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Robert D. Raiford, Nat King Cole and WBT

K

Keith_Lake

Guest
I seem to recall hearing how Robert Raiford, now doing mornings on the JB&B show was once employed by WBT in the 1960s. He got canned over some incident having to do with Nat King Cole. What happened? Could someone fill that gap in my radio history knowledge?

P.S. If this is a locally-sensitive issue or just plain none of my business, please feel free to delete this post.

KL

<a href="http://home.nc.rr.com/gttyson/lastradio.html">The Last Radio Station<a>
 
> I seem to recall hearing how Robert Raiford, now doing
> mornings on the JB&B show was once employed by WBT in the
> 1960s. He got canned over some incident having to do with
> Nat King Cole. What happened? Could someone fill that gap
> in my radio history knowledge?
>
> P.S. If this is a locally-sensitive issue or just plain
> none of my business, please feel free to delete this post.
>
> KL
>
> The Last Radio Station

The story that went around when WBT celebrated its 70th anniversary was that Raiford wanted to have Nat King Cole on the air for an interview and management did not.

I don't know if he was fired over it, but there is a photo around of Cole being interviewed on WBT, it was on the anniversary wall in '92.
 
> The story that went around when WBT celebrated its 70th
> anniversary was that Raiford wanted to have Nat King Cole on
> the air for an interview and management did not.

> I don't know if he was fired over it, but there is a photo
> around of Cole being interviewed on WBT, it was on the
> anniversary wall in '92.

Nat "King" Cole died in February of '65, and WBT signed on in April of '22. Perhaps you mean 40th anniversary, which would've been in 1962. <P ID="signature">______________
Jay Braswell - Moderator
Atlanta/North Florida/South Carolina/Georgia Boards</P>
 
> > The story that went around when WBT celebrated its 70th
> > anniversary was that Raiford wanted to have Nat King Cole
> on
> > the air for an interview and management did not.
>
> > I don't know if he was fired over it, but there is a photo
>
> > around of Cole being interviewed on WBT, it was on the
> > anniversary wall in '92.
>
> Nat "King" Cole died in February of '65, and WBT signed on
> in April of '22. Perhaps you mean 40th anniversary, which
> would've been in 1962.

No, I must have been unclear. When the station celebrated its 70th anniversary in 1992, they put up a wall full of pictures from events and personalities from times gone by. One of the pictures was of Nat, in studio D being interviewed. I think that interview was done by "Uncle Jim" Patterson. The interview had been sometime aroun 1960. The picture itself of the interview was put on yhe wall in '92.

All of those pictures also went into a commemorative book put together by David Eades. It was locally bound thing, not an actual hardback. I threw mine away about 5 years ago because it was getting to be in bad shape. I wish I still had it. I do have the 70th anniverary poster sitting in a closet. It's never been out of its tube.
 
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