DJ David Brenner Live (Part 2)

1979 Desert Inn flyer

I did listen to that entire David Brenner Live episode. In the first 10 seconds they plugged the local affiliate and I learned that this was broadcast on WXRK New York, NY. I doubt hardly anyone has heard this program since it first aired in 1985. Since there were only four episodes, I expect it was not re-broadcast at all. I did spend the time to ID all the music. Billy Preston's band did some covers which I didn't include.  They seemed to run out of material at the end and have to improvise their way to the end of the 90 minute segment. Interestingly he says that on September 4th the show is going weekly. Clearly that did not happen. 

Cyndi Lauper crashed the show, something that was known to happen in New York back in those days. Even I managed to run into Cyndi Lauper. Somehow she was everywhere all at once. Brenner graciously managed not to play any Cyndi Lauper while Cyndi Lauper was there. That would be a social faux pas, like wearing the bands T-shirt to their concert.

LISTEN ON ARCHIVE.ORG
https://archive.org/details/david-brenner-live-8-21-1985-side-b

If you are a jazz head you might know it was also Art Farmers birthday, thought it passed unobserved by Brenner. One of the highlights here was Billy Preston; he had some hits in 1984 and 1985 with Luther Vandross, Whitney Houston and Patti LaBelle. Though it was his cocaine years he was in good form on the show. After the 4 episodes of "David Brenner Live" Preston came back as musical director for the 1986/1987 season of "Nightlife,"   Brenner's next stab at a radio show. It was wildly more successful.

Below is my track listing for this episode if you just want to know what horrible 1980s rock bands he was spinning back then, in the glorious Fall of 1985. I am pleased to report that despite their huge popularity in that moment, he managed not to play Huey Lewis & The News.

1. -Intro
2. -Stand up routine
3. Sting - Fortress Around Your Heart
4. The Hollies - Carrie Anne (clip)
5. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Our House (clip)
6. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Woodstock (clip)
7. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Just a Song Before I Go
8. -Graham Nash interview pt 1
9. The Hollies - Bus Stop
10. -Graham Nash interview pt 2
11. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Teach Your Children
12. Taxxi - Still in Love (clip)
13. -Mary Gross interview
14. Ratt - Lay it Down (clip)
15. AC/DC - Sink The Pink (clip)
16. Paul Young - Every Time You Go Away (clip)
17. -Cyndi Lauper Call-in
18. -The Hooters - interview
19. The Hooters - And We Danced
20. -Cyndi Lauper interview
21. Harry Nilsson - You're Breakin' My Heart (censored)
22. The Hooters -All you Zombies (clip)
23. Graham Nash & The Hooters - Teach Your Children (live)

DJ David Brenner

David Brenner Live was a very short-lived program by a comedian who was very famous at the time. It's so brief that some of the articles about the debut, didn't run until it was almost over. The image above is from the August 31st, 1985 issue of Billboard magazine. The show first aired July 17th of that year. The earliest reference I found was in the July 6th issue of Billboard, it was a short plug.

"Also in New York, DIR Broadcasting has a music/comedy weekly dubbed "David Brenner Live" slated for a July 17th debut. David Lee Roth and Joe Piscopo are the honored guests for that episode, and the 90-minute program is promised to be mostly music. Features on the show, for which 150 stations have signed up so far, include, an oldies segment, top 10 count down, live performances and a listener phone-in bit."

The description sounds like the dogs breakfast, it's music, it's comedy, it's talk, it's live, it's a call-in... It sounds like they didn't have a plan. Alternate theory... maybe they wanted to give Brenner options. A smart programmer might understand it was the safe move to give a stand-up comic flexibility. Who knows. 

That description left me wondering what the show sounded like, but my impression was that there were very few episodes aired. How many show's were there?  I don't really know for sure.  There are 15 weeks and 3 days between the given start and end dates. If it was a weekly program, then that'd be an absolute maximum of 16 episodes. I wrote this draft post years ago, but I found a tape of one show just in March of 2024. At some point I'll have to digitize that aircheck.

August 31st, 1985, Billboard described a CBS segment on DIR Broadcasting's new comedy program "David Brenner Live." That first episode included an interview with David Brenner, DIR's Bob Myrowitz, and the guest was David Lee Roth. The article also identified July 17th as the debut. Myrowitz and DIR are better known for other syndicated programs: The King Biscuit Flower Hour, Schaefer Rock City, and Country Cuts.

David Brenner was a trail-blazer in the genre of observational comedy. He was a  regular on Tonight Show in the 1970s, a frequent guest of Howard Stern, Bill Maher, David Letterman, Larry King and even Ed Sullivan. He was a very influential comic and a beloved figure in his home town of Philadelphia. He's kind of like Rocky, except that he's real. I'd also like to state for the record that his books are good. My personal favorites are Soft Pretzels with Mustard and Nobody Ever Sees You Eat Tuna Fish. Those are autobiographical and have real depth. He didn't tone down the poverty, cocaine or revenge. More here.

David Brenner Live was officially cancelled by November. The New London Day newspaper ran a short article confirming the news on November 2nd. The reasons for the cancellation were disputed. DIR stated that Brenner had scheduling challenges between the program and his stand up comedy obligations. It sounded plausible. But in December Brenner himself stated that he was actually concentrating on a TV pilot. His radio contract was only for 4 shows, with an option to do more. He did the four and moved on. That's all the episodes that exist according to Brenner as a primary source. [SOURCE]

So what was that TV pilot? Brenner got his own TV talk show, Nightlife. It aired weeknights from September 8, 1986, to June 19, 1987. It was produced by Motown Productions in association with King World Productions, the show was filmed in New York City and featured a house band led by Billy Preston. (Yes, the fifth Beatle Billy Preston.)  Dan Ingram was the show's announcer. Nightlife earned an average Nielsen rating of  2.4; not amazing but not bad. Purportedly it was just lost in a sea of other night time talk shows. It still ran for 195 episodes. That's about 40 weeks.

According to that November 2nd issue of Billboard, Brenner's slot was filled with "Almost Live With Richard Belzer." (Mr Belzer has his own oddball radio career I'll cover another day.) Finally in 1987 DRI explained what they had been trying to do. It was Kim Freeman at Billboard again covering the comedy beat. 

"Even with the likes of hot comedians Robert Klein, Richard Belzer, and David Brenner and New York radio star Howard Stern, DIR's longform efforts in this field have "hit a wall" after clearing 30% to 40% of the country. Each of these shows were targeted mainly toward album rock radio, a format that [Peter] Kauff feels is missing the boat by not embracing more comedy."

Brenner took a second stab at radio in 1994 hosting a daytime talk-radio program. He took over the time slot of the Larry King Show on Westwood One. It ran 3:00 - 6:00 PM Eastern time. The first episode guests included David Letterman, Howard Stern and comedian Richard Lewis. Some critics bemoaned the change from news to entertainment but the show aired in 100 markets and ran from 1994 to 1996. David Brenner died in 2014 of pancreatic cancer.

The Spamettes!

They were never actually called the Spamettes. Some sources claim they were nick-named the Spamettes, but this is apocryphal. Alas, in 1946, the Hormel Company started recruiting for for an all-female troupe of musicians to promote their processed meat products. But before I go any further into Spam-related history, I should note that Jill M. Sullivan and Danelle D. Keck wrote the definitive text on this topic: The Hormel Girls in 2007. Even Sullivan and Keck couldn't resist the inherent schmaltz of Spam. I'll quote:

 "On any given summer Sunday evening in 1948, one could hear on the Mutual Broadcasting System the sponsor of a popular program exclaim 'S-P-A-M! the first meat of its kind in America preferred by most people SPAM! Over eleven years ago the news sensation of the meat packing industry, SPAM. Today this miracle meat of many uses continues to maintain its leadership from coast to coast." 

It's hard to take Spam seriously. It has been around since 1937, and rose to prominence as a war-time food-stuff. But Hormel sold 122 million cans in 2011, a sales increase of 11% from 2009. In short... someone is eating it. Spam has been around for over 80 years. In 80 years as you might imagine they've done a wee bit of radio advertising. The image above is a print ad for the Burns & Allen show. But they have also advertised on radio.

In 1947 Jay Hormel put together a 20-member  all-women's bugle corps. The Hormel Girls were a drum and bugle corps of female WWII musicians. I should point out now that the recruiting process required all those ladies be white, and unmarried. The group toured and held parades in small towns. When they played the came with flag-bearers, and a drum and bugle corps. As an orchestra they added tuba, trombones dancers and expanded to more than 60 members. More here

 In 1948, the Hormel Girls debuted on radio. Music with the Hormel Girls became a top-rated weekend show on three different radio networks.  The program debut on ABC airing Saturdays at 6:30 PM following the Hour of Charm.  It was hosted by Betty Dougherty, and Elina Hart and the 30 minute show included both an orchestra and a chorus. Marilyn Wilson was the announcer. (Later Marilyn Wilson Ritter) They switched to CBS in May of 1950. Out of all 6 years of radio, there are only eight surviving 16-inch transcriptions discs of those Hormel Girls shows. More here and here. Marilyn later worked on KRCU public radio.

The original band was band was comprised of 20 former WACS(Women’s Army Corps), WAVES(Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service),SPARS (women’s reserve of the U.S. Coast Guard) and Marines.  According to Sullivan and Keck, they changed their style for radio.  By 1953, the show was number four in the yearly Nielsen rankings. But they disbanded within a year as Hormel refocused on TV advertising. More here.

The group was disbanded after a February1954 radio show.  But they have a strangely lasting legacy. The Hormel Girls held reunions in 1983 and 1991. The Hormel SPAM Museum in Austin, MN, opened in late 2001 and has an exhibit dedicated to the Hormel Girls. And Hormel didn't give up on radio they were sponsoring radio shows like Country Calendar as recently as 1987.

The Other Mutual Networks

It's sort of like NBC Red and NBC Blue. In the1970s the Mutual Broadcasting System network tried to spin off some smaller more targeted networks to grab new demos. It wasn't a total failure, but nothing lasts forever. ABC had launched some format specific networks in 1968.. and maybe from the outside it looked like a good idea.

On May 1, 1972, MBS launched three spin-offs: Mutual Cadena Hispánica and the Mutual Black Network. These are as you already guessed, meant to target black and Hispanic markets. Each network produced a hundred five-minute-long news and sports "capsules" every week to run at quarter of the hour. The was all clearly modeled dafter the ABC news feeds. Starting in 1973, at 5-of the hour, they also offered up the "Mutual Progressive Network." This was less of a "network" and more of a product. This trifecta was sort of symbolic of why Mutual didn't last.

Mutual Cadena Hispánica was also called the Mututal Spanish Network (MSN.) The Spanish-language service didn't last long. it launched with 17 affiliates, mostly in the southwest which at first seems to make sense demographically. Supposedly it lasted less than 7 months. It didn't live up to expectations and was terminated in 1973. Their root problem was that "Hispanic" is not a homogeneous demographic. In that era there were several distinct and large Latino ethnic groups in America including Cubans, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. Marketing to them as a single silo didn't work geographically. There's not much more information on MSN out there but recently found this tidbit here.

The Mutual Black Network fared somewhat better. They started out with WNJR, KCOH Houston, KWK St. Louis, and WIGO Atlanta and by 1974 MBN had 98 affiliates. It's programming was much more savvy than the other two. They ran hard news at 10 of the hour and had their own feature programing. They even tried a own soap opera in 1974. Many of their features were about African American history which were popular. In 1975 they began running a weekly 20-minute program called "Dr. Martin Luther King Speaks," produced by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. That's as big a deal as it sounds. It was eventually spun off and acquired by the Sheridan Broadcasting Corporation, leading to the creation of American Urban Radio Networks.

The Mutual Progressive Network changed it's branding in about 1980 to Mutual Lifestyle Reports (MLR.) It was targeted at AOR stations. It is described in the old catalogs as "part hard news, partly off-beat coverage."  I've also heard it's news coverage described as progressive, which would make sense on an AOR station in the early 1980s. The demographics were younger, and therefore inherently more liberal. I found one source that called it the "Mutual Progressive Network" but it lacks veracity.

Nonetheless by 1979, Mutual had 950 stations, these diversions didn't derail anything.. they were just symptomatic of a network that was going to be absorbed one day into NBC.

Cab Calloways's Quizzicale

Very briefly Cab Calloway had his own program.  He and his orchestra were featured on his own radio program, Cab Calloway's Quizzicale. The program had two separate runs. The first was from July through September of 1941 on Mutual. It aired on Sundays 10:30-11:00pm.  In 1942 it aired Wednesdays 9:30 -10:00 pm on NBC Blue. After that he went back on tour. It ran as a "sustainer," because no sponsor could be found for a program which featured African-American as the host.  The program was broadcast from station WOR in its Mutual incarnation, while the NBC Blue version aired from a different city each week. More here.

Cab Calloway's popularity was greatly due to his twice-weekly live national radio broadcasts on NBC at the Cotton Club. Calloway also appeared on Walter Winchell's radio program. But the Quizzacale, though short-lived was something else entirely.The Quizzacale was a parody of Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge. Calloway played the role of Professor Calloway. Eddie Barefield was Brother Treadway, and Milt Hinton was Brother Sixty-Two Jones.

Barefield was a saxophonist, and clarinet player he played for Calloway from 1933-1936, but also Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Don Redman, and Bernie Moten. When working with Calloway at WOR he was a staff musician for ABC. Late in his career he actually played for The Ringling Brothers Circus. Hinton was a bassist, supposedly the most recorded bass player in history. Early in his career he played with fiddler Eddie South. Moving to Chicago he played in the Chicago scene and graduated to playing with the likes of Art Tatum and Joe Venuti. By 1935 he was playing for Zutty Singleton. It was there that Calloway discovered and then drafted him. He stayed with Calloway's orchestra until it was disbanded in 1951.

Eddie Barefield died of a heart-attack in New York on January 4, 1991. Milt Hinton died six years later in the same city, at the age of 90. Cab Calloway out lived Eddie by 3 years, making it to 86 years old.

There's Good News Tonight

Gabriel Heatter was a news commentator for Mutual Broadcasting.  at his peak his 15-minute news program was carried on over 200 stations five days a week. You will find his name frequently in Billboard in the 1940s usually for his Hooper Ratings. Like many popular programs, his had a certain lowest common denominator quality to his program. It is usually described as earnest and not analytical, while that's a minus for a hardcore news-hound, it's oddly representative of modern opinion-driven commentary programs. The primary difference being that Heatter was upbeat. His program was optimistic, a quality completely absent from all modern news programming. More here.

He started out as a reporter for The East New York Record,  and went on to write for the Brooklyn Times.  He then in a politically fortuitous moment was offered a job with William Randolph Hearst's New York Evening Journal. the hire made sense, when Hearst had run for mayor Heatter had campaigned for him. At 16 years old he introduced Hearst at the podium, the crowd was not friendly as was recorded in a 1941 article in Time Magazine:

"The assignment fell to the juvenile Heatter, then 16. All over New York the youthful Gabriel trumpeted the virtues of candidate Hearst. Frequently he was bespattered with eggs and tomatoes, occasionally bashed on the nose."

Hearst lost. Heatter continued to write.  He went on to write for the the New York Tribune, trade magazines, and several magazines. Then at the age of 42 he made the leap to radio quite unexpectedly. In 1931, he wrote an article for The Nation debating Socialist pundit Norman Thomas. Inspired by the article, Donald Flamm, the owner WMCA-AM invited Heatter  to debate a Socialist on air. His opponent did not make it to the program in time and Heatter instead had the program to himself.  It went so well that Flamm hired him as $35 a week. Heatter got lucky and within a year, WOR became the flagship station of the Mutual Broadcasting Network. He now had syndication. His big break supposedly came in 1936:

"Heatter's advent on the big time dates from April 3, 1936. That night he was stationed at Trenton to cover the execution of Bruno Hauptmann. Although Heatter had been tipped off that Bruno was scheduled to be electrocuted at 8:05, he did not die until close to nine. Meanwhile, Heatter ad libbed triumphantly for 53 minutes for MBS, setting a record for extemporaneous chatter."

What he's remembered for is his sign on catch phrase. He always said "There's good news tonight!" At his peak he hosted two news programs We, The People and A Brighter Tomorrow. He was big enough to do celebrity endorsements and publish books. He appeared in a couple films including the Cary Grant movie “Once Upon a Time”and the 1951 flick“The Day the Earth Stood Still”. More here. After WWII his popularity waned though he remained with Mutual. Though in all fairness, in 1952 MBS was bought by National Tire Co. and pretty much everything MBS was on the wane.

Most biographies date his move to Miami to 1951. This is incorrect, the more likely date is 1948. His own daughter Maida dated the move similarly in an article for Miami Beach Memories and described his broadcasting from home:

"My dad started doing his show here in the late 1940s when Frank Katzentine invited him the radio station he owned. [WKAT-AM] Most of the time dad had the engineers come to the house, and he would broadcast his live 9:00 PM show from there. We hung bathmats and blankets on the walls to insulate for sound."

He never left Miami. He died there on 30th March 1972.

Wild Bill Hickok Radio Show

James "Bill" Butler Hickok died on August 2, 1876 and thus never saw a radio, heard radio, or heard of radio in his life time. He was only 39 and had he not been shot down, he might have toward the end of his life. He surely saw telegraphs, but that was as far as it went. Nonetheless he had his very own radio show in the 1950s.

In 1951, the Mutual Network launched the Wild Bill Hickok Show. Episodes were 25 minutes long and the first hundred or so were sponsored by Kellogg's. Most episodes seem to plug Corn Pops or Rice Krispies. Breakfast cereals were common sponsors of juvenile programming.

Guy Madison starred as Wild Bill Hickok. Andy Devine played Deputy Marshal "Jingle" Jones who was his sidekick. Unlike other dynamic trusty sidekick's "Jingles" is more of a comic diversion. The book "Don't Touch that Dial" by J. fred MacDonald describes the character as "a slow-witted type who offered little help to the star."

Each episode was scored by organist Dick Aurandt. Paul Pierce was the director and Larry Hayes was the head script writer. Other secondary parts were played by Paul Frees, Forrest Lewis, Charlie Lung, Howard McNear, Tyler McVey, Ralph Moody, Jack Moyles, Barney Phillips, Clayton Post, and Will Wright. Charles Lyon did the announcing. Great blog on westerns here.

Most interestingly when the Wild Bill Hickok Show made the leap from radio to TV they kept the original cast. The television show was started a few months later in 1951 and lasted until 1958. This was a childrens show of course. It was in the same vein as Hop-a-long Cassidy and The Cisco Kid, Zorro and The Lone Ranger. The radio show ran for a total of 271 episodes.

The Goodwill Hour

The Goodwill Hour had nothing to do with Goodwill thrift stores. It has to do with a high-school drop-out, a taxi driver named Lester Kroll. He had two sons and as a handle for his radio program, he combined them and became John J. Anthony.

John J. Anthony was everything Kroll was not. John had three university degrees, including one from an all-women's college. In 1927, Lester became an announcer and a disc Jockey. But it was John who started the Goodwill Hour. It began in 1932 as a 30-minute talk program, possibly  the first advice program of any kind. He offered advice and counseling on domestic problems. It was loosely based on a radio show called the Goodwill Court. (which I'll cover another day.) WMRJ-AM closed it's doors in 1932 forcing Lester to take his show to WGNY-AM.

It's no surprise that The Goodwill Hour moved to WMCA in 1937. They had run the Goodwill Court in the first place. Why not pick up the spin-off? John's ratings took off and his program moved to WOR-AM and was syndicated on the Mutual Network. The program was renamed "John J. Anthony Hour." He moved out to California and continued the program out of KFRC-AM in San Francisco until 1953. The program was a dramatic favorite with an audience primarily of women. Hooper consistently gave it a 2.5 rating. Callers admitted to infidelity, the urge to kill people and even that they had killed people. No names were ever used. He did milk the success of the program to write a marriage help book... Ironically he was a divorcee who'd once been jailed for failure to pay child-support. He died in 1970.

KKHJ to KHJ

The FCC no longer grants 3 character call letters, or that's the general rule. It's supposed to be a firm rule, but like all things in radio there always seems to be an exception. Stations make all sorts of cockamamie arguments to acquire them, but KKHJ is the present champion. On March 15th, of 2005 KKHJ became KHJ, again. It was a magical moment but let's rewind to the last time they were KHJ and then follow the ouroboros back to 2005.

In 1922 KHJ took to the airwaves for the first time; it's calls issued from the Department of Commerce as there was yet no FCC or FRC. They operated on 760 kHz, and were owned by the Los Angeles times Newspaper. It was an early CBS affiliate, but CBS dropped them infavor of the bigger stick at KNX-AM in 1931. the station was sold to Don Lee who brought it into the Mutual Broadcasting Network. In 1941 under his ownership they increased their wattage with a move to 930 AM. Don sold out his whole chain to RKO General in 1949

In 1965 KHJ got a complete make-over from ham-fisted top-40 consultant Bill Drake. KHJ became known as Boss Radio. (I'll slander Drake another day) This was the stations golden era. There must be a dozen websites commemorating the DJs and branding of this time in the stations life. PD Ron Jacobs brought in good talent and the ratings killed.

But no good thing can go untarnished in radio. KHJ owner RKO General was in deep doo-doo with the FCC for "unethical conduct" at some of it's stations notably KHJ-TV. At the same time FM was on the rise and KHJ was losing it's grip on the ratings book. In 1980 they tried at country music which floundered. they tried being the "Boss" again in 1984 with an oldies format but the magic was gone. In 1986 they gathered up some classic DJs and bid the station bon voyage as the call letters were changed to KRTH, but still playing oldies. RKO was still in the hot seat though. After the FCC took away a TV outlet in Boston in 1989, RKO bailed out and sold KHJ (then KRTH) to Beasley Broadcasting. Beasley flipped it like cheap realestate and sold it to Liberman Broadcasting.

Liberman changed it to a spanish formatted station and changed the calls to KKHJ reusing some of the classic brand. But KKHJ isn't the same as KHJ. A 3-letter call is a rare thing, Somthign the FCC hadn't issued since the 1930s. PD Alfredo Rodriguez and chief engineer Jerry Lewine really wanted to get back to those classic calls from 1922. So they hatched a plan.

For the record, I want to point out that they didnt' lie. They just got creative. They told the FCC that they spanish pronunciation of K-K-H-J was an expletive. English and Spanish share an alphabet, but our names for the letters are slightly different. In Spanish it's pronounced as follows "chey chey hache jota." Alfredo told them that it's "cah cah hache jota" He told them that caca is an expletive in spanish.. which is also a bit dubious. "Caca" is akin to the word "poop". "Mierda" is more akin to the expletive "shit." [FYI: the more formal "excrementos" means "feces" or "excrament".] None-the-less the FCC bought it. On March 15, 2000 they dropped that first "K" and became KHJ for the first time in 14 years. Today that station is known not as the Boss but as "La Ranchera."

America Radio Warblers

I rejected the idea at first. I was at an antique store somewhere near Galesburg IL. On a shelf of 78s was a book called America Radio Warblers. On the cover was a drawing of a bird in a cage with the tag line "The Original Feathered Stars of the Air." Had there been a radio show of bird songs? Yes there had been.

From 1937 to 1952 the Mutual Broadcasting system carried the 15 minute program Sunday afternoons. Organist Preston Sellers played and was "accompanied" by 10 trained canaries. The program was sponsored by birdseed and pet shops. Hartz Mountain was an early sponsor. Hatz's name is actually on some versions of the recordings. It was Arthur C. Barnett (of Barnett Advertising) that brought the act to the recording studio. Barnett made a record that supposedly trained canaries to sing and to talk. It was just a recording of birds tweeting. It was called "How to Teach Your Parakeet to Talk." He had a thing for birds.


Preston Sellers was the WGN organist. If you look at this schedule from 1948 Sellers is just playing the organ to fill time randomly through the day. But it was a fine hybrid Wurlitzer-Kimball organ and people liked it enough. Organ music was common and even popular in the 1940s. WENR had a similar fill-in organist schedule. Sellers was also the organist at the State-Lake Theatre in Chicago playing organ for both stage and screen. He and his wife Edna performed as a husband-and-wife team at the Oriental theatre ias recently as 1972. This page leads me to belive he is deceased. Barnett brought Preston Sellers together with his troops of birds to WGN-AM. The program was picked up by MBS and carried coast-to-coast.

Barnett had the 78s re-released in 1951 as a set of 45s. 1952 MBS transformed from Cooperative network to corporate network. The birds got the hook. Sellers went back to theatre. Barnett added a partner to his advertising firm and it became Weston-Barnett Advertising. The State-lake Theatre became an RKO Movie house then was closedin 1958, gutted and is now the home of WLS-TV. The fate of the birds remains unknown.

Sheep and Goats Club Revue

Some radio programming fails to translate to our modern minds. I cite for example, The Sheep and Goats Club. It was a program on the Mutual Broadcasting Network in 1940. It was an all-black program from the talent to the producers to the studio audience. It appears in "The Negro Handbook." A tome by Florence Murray first published in 1941. It was a compendium of statistical facts on the American Negro. In time Magazine he described the program himself thus:

"Over on the right here we got the sheep. . . . They sing hymns, and they preach sermons and they is taken up with the spiritual side of life. Then over on the left here is the goats. . . . Among them I see gamblers, a couple of cake-eaters, some jitterbugs and some rug cutters."

In an August 1940 Radio Programme for 630 WOL-AM it listed the following:

"Richard Huey returns to Washington tonight with his Sheep and Goats Club, an amalgamation of psalm singers and hep-cats. There's also a sermon promised for the emphatic country parson"

The Previous March WOL-AM described the same show slightly differently:

"Sheep and Goats Club: A new program. An all-Negro broadcast before an all-Negro studio audience. The "Sheep" are the psalm-singers and spirituals chanters; the "Goats" are the boogie-woogie hep-cats. Richard Huey is master-of-ceremonies and Geraldine Garrick, of "John Henry" radio note, is director."

The show is not described in the introduction paragraphs again, but continues to appear in the schedule into that October, then vanishes. But the Radio logs provide that one critical piece of information. The M.C. is Richard Huey from Louisiana. He was an actor based in Harlem in the 1930s. According to the African-American Theatre Directory of 1960 he had his own theater group, The Richard Huey Players. He owned a small barbecue joint on 135th street called Aunt Dinah's Kitchen. (probably a reference to the book Uncle Tom's Cabin.) The troupe performed through the depression. I easily found trade mags that mention his name up until 1947. I found an interview transcript confirming the barbecue. An actor named Frances Williams mentioned that he was an investor.

The theatre rags paint Huey as a flamboyant actor, a Harlem-big shot and a powerful singer. then I found a lone reference to his recording career. In the book The Truman and Eisenhower Blues, author Guido van Rjin writes the following:

"Since [Henry] Wallace* openly denounced segregation, refusing to address segregated audiences or to sleep in segregated hotels, some African Americans were attracted to the progressive party. These included blues and gospel singer Richard Huey, who recorded "Wallace fit the Battle of America*" released by the progressive party on their own label in 1948."

*Henry Wallace was VP under Roosevelt.
*with the Hampton Institute Quartet

More interesting is the Musical theatre Book that notes Huey is a former Redcap. A redcap is not a little gremlin. At that time it was slang for a porter at a railroad. He was a concierge. His recording career was short, With the Lyn Murray Chorus he sang on a Burl Ives 10" single for Decca in 1943, possibly other odds and ends with the Hampton Inst. Quartet. Some of his musicals were produced as LPs for Decca. Other references have him writing songs for Louis Armstrong, and leading vocal groups such as Richard Huey’s Jubileers and Richard Huey and His Sundown Singers. Another reference has him in 1936 possibly co-authoring radio scripts for WEVD and NBC with Carton Moss. (Huey also gets a less glowing mention in the U.S. Government report: Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States.)

I've not seen it yet, but supposedly Huey can be seen in the short film Caldonia, playing role of Felix Paradise. There are clips online.. but not the one with Huey.

The Blue Coal Radio Revue

I should admit now that The Shadow's history is messy.  It jumped from pulp fiction magazines to radio. It was on 3 different networks, had 2 different producers and 5 different lead voices. We all eventually get to the infamous evil laugh. The radio programs ran for hundreds of episodes and the main sponsor throughout was Blue Coal. The program and the product were tightly tied in the beginning. More here.

Blue Coal was the trade name of the coal sold by the DL&W Coal Mine. [SOURCE]. They actually dyed the coal blueish with a dyed fuel oil. DL&W stood for Delaware, Lackawanna and Western. When Antitrust actions forced DL&W to slim down, Glen Alden bought out their coal titles. DL&W focused on it's rail lines but remained the exclusive retailer of coal mined and processed by the Glen Alden Coal Company. In the great depression coal sales tanked. Output dropped from 11 million tons annually to under seven million.
In 1953 it was sold to the Moffat Coal Company. Glen Alden Coal suffered through declining demand and the stockholders liquidated the company when it floundered. But that was 4 years after The Shadow was canceled. In 1966 they sold it's remaining titles to the new "Blue Coal Corp."

The program had launched in July of 1930 as the Detective Story Hour. Radio listeners tuned to CBS and heard "The Shadow" as played by James La Curto. Street and Smith publishers sponsored the program. They were the publishers of the pulp fiction magazine "The Shadow, A Detective Monthly." The tie-in was big for them but they dropped the program after about a year. 

In September 1931,The Blue Coal Radio Revue relaunched it. The Shadow was played by Frank Readick, Jr. and The Shadow was the narrator. The introduction.. after the laugh went like this "Your neighborhood Blue Coal dealer brings you the thrilling adventures of The Shadow. Creative camps in the writers and producers found it out with the sponsor continually. In some regards the early radio Shadow, the later radio Shadow and the one of Pulp Fiction were different characters. In The Detective Story Hour was a participant, not the narrator.

In 1932 the program moved to NBC, but stuck with Blue Coal as the sponsor. Readick was usually the shadow but sometime La Curto still was the voice. In 1937 The Mutual radio Network picked up the series. It is that network that transitioned the Shadow into a part of the tales. The Shadow had secret identities. On Radio it was Lamont Cranston and on Mutual that became Orson Welles. (In print it had been Kent Allard. ) But most of the many different voices that played the part still were playing Cranston. In 1938 that was Bill Johnson, the in 1943 it was Bret Morrison.

Blue Coal struggled and dropped it's sponsorship for most of 1938 but returned later that year. They held on until 1949. After that the program passed form sponsor to sponsor sometimes having more than one, sometimes none. The program was cancelled in 1954.

Travel Missive #4

I've been eating a lot of prefab food, another invention of engineers and it got me thinking about another traveling engineer. You know Duncan Hines as the brand name on that box of cake mix that even engineers can make cake from. I'm not saying Engineers make bad cooks, I'm just saying we get kind of caught up in the measuring...

Duncan Hines was a real man. And a long time ago, he was on the radio. He was born in 1880, in Bowling Green, Kentucky. He studied at Bowling Green Business University and accepted a job out west as a traveling salesman just before graduation.

Form his experiences eating on the road, in 1936 He published his first book “Adventures in Good Eating.” This came at a time when the automobile had found its way into the hearts and homes of most Americans. For the first time, Americans were taking road trips, after the car radio and before television.

In December 1948 Hines-Park Food Co. was formed. Hines took a hands-on approach in marketing these products. He went on the road again attending store openings, promotional events and often appeared on local radio programs. He was featured on the Mutual Radio Network on a daily basis, Stations like KEX did massive promotions, He even squeezed in an appearance on the Lum & Abner serial ... visiting their restaurant of course.

I however have been eating a lot of Subway after a bad experience at a Shoneys In Tennessee. I really wish his guide to good eating was still in print.

Radio Networks Week, part 4

You have probably never heard of the Mutual Broadcasting system. There is a good reason for that.

The Mutual Broadcasting System
It begins in 1929 as the Quality Network, with four radio stations: WLS in Chicago, WOR in New York City, WLW in Cincinnati, and WXYZ in Detroit. The Quality Network operated for about 6 months only in 1929, and failed due to technical and funding problems. Some of those same problems would haunt Mutual for the next twenty years. [Do not confuse QN with WTAW's Texas Quality Network, these are totally unrelated. ] The network was really run by WGN in Chicago and WOR. It was a first attempt, and the second attempt would not come for another 5 years.

In September of 1934, the Mutual Broadcasting System was founded. They aspired to be the largest radio network in history, it was clearly a reaction to the rapid expansion of CBS, NBC and ABC. The other three networks of the day were funded, connected, and had already carved out a huge slice of the radio advertising market for themselves. There wasn't much left of the pie for Mutual. MBS usually trailed 3rd or 4th in number of listeners and in advertising revenue.
http://www.oldradio.com/archives/prog/mbs.htm

As great as it was to have the most stations, it's quality and not quantity that counts. Most of those 300 radio stations were small, low-power, local market radio stations. This economic fact limited their access to large advertisers. It kept them out of the big money.

For it's members the big plus was that Mutual was owned by its stations and not the other way around. But only a few of those stations were real powerhouses and thus called the shots WOR (New York), WGN (Chicago), and the West Coast collection of Don Lee stations held most of the controlling shares in the System. Mr. Lee was another kook of a buisnessman. Mr. Don Lee, He had exclusive distribution rights in California for Cadillac automobiles and seemingly on a lark entered the broadcasting business by purchasing station KFRC in San Francisco and KHJ in Los Angeles. Don Lee had originally affiliated his stations with CBS but he died in 1934 and the new management went with MBS. Don Lee quietly rolled over in his grave.
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist5/donlee.html
In the 1940s control of MBS moved away from the hundreds of smaller affiliates and into the control of a succession of large corporations: General Tire and Rubber, Armand Hammer, the Hal Roach Studios, and Albert G. McCarthy, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M)... even Amway even owned it at one point. More here.

The executors of Mr. Lee's estate tried to keep the company together, but finally decided to liquidate the broadcasting company and sold most of the stations, the west coast radio network, the 50% share of Mutual to General Tire and Rubber Company in 1952. It became General Teleradio, Inc. became a wholly-owned subsidiary of General Tire. More here.

General Teleradio was renamed RKO General in 1958 after the acquisition of RKO Radio Pictures from Howard Hughes in 1955 for $25 million. General Tire sold the film studio production facilities to Desilu Productions for $6 million in 1956. Mutual was then sold to Hal Roach Studios.

It was at this time that Alex Guterma, the president of Mutual struck a deal with the Dominican Republic. He got paid to ensure that the network would broadcast favorable propaganda for that the Dominican republic. Guterma was indicted and eventually did 3 years in prison for an unrelated SEC violation.

The network was floundering, and the bad publicity wasnt helping. It was quickly sold to John Mc Carthy, a Florida businessman who ran it thru bankruptcy proceedings. 3M bauiled them out. Then the devil hmiself opened his wallet... Amway bought the network on September 30, 1977. Then finally at long last a real media company got their hands on it, Westwood One. In 1985 Westwood one was bought by infinity which was in turn owned by Viacom, a subsidary of CBS Radio. they survived as a brand name until 1999 when even that was folded under CNN radio. Mutual raised the bar in many ways for the other networks . They were the first commercial radio network to convert completely to satellite transmission starting in 1979. Then they became the first network to transmit regular stereo high-fidelity broadcasts in 1982. But in the merge frenzy of the late 80s they have ceased to exist even on paper.