Bermudian Don Johann, 89, was a little shocked to recently find himself at the centre of an international mystery.

Michael Pipe, a music lover in England, discovered eight-track recordings of Mr Johann speaking on Bermuda radio back in the Eighties.

Several of the tapes are of Mr Johann interviewing the late musician Stan “Lord Necktie” Seymour.

Nobody knows why the tapes were made or how they ended up in England.

When contacted by The Royal Gazette, Mr Johann was equally baffled.

“I can remember hosting the Codfish Breakfast Show on VSB,” he told The Royal Gazette. “I knew Stan Seymour but I cannot remember interviewing him.”

Forty-four years ago, the Pembroke resident was part of a group that launched VSB Radio for Kenneth DeFontes. The station operated from 1981 to 2015 when declining advertising revenue forced its closure.

In the 1970s, Mr Johann was playing the piano in local hotels and nightclubs when he was approached by ZBM radio personality Joe Carvalho.

“We were friends,” Mr Johann explained.

Mr Carvalho was rounding up team members for VSB, a new country and western radio station.

“They were looking to do it in an inexpensive way,” Mr Johann remembered.

He had always liked the idea of becoming a radio announcer, so he said yes.

“Oda ‘Blondell’ Mallory and Chris Lodge were with us,” Mr Johann said

There were a few experienced people in the group but many of them were still green to radio.

“We learnt in a hurry. It was rough at first,” Mr Johann said.

Mr Carvalho hooked up the turntable but there were several technical headaches to overcome. One of their challenges was just staying on the air. Their deep voices kept tripping the equipment.

“Ron Evans and I both had heavy voices,” Mr Johann said. “My voice was heavier back then. I have since had surgery on my vocal chords, so I couldn’t be on the radio today.”

He remembers Mr DeFontes calling them the first time their broadcast dropped.

“He said you are off the air,” the piano player said. “He said just stand by and when you hear music go back to your cubicles and start broadcasting. That is what we did.”

Mr Johann’s Sunday morning programme was called the Codfish Breakfast Show as a tribute to the Bermudian tradition of eating fish at the end of the week.

Mr Johann stayed with VSB for less than a year.

“It was fun, but I didn’t like getting up really early in the morning,” he confessed.

That year he also quit playing in hotels due to challenges he was having with his bandmates. Instead, he went to work as a shoe salesman at HA&E Smith’s on Reid Street, a department store that closed several years ago.

“I worked there for 36 years,” he said. “Music was always more of a hobby.”

Mr Johann has retired from shoe selling but is once again entertaining around the island.

He plays the piano at the Grotto Bay Resort & Spa in Hamilton Parish on Wednesday evenings and alternating Sundays and also at Fourways Inn in Warwick on Thursday evenings.

“I play a variety of music,” he said. “I just like to play. I can do some of the old things from the Thirties. I do standards and some Broadway such as Andrew Lloyd Webber.”

However, he is not a fan of modern music.

“I don’t even listen to the radio any more,” he shrugged. “There is nothing decent on it.”

He grew up on Serpentine Road in Pembroke near the former Green Lantern Restaurant.

“It was a lot different when I was a child, that is for sure,” he laughed. “There were not as many things to do in those days. We had bicycles and horses. There were no cars. There was a train.”

For fun, Mr Johann swam competitively at the Eagle’s Nest Hotel in Pembroke.

“They had swim meets there,” he remembered. “There were no freshwater pools, so they piped the water up from the North Shore for the pool.”

Then a friend got a guitar and he wanted one too. He started taking lessons at 14.

“I played country and western because that was very popular back in the Fifties,” Mr Johann said.

He switched to piano when he realised he could not sing. “I couldn’t just walk around strumming a guitar,” he said.

His parents were not particularly musical but he had an aunt who played the piano during the silent movie era in America.

“There were no talkies at that time,” Mr Johann explained. “So they would have someone playing the piano during the film.”

In the 1970s he formed the Don Johann Trio and then the Don Johann Quartet.

They were the house band for the Elbow Beach Hotel in Paget from 1974 to 1981.

“We played six nights a week,” he said. “We would play in the dining room from about 7pm to 9pm and then at 9pm we would go down to the nightclub and play for dancing. Then they would have a show.”

Typical performances would be the Esso Steel Band, the Bermuda Strollers or the Talbot Brothers.

“That was back when tourism was really rocking in the hotels,” Mr Johann said. “The music was swinging.”