Barry Richards, the legendary Rock and Roll Radio DJ made an appearance Friday at Joe's Record Paradise in Silver Spring to help celebrate National Record Store Day. He was also here to autograph DVDs that feature clips from his rock and roll television shows that were seen over Washington airwaves from 1968 to 1973.
"Watching Barry Richards on TV in the 1970s is very surreal," says store owner Joe Lee.
For those who weren't around in those days, Barry was one of the top radio DJs working the DC market during the 60s and 70s at such stations such as WHMC, WINX, WEEL, and WEAM.
"In 1965 everything was AM. I used to hang out at WDON, Don Dillard was my guy. I owe everything to him and Milt Grant," says Barry. Milt Grant was a popular radio and TV host in the 50s who would go on to start WDCA Channel 20. After a number of years on the radio dial, Barry "The Heavy Head Leader" Richards made the move to TV.
"I was one of the hosts on Wing Ding at Channel 20 after Kirby Scott and Jack Alix. I talked Milt Grant into letting me do free-form television."
One of the weirdest shows on local TV was then born, "Turn On With Barry Richards". The show featured local and national rock and roll bands airing at 11PM Saturday nights on WDCA. In between performances, Bowery Boys shorts and Flash Gordon serials would be shown and the show had an open end format. It would often air into the wee hours of the morning with acts like Fats Domino appearing with the Byrds, Little Richard, Alice Cooper, and Humble Pie to name just a few.
Most of local television from that period of time doesn't exist, having been long ago erased or recorded over. So how did these shows survive to be released on DVD?
"One day on the show we were body painting some girls, Milt was in his office watching and got upset and cancelled the show. He said he was tired of all these hippies and threw some tapes at me. I took all the tapes I could load into my car. That's about 40 years ago and I've been schlepping them around America. This guy Eliot found me and digitized them along with some audio tapes of radio interviews."
Included along with the DVD is an audio CD with Barry interviewing the Beatles, the Little Richard "Barry Richards Theme", and many more clips. There is also a booklet with stills and stories from the shows.
Barry would go on to host a couple of short lived programs at Channels 5 and 9 before heading out west. He now lives in Los Angeles and consults for record labels. A book and movie project about his broadcast and music career is also in the works.
Joe's Record Paradise became the first store in the country to stock the DVD and it's also available to order online at www.barryrichardsshows.com. This is only Volume 1, over 40 hours of rock and roll history still remain to be seen, stay tuned!
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