Detroit Radio: RIP..Don Swindell, Former WDFN Production Director

Don Swindell (1953-2023)

Don Swindell wasn't a radio star, at least not in the conventional sense.

But he sure made stations tick, none more than the upstart WDFN 1130-AM, which was more fraternity than corporate radio station when it launched in 1994. Swindell, the oddest of hires on the surface, was a perfect fit.

"Because WDFN was such a s---hole, the facility, I knew most production directors think they're God's gift to production, and most of them are. They're amazing people," said Art Regner, a longtime player in Metro Detroit's sports-talk radio scene. "For the most part, the production director is the lifeline of any major radio station. With these working conditions, we were not going to get one of those God's gifts to production.

"I'm not going to say I was desperate, but I knew I was gonna probably have to hire someone unconventional. This was not gonna be a conventional production job."

After a test run with a conventional candidate that, by Regner's estimate, lasted two hours, he called up Swindell, a local musician by trade, and offered him the job. Swindell, in his deep, cool and calm voice, said yes, and started a few days before the station launched on a Wednesday in 1994. He stayed for eight years, creating some of the most memorable content for Detroit's first all-sports radio station, as part of a career of 30-plus years in radio.

Swindell died Monday, at the age of 70, The Detroit News reports.

At WDFN, Swindell, a trained trumpet player who studied jazz at Indiana University, composed most of the musical bits, including the theme song for the "Stoney & Wojo" show, and did voice-over work. Most memorably, Swindell portrayed a drunk version of then-Lions owner William Clay Ford. He did George Burns; he did Keith Richards. He also portrayed basically every character on a takeoff of "Hollywood Squares."

"If you wanted something, you ran it by Don, and he worked quick, he worked fast. He was so multi-dimensional. He could write, he could voice-over, he could put it together, he wrote music, he did everything.