Baukhage on ABC

I like going into the archives and coming back with obscure tidbits. Were this a video blog  (vlog?) thsi is where I'd roll the Baukhage montage, because puns like that ddon't present themselves every day. But Hilmar Robert Baukhage deserves a montage. He was a real and credible news man back when the news was something that made politicians skittish and sweaty.  He was both objective and informed, that's just plain dangerous.

The Baukhage Talking-News and commentary aired from 1942-1953. It was he who announced the start of World War II from Berlin in 1939. He later aired the first live newscast from the White House on May 20th 1939. He later hosted a marathon eight-hour report on the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7th 1941. Some of it was him and some of it was the times but he was the voice that everyone heard. For two world wars he was a big name in news.

He was born in 1889 in Illinois, then his family relocated to Buffalo, NY. He studied in France, and Germany  eventually becoming fluent in both languages. He graduated form the University of Chicago in 1912. He wrote for newspapers and magazines including The Pall Mall gazette, Stars and Stripes where he covered the Versailles treaty in France.  He eventually got a job with the AP. Later he wrote for United States News, which later became US News & World Report. He enlisted in WWI and served in field artillery. When the war ended he returned to the U.S. and got into radio.

 He started working for NBC Blue in 1932. His first bit was a 5-minute segment on the National farm and Home Hour. (Some sources date this to 1934)  In 1939 he was sent to Europe to report on the war. When Roosevelt wrote an open letter to the emperor of Japan Baukhage read it on air. He covered the attack on pearl harbor from the White house. By the time NBC Blue became ABC in 1945 he'd already been doing his own 15-minute segment for years. In 1948 he moved on to the Mutual network who carried his program to 545 radio stations. As time had rolled on, he had developed a tendency to talk about nature, and history and to speak at length about scenery.  In 1951,(some sources say 1953)  they declined to renew his contract. They claimed he talked to long for modern listeners. Thus ended his 20 year career in broadcasting.

He retired , fished, and wrote a column for the JANAF Register, and in 1959 did some broadcasts for Pentagon reports on AFRN. But he wasn't doing back to radio. He wrote a column for US News & World Report from 1963 to 1967, then retired for real after a series of strokes.  Everyone knows the name Walter Winchell, H. L. Mencken, Edward R. Morrow, Walter Cronkite, and even Morley Safer. But despite doing the news through two world wars Baukhage is largely forgotten. He died in 1976 at the age of 87.

KEX and the Castle Jazz Band

It's a tale of a conflict of interest. Some of this relates to another post here, but I'll summarize briefly. The basic story is a to and fro for KEX-AM. They moved repeatedly from a member of a network to a station without one.It begins in Portland, OR. 1250 KEX-AM began broadcasting on December 23rd, 1926. It's important to note that date because from that time until October 3rd, 1928 all programing on KEX was local. After that date they syndicated some programming from KJR. that was when they joined the Northwest Network. The next week ABC started working with CBS and KEX was able to syndicate some of those programs as well. In August the Northwest Network folded. KEX was back into local programming (and moved to 1080.)

But in 1931 they were bought by NBC and were back into a very syndicated schedule. In January 1942, KEX's was caught up in an antitrust lawsuit and NBC had to divest KEX. They sold it to Westinghouse. (Who moved the station to 1190) Westinghouse already owned WOWO who shared the 1190 frequency. But WOWO has the clear channel license. Their interest in the property was partly to protect WOWO. KEX had to operate as a daytimer.

The Castle Jazz Band were not the only band playing on KEX. Live music was a huge focus in radio well into the 1960s. Seems quaint now, but it was once the meat and potatoes so to speak. Which brings us to the Castle Jazz Band. This band came together in about 1944: Monte Ballou, banjoist, and vocalist put the first incarnations of the band together. Early members included Bob Gilbert, Freddie Crews and Bob Short, Bob Scobey, George Brunis, Don Kinch, Chris Tyle and most importantly George Edward Bruns.George Bruns (sometimes Brunis or Burns) was born July 3, 1914 in Sandy, Oregon. He played trumpet, trombone, clarinet, piano, string bass, and tuba. He was also the Music Director for KEX and simultaneously the the Music Director at 970 KOIN-AM. More here. He'd already played in the Jim Dericks Orchestra, Jack Teagarden's band and Harry Owens' Hawaiian Band. This must have impressed some people at the job interview. George joined the Castle jazz band at the end of 1945 when he returned from WWII. I dont' know which came first, the radio gig or the jazz band.. but he made it work for him.With this direct connection to radio the band exploded in Portland. Their success was so great that they opened their own club in 1949. In 1951, after the cooperative dissolved, Ballou opened a second club in Portland, with a new band which included Bob Gilbert, Freddie Crews and Bob Short. But Bruns only stuck with the band for 4 years. He left Oregon for Los Angeles in 1949. Eventually he ended up working for Disney scoring films such as Sleeping Beauty. His best work was obviously behind him. More here.

Winchellism

Walter Winchell was a petty and mean bastard. I want to make that clear. As inspiring as his story is, remember that. It's important not to lionize people. what's true is fantastic enough. He grew up poor on the Upper East Side. He built something from nothing, and he did it by hustling. He was a real prick, a megalomaniac, and a vindictive womanizer. I do quite like some of his contributions to the English language including the eponymous term "Winchellism" which applied to any number of his his invented words or phrases and more interestingly:

"A pejorative judgment that an author's works are specifically designed to imply or invoke scandal and may even be libelous."

He began in vaudeville, quickly finding that his talent was in writing about vaudeville more than singing or dancing. He wrote for the Vaudeville News starting in 1922 and left it for The Evening Graphic in 1924. It was there that he began making enemies with celebrities and friends with mobsters. Both situations gave him fodder for his column.On June 10th 1929 he was hired by the New York Daily Mirror where he finally became a syndicated columnist. That's when the real trouble began. At first Winchell wrote 4 days a week, then five, then he got a Sunday column. Eventually his column was syndicated in over 2,000 newspapers and read by 50 million people. Success there led to radio.

In 1931 he first began his weekly broadcasts for CBS. The Lucky Strike radio program gave him 5 minutes of airtime at the request of George Hill the president of American Tobacco. He was instantly popular. On March 29th, 1937 he debuted on NBC. Jergens sponsored a 15-minute Sunday night program The Jergens Journal, starring Winchell's high speed delivery. The book "The Secret Life of Walter Winchell" described it like this:

"The familiar staccato voice, heralding twelve and one half minutes of the Jergens Journal... Tapping a telegraph key wildly, though he bothered to learn Morse Code. Ripping at his necktie. Nuzzling against the microphone. Filling his hatband with nervous sweat. Gobbling at twenty million pairs of ears. "

He began each episode with the phrase "Good evening Mr. and Mrs. America from border to border and coast to coast and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press." His banter was clocked at an average of 197 words per minute. While his column focused on gossip, his radio program included a lot of international news giving it a greater air of seriousness. Despite his sensationalist reputation for Hollywood gossip he was also one of the first American journalists to criticize Adolf Hitler in the build up to WWII.

On June 15, 1945, NBC Blue officially became the ABC Network, Winchell rolled on with a different emblem on his microphone. The Jergens Journal ran until December 26th 1948 when Winchell made the leap to Television. It was later renamed "The Woodbury Journal" for their new sponsor. His ABC television program was sponsored by Gruen Watches, and simulcast on ABC radio until 1955. He got into an argument with ABC executives and they canned him. He sued and went to the much smaller Mutual Network.

Winchell a rabid anti-communist had supported Senator Joe McCarthy [R]. Thought Winchell had turned on McCarthy at the end, it had left him stained somewhat and his career was in decline. The fight that would end his career was brewing. He and Jack Paar didn't get along. Paar had been on the Lucky Strike Program as well so they had crossed paths around 1931 only do so again in 1957. Paar had reemerged from Quiz-show exile to host the Tonight Show. Winchell gave Paar the treatment. He said that Paar was having marital problems. Paar denied it, but the fact is, Paar married and divorced the same woman twice. It wasn't a stretch. But Paar had a platform from which to fire back. He said that Winchell never voted (which was untrue) and that his column was "written by a fly." He called him a "silly old man" and went on to mock Winchell's high pitched voice. Ironically it was Paar who had to make a retraction. More here.

Paar kept up the pressure and in a series of attacks in 1959 he read passages from the book "The Secret Life of Walter Winchell." It was a hit piece written by Lyle Stewart that gave Winchell the treatment he'd given everyone else. At the same time Winchell's home base newspaper The New York Daily Mirror was floundering under a prolonged strike. The newspaper went under in 1962 and Winchell was cast adrift and to faded into obscurity. He retired from the Mutual Network in 1969.

Married on Air

In the 1920s there were a handful of radio weddings. Some fo these were on air entirely, others relied on the radio to provide the music. In once conformed instance, in 1926 in Belleville, NJ one couple marched down the aisle to the sound of the wedding march on WAAM. It was possibly inevitable that it woudl become something as ridiculous as a game show on ABC.

The year was 1945 and John Nelson the host, his co-host was Roberta Roberts. Jack McElroy was the singing announcer. The program Bride and Groom, ran from 1945 to 1950. The couples literally got married on air in a neat 30 minute program. The nuptials weren't tinkered with but immediately following the "I do" portion of the program, the couple was interviewed. It had a human interest angle to it. In 5 years they burned through about 1,000 couples. On the ABC scheduel it was sandwitched between soap operas if that tells you about the target demo. Sponsor Sterling Drug stuck with the series for the whole 5 year run.

The weddings were held at a chapel in the Chapman Park Hotel in Los Angeles, CA but in the last year of the program they were held taht the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel. Producer John Reddy went through thousands of letters from hopeful couples. Couples were selected on who made the best story, blind couples, cute couples, young couples, old couples.. It didnt' matter. It was radio, they needed a story.

Winning couples won not just wedding rings, but also some appliances and a honeymoon. In 1949 they gave away $104,000 of prizes. It dosent sound like much now, but at the time it was one of the best deals in game show land. It did well enough that Mutual Broadcasting made their own series "Married for Life" focused on interviews with engaged couples.

Oscar "Papa" Celestin on WOSU

The importance of Oscar Celestin cannot be over emphasized. He was president of the first Negro Professional Musicians Union. He played in several bands (one of which ended in a gun fight) but formed his own band The Original Tuxedo Jazz Orchestra in 1910. It existed into the early 1930s. It's line up included every big name in dixieland and hot jazz you can think of: King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Baby Dodds, Pops Foster, Johnny St. Cyr, Zutty Singleton... the list goes on. They recorded some sides for Okeh starting in 1925. He has a good bio here.

But in WWII he had to give up the band and worked in a shipyard. After the war he formed a new band (with the same name) that he remained with until his death in 1954. This band took off. They got a regular gig at the Paddock Lounge on Bourbon Street in the French quarter. They were sort of a tourist attraction. It was about this time that he began making radio broadcasts on WDSU. Arhoolie records released a whole LP of these WDSU broadcasts, and despite the crappy annoncer Roger Wolfe, the band is badass. At least some of these were also on WDSU-TV. Wolfe had his own record label, Bandwagon records that put out some Celestin cuts around 1950. WDSU had yet another radio show called the Dixieland Jambake where Celestin made yet more appearances. Papa then scored a big money gig for the Mississippi shipping Company, playing on the docks to serenade incoming and outgoing passengers of courselines. It made him a virtual celebrity.Things were going so well that in 1950 ABC was looking at syndicating radio shows out of New Orleans as a major talent hub. Bob Swezey met with some ABC execs who were connected to WDSU. ABC was already syndicating a program called "Battle of the Bands" out of NOLA. it featured groups rounded up by Papa Celestin and Sharkey Bonanno. Swezey was partitularly interested in gettign exposure for some cajun stand up comics.

In 1953, a year before his death he played a special concert in the Whitehouse for President Eisenhower. It was May 8th, 1953. He and his band were flown to DC for the annual banquet of the White House Correspondents’ Association. They were the first African-American band to do so. An estimated 10,000 people attended his funeral.

Paul Harvey: The Last DJ

Paul Harvey died Saturday at the age of 90 at a hospital near his winter home in Phoenix. In the year 2000 ABC renewed his program for another 10 years; a vote of confidence at the end of a radio that lasted over 70 years. He was the last DJ in America older than radio itself. He was born in 1918, three years before the first commercial radio license.

His program "News & Comment" began on ABC in 1951, his other "The Rest of the Story" began in 1976. He began at KVOO a radio station in his home town of Tulsa, Oklahoma. He briefly worked at KSAL in Salina, KS, KOMA in Oklahoma City, KFBI in Abilene, Kansas and KXOK in St. Louis. In 1941, He became program director for WKZO in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

But a year later he moved to Chicago for a gig at WENR Chicago. It was there that his 10 p.m. newscast became the top-rated program and his real career began. It is rumored that Paul Harvey Jr. may take over the program.

Teentimers Club

NBC carried this little known show from 1946 through 1949. The program was aimed at teenage listeners hence the name "Teentimers." It debuted in 1946 running on Saturday mornings on WGN. The program sported appearances by Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa, Louis Jordan, Lionel Hampton, Les Brown, Woody Herman, Jimmy Dorsey, and Cab Calloway. This was dance music. There are actually some 16-inch transcription discs known to exist of at least the Ellington performances. It was also carried on AFRS.

By the time WWII ended, Johnny Desmond was a sergeant and had sung for Gene Krupa and Glenn Miller. He came back and did some variety shows for NBC. But he also started recorded for RCA Victor and became a teen idol. In 1946 NBC pounced on him, they paid him $500 a week to sing on Teentimers.

But it was one of a number of these 1940s radio programs trying to reach teenagers which at the time were coming into their own as a market. 1450 WWDC-AM had a program called "Teentime revue" and "Teentime requests." 980 WRC-AM had Teentimer's Show. 

Another program ABC's Teen Town was created by Harold Stokes and hosted by Dick York (yes that guy from Bewitched.) That program actually changed it's name to Junior Junction to avoid brand confusion. It was carried on ABC affiliate WCFL in Chicago. That show ran from about 1947 until at least 1952. There's more about that show in the book The Golden Age of Chicago children's Television by Ted Okuda.

Spending for juvenile-focuses radio shows increased between 1941 and 1951 from $600k to $7 million. That's an increase of more than one thousand percent.  More here.

Sammy Kaye's "Sunday Serenade"

Sammy Kaye's "Sunday Serenade" started out in January of 1944 and lasted through is on nationally on the NBC Blue network. ABC picked it up in 1944 and carried it until 1948. I really cant' stand Key's music. It's to the far pop side of big band and really without any redeeming value. I refuse to call it a swing band. They did not sing. It was more like light pop. That said, he was very popular. Both Perry Como and Nat King Cole covered his songs.

The program was a mix of idle chatter, live music and strangely, poetry. On his Sunday Serenade radio program, Kaye read poetry sent in to his show by his listeners, often over the music. Eventually this spawned a series of self-released books collecting poetry from the program. His book company was "Serenade Publishing." The 30 minute program was very light and is often described as "relaxing." Kaye plugged the books on the show and that worked well enough they're easy to find today.

It was actually one of the earliest programs ever to feature poetry readings. The right to read poetry over the radio actually had to go to court. In 1934 Jimmy Durante spontaneously broke out into verse on an NBC program. It's author Alfred Kreymborg sued Durante and NBC. the court ruled in favor of the schnozzola. Poetry had a little miniature boom in broadcasting.

So as the story goes, Kaye was on his tour bus near Cincinnati he's listening to a rendition of "Moon river" a late-night program at WLW-AM. Over the gentle little tune somebody read some poetry. Kaye loved it and retooled his program. They broadcast live from a small theater in the New York Barbizon Hotel. AFRN carried the program around the world. The Barbizon was an odd hotel. In the 1920s it was a refuge for single women. Men were not allowed above the lobby. More here.

Sammy recorded for Vocalion, RCA Victor, and Columbia in his career. He began as a saxophonist in college, playing in dance bands. He formed a ball room big band and played in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Cleveland before relocating to New York. In radio he appeared on the Old Gold Cigarettes program, The Chesterfield Supper Club, Sammy Kayes Cameo Room, So You want to Lead a band and Sammy Kaye's Chrysler Showroom.