Don Blanton began his career in radio in a most unusual way. After having his tonsils and adnoids removed at a very early age it caused his voice to be quite high pitched. He was ridiculed by family, children at school, and most people innocently thought he was a girl when he answered the phone at his residence. Fed, up and Mad As Hell, he decided to do something about it. Since his father was in the military, Don had knowledge of the Armed Forced Radio Network. He called the network one day and spoke to Fred, a very nice man with a very deep voice. Don explained his plight and asked Fred how to speak in a radio voice. Fred told him to practice everyday reading newspapers out loud while lying on your back and this will force the air into the diaphram thus lowering your voice. After several weeks, Don could indeed speak like a radio announcer, and because of his pitch range, he could imitate females and males and started imitating many celebrity voices.

In the 1968, Don’s father was ordered to Viet Nam, and Don and his family moved to Charleston, S.C. while waiting for their father to return home from war. While in Charleston, Don went to a local radio station on a field trip. The stations was an all black soul station that operated on 1000 watts of power and signed off at dusk. The station was a bicycle ride away from Don’s home. Everyday he went to the station after school and asked if he could sweep up, clean, anything to just hang out there. The black Dj’s and management loved him and he soon became sort of the station’s mascot. Don could emulate all of the “jive talk” that the brothers were speaking on the air. And then one day, Don made a bold move, he asked the station’s manager if he could be a DJ at the radio station. The manager explained that it was an all black station and that Don was white, and it was the turbulent 60’s, and that Don could not be a DJ there! After many days of insistance, Don finally wore the poor station manager down, and was told that he could have a job if Don could obtain an FCC Radiotelephone 3rd Class License with endorsement.