CJVC-Toronto/CBC Dominion Network – Jazz Unlimited – August 1953 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
The airwaves around the world in the 1950s were filled with concerts and club dates of every kind and type. But what about the disc-jockey programs; the ones where they just played records, those pieces of vinyl that spun around at 33 1/3 or 78 rpm?
We didn’t have Rock n’ roll quite yet, and mainstream Pop was pretty bland for the most part. So it was up to the small stations, the non-network affiliated stations, to do the musical exploring. In this case, it was CJVC in Toronto, Ontario, which could be heard well into New York State and who offered an interesting program; Jazz Unlimited. Later on, programs like this would become the mainstay of FM Radio, which had been gaining popularity since the end of the War and with the advent of the lp. There were a lot of these kinds of stations all over the country (here as well as Canada), and they played a whole range of disc-jockey programs, from Rhythm & Blues to Country-Western – Jazz fit right in there.
Jazz Unlimited, as far as I can suss out, was a daily program presented in some five parts – and I believe it was carried by the CBC Dominion Network across Canada. I’m not 100% certain, but I do know the program originated at CJVC in Toronto. The Jazz they offered ran the gamut from traditional to Bop, and even a word or two from Al “Jazzbo” Collins by way of his then-latest record “Three Little Pigs”.
This was the state of Disc-jockey programs prior to the dawn of Top-40. So to get an idea of what the climate was like, here is a one-hour extract from Jazz Unlimited from CJVC in Toronto, Canada on August, 1953.
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