Windsor-Detroit Radio: Rosalie Trombley Bronze Statue Considered

Rosalie Trombley

A Windsor music radio pioneer remembered as the “girl with the golden ear” and credited with jumpstarting the careers of many superstars in the music industry could soon be commemorated locally with a bronze sculpture.

The Windsor Star reports City council on Monday will decide whether to approve $100,000 for a statue of Rosalie Trombley, legendary music director of famed Top 40 radio station CKLW, also known as The Big 8.

Designed and sculpted by Windsor artist Donna Mayne, the statue will depict a life-sized Trombley in bronze leaning against a monolith number ‘8’ carved in granite. It would be located within the Festival Plaza footprint and be ready for installation by April 2023.

“She broke barriers for women in the music industry that was dominated by men,” said Mayne, who also sculpted the downtown statue of abolitionist and Black newspaper publisher Mary Ann Shad that now sits at the corner of Ferry and Chatham Streets. “(Trombley) played a very historically significant role in our area.”

Trombley joined The Big 8 in 1968 as a switchboard operator and would eventually rise to the position of music director at the station. She was later among the organization’s top executives.

While it was a small Windsor-based station, The Big 8’s 50,000-watt signal reached other markets and metropolitan areas. By the early 1970s, CKLW was among the top 10 radio stations for North American listening audiences.

Through her programming choices, Trombley was responsible for boosting the careers of seminal musicians of the period, including The Guess Who, Bob Seger, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Kiss, Alice Cooper, Gordon Lightfoot, and many more.

Trombley died shortly after, on Nov. 23, 2021, at the age of 82. 

Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot described Trombley as an “integral builder of the music industry” who was “kind and encouraging” and “possessed the ears to determine which songs had that ‘hit’ factor.” He said he is personally grateful that Trombley played many of his records in high rotation.

“As a Canadian artist, Rosalie helped export my music to the world,” Lightfoot wrote. “For that reason, her accomplishments are culturally significant. The global success of Canadian recording artists to this day finds its roots in Rosalie’s endeavors.”

Dan Hill, another Canadian singer-songwriter who benefitted from Trombley’s work, wrote that his single “Growing Up” sold in excess of 10,000 copies in two weeks, mostly in Detroit, after Trombley added it to her “vaunted” playlist in 1976. Although she “could be tough” and only played Canadian singles that she “felt deserving” of her station’s airplay, Hill looked up to her as a mentor.

Former program director of CKLW and American entertainment executive Les Garland wrote that Trombley’s were the “best ears” of any music director he’s ever known.