The Old Fashioned Revival Hour

Rev. Charles E. Fuller was a radio evangelist in every sense of the word. He hosted the Old Fashioned Revival Hour, a weekly Sunday broadcast that ran for over three decades. At it's peak it was carried on over 450 stations. Even the music was popular. The Old Fashioned Revival Hour Choir and quartet, and it's organist George Broadbent made several popular recordings in the 1940s and 1950s.

Charles was born in California to a wealthy family that owned mines and orange groves. and his first work was as an orange grower working for his father. Some biographies say he saved up his money and bought a telegraph and learned Morse code. It's more likely that this was a crystal set of some kind. He attended Pomona College in 1906, he worked for his father managing an orange packing plant but later quit to pursue bible study.  He spoke on radio at a bible conference in 1927. His study group grew. He joined the Cavalry Church and began broadcasting his Sunday evening services on KGER-AM. He left that in 1933 to begin full-time radio evangelism.

He began the Gospel Broadcasting Association in 1933. His services were carried on KFI and KNX. In 1937 he began paying for airtime on the Mutual Broadcasting Network. He started a second show on Mutual called the Pilgrim hour that ran from 1944 to 1947. Mutual started with 13 stations but when they expanded their network Fuller went with them, ballooning to 450 affiliates. But 10 years later it all collapsed for Fuller. Mutual dropped all paid religious programming after noon on Sundays. Fuller had to scramble to piecemeal a network of independent stations without a national middleman syndicating. In 1949, (1951 in some accounts) he cut a new deal with the ABC Radio Network, which bumped him back up to 650 radio stations.

Fuller died in March of 1968, two years after his wife. The program was briefly hosted by Fuller Seminary president David Hubard.  After the final episode was recorded in March of that year, Fuller died of heart failure. His son Dan Fuller and David Hubard began a new radio ministry called the Joyful Sound. In 2002 the junior Fuller began rebroadcasting the Old Fashioned Revival Hour on a station in Ventura, CA. (I've been unable to determine which one) Today, the program is broadcast on 120+ stations across the United States including shortwave. More here.

DJ Spike Jones

Spike Jones was born Lindley Armstrong in 1911 in Longbeach California. He was a drummer by trade so the percussion was natural for him. But he also played with groups in the 1940s doing popular dance numbers. His first gigs on air were at KFOX-AM and KGER-AM around 1928 with the band Spike Jones and his Five Tacks. They played hot jazz, and weren't yet incorporating kitchen utensils and car horns. His first break was in the 1930 when he joined the Victor Young orchestra filling in for Vic Burton. By 1936 he was doing studio sessions with the group. Victor Young was connected, he was the musical director of the Harvest of Stars radio program. (It ran on NBC and CBS from 1945 to 1950)

After that he began appearing on syndicated radio programs. At first he was just a house drummer, playing for Al Jolson and Burns & Allen. Then he started appearing on the Kraft Music Hall program from 1940 - 1942 while Bing Crosby was it's host. That's about when his group officially became Spike Jones and The City Slickers. They played a NBC show called Point Sublime in 1941 under the name Duke Daniels and the City Slickers. The name Spike Jones appeared shortly thereafter. In 1942 they cut "Der Fuhrer's Face" and it exploded. He had a movie deal within a week.



But Jones kept working in radio. He played a bit on Fibber & Molly McGee 1940-1943.  Then the Lifebuoy Program aka the Bob Burns Show in 1943 and 1944 and now The City Slickers were the house band. He got an even more central role as a summer replacement in 1945  for Edgar Bergen on the  NBC program, The Chase and Sanborn Program.

Then he got his own show. Starting in 1947 he was hosting the Coca-Cola Spotlight revue, (aka the Coke Show) which was renamed in 1949 as The Spike Jones Show. He did a tour in 1949 and grossed over a million dollars. RCA Victor took out full page ads in Billboard just to brag. It was said that his booking agency MCA got him the gig. They had a lot of muscle back them so I believe that. Guests included Frank Sinatra, Frankie Laine, Mel Torme, Peter Lorre, Don Ameche and Burl Ives. The program ended in June of 1949. After that he went off to TV and Hollywood. But he had been a heavy smoker for decades and by then was using an oxygen tank offstage to keep going. He died of emphysema in 1965. He was only 54.

Allen Revival Hour

Evangelists like Pat Roberson, Jimmy Stewart, and Billy graham have all produced a lot of radio programming. But on the bench behind them have always been a slew of lesser known radio men preaching away in relative obscurity on the AM dial. We usually learn their names only because of disgrace and scandal rather than their accomplishments. He's a tale that's as sad as it is true.

Asa Alonzo Allan was a Pentecostal who did healings and tent revivals. But he was also a severe alcoholic suffering from depression. He was sometimes ticketed for drunk driving on the way to his own revival meetings. He'd been drinking since he was a child and he never shook it. He ran away from home when he was 14.  He spent the next 7 years carousing and drinking but found the faith in 1932 at a Methodist church. He later attended a attended a Pentecostal camp meeting and that set his path for life. He officially became a preacher in Holly, Colorado in the late 1930s. He became increasingly popular and was doing tent tours by 1951. More here and here.

In 1952  the "Allen Revival Hour" began broadcasting, by November of 1953 it was being carried on 9 stations. It was a very strong and promising beginning.  By1955 was broadcasting on seventeen Latin American radio stations as well as eighteen American ones. I have a list from one of his own publications, The Voice of Healing, August 1955 issue, but it unfortunately contains some clearly wrong information, like Mexican callsigns attributed to metros well inside the U.S. The call signs are as follows:  XEG-AM, XELO-AM, KGER-AM, WASL-AM, WJJL-AM, WVCH-AM, WPIT-AM, WPIK-AM, KCVR-AM, WNJR-AM, KBYE-AM, KGA-AM, KMAC-AM, WKXV-AM, and WMSN-AM. 

The Allen Revival Hour program  was so popular that it was being aired on the British pirate radio ship "Radio City" in the mid 1960s to generate ad income. I even have come apocryphal claims that it was briefly aired as a TV show. He had books, he had LPs, he had a magazine, and a radio show. He was at the peak of his career.

In 1967, Allen was sued by the IRS for $300,000 in unpaid taxes. It was a crushing blow. His health began to deteriorate, years of drinking caught up with him. The faith healer had arthritis so bad he had to delegate his crusading to his staff. He had knee surgery in 1969. But in 1970 it came to an end. He had a "distressing" phone call with a friend and was subsequently found dead at the Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco seated in front of his  TV.  He died of  what we now call FLD (fatty liver disease) which is commonly caused by alcohol abuse. At the time his radio program was carried on 186 stations.He was only 59.