Blues Power DJ, Gil Anthony, (born Gilbert Pavlicek on October 2, 1946) was raised speaking Bohemian in the Czechoslovakian/Catholic section of Dickinson, North Dakota. He loved music from an early age, listening to the radio, copying lyrics from the Hit Parade, and buying records.
When he was eight, his mother worked at a hotel and a jukebox vendor there would sell two 45 rpm records for 25 cents to Gil. By age 13, he already had an impressive record collection, especially early soul records. This love of Black music would later forge Gil’s career as one of the foremost blues DJs.
At 18, Gil joined the Air Force as part of the Missile Security/Honor Guard and was stationed at Vandenberg Air Force base in California and later Johnston Island, an atoll in the North Pacific Ocean. He left the Air Force for his first radio job at KDAK Carrington, ND.
He returned to California in 1969 for college and a job at KRUZ and later KACL, both in Santa Barbara. Later that year, Gil attended a Santa Barbara Swap Meet where he bought recordings by three blues artists on the Excello Records label: Lightnin’ Slim, Lonesome Sundown and Slim Harpo. Thus began his obsession with blues and the collecting of thousands of blues records over his career.
Being a radio DJ moved Gil to various markets and stations. He lived and worked in Eureka and Lompoc, California before accepting a job that would move him cross-country to WAGF in Dothan, Alabama in 1978. It was in the Wiregrass area that Gil would start the Blues Power Radio program at WDMT in Eufaula in 1995. Gil also began attending the Blues Music Awards and the International Blues Challenge in Memphis in 1997 where he befriended major blues artists such as Shaun Murphy, Robin Rogers, and Paul Hornsby whom he later featured on Blues Power and at his Blues Power Christmas Parties.
Blues Power was distributed to stations across the country and would later become its current nine-hour weekly offering on Sunday and Monday nights on WDIG in Dothan along with live streaming from his website (http://www.gilanthonyblues.com) and on Facebook Live. Blues Power Radio has built a worldwide audience, given Gil’s infectious passion for and encyclopedia knowledge of the blues.
In 2010 and 2011, Gil was part of a board that initiated a fundraising program and awareness campaign through music to benefit ALS research. He later co-founded the Wiregrass Blues Fest in 2011. In 2013, Gil was awarded the prestigious Blues Foundation’s Keeping the Blues Alive Award for Radio, given his stellar contributions through Blues Power Radio.
Later that year he became a charter member of the Wiregrass Blues Society and has worked ever since to honor the contributions of Wiregrass musical artists. In conjunction with the Wiregrass Blues Society, he has conducted Blues in Schools programs for over 12,000 area students. The Wiregrass Blues Society’s mission to educate and celebrate the blues would simply not have been possible without Gil’s tireless effort.
Gil has been one of Big Mama Thornton’s most relentless advocates. He most recently led the charge to rename a street in Ariton, Alabama after the city’s most famous native. He was also instrumental in having a street named after another famous blues artist from Ariton, J.W. Warren. Gil, with another tribute to Big Mama, opened the Big Mama Museum on Main Street in Ariton. The museum is stocked with a comprehensive collection of Big Mama’s memorabilia from his personal collection.
In 2024, Gil, along with family members of Big Mama, attended her induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Big Mama was inducted in the Musical Influence category.
Birmingham Record Collectors is honored to have been associated with Gil Anthony since its founding. Gil was the first president!