On this day at noon, the pirate radio station, Radio Caroline, first went on the air, transmitting from a refurbished Dutch passenger ferry, anchored off Felixstowe, Suffolk in the North Sea. Radio Caroline was founded by Irish musician manager and businessman Ronan O’Rahilly after he failed to obtain airplay for his artist, Georgie Fame, on Radio Luxembourg and the BBC Light Programme. Unlicensed by any government for most of its early life, it was a pirate radio station that never really became ‘illegal’ as it was operating from international waters outside any national jurisdiction. Initially Radio Caroline’s musical theme was Jimmy McGriff’s ‘Round Midnight’, a jazz standard by Thelonious Monk, but it was soon replaced by ‘Caroline’, a song released by the British harmony beat group, The Fortunes, that same year.
