He was born on September 7, 1925 and raised in The City's Sunset District, christened Daniel Sherwood Cohelan but known to listeners within the sound of KSFO's signal as "Donny-babe."
Heavy-smoking, hard-drinking and reckless living, Don Sherwood set the standard for every radio bad boy and shock jock to follow in his wake for decades to come.
Now a confirmed high school drop-out, Sherwood began attending classes at night while driving a lunch wagon during the day to make a buck. It was at night school that he would receive advice that would change his life forever: the prescient principal advised him to enter radio school, where his smooth, mellow voice would serve him well. He enrolled in the Samuel Gompers Trade School on Bartlett Street in the city, later boasting that he graduated in only a few weeks so that he could go after his first job in broadcasting.
With his radio school diploma in hand, however, he was unable to find a station in the city willing to hire him. He enlisted in the Merchant Marine, serving until he was nineteen years old, then returned to San Francisco where KFRC offered him the break he was looking for - a temporary job as an announcer.
As his on-air responsibilities expanded, he would make fun of the commercials, use sound effects (with the help of a talented engineer named Charlie Smith), occasionally imitate popular singers, and present a number of regular comic features including "Just Plain Rosita," in which he pretended to translate the story of a Spanish language radio soap opera (actually dialog from a Spanish-language instructional record).
Don's 1962 KSFO family portrait.He also was the star of a long-running spoof on super heroes called "Super Frog," which relied on music and sound effects. Even with all of that, the job was short-lived, but inspired him to head to Los Angeles in search of radio work there.
After a year of frustration and little employment in Southern California, he came home once again only to find the job market as bleak — if not worse. He accepted a six-month hitch as radio operator on an Army transport ship, and then found himself back in San Francisco once more, unemployed.
Desperate for work in his chosen field, he made the rounds of the city's handful of radio stations, failing until KQW, headquartered in the stately Palace Hotel - it would become KCBS a few years later - offered him a foot in the door in the form of a daily ten-minute program, from 5:50 to 6 a.m., during which he could play a few records, talk a bit and read the news.
Don's station bio in 1968.He would then hang around the station each day until 2 p.m. to announce the station identification and read the news headlines. It wasn't much, but it was a real job at a real radio station. Taking another career leap, Sherwood landed squarely on his feet at KSFO in San Francisco.
During Sherwood's KSFO programs, Hap Harper provided some of the Bay Area's first traffic reports (from a fixed wing airplane). On one memorable 1960 broadcast, comedian Bill Dana surprised Sherwood trying to report from Harper's plane. Whenever Sherwood actually played recordings, he deliberately avoided rock music - which he detested - instead he played his favorite "easy listening" singers such as Wayne Newton, Johnny Mathis, Vic Damone, and Carmen McRae. Sherwood would sign off with, "Out of the mud grows the lotus."
For some reason, Sherwood often tampered with the Berkeley Farms dairy products commercials. The prerecorded announcement included a final line "Farms in Berkeley?" followed by the mooing of a cow. Berkeley Farms had hired cartoon voice expert Mel Blanc to do the cow voice.
He also would tamper with a familiar cigarette commercial, known for the line "outstanding...and they are mild," by interrupting the words with his own comments or a recording that had nothing to do with the product. Reportedly, advertisers didn't mind Sherwood's actions because it actually called greater attention to their products.
While also hosting a late night television show in the mid-1950s, Sherwood was often late for his KSFO 6 a.m. morning broadcasts or did not show up at all, forcing KSFO to use Aaron Edwards, Carter Smith, or whoever else was available on short notice.
Sherwood had left the San Francisco Bay Area in 1957 to be considered as a possible NBC television host in Chicago, only to become homesick and return to San Francisco. He also moved to Honolulu and worked as an announcer there, before again deciding to return to the Bay Area. His final stint at KSFO was in 1975. Listeners generally thought he had lost much of his humor and creative imagination in his later broadcasts.
Worsening health led him to spend much of his later years traveling or on a house boat in Sausalito, California. He did appear on KGO Radio with talk show host Owen Spann late in his life and, despite poor health, still displayed considerable wit and wisdom. Don Sherwood passed away on November 6th 1983.
