Francisco, Roger | University of Illinois Archives

Roger Francisco was born in Decatur, Illinois, in 1938 and moved to Springfield, Illinois, in 1946.

Francisco’s professional path was determined in 1951 when he heard a record on a snack shop juke box of Les Paul and Mary Ford performing, “How High the Moon.” Captivated by the sound, he began learning to play guitar and devoting himself to music. He played bass in his high school symphony orchestra and worked at a local radio station cataloging records on 3x5 cards. While there he became interested in the technical aspects of the audio mixing boards and the newly acquired audio tape recorders.

Moving to Urbana, Illinois, in 1956 to attend the University of Illinois, he worked part-time as an audio engineer at WILL-TV in its first year of operation (located inside Gate 24 of Memorial Stadium), as well as performing bass with several local bands and the music program "Jazz You Like It" that gave concerts at the University's Illini Union. In 1958, he went to work for the Magnavox Corporation’s government and industrial division in Urbana, heading their environmental testing laboratory, stress testing missile components and ordnance fuses.

In the mid-1960s, Francisco was playing bass with the pop band The Galaxies, who had the opportunity to record four singles in Nashville at the famed Monument Studios. This gave him the idea of putting together a small recording studio in the basement of his Urbana home to produce demos of songs he was beginning to write. This led to other bands asking to record there (subsequent records were released on the RoFran record label), then progressed to producing radio spots and tv soundtracks.

Outgrowing the basement studio several years later, he established RoFran Enterprises at the corner of Race and Washington in Urbana. Over the next few years Francisco recorded demo tapes and records for local bands, including REO Speedwagon, Dan Fogelberg, Head East, Starcastle, Al Franken, The One Eyed Jacks, The Finchley Boys, All Star Frogs, Dee Dee and Cecil Bridgewater, Bluesweed, Feathertrain, The Esquires, Mackinaw Valley Boys, The Guild, Thom Bishop, Hound Dog Moses, The Lindsey Triplets, Marvin Lee and many others. He also recorded on location and made LPs for high school bands and choruses and church choirs.

In 1969, Francisco connected with the Red Herring Coffee House on the University of Illinois campus and recorded on location their annual folk music festivals for several years, producing the LPs for these and also the Red Herring Bootleg Album, a studio production of the various folk artists. An outgrowth of this was his becoming co-manager of The Ship and working on recording their LP for Elektra Records in Los Angeles in 1972.

During these years he played bass and guitar six nights a week for several groups at The Beacon Night Club north of Urbana. These were The Prodigies, which became Sound Studio One and later The Expressions, all of which produced RoFran recordings.

Another group Francisco became involved with (and played bass for) was Spoils of War, with electronic and computer-based music based on the works of Herbert Brun. Many recordings and LPs were produced throughout the 60’s along with numerous campus live performances.

He sold the studio in 1972 and went on to help establish Silver Dollar Studios in Urbana, and eventually moved on to Creative Audio studios (owned by the group Champaign). It was here he conducted a weekly recording class for aspiring recording engineers and put together a separate small studio area for producing radio and TV soundtracks. He produced an LP of the CBS miniseries “Alice in Wonderland,” which was nominated for a children’s Grammy Award in 1985.

Around this time, he moved his commercial production equipment to his garage in Champaign and worked solely on radio-tv and corporate video soundtracks, which won numerous Champaign-Urbana Advertising Club awards over the next several years, culminating in his being awarded the prestigious Zimmerman Award in 1994 for “outstanding contribution to the advertising community.” He performed voiceover and on-camera roles for a number of these projects and ventured into talent work in Indianapolis and Chicago (including a brief appearance in the 1985 Chuck Norris film “Code of Silence.”)

In 1986, he was contracted to produce the music for the University of Illinois' Women’s Gymnastic team’s floor routines, which he continued to do annually until 2016.

Along the way, Francisco was hired at WICD Channel 15 as studio manager for the nightly newscasts and was ultimately assigned to be the weekend weather anchor.

In 1989, Francisco joined with video producer Doug Fink to enter into a partnership with the News Gazette to form The Prairie Production Group (PPG), a complete audio-video production company with studios in downtown Urbana. One such production was for the University of Illinois NSCA documentary Cosmic Voyage, for which he provided the voiceover. It was nominated for a documentary Academy Award in 1997, but unfortunately Francisco’s voiceover was re-read by Morgan Freeman.

A top client at PPG was Human Kinetics, a publisher of sport and physical education books, venturing into videos. By the mid-90’s the owner talked Francisco and Fink into moving to Human Kinetics to develop their audio-video division in July 1996. Many productions took them to locations across the country, working with top physical educators and sports elites.

During this time Francisco ended up doing a majority of the voiceovers for the projects which lead to an early assignment as the voice of…the Pacer Test. This was a narrative for a “multi-stage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues.” This was a test used in middle and high schools all across the country. It ultimately led to an internet discussion of “who is that voice of the Pacer Test?” There were dozens of internet memes produced and ultimately the voice was found. Two high schoolers in New Jersey even took it upon themselves to produce a video interview with “the voice.”

Francisco finally retired from Human Kinetics in 2016 at the age of 78, and received a special honorary award, “70 over 70,” from the News Gazette in 2020.  He also has been awarded life memberships in the National Recording Academy and the Audio Engineering Society, and is a member of the Cinema Audio Society, a Hollywood sound guild.