DJ Shorty Fincher

I bumped into Shorty Fincher before, reading about Lucky Lang. Shorty was actually named Luther Clark “Shorty” Fincher and he was born in 1899 in Iukia, MS according to his biography in this song book. I am aware of one other Fincher song book and it's dates with a signature to 1941. [SOURCE] At that time he was on WORK in York, PA. I suspect my song book is the older of the two, being more plain, having possibly a 1937 or 1938 publication.

As is often the case his obituary reveals more information than any other source. He died in 1958 and was 58 years old so his year of birth is accurate. Had he lived to the following November he'd have been 59. At the time he was operating Valley View Park in Hallam, PA. He was also a DJ on WGCB in Red Lion. The obit is probably the source for the alsobooks.com information stating the following

"Fincher came to York county in 1940, and his large car with steer horns on the radiator soon became a common sight. For a time he had a music group called Shorty Fincher and his Prarie Pals. He was heard on WORK and WNOW radio in his early years."

It gives the town he was born in as Iuki, MS which is not what the song book says. I am assuming they're both spelling variations of Iuka, MS. Regardless the family moved to Anniston, Alabama, when he was one year old. He was survived by his wife Alexandra "Sallie" Fincher, four sons: James, Fred,  and Donald; and a daughter Nellie named for his mother. the obit goes on to name all his siblings but hiding his sisters names behind their husbands as a Mrs. so they're not worth including. it was more interesting that many still lived around Anniston, AL but some were local to York or Philadelphia. More here.

One of 14 brothers he and two others started a band, The Cotton Pickers, in 1932. The Cotton Pickers included Shorty, his brother Hamilton (who performed as the comedian "Rawhide"), Alexandra Kaspura as "Lonesome Valley Sally," Florence "Yodeling Flo" Morosco, Dolph Hewitt and Ted Buchanan on guitar.  The Cotton-pickers relocated to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they had a regular program on KQV-AM. Around then he recorded four sides for Columbia records as the "Crazy Hillbillies Band". [SOURCE] That name is due to a sponsorship from Crazy Water Crystals. He also recorded under the name Colonel Jack [Brinkley] and Shorty's Crazy Hillbillies, as well as six other sides for Okeh. 

If you didn't know, crazy water crystals were a laxative. It was disturbingly popular. The company sponsored radio programs all over the South. The Crazy Mountaineers, Dick Hartman's Tennessee Ramblers, The Crazy Hickory Nuts, The Lone Star Quartet, Shorty's Crazy Hillbillies, The Crazy water Crystal Gang, [SOURCE]  and the Crazy Water Crystal Program itself. Their ads and sponsored programs were aired on WBAP, WPTF, WBT, KRBC and several border blasters as well.

From that 1932 group Dolph Hewitt (aka Adolph Edward Hewitt) went on to a career of his own. He got into WWVA at the age of 16, over a year before Fincher. His first performed with Frankie More and his Log Cabin Gang. In the 1940s Dolph moved to St. Louis and performed at KMOX. That went well and he graduated to an ABC Radio Network slot with Pappy Cheshire’s Ozark Champions. In 1946 he joined Radio Station WLS with the Sage Riders on the National Barn Dance. He recorded several sides for Kapp and Victor records. More here.

Back in Pittsburgh, Hamilton Fincher was hired by Doc Williams as a comedian for his band, the Border Riders. Williams and the Border Riders went to Wheeling, West Virginia, along with Hamilton. Shorty Fincher followed them shortly thereafter with the Cotton Pickers and joined the WWVA Jamboree, which was broadcast on Saturday nights over WWVA from Wheeling. Through WWVA, Fincher also co-hosted his own show, the Shorty & Sally Fincher Jamboree Show, with Lonesome Valley Sally. 

 Some sources report that Shortly was operating an amusement park at Dreamers Beach in Delaware in 1949. But a 1949 issue of Billboard reports that the first Wisconsin folk music park began operation that May in West Bend, WI.  That's about 30 miles from Milwaukee. The issue specifically says that "Valley View Park, which was operated last year by Shorty Fincher, will run this year with Nemo Lippert, of the Range Riders."  That note would put Shortly in Wisconsin in 1948. Nemo Lippert was another country artist from PA. His range Riders performed on WNOW in York. He was later on WTPA-TV in Harrisburg.

 In this part of their career, Shorty and Sallie operated their own amusement park in Hellam, PA. Purportedly the park became more of a flea market in the 1960s after Shorty died. In 1953 The Emmitsburg Chronicle of Maryland puts Shorty Fincher and Sallie at a Firemen's carnival and ox roast. The York Dispatch has them at another Firemen's carnival in July of 1954. They were playing the country version of the oldies circuit, but I'm sure they had a good time. I found one obituary that stated Shorty was a disc jockey and salesman for radio station 1440 WGCB-AM in Red Lion, PA. The station signed on in 1950 so that narrows down the time frame. While Shorty died in 1958, Sallie lived until 1987 operating the park for decades after his passing. Joan Concilio of the York Dispatch has been writing a series of articles about the park's history that are highly recommended. [LINK]

Bob Jones College (of radio)

At first I assumed that The above Bob Jones Collegehad nothing to do with the Bob Jones Christian College in Greenville, South Carolina. I was wrong. Their campus has moved twice, muddying the waters so to speak. Bob Jones College was founded in 1927 by evangelist Bob Jones, Sr. near Panama City, FL. The school relocated to Cleveland, Tennessee in 1933 where it remained until their move to their present 205 acre compound in 1947.The ad above dates to end of their tenure in Tennessee.

Jones founded the college in the wake of the Scopes money trial, terrified that secular thinking might break out.  So he founded the school in St. Andrews Bay, FL with a charter from a circuit court in Panama City. His first class had only 88 students. The purpose of this school was to get back to bible-basics... in other words it was anti-science and specifically anti-evolution. they were also thoroughly racist openly supporting the KKK, they still banned interracial dating on campus until 2000. Unsurprisingly the modern (yet oxymoronic) Bob Jones College science department still supports young-earth creationism... but back in the 1940s they cherry-picked enough real science to believe that radio waves were real. At least real enough to hand out diplomas. They offered graduate and undergraduate courses in technique, script writing, program building and more.

The school barely survived the great depression and was on the verge of bankruptcy when it moved to Tennessee. But Jones had already been broadcasting since the early 1920s. There are documented appearances in Pittsburgh, PA as early as 1925 on KQV-AM. In 1927 he began a radio ministry that consisted of two programs, a daily and weekly which he did personally until 1962. The show was purported to be heard coast to coast but I can't find a list of affiliates. I do know that it originated at a Chattanooga station, WDOD-AM.

In 1944, Jones became a founder of National Religious Broadcasters. After World War II, the GI Bill was introduced, which led the student body of the college to nearly double, hence the impetus to relocate again.But the move to Greenville also allowed space for a university radio station. WMUU-AM signed on with 1,000 watts at 1260 Khz on September 15, 1949. They added an FM station 94.5 WMUU-FM in 1960. The station airs easy listening today and it possibly one of the blandest stations in the nation. The university continues to be a strange crank even among religious institutions, they recently made the news for expelling a student for watching the TV show Glee. More here.

Doc Williams on WWVA

I had some real difficulty researching Doc Williams, despite his career longevity.  Early this year he died. The plethora of obituaries filled in some long standing blanks. Doc was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1914, and grew up in Tarrtown, PA about 35 miles North east of Pittsburgh.  His real name was Andrew John Smick, his family were Slovak immigrants.  He dropped out of high school at the age of 16 to start his first band with his brother Cy and a neighbor, Joe Stoetzer. He'd already been working in the coal mines with his father and had different long-term plans. He began his radio career in Cleveland in 1932 on "The Barn Busters" at WJAY-AM in Cleveland, OH. More here.  The barn Busters was a bit of an amateur show, but his charisma there led to a gig with a bigger band, Doc McCaulley and his Kansas Clod-Hoppers.

They had a 15 minute show each morning at 8:10 AM. McCaulleywas a West Virginia native, and pretty well set the young Mr. Smick on the path so to speak. He then formed his own country band, the Alleghney Ramblers still with his brother Cy, and Curley Sims on mandolin. In 1935 they left Cleveland tor a gig on KQV-AM in Pittsburgh with a new name as well, the Cherokee Hillbillies. Just a few months later they picked up Miss Billie Walker as a singer and became the Texas Longhorns and traveled to WWL-AM in New Orleans.Sometime between 1936 and 1937 Andy Smick became Cowboy Doc, then eventually Doc Williams. The book Mountaineer Jamboree by Ivan M. Tribe covers this in fantastic detail.

By 1937 they were back up north on WJAS-AM in Pittsburgh, simulcasting on KQV-AM and WHJB-AM in Greensburg, PA with a 8:30 AM program. This was when Doc Williams band became the Border Riders. Some biographies claim they were already the border riders while in Louisiana, this remains in contention. Later that year they auditioned at WWVA-AM and got the 2:45 afternoon slot. they also started performing on World’s Original WWVA Jamboree.  the program was later re-named Jamboree USA. It was the second-longest-running live country music show. He signed off every show with the words "Keep your chin up and keep smiling."

According to legend in 1940 he even turned down a job at WSM-AM in Nashville on the Grand Ole Opry.Doc has spent most of his long country music career at WWVA-AM, except for brief periods at WREC-AM, Memphis, Tennessee, and WFMD-AM, Frederick, Maryland also around 1940. That year  WVA-AM increased its power from 5,000 watts to 50,000 watts in 1941. Despite all that success, he only began touring in 1949.

Williams outlasted everyone, he was on the Jamboree for 61 years. In 1984 he was inducted in the Wheeling Hall of Fame. Williams officially retired in 2005 the WWVA-AM Jamboree ended. He published his autobiography, Looking Back, in 2006. [Link]. Today 1170 WWVA-AM is a news talker. The most  amazing thing about his career is that he never had a national single, and never recorded for a major label. That 78 above on Wheeling records, his own label founded in 1947. In Canada they released a dozen or more sides on Quality Records. If you want any of it today you have to buy it on his website docwilliams.com. He died just this winter, on January 31st 2011. He was 96 years old.

The Radio Trafficopter !

Leonard Baldy was a Chicago native and veteran of World War II. Baldy became a minor celebrity pioneering the use of the radio trafficopter and the radar gun. One of those has become a useful staple of the New talk station during rush hour all over America. The other a pox upon the lead-footed. More here.

He wasn't' the first cop in a trafficopter. In 1964 the National Research Council had already released a study on the effectiveness of trafficopters. But Officer Baldy was the first to really take it to radio. He gained was the first patrolman in the United States to experiment with the radar gun. the year was 1954. With it be also became the first police officer in the world to write a ticket for speeding using a radar device. In was on Chicago station WGN-AM where he made live traffic reports from the sky. He actually did demonstrations of the device on Television that same year. More here.

After his death, he was elected to the National Police Hall of Fame and had his badge number retired. In 2007 the city of Chicago memorialized him renaming a street "Leonard Baldy Way". In 2006, his son, Tim Baldy, published a biography entitled Chicago's Finest.

But he wasn't the only trafficopter man in radio land. Radio station 970 WEBR-AM took to the air in 1959 . Their Jack Sharpemade traffic reporting into a broadcast news staple. In 1967 1410 KQV-AM sent traffic reporter, Mr. Bob Harvey into the air. He became "Captain Bob" for and made regular trafficopter reports. But a year after that Officer Baldy did when his trafficopter crashed into a suburban Chicago intersection. In 1971, over a decade the city of Chicago had a trafficoptercrash. Officer Irv Hayden died instantly, but the trafficopter lives on.

Who was Rex Miller?

Most disc jockeys would be pumping gas if they couldn't be at the mic. As a group they are generally uneducated, but charismatic. But we one-dimensional people make the best on-air talent apparently. Rex Miller wasn't like that at all. Bright, industrious and multifaceted. the big question is why he bothered with radio at all. More here.

He was born in 1939, Miller became a radio announcer before he finished high school in St. Joseph, Missouri. He dropped out of junior college to attend Elkins Institute of Radio in Dallas. It was there he went back to radio. He studied both as an announcer and engineer. By all reports his career started at WNOX, but it didn't end there.

 

His resume includes KLIF and KBOX in Dallas, WQXI in Atlanta, WITH in Baltimore, KWK in St. Louis, WPRO Providence, WUBE in Cincinnati, WNOX in Knoxville, KQV Pittsburgh, and both WNUS and WIND in Chicago... he left his stamp in a dozen major cities. As a radioman he was unstoppable. While at KLIF he released a series of 45s in Dallas just to show off his musical talents.

He left radio in 1971 to pursue a writing career. Beginning in the 1980s he started publishing horror novels. The novel Slob was his debut. He published half a dozen horror novels including Slice, Savant, Butcher, Iceman and the 5-book Chaingang series, maybe others. Steven King was a fan. He also had a successful mail-order business dealing in collectibles for comics and superheros. In some circles Rex was referred to as an expert in the field of juvenile-related collectibles.

Rex died on May 21, 2004 at a hospital in Sikeston, Missouri. He had been in a nursing home for six years, after a debilitating stroke. More here.  [Nevermind Some deletionist prat deleted the article on Rex Miller, try this one on the Jeff Roteman page here. ]  I took some time to parse his bibliography. Some of the dates are dubious, because of reprints and e-books —but have at it.

Title	Year	Publisher	X
Saint Louis Blues	1995	Maclay & Associates	XXX
Iceman	1990	Onyx	XXX
Profane Men	1989	New American Library	XXX
Slob	1987	Signet	XXX
Frenzy	1989	Pan Books	XXX
Stone Shadow	1989	Onyx	XXX
Slice	1990	Onyx	XXX
Chaingang	1992	Pocket Books	XXX
Butcher	1994	Pocket Books	XXX
Savant	1994	Pocket Books	XXX