Dave Diamond’s music influence

Dave Diamond

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If you watched CBS Sunday Morning last weekend, you may have noticed that former Storm Laker Dave Diamond was mentioned prominently in one of the features.

CBS correspondent Anthony Mason was doing a story on the influential 1960s rock band The Doors. Mason was interviewing the two surviving band members, Robby Krueger and John Dunsmore, on the origins of the band. Mason mentioned that in their early days in Los Angeles, their careers were given a big boost when Dave Diamond, then one of the most prominent DJs in Los Angeles radio, took a liking to the band and gave The Doors heavy airplay on his influential radio show, The Diamond Mine.

Krueger and Densmore agreed that Diamond’s airplay was a significant boost to the band’s fortunes, helping propel them into one of the biggest recording and performance acts of the era. The other members of the band were frontman Jim Morrison and keyboardist Ray Manzarek, now both deceased.

A few of the band’s big hits were “Light My Fire,” “Touch Me” and “Riders on the Storm.”

Diamond was a huge influence on West Coast music in the 60s and 70s, helping boost artists like singer Linda Rondstadt into stardom. He was also publisher of “Incense and Peppermint,” the 1967 megahit by Strawberry Alarm Clock. He also accompanied the Beatles on their first American trip.

Dave retired from radio in 1982 and, having earned a master’s and doctorate degrees, came to Storm Lake to join the faculty of Buena Vista University’s mass communications department. That’s when I got to know Dave during my tenure in the public relations department at Buena Vista. He was part of a faculty that developed BV into one of the best journalism programs in the Midwest. He was voted “Professor of the Year” by the student body in 1986.

After teaching at BV for five years, Dave moved to Sioux City to chair Morningside College’s mass communications department. He then returned to his home state of South Dakota to teach journalism and broadcasting at Black Hills State University for 17 years.

Dave died May 5, 2014, at age 77 at his home in Spearfish, S.D. The Hollywood Reporter headlined him in his obituary as “legendary rock deejay.”