UL Warragul where I heard him one evening: his voice had matured, and he sounded great. After that I lost track of him.

Lee (Leyden) was our next-door neighbour's younger brother, so we often saw him at the time he started at 3SH. I was about twelve or thirteen, and he was probably about seventeen or eighteen, a cheerful, friendly, energetic kind of bloke.

My friends and I sometimes called him "Uncle Lee" because if he was on in the afternoons he would do the kids' show, so he would have to sign on as Uncle Lee. We were half-smart, cheeky young lads, and he must have found us pretty annoying.

Even so...

I was a radio nut: I used to stay up late picking up remote stations (they started to come in around sunset), and I would mark their locations on a map of Australia.

One Saturday I had a big length of aerial wire that I was trying to string up in the yard outside my window, but I couldn't get much height. Lee saw I was getting nowhere, so he grabbed the end of it and climbed up a tall pine tree, right to its skinny top so that he was swaying dangerously from side to side, and he tied my aerial up there. After that, I pulled in those after-sunset stations better than ever.

Two kinds of people: those who won't rest until they've solved the Whatever Happened To...? puzzle, and those who prefer to move on and stay pretty much in the present. I'm with the first group, who can't resist Googling old friends' names, or searching for them at FriendsReunited or Facebook.

Last week I was thinking about radio in the sixties, and about my aerial up the pine tree in the side garden. I wondered what had happened to Lee Haig, and I found him at the Herald-Sun's Tributes website. He died in Melbourne last October.

I was thinking: I'll write about him here, and anyone who ever Googles "lee haig" + 3sh or 3ul will easily find this page.

▶︎ Bob Carmichael at 3NE Wangaratta

Earlier, I mentioned the opening of 3NE Wangaratta in 1954. Bob Carmichael, who was on air at 3NE from its earliest days, has a page of reminiscences at his website. [Now offline: here's a link to the archived version.]

And yes, there is a photo of Bob at a broadcast from a country ball: see also the radio memoirs of Frank Avis and John Pearce for anecdotes about this country radio staple.

▶︎ "Frank Avis's Memoirs of 42 Years in Radio"

A highlight of John Pearce's radio memoirs (see earlier post) is his remote broadcast from a country dance for 3SH Swan Hill, probably some time in the late 1940s.

I've just found another entertaining account of a country dance broadcast, this time from Frank Avis in The Ball Broadcast, recalling his time at 2LF Young in the mid-1950s. Avis, best known as a radio newsman, is publishing his memoirs as a blog at FrankAvis.com.

Frank Avis started in radio at 2MG Mudgee, and his latest post (15 February) takes his career up to 2DAY-FM Sydney in the 80s and 90s. Along the way, he's worked at 2LF Young, 3BO Bendigo, 7HO Hobart, 3UZ, 3XY, 3AK and 3DB Melbourne, 6PR Perth, 3MP Mornington Peninsula, and 2GB and 2MMM-FM Sydney.

Frank arrived at 3BO not long after the young John Laws left, and he tells a couple of good yarns about Laws's time at the station.

Great stories from a radio insider: highly recommended.