Carter Blakemore Smith was a San Francisco native who graduated from Lowell High School, City College of San Francisco, and San Francisco State University.
He was first heard on Bay Area radio while still studying at SF State, holding down an airshift at KRE.
He was recruited to join KSFO in 1963, starting out by reading newscasts during Don Sherwood’s morning show. After a few years of holding his own with the mercurial Sherwood, Smith was given his own 9 AM to noon show on KSFO in 1966.
The puckish Smith was known for offbeat ideas like promoting a weed contest at the Marin Art and Garden Show. Smith had developed a daily bit with Sherwood called “Gardening by Mail”, and with a straight face, he championed the growing of weeds as “coincidental horticulture”.
After a decade at KSFO, Smith moved to KNBR, where his afternoon show was the counterpart to Frank Dill and Mike Cleary’s “Frank and Mike in the Morning”.
Smith returned to KSFO in the early 1980s, then moved to KFRC when it switched from pop to standards in 1986, lasting until 1994. There would be a final reunion with KSFO for a couple of years, and then ten years on KABL, ending in 2005.
Smith often referred to himself as “a prince trapped in the body of a disc jockey” and amassed a collection of some 6,000 T-shirts, many of which were donated to the Smithsonian Institution.
Carter B. Smith was named to the San Francisco State University Alumni Hall of Fame in 2004.
Smith died in 2011 at age 74.