"Marie"
While attending Vancouver’s King Edward High School in 1954, a 16-year-old Robinson phoned CJOR deejay Al Jordan on the air with a Jimmy Stewart impression, then followed that a week later with a Humphrey Bogart imitation. Impressed by his enthusiasm, Jordan invited the young Robinson to write scripts and do some production for his show.
His humorous impressions, along with his easy-going confidence and natural ad lib abilities, earned him an invitation from program director Vic Waters. He soon took over as the show’s DJ and played his first record, "Marie" by the Four Tunes, on November 12, 1954.
Robinson became one of the first white DJs to play so-called “race records,” incorporating African American-derived rhythm and blues and rockabilly into his show, and received insults and threats from listeners for playing music by black artists such as Ruth Brown and Lloyd Price. He would buy most of the records himself across the border in nearby Bellingham, Washington, rather than wait for them to be available in Vancouver.
 CKWX |  KGW |
Robinson routinely generated headlines with his publicity stunts, including a whopper on the night of March 31, 1958, when he went on the air with a phony news report that a whale had washed ashore on Sunset Beach, just blocks from CKWX. He broadcast the story with the full cooperation of newsman, Jim McDonald, and repeated and updated it every ten minutes. (They) kept this up until midnight April 1st, at which point he played "A Whale of a Tale", a song from the movie "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea".
Red at CFUN in April, 1962 co-hosting with Dave McCormick (on Dave's final show before he moved to KMAK.) [ LISTEN ] (21:30)
Robinson went stateside in 1959 to KGW Portland, Oregon, where he also did TV for the first time at KGW-TV. He then did a six-month stint in the U.S. Army before returning to CKWX in 1961. From 1962 to 1967, he was program director at CFUN. While there, he helped turn the station into one of the most prominent Top 40 stations in the country, and served as the MC when The Beatles played a packed Empire Stadium in 1964. In 1968, he returned to CJOR as operations manager, turning it into a successful talk radio station.
Robinson worked in sales for a year at CKLG and in 1971 he started DJ-ing the morning show at CKWX, which he continued until 1983. From 1985 to 1993 he hosted a cross-Canada oldies show called Reunion, and for Expo 86 he programmed and presented the Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll, featuring more than 40 big-name acts like Ray Charles, the Everly Brothers, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Roy Orbison, in 13 weeks.
In 1993 Robinson began working for CISL, hosting a top-rated morning show there until 2000. Although he officially retired in 2001, he continued to host a weekly program. A devotee of the AM dial for nearly his entire life, he moved to FM for the first time in 2007 with a show on 104.9 FUN-FM, but eventually moved back to AM. He continued to play oldies on CISL's Red Rock Diner every Sunday.
KGW fan clubAfter returning to Canada to work in radio, he became host of the CBC TV show Let’s Go/Music Hop in 1963. He introduced the country to such homegrown talent as The Guess Who, The Collectors (see Chilliwack) and Terry Jacks, until he left the show in 1966. He was a frequent guest host of CBC TV’s Cross Canada Hit Parade and hosted CBC TV’s Trivia Challenge (1977–79). He also helped raise over $100 million for children in BC as the host of the annual Timmy’s Christmas Telethon for 23 years. His prime time Sunday movie program, Red’s Classic Theatre, was broadcast to loyal audiences in both the Lower Mainland and Pacific Northwest by Bellingham station KVOS-TV from 1989 to 2001.
Red hosting LET’S GO in 1966Robinson also worked in the advertising world, founding Trend Advertising (later Palmer Jarvis Advertising) in 1969, which counted McDonald’s among its clients. Robinson helped open the first three McDonald’s restaurants in Canada and appeared in the company’s first Canadian TV commercial. He also co-founded Vrlak Robinson Advertising, which merged with Hayhurst Communications in 1987 to form Vrlak Robinson Hayhurst Communications Ltd., one of the largest advertising agencies in Vancouver.
At the opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1995, Robinson was one of a number of pioneering DJs honored as having a legendary impact on rock ‘n’ roll. A play called Red Rock Diner, written about Robinson’s late 1950s career by Dean Regan, has had three runs in Vancouver, as well as in Toronto, and played many other Canadian cities as well as Kansas City.
The Royal BC Museum in Victoria has honored Robinson as one of 132 influential British Columbians. He has donated much of his memorabilia to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and is a passionate advocate for a museum devoted to Canadian broadcasting.
Considered by many to be “Canada’s Dick Clark,” he has been a fixture on Vancouver’s radio and television scene for sixty years. Robinson has been inducted into the Canadian Broadcast Hall of Fame, the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame and the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, and was honored as a legendary DJ by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
WHERE DID RED WORK? Here is the list: CJOR, CKWX, KGW, CKWX, CFUN, CJOR, and CISL.
Some materials found on this page were originally published by the following: The Canadian Encyclopedia, Rock Radio Scrapbook.
