DJ Ray Myers

Raymond Robert Myers was born in 1911 in Lancaster, PA. He was steel guitar player who performed on radio around the region. He was the fifth in a family of nine children and started in music in high school with the trombone then harmonica, only later transitioning to a Hawaiian steel guitar.

He began playing it at local events in churches and amateur contests. With the toes of his left foot he held a steel bar to note the frets and with his right foot he held a custom pick to strum the strings. Did I mention he had no arms?

Playing guitar with your feet has a certain way of attracting attention and though his mother had avoided putting him on a side show,  in 1933 he contacted Robert L. Ripley and in short order Ray was performing at the World's Fair in Chicago, IL. More here.

He returned home to where his family now lived in Paradise, PA. Local radio station in Lancaster, WGAL-AM gave him a slot where he continued to do programs remotely for Ripley which were nationally syndicated on NBC. At the time Ripley was the host of The Baker's Broadcast from 1935 to 1937. A performer from the WWVA-AM Jamboree named Cowboy Loye Pack heard Myers and wrote him a letter. Two weeks later Ray sang his first song on WWVA in Wheeling, VA.

His performances on WWVA spread his fame as a novelty musician in ways that the side-show Ripley program couldn't.  Next year, 1938 found Ray playing on WEEU-AM in Reading, PA with Uncle Jack Nelson into 1940. In 1939 he had a short stint at WHAS-AM in Louisville, KY but returned to Reading within months. But he went on to perform on WSVA-AM in Harrisonburg, VA, WKBN-AM in Youngstown, Ohio and WCHS-AM in Charleston , WV. Some of those dates he played with Radio Dot and Smokey. IN 1943 he had his own show again, this time on WHIS in Bluefield, WV. He remained there less than a year before returning to Pennsylvania. His own mother gave an account of his touring and is the primary source for that information here.

The trail goes cold for almost a decade but Myers had a daily show over radio station WPDX-AM  in Clarksburg, WV as a trio with the Mays Brothers and Cindy Coy. It is probably the same group known as the "Cindy Coy Trio" on WILE-AM in Cambridge, OH in 1949. They signed to Donnett Hit Records that year and were never heard from again. Myers is known to have been playing on WLAC in Nashville as late as 1963. He died in Gordonville, PA, in May 1986.

Ripley's Believe It or Not Radio

Robert L. Ripley was a natural showman and a great teller of tales, some true some not. He gave his own birth date variably, anywhere between 1890 and 1893 and usually on Christmas. He lied about his education, stuttered and his first name wasn't even Robert. It was used a pseudonym. His real name was Leroy Ripley and he was born in 1890,  beleive it or not. His daily comic  was carried by over 300 newspapers in 33 countries a circulation of 33 million. Because of this, we all know about the comic, they've been collected in books and rerun for decades. What's been forgotten was he had his own  radio show from 1930 to 1948.

Several firsts in broadcasting are attributed to him. He was supposedly the first to broadcast nationwide from the middle of the ocean. He was also ostensibly the first to broadcast from Buenos Aires to New York. Less credibly he claimed to have been the first to broadcast to every nation in the world simultaneously.  It's a outlandish claim made by a man in the business of outlandish claims.

In April of 1930, "Ripley's Believe It or Not" debuted on radio.  At first it was a bit on the The Collier Hour. Before the month was out Colonial Beacon Oil was sponsoring a 15-minute NBC program on Monday nights.Then from 1931 to 1932 his series aired twice a week sponsored now by Esso. In 1933 his routine was added to Benjamin Albert Rolfe's Saturday Night Variety program, aka the Rolfe Show, aka Rolf's Party. Here the format changed to become more dramatic. Rolfe's orchestra added ambiance and Rolfe did color and play-by-play. Ripley now drinking to calm his nervous stutter just did the introductions.

Ripley was the host of the Baker's Broadcast from 1935 to 1937 replacing former host Joe Penner, and interim host Edgar Bergen. The program ran on Sunday nights on the NBC Blue Network. It was at the end of that era that be began doing live remotes.  His program See America First with Bob Ripley ran from 1939 into 1940 on CBS. It too exploited the live remote format.

He went from there to the Mutual Network. Starting in 1944 he was on five nights a week. That faded and he jumped back to CBS with an ill-fated program "Romance, Rhythm and Ripley." That lasted less than a year being dropping in early 1946. In 1947 they recast him in his more comfortable surroundings "Pages from Robert L. Ripley's Radio Scrapbook " That show ran from 1947 to 1948.  The program ended in 1948, primarily because he was moving on to television. The TV show, though promising, ended a year later because he died.  Jack Palance hosted a later version of the TV program. If you want to know more, Bob Considine wrote a great biography Ripley, the modern Marco Polo.

Wanna Buy a Duck?

You probably have no idea who Joe Penner was. But he was voted radio's top comedian in 1934. His career really began with a guest appearance on the Rudy Vallée Show on July 13, 1933. It was a quick rise to the top and a long painful slide into obscurity. This episode of the Rudy Vallée show was recorded and strangely even Wikipedia has a clip.
Joe was born Joe Pinter in Hungary and emigrated with his parents at the age of nine in 1914. they settled in Detroit. He went into vaudevilel on a lark. His first appearance on radio was in 1929 on the Paramount-Publix radio hour on WABC carried on CBS. Paramount-Publix was an early variety program that ran every week. It's off topic, But interesting to note that the Paramount-Publix Corporation owned theaters, made movies and distributed them. Sam Katz founded the group in 1925. In January of 1933 they went into receivership. Creditors ate them alive, the radio program did not survive the reorganization.

After Rudy Valee Penner scored his own NBC Variety program in October 1933. Literally only three months had passed since he guested on The Rudy Valee program. "The Baker's Broadcast" began on the NBC Blue Network on October 8th 1933. But sudden fame led to a suddenly big ego. Penny Quit his own show in 1935 in a dispute with the shows ad agency over the show's format. He took the opportunity to move to CBS and start the "The Joe Penner Show" which first aired October 4th, 1936 on CBS. It was sponsored by Cocomalt and widely referred to already as his "come-back." More here.Everything Penner touched turned to gold.. after he stopped touching it. The Bakers Broadcast remained on air with a new host, Robert Ripley, of Ripley's Believe it or Not. The programs band leader and it's singer were none other than Ozzie and Harriet who went onto even greater fame. More here.

His catchphrase was "Wanna Buy a Duck?" Maybe it made sense in the zany comedy of the 1930s.. but it's lost on me today. Penner died of heart failure in Philadelphia, PA in 1941.