Bob Burford

In the late 1950s I lived in southwest lower Michigan on Lake Michigan 55 miles due east across the lake from Chicago, as the crow flies. I kept my alarm radio set for 5:30 a.m., the time when Dan Sorkin’s radio show on WCFL (Wonderful Chicago Federation of Labor) came on the air. His musical intro to the show was Cal Tjader’s very swinging version of “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Google it. You simply had to move to that groove if you had blood in your veins. No one could successfully argue that Dan Sorkin was mentally well balanced. He was not. It’s not that he told jokes or anything like that. He just simply had a mind that was a bit off the rails ... which made him Chicago’s darling of the morning drive. Very entertaining.

Fairly often Sorkin would have Bob Newhart on his show. Dan was a frequent visitor to Chicago’s few comedy clubs where he first met Newhart. That was a few years before Newhart was Newhart. He was an accountant at the time and tested his comedic talents in the comedy clubs. So I would start my days listening to Dan Sorkin, Cal Tjader, and Bob Newhart ... laughing my ass off at Newhart’s routines that later made him a household name. Could there be a more perfect start to a day?

Of course, Newhart broke out of the Chicago scene and became known not only nationally but all over the world as well. When he was given his own TV show (taped in Los Angeles, of course), he got Dan Sorkin to fly out to LA every week to tape the announcing. (Besides giving him air time and exposure to Chicago, Sorkin had also introduced Newhart to Warner Brothers.)

Dan Sorkin eventually moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where he continued his involvement in radio. He was a motorcycle enthusiast who took great delight in pulling cops over on the freeways and giving them hell for speeding or reckless driving, or whatever else he might dream up. Just imagine being a California Highway Patrol officer and this bearded scruffy-looking lunatic-ish motorcyclist with a peg leg wearing bib overalls approaches you threatening to arrest you. That was Dan’s idea of sport. He lost his leg in a motorcycle accident. That led to him founding the Stumps are Us society to assist and lend moral support to other such victims.

I had the pleasure of meeting Sorkin briefly at the Walnut Creek Country Club in the East Bay about 30 minutes east of San Francisco. The legendary guitarist George Barnes was a major mover and shaker at the Concord Jazz label in Concord, California. Barnes was producing a Concord Jazz album for Father Tom Vaughn at the Country Club (great acoustics). Father Vaughn was an Episcopal priest with an extraordinary talent for jazz. His playing was very much in the same vein with Vince Guaraldi (“Peanuts”). One very cool dude.

When they took a break to change tapes, everyone, including me, went to the bathroom. I found myself standing in line behind George Barnes. So that’s where we met. And thus began a close relationship until his death in September 1977. But that’s a story best reserved for another day.