 |
Carter B. Smith Tiburon, CA QCWA # 12635 |
 |
Carter B. Smith, a mellifluous name that became a household one to listeners of KSFO and KNBR in the 1960s and '70s, died Monday January 24, 2011 at his home in Tiburon after a three-year battle with brain cancer. He was 74.
Mr. Smith was on the radio for 50 years, more than 40 on Bay Area AM after getting his break when he mouthed off to the legendary Don Sherwood on KSFO. Mr. Smith went on to work drive time at the major mainstream standards music stations - KSFO, KNBR, KFRC and KABL - and was inducted into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame in 2007.
"He really personified personality radio, " said radio historian and Chronicle columnist Ben Fong-Torres. "He was totally himself, acerbic and candid and funny and observant. He parlayed all of that into the break between records."
Carter Blakemore Smith was born New Year's Day, 1937, in San Francisco. He graduated from Lowell High School, City College of San Francisco and San Francisco State College, where he studied broadcasting.
As a teenager, he'd done a radio stint in Red Bluff(Tehama County), where his dad had moved after remarrying. His first local job, while still a student at State, was at KRE in Berkeley. In 1963, he was hired as a morning news reporter at KSFO, then the top-rated station in morning commute by a wide margin. He described the scene to Fong-Torres in a 2008 interview for his Radio Waves column:
"The PD (program director) said, 'You'll be working with Don Sherwood. Be very careful. If he doesn't like you, you won't be working here.' I ignored him the first couple of weeks. One day, he said something on the air, and I hit the talk button and said something. He said, 'Why don't you come in here?' "
Mr. Smith stood up to the test and became a sidekick fill-in during Sherwood's unexplained absences, which were often. "Sherwood had a life in tatters at all times, but when he went into the studio, he was the most controlled man you ever met, " Mr. Smith said. "We used to do radio as good as any radio ever done."
After a decade at KSFO, Mr. Smith moved to KNBR, where his "Carter B. Smith Show" was the afternoon counterpart to "Frank and Mike in the Morning, " another legendary show featuring Frank Dill and Mike Cleary. Mr. Smith's moniker was "the prince trapped in the body of a disc jockey." He was also called "the man with the million-dollar vocabulary."
"His voice was human and conversational, just a nice average-guy voice, " Fong-Torres said.
Mr. Smith returned to KSFO in the early 1980s, then moved to KFRC when it switched from pop to standards in the mid-'80s. His last stint was 10 years on KABL. When he signed on after a few years off the air, he said, "It's me, Carter B." - he didn't need to mention the last name. He changed stations but he never changed his style in the standards format, which he described as "play a little, talk a little, play a little."
When KABL switched to talk-only, in 2005, Mr. Smith found himself out of a job for the last time, as it turned out, 50 years after he'd started in Red Bluff. But he never formally retired.
"I'm tanned and ready to go, " he said.
Among Carter's greatest accomplishments was his effort in 1982 to publicize the need to restore San Francisco.s landmark cable cars. In addition to taking an 18-hour marathon ride on .Cable Car 68. to raise funds for the restoration effort, he appeared on radio stations from coast-to-coast (and around the world via shortwave) to increase awareness of the venture. His interests were varied and wide-ranging, and included aviation history and ham radio, Carter's amateur license was K6CWM.
Always a listener favorite, he later moved on to KNBR, KFRC (in its Magic 61 incarnation) and KABL. Also widely known for being the proprietor of one of the world's largest collections of T-shirts - numbering upward of 6,000, many of which were donated to the Smithsonian. Carter B. Smith was elected to the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame in 2007.
Mr. Smith was relaxing at his home in Tiburon, where he'd lived since 1968, when he suffered a mild stroke three years ago. At that time, it was discovered that he had brain cancer. Mr. Smith recovered fully from the stroke and led an active and normal life until his recent decline. Two months ago, Mr. Smith's son, Clayton, walked into Sam's Anchor Cafe in Tiburon, and there having lunch was his dad, Jim Lange, Dill and Cleary.
"I said, 'Looks like we've got about 200 years of radio here,' " Clayton Smith said, to which Lange laughed and said: "More than that."
Mr. Smith died peacefully at home in his bedroom, with the TV tuned to the stock report.
His first two marriages ended in divorce. In 1986, he married Barbara Koontz, and they were married until his death.
Survivors include his wife of Tiburon, sister, Cynthia Stilley of Flint, Mich.; sons Carter B. Smith Jr. of San Rafael and Clayton Smith of Sonoma, and two granddaughters.
