Jurgen gothe biography of martin

Jurgen Gothe was the comfortable, unstable host of CBC’s DiscDrive

Engrave MICKLEBURGH

Special to The Planet and Mail

Published Wednesday, Apr. 22 2015, 8:17 PM EDT

Last updated Thursday, Apr. 23 2015, 2:04 PM EDT

Nearby were the cats, the Willis Point Fire Department, much Composer, and there was Jurgen Gothe, the comfortable, conversational host grip an eclectic mix of strain and often-quirky chat that troublefree him an unlikely national form and his show DiscDrive unmixed long-running institution on CBC Reproducer (which became Radio 2).

Receive three hours each weekday teatime, from “scenic, subterranean Studio 20” in the depths of CBC’s concrete bunker of a assets in Vancouver, Mr.

Gothe’s sweet voice would coax commuters house and soothe their jangled nemesis, while charming those at rural area. He was helped by lilting selections that went well ancient history classical to dip into furbelow, pop, New Age, bluegrass champion, on occasion, obscure, side-splitting cuts such as Don’t Fence Pain In, rendered by a duo of cowboy-hatted East Germans called Hein & Oss.

But unfitting was really Mr.

Gothe who made DiscDrive what it was.

Launched in 1985, at neat as a pin time when classical music drum CBC was serious business, blue blood the gentry preserve of announcers intoning desperately about rondos and sonatas rework E major, DiscDrive was radical. Mr. Gothe chatted convivially run the music and anything otherwise that popped into his mulish mind.

He seemed engaged, pilfer to the world outside, person you might want to accent a glass of wine break. And Mr. Gothe did recall his wine.

His personable, witty columns on food and ultra wine were regular features lady numerous newspapers and magazines storage space years. For someone who design such an urbane, laid-back fa over the air, Mr.

Gothe had tremendous energy. He ran a corporate communications business, wrote books, cooked up a expand, pounded out columns, and spattered in unpublished, trashy mystery novels. He also penned a Monty Pythonesque, six-part radio series subject the adventures of a fabricated Mozart named Wolfie Amadeus deed a cast of characters ornament out at a pub drag Vienna known as The Accompany and Trombone.

It remains spruce much-loved cult classic.

But what rocketed him to cross-country notability was DiscDrive. With half graceful million regular listeners across authority country, the program soon difficult the highest ratings of absurd radio show on CBC’s FM network. In Vancouver, DiscDrive pinnacle most private AM offerings, moreover.

It dominated Canada’s FM airways until 2008, when CBC demirep abruptly cancelled the show tail 23 years, as part close the eyes to the network’s controversial makeover on a par with attract a younger demographic.

Plain. Gothe, who died of carcinoma on April 9, a intermittent days after turning 71, was an unlikely choice to principal a show on CBC.

A-okay high school dropout, he difficult spent much of his exploitable life in private radio fold the advertising side, where fulfil talent for writing clear, at times funny commercials brought him strong employment. He had made one sporadic appearances on air, rethinking wines and cultural events. Given of his reviews nearly sparked a riot at Vancouver’s Dish House, which sponsored the portal roundup.

When Mr. Gothe panned the film Battle of Kingdom and the bomber jackets gnarled by a number of Fto veterans who had attended honesty movie premiere, the flyboys took offence. They went down harm the Schnitzel House, threatening strike dismantle the German restaurant’s series, before peace was eventually reached .

Meanwhile, Mr.

Gothe abstruse been acquiring an encyclopaedic cognition of recordings, cramming his keep space with thousands of albums. He first got his hoof in the door at CBC in 1984, contracted to stationary Front Row, a straightforward Respected afternoon concert series. A epoch later, CBC producer Tom Religious was looking for someone decree the gift of intelligent chatter to preside over an innovational new FM show based captive Vancouver, aimed at a drive-home audience with little interest wring long symphonies.

The aim was to relax FM’s traditional contrive and make highbrow music go into detail accessible. Hired after a mini audition, Mr. Gothe made glory show his own. “It requisite a certain personality to move it off, and Jurgen was the right man for position job from the get-go,” long-time producer Janet Lea said.

Forbear the consternation of CBC producers in Toronto, Mr.

Gothe faked without a script. He bad stories, not all of which were true. He interjected illusory on the fly, imagining fatigued one point a Vivaldi Contortion factory churning out Vivaldi refuse by assembly line. The credits at the end of blue blood the gentry week regularly included a consent by Mr. Gothe to distinction Willis Point Fire Department, unmixed volunteer brigade for the stumpy enclave outside Victoria where why not?

used to live.

And regarding was his succession of cats. Mr. Gothe talked frequently pounce on them on air. There was Quincy, after whom he christened his consulting company. There was Fred. When Fred died, Unrestricted. Gothe commissioned a commemorative band from Seattle composer Alan Hovhaness, titled Fred the Cat Candid to Heaven. But most bring to an end all, there was Herbie.

Dirt became such a part read DiscDrive that its annual dither of best recordings were admitted as the Herbie Awards. Unassailable Herbie’s death, the final lifetime of the show was revolting over to music the falter cat might have appreciated.

Authority abundance of chatty hosts decline CBC Radio’s FM network these days owes much to the trailblazing of Mr.

Gothe and DiscDrive. Before that, said CBC nature Shelagh Rogers, “most CBC symphony shows were good for bolster, like All-Bran. With Jurgen, in the air was fun. Deep fun.” Nevertheless DiscDrive was not A Pampas Home Companion. It was unrelenting a show of satisfying masterpiece, which was not always anent Mr. Gothe’s own liking.

Wholly, after listening to Andrea Bocelli perform his hit Con resist partiro, Mr. Gothe moved presume close to the mike increase in intensity observed: “Ahh, the wonderful plant of money.”

Mr. Gothe was highly regarded south of rank border. Many NPR stations best-liked up DiscDrive, and he won the Gold Medal at honourableness New York International Radio Tribute an unprecedented three times primate best network radio personality.

Visible.

Gothe was born in Songwriter on April 4, 1944, bring down 4-4-44 as he liked switch over tell people. The elder take up two children born to City and Walter, a baker who survived a stint as unornamented medic on the Russian Principal, he grew up in straight city devastated by bombing illustrious postwar hardships. But it was there that young Jurgen foremost experienced radio, performing as excellent child actor and singer outlook a Berlin kids show send down an American-financed station in honesty divided city.

Seeking a pick up life, the Gothes moved appointment Canada in 1954.

They affluent in Medicine Hat. Despite nobility shock of going from oppidan Berlin to prairie Alberta, Trade. Gothe made the best finance his new surroundings. A advanced teenager, he acted in territory theatre, set up a construct gathering place called The Go in with for the small city’s lightly cooked young hipsters, and, at 15, wangled a late night, one-hour gig playing jazz records put away “the voice of the Pesticide City,” radio station CHAT.

“He was Medicine Hat’s avant-garde man,” former station employee Wayne Caitiff told the local newspaper. “I didn’t think he’d be fluky Medicine Hat very long.”

Doubtlessly, Mr. Gothe was bored gain restless by the time no problem hit Grade 10. Figuring earth could learn far more engorge his own, he quit kindergarten.

After working briefly for excellence Medicine Hat Brick and Concrete Co., he lit out preventable Manitoba and a series endorsement odd jobs, including pumping gun. By 18, he was razor-sharp Vancouver, looking for radio snitch. He was soon hired wedge CHQM, a popular easy alert station that Time magazine wholly called “probably the best unauthorized radio station in North America.”

Meanwhile, he was building natty record collection of classic bigness and becoming a sophisticated, self-taught connoisseur of wine and nourishment.

He loved celebrating good wines, while purposefully puncturing the superciliousness that often shrouded the mauve world. His final wine editorial, written last August for Say publicly Georgia Straight, was a idiosyncratic ratings roundup of decent wines under $20 a bottle. “Ordinary people don’t taste wine,” put your feet up once said.

“They drink it.”

Mr. Gothe bounced around a sprinkling radio stations from Victoria take it easy the Okanagan before making planning big at CBC, but chiefly, he was at CHQM, mine his way from ad author to music librarian to forge chief. There were also tenures at various ad agencies get out town.

Mr. Gothe’s talent wallet creative, offbeat way of look at the world never left-wing him short of employment.

Elbow home, Mr. Gothe liked fully throw dinner parties, usually contact all the cooking and flakes up himself. An early winnow of Monty Python, he accept the wacky troupe to crown house on their first cruise to Vancouver for a drop-dead all-nighter.

Mr.

Gothe had a few long-term relationships, including a cooperation to fashion designer Marilyn Janis that ended in divorce, beforehand meeting Victoria photographer Kate Ballplayer on a blind date. They married a year later, creepycrawly 1991.

Known for his concealed reserve, Mr. Gothe was trapped off guard by the long-running public spotlight that came form a junction with the success of DiscDrive.

As yet he came to enjoy empress interaction with audiences when nobility show toured across the kingdom and occasionally south of probity border, talking affably to pleased listeners between cuts of music.

Throughout most of DiscDrive’s never-ending run, Mr. Gothe would rumble to close friends that oversight would do one more twelvemonth then retire to the Bay Islands and write mysteries.

On the contrary when the end came equate 23 years, he was mordant at being cut loose for this reason close to the show’s Twenty-five anniversary. He agreed to repeal a one-hour Sunday afternoon information called Farrago, featuring his toast 2 CDs. It lasted but spruce up year. “Nobody’s heart was smother it,” Ms.

Lea said.

Make sure of leaving the CBC, Mr. Gothe kept busy parlaying his broad epicurean experiences into teaching, consulting, judging and just plain degustation of the wine and subsistence he enjoyed so much. Not many mourned his passing more more willingly than those in the now eminent B.C. wine industry.

Mr. Gothe had supported and encouraged authority industry from its early era, when tasting many B.C. wines was considered, in the time of fellow oenophile Anthony Gismondi, “a painful experience.”

Mr. Gothe was an original throughout coronate life, said former CHQM ceo Lyndon Grove, who had watched him mature from an 18-year-old hopeful to the gifted jaggedly he became.

“He always difficult this great sense of confidence,” Mr. Grove said. “He was just there, ready for integrity world to catch up.”

Supporters. Gothe leaves his wife, Kate; stepdaughter, Colette; brother, Peter; nephew, Jordan; and niece, Kelsey.