Blind DJ brings blues to KSDS

By: RANDY DOTINGA - For the North County Times | Wednesday, February 27, 2008 1:05 PM PST ∞

Ted Herring is just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill jazz-station disc jockey who marries people and gives massages for a living even though he can't see. It's not exactly what he had planned.

Back when he still had his sight and was a student at San Diego City College, Herring expected to be a radio news reporter. He got an on-air gig at the tiny campus radio station and strolled into work on a September morning in 1978. He was the only newsman on the air at the station. The other two reporters didn't bother showing up because a PSA airplane had just crashed into the North Park neighborhood. Herring stayed on the air during a very difficult day but vowed to never cover news again.

"It was just that tragedy seems to be one of the big highlights of news, and it didn't seem like a lot of fun as a career," Herring recalled.

And it didn't help that he could barely hold in his emotions. But Herring didn't leave the airwaves. Herring, known as "T," will celebrate his 30th year as a disc jockey this year. His two weekly KSDS blues shows are now heard throughout the world online ---- he's gotten notes from fans in the Netherlands and Australia ---- and he manages to stay on the air even though a degenerative eye disease robbed him of his sight.

"It's just a matter of reinventing myself," said Herring, who's alone in the studio during his shifts. "I'm just a blind guy running a radio station."

KSDS, which can now be heard throughout most of North County thanks to a recent signal boost, is unusual in many ways. For one, it plays traditional jazz (along with blues, Dixieland and swing), one of only a handful of stations to do so in the country. For another, most of its disc jockeys moonlight at the station while working full-time jobs somewhere else.

"We have a meat department manager at Vons, a pizza restaurateur, an attorney, several hi-tech engineers and computer gurus, a big-time club DJ, a real estate agent, a real estate appraiser and several social workers," said KSDS program director Mark DeBoskey.

And that's not all. There's also a teacher, an event planner, a mail carrier, college librarian, a county parks maintenance worker and a record store owner.

But nobody quite compares to Herring, who's 59, married and a licensed minister. (The license comes from the ubiquitous Universal Life Church, which licenses anybody.)

Herring has performed about 150 weddings during the past 13 years.

"I call them truth-and-growth weddings," he said. "I find out about how they met, and on the day of the wedding I tell the story. One of the great joys you can have is to tell someone's love story in front of them."

This next weekend, in fact, he'll perform the wedding of KSDS disc jockey Ida Garcia, and he'll perform a wedding for another station host, Claudia Russell, in October.

Herring began speaking in public after he started to lose his sight. He's now blind but has adjusted his KSDS routine ---- his live shows air Saturday and Sunday evenings ---- by having someone else read information about the songs into a tape recorder. He then listens to the recording before speaking into the microphone to announce titles and artists.

It is, he said, a blessing that he's able to use CDs instead of records, since he uses clicks on a CD player's knob to figure out

which track is the right one. One might think a disc jockey who has played the blues for years might get a bit ---- um ---- what's the word? Oh yeah. Blue.

Not so, Herring said.

"You can get blue and you can work the blue side of the feeling. But for as much sadness as there is, it's balanced with joy and feeling good as well. The state of blue can be many different things."

Hence the name of his Saturday night show ---- "Every Shade of Blue."

"That way," he said, "I can play it all."

---

North County fans of Mozart, Mahler & Co. will be left in the cold a little bit longer. XLNC, the cross-border classical station, is having technical problems as it tries to upgrade to a new frequency and a stronger signal.

For now, listeners can be sure of finding the station at its old frequency, 90.7 FM, which is impossible to hear in much of North County. The station plans to restart programming on the new frequency ---- 104.9 FM ---- later this week.

It's not clear whether any Mexican station will try to take over the 90.7 FM frequency when XLNC abandons it for good. It's possible that local listeners may be able to hear L.A. public radio station KPFK/90.7 FM, which airs progressive/leftist programming. (Yes, those are photos of Che Guevara and Malcolm X on its Web site.) North County may never be the same.

Randy Dotinga's campaign motto is "No, we can't." E-mail him at NCTimesRadio@aol.com.

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