Oral History with Cary Wolfson, OH2093

2018

OH2093

single recording; 1 hour, 11 min., 4 sec.

Cary Wolfson, former host of the blues radio show Blues from the Red Rooster Lounge, talks about his three-decade-plus career in local and syndicated radio. Wolfson speaks about adventures in San Francisco in 1970; coming to Boulder from Baltimore, Maryland, in the 1970s; the start of KGNU Independent Community Radio; how The Red Rooster Lounge came to be; the beginning and end of Blues Access Magazine; the battle to keep radio station KGNU alive on a shoestring budget; early KGNU pledge drives; and the 1970s and 1980s processes of syndicating a radio show. Additionally, Wolfson touches on KGNU’s Grateful Dead Marathons; KJAC, The Colorado Sound; Radio Free Amsterdam; and how his involvement in photography has impacted his later life.

Topics discussed include: blues (music), Blues Access Magazine, Blues After Hours (KGNU radio show), Blues Foundation (Memphis) , Blues from the Red Rooster Lounge (KBCO radio show), Blues Legacy (KGNU radio show), Boulder (1970s), Boulder (1980s), Boulder photography clubs, Colorado Sound (KJAC radio show), community radio, Crisman Speaker Company, Flatirons Photography Club, Grateful Dead Marathon (KGNU radio show), iPhone camera art, jazz, KBCO, Keeping the Blues Alive Award, KGNU, Longhorn Radio Network, Nerd Studio, non-commercial radio, radio (Boulder), Radio Free Amsterdam, Red Rooster (radio persona), Red Rooster Lounge, Wax Trax Records. People include: Barsamian, David; Campbell, Bruce; Constantine, Dennis; Elliott, Steve; Gerberg, Glen; McIntosh, David; McPhail, Benji; Rucker, Leland; Sinclair, John; Skultelsky, Bob; Wolfson, Nancy.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Oral histories may be used for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to the Carnegie Library for Local History, Boulder.

Oral histories.

Gordon, Joyce

Wolfson, Cary
1947

Radio stations--Colorado--Boulder
Blues (Music)

eng

Maria Rogers Oral History Collection

A sample playlist, provided by Cary Wolfson, is available through the Carnegie Library.

This interview is part of a series about the history of radio station KGNU.