The Cruise of the Rev Seth Parker

Phillips Haynes Lord was a radio program writer and producer who was very active from the 1930s into the 1950s. He created the Gang Busters program that ran from 1935 - 1957. He had an idea for a character, the Rev. Seth Parker who was part backwoods philosopher and part clergyman. He crafted a set of scripts around it which included old-time music, mostly gospel. He started selling these to radio stations directly under the name "Seth Parker's Singing School."  In 1929 NBC picked it up as a 30-minute program to run six days a week. I wrote about his career transition back in 2015. [LINK ]

According to the Encyclopedia of Women in Radio (1920 - 1960), the cast included Vernon Reed, Francis Diers, Lovina Lindbergh, Eunice Cole, Wilbur Showalter, Dan Hosmer, and Sue Fulton.But even that quite well-researched encyclopedia lists the Singing school as a 15-minute program and Seth Parker as airing as a 15-minute program Sundays 10:45  to 11:00 PM, 1931 - 1932. It was a huge success. He wrote a play that became a film "Way Back Home." They even released 12 sides of of 78 rpm gospel hymns by the Seth Parker Trio. (This is erroneously referred to as the Phillips Lord Trio in some accounts)

Then NBC started sending Seth Parker on the road. In 1931 a press release described Seth Parker and the Jonesport Neighbors as "going a-visiting." It was a funny way to describe a tour of this magnitude. They made stops in 23 states and two provinces of Canada leaving New York on October 4th and heading to Buffalo, NY.  The complete itinerary is below. It's a grueling tour schedule that would have taxed even Black Flag. Shows 6 nights a week and travel almost every day.

DATE	CITY	STATE
10/5/31	Buffalo	NY
10/6/31	Hamilton	ON
10/8/31	Pittsburgh	PA
10/9/31	Erie	PA
10/10/31	Cleveland (Broadcast)	OH
10/12/31	Canton	OH
10/13/31	Dayton	OH
10/14/31	Cincinnati	OH
10/15/31	Columbus	OH
10/16/31	Youngstown	OH
10/17/31	Sandusky	OH
10/18/31	Cleveland (Broadcast)	OH
10/19/31	Akron	OH
10/20/31	Toledo	OH
10/21/31	Detroit	MI
10/22/31	Detroit	MI
10/23/31	Grand Rapids	MI
10/25/31	Chicago (Broadcast)	IL
10/26/31	Chicago	IL
10/27/31	Minneapolis	MN
10/28/31	Duluth	MN
10/29/31	St Paul	MN
10/30/31	Milwaukee	WI
11/1/31	Chicago (Broadcast)	IL
11/2/31	Davenport	IA
11/3/31	Des Moines	IA
11/4/31	Kansas City	MO
11/5/31	Kansas City	MO
11/7/31	Omaha	NE
11/8/31	Denver	CO
11/10/31	Salt Lake City	UT
11/12/31	Portland	OR
11/13/31	New Westminster	BC
11/15/31	Seattle	WA
11/18/31	Oakland	CA
11/19/31	San Francisco	CA
11/22/31	Los Angeles (Broadcast)	CA
11/23/31	San Diego	CA
11/26/31	Phoenix	AZ
11/28/31	Houston	TX
11/30/31	Houston	TX
12/1/31	San Antonio	TX
12/2/31	Oklahoma City	OK
12/3/31	Tulsa	OK
12/6/31	Chicago (Broadcast)	IL
12/8/31	Louisville	KY
12/9/31	Nashville	TN
12/11/31	Atlanta	GA
12/13/31	Miami	FL
12/14/31	Miami	FL

The program began the same way each time:

"Way up on the coast of Maine is a little old-fashioned white farm house sitting high upon a hill and looking out over the Bay of Fundy. It's the home of Seth and Mother Parker, and her every Sunday evening their good neighbors gather to sing old-fashioned hymns in the old-fashioned way. Tonight we find them already in the sitting room. a fire blazing on the hearth takes off the chill of the evening air, and everything in the little sitting room spells peace and comfort."

In 1933, Lord came up with the tour to end all tours. He wanted to sail around thwe world and broadcasting his show via short-wave radio. He purchased a schooner named Georgette. It's four masts were 25 feet tall. It was 188-feet long and weighed 867-tons. The size is debated. Jim Harmon says 3 masts instead of 4. The Encyclopedia of Women in Radio states it was 150-feet long. A 1988 Popular mechanics article says 250 feet and 775 tons. I cant' even begin to guess how the numbers got so far apart. He packed under-water photographic equipment, a diving shell to be used for undersea exploration. But it was also a radio station with a 1,000 watt shortwave transmitter. Eugene Nohl handled the advance promotions which were fanciful to say the least.  Plenty of talk about "...sunken civilizations of the South Seas Islands" complete with a "search for sunken treasure" and of course hunting for "Shipwrecks."  It was allocated the call sign KNRA. The Frigidaire appliance company signed on to sponsor this joyride.

On November 20th, 1933 the Seth Parker departed from Totten, NY. The first broadcast was on December 16th from Portland, ME replete with a ship-load of local politicians. They continued broadcasting live on Tuesday nights from 10:00 - 10:30 EST, often on 6160, 6423, 6900, and 8840 kHz. With a crew of 27 people, the ship docked at various ports along the eastern seaboard such as Philadelphia, PA, Baltimore, MD; Charleston, SC, Savannah, GA,  Jacksonville, FL, from where they broadcast their short wave radio program which was re-transmitted by NBC. In December of 1933 they crossed through the Panama Canal toward the South Pacific.

As the Rev Parker, Lord Phillips had a very wholesome image. But though he was essentially playing his own grandfather, Phillips was only 31 years old. There he was at sea with a boat full of musicians, booze and celebrities...  The broadcasts sometimes revealed a bit of the frivolity behind the scenes of a voyage filled with wine, women and the proverbial song. The book Great Radio Heroes by Jim Harmon reported that "Afterward the ship rocked with lavish parties full of bubbles, giggles and hot jazz music. Disgruntled reporters... suggested that Seth Parker seemed to think he had already reached the promised land." [SOURCE]

Then it came to an abrupt end.  In February 1935, a tropical storm off the coast of American Samoa damaged the ship to the point where the expedition was abandoned. On Feb 8th Captain Frank Eckmann, sent a distress signal and the leaking schooner was eventually towed by tugboat to Pago Pago. More HERE. The schooner was sold and in 1936 its owner sailed it to to Coconut Island Oahu, HI; where it was permanently anchored for use as a bar and movie theater. It's masts were removed in 1945 and the hull slowly rotted away.  It's wheel sits at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu Harbor. More HERE.

In 1952 an article in the  Pittsburgh Press newspaper described Lord as living "in a penthouse atop a New York City's Waldorf Astoria, owns a private island in Maine, and is a wealthy man with one of broadcasting's fabulous incomes. Credited with having originated more successful ideas than anyone in radio."  In 1999, broadcast historian Elizabeth McLeod listed the Cruise of the Seth Parker as one of the top 100 old-time radio moments of the 20th century.

From Gangbusters to Seth Parker's Hymnal

It's one of my more peculiar radio books. Seth Parker was not  a clergyman. He was a character played by Phillips Haynes Lord a man who was once a high school principal. (More on that momentarily.) He was best known for the Gang Busters radio program that was broadcast for over two decades. But for a time he also impersonated his own grandfather and creating the character Seth Parker, a folksy clergyman focused on old time religion and music. As Seth Parker, Lord ended up on NBC. Didn't Lenny Bruce get arrested for that?

His work in the Gangbusters began later, starting in 1935. The program ran into 1957, it was huge. He got to do Gangbusters movies in 1942 and a TV show in 1952. They spun off a series of DC comic books based on the radio serial. Seth was a superstar. Yes, he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The show was an early cop drama, complete with sound effects, fast action and true crime stories directly from J. Edgar Hoover. No really, Hoover actually supplied them with source material from FBI files to encourage them to lionize the FBI.

But back to the grandfatherly thing. Lord was born in 1902, so he was
about 27 when he began impersonating a senior citizen in 1929. He had been a high school principal in Plainville, CT for 2 years before growing bored and running off to New York to try his hand at script writing. He sold some scripts for "Seth Parker's Singing School". It took off and the character "Seth Parker", a clergyman and rual philosopher based on his real-life grandfather, Hosea Phillips, had to become real... or at least real enough for radio.

Thought recorded on a sound stage in New York, he purported that the show originated in the Jonesport, Maine area. NBC ran the show six days a week under the name Sunday Evening at Seth Parker's. He published Seth Parker's Hymnal in 1930, his Album that same year, then Seth Parker and His Jonesport Folks in 1932 then a Scrap Book of "backwoods philosophy" in 1935. Lord wrote the show and played the title role until it was discontinued in 1939. Notice the overlap with Gangbusters. There was also a period when he was a cop by day and a preacher by night... at least on radio.

Gang Busters

The American idiom "came on like gang busters" supposedly comes to us from a 1930s CBS radio serial. To quote etymology.com:

To come on like gangbusters (c.1940) is from radio drama "Gangbusters" (1937-57) which always opened with a cacophony of sirens, screams, shots, and jarring music.

Gang Busters was a radio serial aimed at teens. It claimed to be "the only national program that brings you authentic police case histories." It premiered originally under the name " G-Men" and was sponsored by Chevrolet. The title was changed to Gang Busters January 15, 1936, the show had a 21-year run through November 20, 1957 Wednesday nights. The new sponsor was Palmolive Soap. Archive.org has a few dozen of their programs here free.



The program debuted in 1935. It's writers worked with the FBI so that they could use case files as script material. All scripts based directly from actual police records and had to be approved by the Bureau first. As much as that sounds like hype, it has some basis in fact. Show #287 is based on the case of James Otis Meredith and John Couch, a couple of young Missouri ex-cons who went on a burglary spree in 1938. Gang Busters used the real-life story line November 13, 1942.

Following every episode the program listed off recent reports reports of wanted criminals and suspects, received from the police and the FBI. Kind of like John Walsh today. By 1942 at least 277 criminals were caught because of tips that came from the programs listeners.

It's creator, Phillips Haynes Lord was a script writer, radio voice actor and screen performer. He debuted in 1929, on the NBC program "Seth Parker's Singing School" which he also wrote. His Seth Parker Character was syndicated and rolled over into books, a few gospel records, and several different radio programs. Mr. Lord learned how to syndicate, and synergize. He switched form wholesome religious programming to action very suddenly and never went back.

The program was so popular it was reinterpreted for every other media imaginable. In 1942 Universal movie serial based on the radio series. Then in the 1950s it made the jump to television with a serial produced by Universal. DC Comics ran a Gang Busters series that lasted for 67 issues.