These past few weeks, I once again tried to find the whereabouts of one of my earliest mentors in the radio business; Big Jim Edwards (not his real name). What got me to thinking about this man was a post on Facebook by Jim Davis aka “Big Jim Edwards.”
Big Jim Edwards
I learned from Bill Hennes, former program director of CKLW, that “Big Jim Edwards” was often used at radio stations consulted by the legendary Bill Drake* for one of the station’s air personalities. Jim Davis was recruited to be part of a new team of air personalities being assembled to light-up The Big 8-CKLW in Windsor-Ontario, Canada. CKLW would identify itself as being part of “The Motor City” aka Detroit, Michigan. It would be at this Drake formatted radio station where Jim Davis would be anointed “Big Jim Edwards.”
Richard Poirier
When I started working weekends at 1420-WBEC back in the late 60s, the evening DJ on this station was a man named Richard Poirier, but to his listeners, he was known as Jim Walker. While the radio station was a mixture of news, talk and middle-of-the-road music during the day, at night it would turn into a Top40 station to appeal to the teenagers of Berkshire County while their parents were glued to the tube (TV).
Jim would listen to the practice tapes I would produce in WBEC’s production room and critique them, trying to make me a better air personality.
Jim Walker Become Big Jim Edwards
In 1968, Jim Walker was hired by 1340-WNHC in New Haven, Connecticut to hold down the 6-10pm (Monday-Friday) and 6pm-Midnight (Saturdays) at this smoking hot Top40 radio station. It would be here, that Jim Walker would become “Big Jim Edwards.” This is a short air check of my mentor on New Haven’s Boss Radio.
https://archive.org/details/big-jim-edwards-1340-wnhc
I’m sure you can see why, as a 17-year old teenager, I was smitten with this style of radio.
Sadly, this high energy format quickly would burn Jim out and he departed the station in August of 1969. Jim wrote to me that he wanted to move intro radio programming. He would get that opportunity at 1450-WSVP in West Warwick, Rhode Island, where the more music sound of Drake-Chenault was programmed on this Providence rim-shot radio signal.
I lost touch with Jim after he departed WSVP. I’ve reached out to people who he worked with like Bill Hennes and Jim Hooker (GM of WSVP back in the day), but they both didn’t know where my Big Jim Edwards is today.
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