Richard Bogardus Blanchard was born in Gardner, MA. His hair color provided his nickname.
Blanchard spent several years playing trombone in a big band, then volunteered for the Army Air Forces in 1943. His military service ended in 1945.
Blanchard was already familiar with radio, having held an amateur radio license since 1938 (he would eventually become a lifetime member of the Amateur Radio Relay League). He was first heard on broadcast radio in 1945, working at KPRO (Riverside, CA).
Over the next several years, Blanchard worked his way from Riverside to San Diego to Las Vegas. He developed a zany on-air approach complete with a made-up language he called “Zorch”. He would create comedy sketches with multiple characters and play all of the parts himself, using different voices.
KCBS brought Blanchard to San Francisco in 1951 and while his run on Bay Area airwaves would end in 1955, Blanchard made quite a mark. His act intersected perfectly with the growing “beat” vibe in San Francisco.
Blanchard was profiled in both Life and Time magazines in 1953, with Time writing, “In San Francisco, some teen-agers dye their hair green. Others pencil their eyebrows in red, paint cat’s whiskers on their faces, wear purple lipstick. Their hats are trimmed with swizzle sticks, foxtails and pipe cleaners. Shouting the password ‘Zorch!’… they storm into a radio studio in the Palace Hotel five nights a week to pay homage to a bop-talking disk jockey named Richard Bogardus Blanchard.”
After his brief but memorable San Francisco run, Blanchard moved down the coast to KNX in Los Angeles. In 1965 he left radio for television and became the technical director for KHJ-TV, where he stayed until his retirement.
Red Blanchard died in 2011 at the age of 91.
ADDITIONAL EXHIBITS:
Red Blanchard website (external link)