The Midnight Jamboree WEVD (part 2)

Gene King, left. very camera shy.

In 2012 I wrote an article about the Midnight Jamboree which debuted on 1300 WEVD-AM in 1936. I did not expect I would need to write a Part 2 at the time. I used the sources I had available at the time and it felt fairly complete. A recent comment from a reader [HERE] pointed out that personal letters between Ev Suffens (stage name for Raymond Nelson) and writer Ayn Rand, describe Suffens as the host of Midnight Jamboree. The problem is that multiple sources also name Gene King as the host. Someone on the internet was wrong, and it might be me; so I revisited the subject.

Back in 2012 I rarely cited sources. It seemed unnecessary with informal writing like a blog.  It was my readers questions (and even researchers questions) which drove me to cite sources initially for my own use. I think my original source was the Arnold Passman book The DeeJays. [SOURCE] It does not specifically say that King is the host but Passman refers to the program as Gene King's; full apostrophe S. In 1942 the Ohio state University Monthly [SOURCE] specifically stated:

"...[King] started announcing for WEVD, became after a time, chief announcer and conducted the tremendously popular "Midnight Jamboree," New York's all-night recorded music program, to which an estimated 300,000 turned for nocturnal entertainment."

The Chief Announcer claim is corroborated in the 1939 Radio Annual. [SOURCE] The book Music in the Air also lists him as the host. "New York contemporaries of Symphony Sid included Gene King, whose Midnight Jamboree on WEVD (Eugene V. Debs) featured
current bands and vocalists..." [SOURCE]

Gene King, probably U. Ohio grad pic

The earliest I can place King by citation, at WEVD, was August of 1937. He's named, alongside Bill Resnick as station staff in an issue of Billboard. [SOURCE] This aligns pretty well with the date from that Ohio State publication stating that he was in Spain "..when the Franco revolt broke out..." that would be July 1936. That's a good source but I had more.  The UC Law Journal of Race and Economics [SOURCE] mentioned King at WEVD in a foot note referencing a New York Daily News article in November of 1939. Maybe the most important citation I found is Broadcasting Vol. 19, No. 8 of October 1940 [SOURCE] which specifically states:

"Gene King has resigned as conductor of the daily program Jamboree on WEVD, New York, from midnight to 4 a.m. to preside over a daily record series on WOR, Newark, entitled Danceland, which started Oct. 14, 3-3:30 p.m"

 

So it's clear that Gene King was the host of the Midnight Jamboree for a period of time, starting in 1936 and ending in 1940. But we also know the program ran into 1942, so clearly King was not the only host. Was he the first? 

The first Ayn Rand letter to Ev Suffens is dated April 6th. [SOURCE] Notably this is before King returned from Europe. Dismuke.org cites this as well. [SOURCE] But the answer is back in those Ayn Rand letters. In her June 10th letter [SOURCE] she complains about the new announcer of the Midnight Jamboree. She does not name him, but does criticize his playing of Jazz. (Gasp!)  So Ed Suffens was only the host prior to June of 1936. How much earlier did the program begin?

The Daily Worker reported the radio schedule of WEVD, WEAF, WOR, WABC, and WJZ daily from 1924 through 1936. So in reviewing those schedules, we can say with confidence that February 20th, 1936 was the first episode of the Midnight Jamboree. [SOURCE] Prior to that time, the midnight slot was held by a dance program, and usually preceded by an opera program. Ev Suffens was only host from February to June of 1936, a period of about 6 months. 

The DJ name Ev Suffens only appears rarely outside in the letter of Ayn Rand. The name appears in Variety in October of 1933 as the former director of the Provincetown Playhouse, then launching a drama and Opera studio. [SOURCE]. Then in the 1938 Radio Annual he's listed as the chief announcer at WEVD. [SOURCE] He seems to stop using the name after that. But a Raymond E. Nelson starts directing TV programs in the early 1940s and that may be him. That Ray Nelson later became the VP of the NTA film network. 

But who then was hosting the Midnight Jamboree after King left in 1940? There is a little disambiguation. There was a Gene King at KCTO in Columbia, LA in the late 1960s and another at WPCH in 1932. [SOURCE] Neither of these is our Gene King. King went on to WOR, and then WCOP as reported in Part 1. After King left the program, it's profile declined significantly. You might think it ended but for two references... 

One of the last references to the Midnight Jamboree was in a September 1942 issue of Broadcasting Magazine. [SOURCE] It does not name the host. It's also mentioned in Radio Daily. [SOURCE] They both probably got the same press release for Carl Post's piano gig on the show. But a 1941 issue of Billboard lists the host as David Niles.

 "Those stayer-uppers who tune into Station WEVD here for the nightly dance music kicks offered by the titularly swing-tinted Midnight Jamboree must think they have the wrong wave-length, unless they're used to the clever introduction given the show by its conductor, David Niles, who is also the station's chief announcer."

I had thought that was the end of it but a 1958 issue of Downbeat lists the show still on air. [SOURCE] The formerly 4-hour weeknight program had become just a 3-hour Sunday special. In1947, Ernest Tubb's Midnite Jamboree on WSM had overshadowed it, absconding with the name. David Niles obituary in the New York times [SOURCE] states that he started his career on WMCA in 1933 after a career in the stage and silent movies. He was the chief announcer at WEVD for 37 years. Sources confirm his presence at the station well into the 1960s. Billboard describes him as the News Director in 1966. [SOURCE]

You can hear Niles voice on a transcription disc from 1948. [LINK] Billboard confirms Niles was the Jamboree host, as early as 1940. [SOURCE]  Note that it's absent from this radio schedule [LINK] which otherwise places Niles on a talk program.  I suspect he took the Jamboree over from King directly. But there could have been a gap, and the earliest reference I can cite is this very critical July 1941 quote in Variety. [SOURCE]

"Manhattan has five stations on the air 'till 4 a.m., WHOM, WHN, WEVD, WNEW and WOR. After four o'clock just WNEW and WOR fight it out; WHN quits at three. But it plays the loudest records, positively. If a disk is just wild that's not enough for WHN, it's got to be frantic... Sunday nights David Niles (WEVD) has New York to himself from three to four. And what does he do with it? Nothing. Davey ought to change that maudlin paragraph Introducing his final 15-minutes in which he 'rests, relaxes, and reminisces.' Hear it twice and it starts to take on a comedy angle, But Davey must like it because he serves it regularly at 3:45."

It seem like Suffens started the Midnight Jamboree, and Gene King built it into a popular jazz-inflected program. Then Niles went back to a very mellow classical playlist. Rand would have been pleased but apparently popular listeners were not.

A Yugoslavian Radio Archive (Part 2)

Radio NB map from their 2002 site

First, a foot note from Part 1. The radio format "folk" in this region is going to be music most Americans would call Polka. But the usage here is more like ethnic, thought there are multiple ethnicities at play... hence the break-up really.  I will say that the more you listen, the more you can hear other cultural influences that take the music somewhere distinctly different than a Polish Polka. But still.. like Reg Mex... there's a lot of Polka in there. 

As I browse the sites for information I keep finding references to NATO bombings and it's not lost on me how bloody the break up was. This was not an amicable separation. This was a collapse driven by nationalistic rivalries and multiple wars of independence. If you are looking for more in that history I recommend the BBC documentary series The Death of Yugoslavia. It's on Youtube here. 

RADIO LASAREVAC [LINK] The Radio L website was loaded with Flash so it's content is mostly lost. The landing page gives the frequencies 103.6, 89.3 and 648 ST. The about section is blank. According to Streema today the station is based in Lazarevac, Serbia and the station Airs Adult Contemporary and Top 40/Pop music.

RADIO LESKOVAC [LINK] There was a short blurb on this site: "Radio Leskovac broadcasts thirteen hours of programming every day. Only two hours of programming are rebroadcast: Radio Belgrade - "Vesti", "Novosti dana", Radio Free Europe - "Jutarnji dnevnik", Radio B92 - "Dnevnik"." Then it also had 11 hours of it's own local programming. The site stopped updating in 2005.

RADIO MADONA [LINK]  This pop station broadcast on 101.00 and 104.9. It had some connection to a disco of the same name. It's hard to know if that was metaphorical or literal. The website says that it had only two shows: Hit Needle - Saturdays from 3:00 - 9:00 PM and DJ Time & Top 20 - Sundays from 9:00 to Midnight. Their transmitter was on Crni Vrh, a mountain in eastern Serbia between towns of Bor and Žagubica.

 

RADIO MARIJA [LINK] This was a religious station with the motto "God's voice in every house" The name means Radio Maria. It broadcast on 102.9 in Novi Sad. The station signed on in 1987 and is still on air today [LINK]  The new site uses the TLD .cr indicating a home in the modern boarders of Croatia. That modern site explains:

"The Radio Marija Association is a non-profit, non-governmental and non-political civil society organization, founded in Croatia in 1995. The first initiative committee was created within the framework of the Rosary Movement for Conversion and Peace, and on the eve of its foundation, cooperation was established with Radio Maria of Italy. The idea of ​​Radio Marija and the first program originated in 1983 in a parish in Erba in northern Italy."

RADIO MORAVA [LINK] Radio Morava signed on July 1st 1996. on 98.4 broadcasting folk music. It was based in Jagodina in central Serbia. The site information suggests they had live music as well. The .rs TLD of their new site [LINK] indicates their domain is hosted Romania though they are still physically in Jagodina. 

RADIO NB [LINK]  Located in Novi Becej, at the center of Vojvodina, This station was founded in 1998 by the  Novi Bečej Municipal Assembly and broadcast programs in Hungarian and Serbian. It's signal was on 106.1 and the map was cached and pictured at top. These municipal stations seem to be akin to a community station in some ways.

 

RADIONICA [LINK] This is not a radio station but I included it because it's the only website I found which actually addressed the dissolution of the .yu domain. It describes the process for transferring .yu websites which would very messy and bureaucratic "I hope that this whole campaign about the National Internet domain will have some results and as soon as possible, because this current situation is unsustainable and unacceptable.." I think this was a web host.  Radionica means workshop in Croatian but I'm keeping it here for it's ICANN commentary which is lengthy and detailed.

RADIO NOVI SAD [LINK] This station was founded in 1949, possibly the oldest in the set if not the region. It broadcast in Derbian, Hungarian, Slovak, Ruthenian, Romanian, Ukrainian and Romanian. It operated Radio Stotka on 100 Mhz and Radio Novi Sad on UKT 89.5 MHz and 93.7 MHz, St 1485 kHz which operated 13 hours a day. It describes the programming as "The basic purpose of this City Radio service has been reporting from the City Assembly meetings, the government and all the other city authority body. It also means covering the work of public utilities and services under city control." But it was also home to the Tamburitza Orchestra and had robust music programming.

RADIO NOVOSTI [LINK]  Some of the flash survived on this one. Novosti means news, and this is an all news station which broadcast on 104.4 in Begrade, Serbia.  It operated today on 104.7 on a .com TLD. [SOURCE] That news site confirms they signed on in 1993 and today broadcasts with 10 digital channels.

RADIO ORION [LINK] This station signed on April 24th 2001 with a mix if music and news. The menu is broken and parts of the site lost. Today it operates on 91.7 in Romania broadcasting 24 hour a day. When I tuned in today it was pop music. 

RADIO PALIC [LINK]  This station broadcast on 103.0 starting in 1998 from Subotica, Serbia. The site is mostly text. But the a staff list survived. I found a news article which suggested a radio tower in Palic was bombed by NATO in 1999. It may have been destroyed. The station does not exist today. There is another station Radio 103 which seems to occupy the same frequency. [SOURCE]

RADIO PEK [LINK] Pek signed on March 13th 1996 on 93.9 FM broadcasting to Kučevo and the surrounding area of eastern Serbia. The station move3d to 94.0 by 2006 and was broadcasting a mix of folk, pop, dance and rock music with a second signal on 98.3.
 

RADIO PINGVIN [LINK] Pingvin means Penguin.  It signed on November 23rd 1991 broadcasting in Belgrade on 90.9. The description confirms it had several different owners before 2006 and different names but that it's basic policy of no politics and no populists had remained constant. That logo is great and they are still on air today. [LINK]

 RADIO PLANETA [LINK] This station broadcast on 102.2 Mhz in Novi Sad beginning in 2003. Their studio was located in the Planeta Shopping Center. The site makes a point of directing listeners to the Fontana restaurant where the staff hang out. Someone was getting free drinks. 

RADIO POZAREVAC [LINK] This station, founded in 1977,  has a really good history page which I'll quote "The solid roots of Radio Požarevac were established in the early seventies through the so-called "Radio LJ K I", a program that, in cooperation with the Organizing Committee of the Ljubičevo Games, ran every summer before and during this tourist and sports event... The first program of this type was broadcast from the premises of the KPD Zabela, while it was later moved to the premises of the Požarevac Municipal Assembly. The program consisted of news, specialized programs dedicated to the Ljubičevo Games, a news program, music programs, as well as listeners' wishes.In the summer of the same year, the experimental program of Radio Požarevac began, which lasted from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM. The ceremonial start of the broadcasting of the Radio Požarevac program followed on October 12. The program was broadcast on medium waves of 240 m and ultra-short wave area of 92.1 Mhz.This significant undertaking was started by Bogran Živanović, Jovan Rajković, Ljubiša Dobrosavljević, Siniša Ristić and Zoran Vasić as journalists, Novica Mišić and Radenko Ristić as sound engineers, and Petar Crnobrnja and Gordana Kuzmanović as announcers.  " 

RADIO PULS [LINK] Puls (which means pulse) broadcast news, music, sports and had call in programs from 91.1 FM. I think this is the same station which today broadcasts on 96.0 from Despotovac, Serbia. If so it was founded December 19th 1997. [SOURCE] A 2003 cache tells me the station was founded in September 2002 and their original frequency was 91.1 and that they carry music and information programs. 

RADIO S [LINK]  Radio S had multiple signals 104.7 in Beolgrade, 94.3 in Kragujevac and 96.9 in - Novi Sad. Their stick in Belgrade was the first and signed on August 17th 1994. The had a very fancy site of all flash which was cached.

RADIO SAFIR [LINK] Safir signed on in 1995 and their "about" section brags that they have over 70,000 songs in their library. I think there were two more stations in the group from the line "your Gold 013 FM 106.4 MHz"Their studio was based in Pancevo across the river from Belgrade, Serbia. 

RADIO SECANJ [LINK] The landing page reads "Public Enterprise of Broadcasting Activities" This public station started broadcasting on July 9th 1999 on 96.3.  As of 2005 it employed 13 workers. and planned to launch a cable television channel and establish a local radio and television stations.

RADIO SOMBOR [LINK]  Surely the oldest station in this list, Sombor started broadcasting on July 31st 1972. It reads "On medium and ultra-short waves, the program was broadcast on weekdays from 1 to 6 p.m. Among the first shows were "Chronicle of the Day", "Pop Studio", "Twice Forty" and others. The program was prepared by the journalists of "Somborski novina" and the newly formed editorial staff of Radio Sombor.  Today, Radio Sombor broadcasts its program on two frequencies, 90.9 MHz and 97.5 MHz. On 90.9 MHz, 11 journalists - nine in the Serbian-language newsroom and two in the Hungarian-language newsroom prepare a daily program that lasts 24 hours."

RADIO SPEKTAR [LINK] The Spektar group was founded on November 11th 1995. The station broadcast on 107.7 from Pancevo 24 hours a day with a mix of news, education and music programming. Their about section emphasized a number of local programs:" The Businessman's Club, Every Word, Evergreen Club, Danube flows into Tamis, Top Kiss, a Quiz show, a Nostalgia program and Happy Turnips (Veseli repici) which purports to be about pets... Google thinks the name is Slovenian.

 

RADIO STARA CARSIJA [LINK]  This station broadcast ion 99.1 from Cuprija Serbia. There's not much info on the programming but it says that "According to some of our internal research, conducted in Cuprija, Radio Stara Carsi is mainly listened to by the intellectual class of the population." They're still broadcasting today [LINK]

RADIO SUBOTIKA [LINK] This website was available in Magyar, Croatian and Serbian. The station was founded by the Subotica Municipal Assembly on November 29th 1968, and was broadcasting on 91.5 in 2006. Their history notes that broadcasting on Medium wave was interrupted by NATO
bombing on May 22nd 1999.  [SOURCE]  The station broadcast programs in Serbian and Hungarian for six hours a day, and in Croatian for one hour. They actually have a Wikipedia page which reports they launched a German program in 1998, which is the first radio show in German since 1944... ahem. 

 RADIO TOCAK [LINK] Instead of an about page they post a mission where they report that Radio "Točak" was the first Roma electronic media in the region of Western Serbia broadcasting on 104.2 FM. The station broadcast news and educational programs for Roma minority groups. The station was founded April 28th 2003 and served an ethnic minority of 40,000 Roma. Točak means wheel in English

RADIO TREND [LINK] This station was based in Baèka Topola in Vojvodina, 65 miles from Novi Sad. The community had about 15,000 citizens consisting mostly of Serbs, Hungarians, Slovaks and Ruthenians. The station broadcast on 95.2 FM. A 2018 report listed them as one of a handful of stations broadcasting Hungarian programming. [SOURCE]

RADIO X [LINK] Broadcasting from Požarevac on 100.5 this station broadcast folk music. Not just folk, it clarifies "folk music - songs from the 60s, 70s, 80s and early 90s" So that's the Adult AC of Folk. Their signal covered Pozarevac and the entire Branicevski district, Smederevo and surrounding towns. Their biggest program was Željoteka Live which inenglish means disco with live folk music groups.

RADIO ZENIT [LINK]  This station covered the municipalities of Kula and Vrbas and broadcast 24 hours a day mostly in Bosnian. The site has a great animated .gif of the coverage area. Their name translates to Radio Zenith. The station was founded on December 26th, 1998, and broadcasts on 100.7.  The station is still on air today. [LINK] Their new site has a .ba TLD for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

RADIO ZVEZDARA [LINK] The cache is very fragmented. Zvezdara is a city in Belgrade, presumably it's locality. This station broadcast on 106.2, information only preserved in page title. The station still exists today [SOURCE] on the same frequency.

VOICE OF AMERICA, SERBIAN SERVICE [LINK]  The history on this site has nothing specific to Yugoslavia, not even in 1999. It's very generic info that describes the whole global VOA network. Locally it was called Glas Amerike, this service was started in 1942 during WWII. All programming originates in the USA, but if broadcast 24/7, 365. It purports to be objective and accurate but it's Western propaganda initially created to combat Nazi propaganda. But it's still on air today and depending on where you live, it might be a better news source than you have otherwise. The cache goes back to 1998. It's still operating in Serbia and Macedonia today of course. [LINK] and [LINK] They ended their Croatia service in 2011. More here and here.

Radio Burma

In the book Finding George Orwell in Burma by Emma Larkin was a single passage about radio. [It's quite a good read by the way.]

"By far the most trusted source of news are the daily radio programmes broadcast to Burma by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the Voice of America (VOA and the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB). To try to prevent people from listening to these, the government occasionally jams the signals. A few years ago a 70-year-old man was sentenced to two years in prison for listening to VOA in a tea shop."

Larkin's book was published in 2004 and the situation in Burma has changed significantly since then. But lets talk semantics. In 1989, the military government officially changed the English translations of many names dating back to Burma's colonial period or earlier, including that of the country itself: Burma became Myanmar. The renaming remains a contested issue nationally and internationally. More here.

Many opposition groups and countries continue to use "Burma" because they do not recognize the legitimacy of the ruling military government. So choosing to call it Burma or Myanmar is a political decision. I'll use the name Burma for consistency and as I too choose to see dictatorships and other authoritarian governments as inherently illegitimate. But the change occurred in 1989, and even the U.S. State Department's website lists the country as "Burma (Myanmar)".

The DVB started as a non-profit media organization operated by Burmese expatriates based in Oslo, Norway. They started the operation in 1992. It made radio and television broadcasts aimed at providing uncensored news and information about Burma. They operated in defiance of the authoritarian military government. The news outlet has long been one of the only credible sources of news from Myanmar.

The DVB brought a highly charged air of defiance to the country’s heavily censored media, with reports detailing human rights abuses, oppression, corruption, and the perspectives of ethnic rebel armies. DVB states that it has four primary goals:      

• The provision of accurate and unbiased news to the people of Burma.
• To promote understanding and cooperation among Burma's religious and ethnic populations.
• To encourage and sustain independent public opinion and to provide for social and political debate.
• To impart the ideals of democracy and human rights" to the Burmese people.

2012 was a pivotal year for the DVB. In 2010 Burma held it's first elections in 20 years. Following the election, the military government formally gave control of the administration to a quasi-civilian government. In March of 2011, Thein Sein, a retired senior general was sworn in as president. Somewhat unexpectedly the Thein Sein government scaled back other media restrictions even allowing privately owned newspapers to operate. DVB gradually moved back into Burma, where it became an independent media company operating openly. In March of 2018, DVB started broadcasting on digital terrestrial television.

Then came the coup of February 2021. Myanmar's military seized control,  declared the results of the last general election invalid and revoked the licenses of several media outlets... including DVB. Burma reverted to a pre-2012 state virtually overnight. More here.

The the arrests began. On the behest of Myanmar, the police in Thailand arrested three DVB journalists. They were trying to flee to Thailand. The group included Min Nyowho had been reporting on the coup. On May 9th, Thai authorities arrested more of Min Nyo’s DVB colleagues in Chang Mai. The group are being detained pending a court decision. More here.

Eric Dolphy On The Radio

Eric Dolphy died of complications due to diabetes on June 29th, 1964. He was only 36 years old. His career was short but legendary. Already he had worked with Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Booker Little, Mal Waldron, Ornette Coleman and Max Roach to name only a few. He saw just seven albums released in his lifetime; amazingly all in a 3-year span.

• 1960: Outward Bound
• 1961: Caribé with The Latin Jazz Quintet
• 1961: Out There
• 1961: At the Five Spot, Vol. 1 (live)
• 1962: Far Cry
• 1963: Conversations
• 1963: At the Five Spot, Vol. 2 (live)

But posthumously another 25 Eric Dolphy albums have been released (mostly live recordings) and he appears on another 50 albums as a sideman. More than 70% of his ourve was released after his death, so he had little input into those releases. That being said, the last three known recordings he made were intended for radio broadcast: 

• 1964: Last Date (for radio program at Hilversum)
• 1964: Naima (for ORTF radio program at Paris)
• 1964: Unrealized Tapes (for ORTF radio program at Paris)

1964 was a busy year. Dolphy left for a European tour with Charles Mingus. Their first concert of the tour was at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw on April 10th. As a tour highlight, Dolphy also was on Belgian Television RTB (Radio-Télévision Belge). That performance was taped at at the Palais des Congres in Liege on April 19th with the Charles Mingus Quintet. Normally a sextet, Johnny Coles was too ill to perform and they performed minus a trumpeter. Not everything was bright. In Bremen some young fascist painted a swastika on Dolphy's hotel room door. Dolphy announced on tour that he would remain in Europe when the tour wrapped up. More here.

Last Date was recorded on June 2, 1964 in Hilversum, Holland. The material was actually released in early 1965 which is earlier than any of his other radio recordings. Numerous radio stations operated from this location at the time: NCRV, KRO, VPRO, AVRO, RVU, ICOR, NRU, RNW, NTS, NOT, TELEAC, and TROS. This session was for the program "Jazz Magazine" on VARA in Holland. It's host Aad Bos was with VARA from 1954 to 1992. His program used the studio 5 space. After being laid off in 1992, Bos hosted "VPRO Jazz In Four" until he retired in 1996. More here.

Naima was mostly recorded Paris, France, June 11, 1964. Triple Mix was recorded in November of 1960 at Esoteric Sound Studios in New York. The other 4 tracks were recorded live for OTRF. Unrealized Tapes also consists of tracks from the June 11th session. It is confused by misspellings of some of the players names. They share a two tracks "G.W."  and "Serene." Discogs labeled this as a free jazz album which I would argue it is not. If you expect Ornette Coleman's reed squealing, this will strike you as comparatively subdued. Regardless the recordings should be observed with some reverence as they are Dolphy's last known recordings; made just 18 days before his death from diabetic shock.  More here.

Jacques Dieval, the French pianist produced the session at ORTF. Some of the session men like Donald Byard, and Nathan Davis has also joined Dolphy at the Chat Qui Peche club. But this session was probably recorded at studios in the Maison de L'ORTF.  To their credit, Resonance records has been releasing a number of ORTF jazz recordings from this era. That list also includes sessions with Larry Young, Nathan Davis, and Wes Montgomery. Jazz was part of the French post-war identity. They had been early adopters in the 1920s and in the following decades many African-American jazz musicians toured Europe, as it was more socially progressive than the U.S. Some came to stay, like Dolphy. More here.

From 1949 to 1981 as the RTF, then after 1964 as the ORTF, the Office de Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française, oversaw all public radio and television in France. All radio programming, and especially news broadcasts, were under the control of the national government. It sounds ominous but think of it as French NPR. But in 1980 there were only 7 of these licensed stations in France. Their competition was mostly French-language radio stations originating outside of France in the micro-state of Monaco, the Principality of Andorra, Luxembourg, Germany and of course BBC Francais.

But jazz is an instrumental music that supersedes language. Jazz Magazine listed off programs French jazz-heads could hear from Algiers, Brussels, Monte Carlo, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and several in Germany, coming from Munich, Frankfort, Salzburg and Hamburg. Perhaps the most popular were the American jazz programs on VOA like Downbeat, or Willis Conover on the Voice of America Jazz Hour and Leonard Feather's Jazz Club USA. I won't go further down this tangent but if you are interested she covered this in great detail in the book  Jazz and Postwar French Identity by Elizabeth McGregor.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention one more radio session. There was one more in 1964, recorded before those but only released much later, piecemeal on other albums. Dolphy played with the Bob James Trio and Once Brass Ensemble at the ONCE festival at a VFW hall in Ann Arbor, MI on March 2nd, 1964. The session is mostly under the Bob James name, but a single Eric Dolphy track called "A personal statement" was recorded at WUOM. In that same era, 1956 through at least 1969 WUOM recorded and released LPs of it's own glee club and symphony band so they clearly had the ability. [LINK] But it remains uncertain who made the recording. Dolphy may have taped it himself, his earliest known recording is a home recording with Clifford Brown from 1954. The WUOM session was probably first released in 1987 on  Eric Dolphy ‎– Other Aspects. It was a re-release more recently on the album Eric Dolphy: Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Studio Sessions. More here.

The Baltic Chain and Radio

Today Hong Kong is trying to "unshackle" itself from China. On August 23rd in 2019 supporters of their pro-democracy movement linked hands across the island, creating human chains on both sides of the city's harbor that they stretched for almost 25 miles.

These protests were inspired a a similar, but much larger historic protest, in the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. On Aug. 23, 1989 approximately two million people joined hands forming a chain 419 miles long. (some estimates say 1.5 M) It stretched from Tallinn in Estonia, through the Latvia capital Riga, to Vilnius in Lithuania.

The protest was referred to as the "Baltic Chain" or the "Baltic Way" or even the "Chain of Freedom."  The Soviets called it "nationalist hysteria" driven by "extremist elements" promoting anti-socialist and anti-soviet agendas. Were outsiders were exploiting nationalism with the goal of independence? Well that last bit turned out to be true.

Coordinating two million people is no small feat. They disseminated information through regional organizations like the Latvian Popular Front, the Reform Movement of Lithuania, and the Popular Front of Estonia and via clandestine broadcast services, like Radio Free Europe, VOA and the BBC despite Soviet jamming efforts.

President Gerald Ford strongly supported funding for Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe in speeches in 1974. These broadcasts were elevated to a new status in November of 1983 when they were incorporated into a separate Baltic radio division called the Baltic States Service of Radio Liberty. For more on that please read Jonathan Conde's 2018 masters thesis [LINK].

The Baltics had largely industrialized Post-WWII under the Soviets. They post 1968 moved directly into commercialism. In 1967 the Estonia Stereo was developed at Tallinn Radio-Electronics. It was the first stereophonic radio set in the whole USSR, [model Estonia-005] and it was manufactured at the Red RET plant in Tallinn between 1969 and 1973.  Between 1971 and 1972 car sales in Estonia quintupled. But the media was still strictly controlled, and the internet was decades away.  As Peeter Vihalemm wrote in his paper Media Use in Estonia, "During the period of glasnost, when the multi-party system did not yet exist and the underground centers were weak, the media was the main mechanism of mass mobilization " [LINK].

The Book Estonia Life Stories by by Tiina Kirss and Rutt Hinrikus gives the story of Asta Luksepp. 

"Before leaving I stopped by at home and adjusted the radio to the right wavelegnth for my mother.  We gathered at the market square in Elva... Our assigned place in the chain was between Nuia and Viljandi. We kept driving toward Latvia until it was 7 o'clock. We stopped the buses and joined other folks from Vorumaa. There were so many people that we could not fit in one line, so we formed parallel chains. We were all moved to tears. We had radios along, and thus could follow the orders coming from Tallinn."

So what radio stations broadcast the signals and the events? According to Peeter Vihalemm, most of them.  "...the two-million-person demonstration “Baltic chain”, organised on 23 August 1989, the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, was not only directly broadcast on all radio and TV channels in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, but it was also organised and managed with the assistance of the media."  The weakness of the Soviets in this moment and the popularity of the independence movement is hard to overstate. The Estonians, Lithuanians, and Latvians expected reprisals and for the most part... they did not come, not that day anyway.

The reprisals came when Estonia made the big move for independence and started printing up their own Estonian Passports, then declared independence on August 20th 1991. Moscow sent in the tanks.  Thousands of citizens the Tallinn radio and TV tower to prevent it's use for Soviet propaganda. Radio operators jammed the elevator and threatened to turn on the oxygen-removing fire-suppression system on the soldiers. Bullet holes dating from the Soviet coup attempt of 1991 are still visible at the base of the tower.

While the people of Hong Hong fight their own fight, in Lithuania they commemorated the 30th anniversary of the Baltic Way with a radio art installation. It was conceived of by two young artists, Viaceslavas Mickevicius and Ieva Makauskaite who worked with Lithuanian national broadcaster LRT.
The radio installation, entitled "One Wave" is made up of more than 2,000 old radios that will play a trilingual song known to be the anthem of the Baltic Way entitled "The Baltics are waking up". According to EuroNews, Mickevicius, who was 5 years old in 1989, wondered how they managed to organise the protest. "It appeared that the main role was played by the radio. Special radio broadcasts helped to coordinate the rally," said Viaceslavas Mickevicius, one of the two artists.

CUBAN CHANNEL RAID

NARBA was replaced in in 1983, with the adoption of the Regional Agreement for the Medium Frequency Broadcasting Service in Region 2, A.K.A. the "Rio Agreement", which covered more or less the entire Western hemisphere. That was over 30 years ago, so NARBA is largely a historical artifact now. Looking back what remains notable is both the nations that participated, and that that didn't. Most notable is the one nation who joined, then later withdrew: Cuba. More here.

Cuba was on board with the original NARBA, let's call it "NARBA Classic" back in the 1930s. The initial NARBA bandplan, was actually known as the "Havana Treaty."  It was signed by the United States, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti in December of 1937. It took effect in March of 1941. Back then the primary goals were: standardizing engineering practises, reducing interference and fairly distributing channel assignments across nations.  In fairness, NARBA Classic favored the US substantially.

In 1949 when NARBA was being re-negotiated, Cuba was in it to win it. The problem of conflicting channel assignments was of primary concern and while Mexico refused to participate the other participating nations were in for a high stakes poker game. Cuba in a savvy maneuver proposed they get wildly more than they wanted putting the US on defense. Broadcasting magazine literally described the Montreal NARBA proceedings as the “threat of ether war.”  This was a tad dramatic, but Cuba did ask for the following:

1. Right to 3 more 1-A channels
2. Power increases on 3 more 1-A channels
3. Establishment of 11 Class 1 stations (7 regional, 4 clear channel)
4. A total of 108 assignment son 79 channels
5. Increased protection on certain Cuban channels 
6. A ban on further licensing of 590, 690, 860, 950, and 1010 in the Southern US (FL, GA, AL, MA, LA)

Under the previous NARBA treaty of 1941, (and the interim agreement of 1946) the 690 frequency was already designated a Canadian 1-A clear channel, so that wasn't a big ask. In trade, they offered to give up the below stations to protect the clear channel status of KNBC in San Francisco and WMAQ in Chicago.

1. 1 Kw station on 670 kHz at Oriente
2. 250 watt station on 680 kHz at Artemisa
3. 1 Kw station on 680 kHz at Santa Clara

The conference voted 6 to 4 against.  Letters to broadcasting magazines described it as "jungle warfare" or as a "cold radio war" and the island of Cuba as "pint-sized."At the time, the whole island of Cuba only had a population of about 5 million. That is about the size of Boston, MA today. Boston has more than 90 AM and FM signals so 108 assignments isn't excessive in today's terms, but it may have seemed that way in 1949. 

It's 1,300 miles from Cuba to Chicago. By today's math, the stations they were offering to protect were in little danger from those local Cuban stations. Though at the time AM reception was common at those distances for clear channel stations. So they would have been regionally impeded in the South East. Interestingly ABC, Westinghouse, KPRC, and Fort Industry Co. all still voted in favor of the treaty.  (Mexico refused to even attend the conference.) The following US stations would have been effected by the Cuban proposal:  KFI, WNBC, WJR, WBBM, WCCO, WLS, WENR, KPRC, WFBC, WSUN, WJBO. An even greater list was described over-dramatically as having "incomplete' protection. In Cuba WIBS would have to move from 740 to 730 kHz, and WKAQ in San Juan would have to reduce it's radiation toward San Juan. 

Cuba didn't get what they asked for, but they got what they needed.  A three-year interim agreement gave Cuba expanded allocations, including the right to share 5  U.S., 3 Canadian, and 2 Mexican clear channel allocations. The interim agreement expired on March 29th, but the new NARBA agreement was signed in November 1950 and was good for another 5 years. NAB was pretty pissed. That same month Billboard Magazine published that the NARBA "conference quietly stole away this week after signing a pact which empowers Cuba virtually to destroy half a dozen clear-channel frequencies in New York and elsewhere."  Broadcasting Magazine just referred to it was "Cuba's Victory."

Remember Fidel Castro rose to power in 1959, so while he was the beneficiary of those proceedings, he was not their architect. NARBA was still biased in favor of the U.S. and Multiple signers were considering walking away before 1980. But Cuba had been in a radio fight with the U.S. for decades. The CIA broadcast anti-Castro propaganda starting in the 1960s, VOA began beaming western propaganda at the island the same year as did Cuban exiles in Florida. In response, Cuba beefed up it's local service, aided Radio Free Dixie, and broadcast Radio Moscow to the U.S. as late as the 1970s.  All of that was outside the treaty.

The Carter administration had improved relations with Havana to the point where the radio spat had largely cooled. But Ronald Reagan was a rabid anti-communist. After his election  the broadcasts resumed.  In 1980, Cuba gave the required one year notification that it was withdrawing from the NARBA treaty. Reagan administration officials announced plans to establish a "Radio Free Cuba". This service was named Radio Marti in 1982 and service began in 1983. Seeing this coming, and with no attachment to treaties signed by the pre-revolutionary government, Cuba abrogated NARBA in 1980. They even gave the standard 1-year notice. 

Radio Cambodia Crackdown

On August 23rd, the news broke that the government of Cambodia has shut down two independent radio station. 93.5 FM Mahanokor and Voice of Democracy (VOD), two Khmer-language radio stations, were ordered to close on Wednesday by the ministry of information. Mohanokor broadcasts programs produced by Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and the Cambodia National Rescue Party much to the ire of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen. Mohanokor said it received a letter from Information Minister Khieu Kanharith cancelling its authorization to operate.

In a Facebook post, Phay Siphan, a spokesman for Cambodia's cabinet, cited U.S. President Donald Trump's criticisms of the press as justification for their crackdown on freedom of the press. He framed it as a conflict between freedom of expression and the authority of the state.

"President Donald Trump thinks that the news reported by these organizations did not reflect the truth, which is the responsibility of the professional reporters... This means that freedom of expression must respect the law and the authority of the state."

On August 26th it got worse. The Bangladesh Daily Star newspaper revealed that the tally was actually 15 radio stations. The list includes Mohanokor and its three provincial affiliates. But also that the Information Ministry's website lists seven other media owners who were asked to stop broadcasting from the 11 radio stations they owned across 10 different provinces, including Kampong Cham 99.7 FM.

But wait there's more. Sarika FM dropped it's Voice of Democracy program from the schedule.  WMC 102 FM, the radio station run by the Women’s Media Centre of Cambodia which had also broadcast RFA and VOA programs broadcast only silence on the night of August 23rd. Several other local radio stations in various provinces that lease airtime to VOA and RFA have also reported receiving warnings of violating their agreements with the ministry.

The Cambodia Daily newspaper was very reserved in it's response [LINK].  According to the station’s director, Yi Chhor Vorn, the ministry didn't even cite a law or regulation that the station had violated.  Most popular Asian media outlets assumed that the shutdown was in response to their relaying of news content from the U.S. media outlets deemed critical of the government and supporting the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) opposition party.

Radio Azadliq means Radio Liberty

The word Azadliq (that is Azadlıq in cryllic) in the Azerbaijani language means Freedom or Liberty. There is a popular newspaper in Azerbaijan named Azadliq. In the city of Baku lies the biggest city-center square in the country, Azadliq square. [LINK] Prior to 1991, the square was named Lenin Square which leads to my third example: Radio Azadliq.

Radio Azadliq is just another name for Radio Free Europe (RFE) or Radio Liberty. The station broadcasts programs in many languages: Albanian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Bosnian, Belarusian, Chechen, Crimean Tatar, Dari, English, Georgian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Tajik, Tatar, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Uzbek... Notice that Spanish, French and Italian aren't on there. RFE has always targeted Western Europe.

The division between the Russian sphere of influence and the West has a special relevance in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan first declared independence in 1918, breaking loose of the Russian empire in it's post WWI collapse. But Azerbaijan has oil. So after the rise of communism,under Lenin, Russia attacked, and an estimated 20,000 Azerbaijani soldiers died defending their 2-year old country. This soviet control remained status quo until 1991, when following Russia's economic collapse, Azerbaijan declared independence again. The Soviet response was more muted this time. They supported a military coup which installed a soviet-era former government. But Azerbaijan retained a somewhat independent-ish media until about 2007. More here.

In 2007 came the arrest of more than a dozen reporters critical of the regime. Newspapers were shut down, crushed by lawsuits. In 2008, the government of Azerbaijan  imposed a ban on all foreign media broadcasting in the country, including BBC, Evropa-Plus, Voice of America, and RFE, effective  January 1st, 2009. Radio Azadliq lost their 101.7 FM signal, more here. RFE continued on with a local office, but with content only available on shortwave, satellite or online.  More here and here.

Annually the regime created new restrictions on freedom of the press. They passed new laws banning photography without permission, anti-libel laws, bogus "hooliganism" rules. In 2011 at least 50 domestic and foreign journalists were harassed or attacked in 2011 in Azerbaijan. Then came the big 20014 crackdown.  The government has accused the station and its employees of espionage and of being a foreign-financed entity. The first charge is bogus, but the second charge is entirely true. Radio Free Europe has been financed by the American government since it was founded in 1953. The Baku office only opened in the 1990s.

The police raided the that same Baku office and seized computers, flash drives, documents and other materials, and then sealed the premises. A dozen employees of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Azerbaijan were arrested on December 27th and detained for up to 12 hours of questioning and/or torture. Officials even detained the station’s cleaning woman.

Afterward, Radio Azadliq stubbornly continued it's programming. The regime responded by blocking their website and and some social media platforms. In 2016 Radio Azadliq’s daily program Azadliq A-Live was been taken off air by Kanal-V, a satellite television channel is broadcast over the Turksat 1C 420 Satellite. No explanation was given. Now limited to Facebook and Youtube, Radio Azadliq still presses on. More here.

WJNT Vs. Cuba!

This is the tale of how AM radio interference from Cuba helped propel the allocation of FM translators to AM stations in the U.S. Let start with this little tidbit on a document posted on the State Department website. It's referred to in other documents as the Federal Communications Commission's Observation of TV Marti.

Cuba withdrew from NARBA (North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement) decades ago, and the US has separate agreements with Canada and Mexico rendering the document only binding for a few island nations. It's effectively moot. But still we manage to fight with Cuba. In 1982 we began bombarding Cuba with Radio Marti on 1180 and it's VOA programming. This was actually a replacement of a prior propaganda station operating on 535 kHz and 1605 kHz. [SOURCE] Cuba was understandably irritated by this and began jamming 1180 with a loud humming noise. The problem was so foreseeable that the Broadcasting Board of Governors, under the Regan administration, set out in the following paragraph that they were allowed to lease time on other stations should Radio Marti be successfully jammed. More here.

But Radio Marti was not successfully jammed. But at least three other U.S. stations were: 1180 WJNT-AM in Jacksonville, MS; 1180 KGOL-AM in Humble, TX; and strangely 1160 WCRT-AM in Nashville, TN. Today you wont' find an AM station on 1180 AM within 700 miles of Miami. And the nearest one is WLTT-AM, a daytimer near Wilmington, NC. Radio Marti is why. It's not just the Cuban jamming, the two stations in tandem effect all reception near that frequency.  More here.

The stations caught in the cross fire all won themselves consolation prizes. WJNT now operates at night on WJNT-FM1 at 103.3, a 500 watt Nighttime-only FM booster. It's been operating under an STA since1999. WCRT-AM got WCRT-FM1 operating on 98.7 at 75 watts. But KGOL didn't fare so well. The station was not allocated an FM translator. Back in 1982 NAB threw a fit and claimed that Cuba was jamming signals on 570, 670, 1040, 1160, 1380 and had the ability to "cripple more than 200 stations in 34 states." A pretty dubious claims since they couldn't even successfully jam Radio Marti. Even in 1987 the New York times wrote "The noise is annoying, but it does not block the programs." However, the events did broach the engineering topic of FM translators for AM stations a coverage tactic which continues today. Thank you Mr. Regan.

Elmer Davis

Elmer Homer Davis had a wit like Mark Twain, and a career like Edward R. Murrow. He remains eminently quotable.  In 1924 Davis wrote a zinger that rings true today:

"The only visible difference of any sort is that the Republican party seems to contain a slightly higher percentage of crooks, and the Democratic party of fools."

Davis was a classic  intellectual. His Hoosier accent may have made his radio career but he was ivy league material. He was born in 1890 in Aurora Indiana. A droll and witty youth, he attended Franklin College and graduated magna cum laude. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and attended Queens College, Oxford. He graduated and became a writer for the New York Times in 1914. He wrote 3 books before 1921 including a history of the New York Times. He stayed on staff until 1924 when he left to freelance. He went on to write for Harpers, the New Yorker, the Life and many other publications. He began appearing as a guest on CBS in 1930.

Elmer Davis became a radio news reporter in 1939 when Paul White, the news chief at CBS, asked him to fill in as a news analyst for H. V. Kaltenborn. (Kaltenborn was on assignment in Europe.) By 1941, the audience for Davis' nightly five-minute newscast and comment was 12.5 million.

In 1942 After less than 3 years in his CBS role, Davis was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt as the director of the newly created United States Office of War Information (OWI). That's no small promotion. He went from the talent pool to executive management in a government organization with over 3,000 employees. He had no management experience. Davis landed the role because he brought with him public respect and integrity. In the end it wasn't much of a weapon against internal politics and bureaucracy. He didn't get along with Truman nearly as well.

Davis took strong stands on divisive issues. He recommended  to President Roosevelt that Japanese-Americans be permitted to enlist. This was in an era when Asian-Americans were being interred in concentration camps.  Davis won the issue with Roosevelt, and some Asians were permitted to enlist in a special regiment, (including one future senator) but the camps remained. He also steered VOA programming toward news and away from propaganda. He wanted to retain the objectivity of a his former newscast. In some ways his view agreed with that of John Chancellor who saw VOA as "selling" America as an idea by upholding it's ideals.

 When OWI closed in 1945 Davis took on a role at ABC as a newscaster weeknights. there he criticized McCarthy in the red scare, and opposed Wallace in 1948. He left radio in 1953 and gave TV news a try in 1954 then retired for real. He wrote, published collections of his writing, and died in 1958.

The Midnight Jamboree WEVD (Part 1)

The Midnight Jamboree sounds like another barn dance type of program. It's not. Host Gene King worked from 7:00 PM to 4:00 AM. That shift included "The Midnight Jamboree" and whatever else they threw at him. More here.

The  Jamboree aired six days a week, and was sponsored by Alka-seltzer back in the golden era of late-night request programs. Starting in 1936, he hosted the program at least into 1941 running against the "Milkman's Matinee" on WNEW-AM. Some issues of Downbeat Magazine note the program still airing in 1958, though clearly with a new host. *Interesting note: the Midnight Jamboree and the call letters WEVD appear multiple times in the personal letters of Ayn Rand.  Even while she recognized them as "pink" (a reference to communism) she remained an avid listener .

The Midnight Jamboree debuted in 1936, back when 1330 WEVD-AM still shared time with WBBR-AM and WHAZ.  WBBR was owned by the Jesuits Watchtower Society, and ran all religious teaching. The share-time continued until 1957 when the station was sold, under some duress to Tele-Broadcasters, who only held the license for 2 years before selling 1959.That buyer, John Camp retained the license and bought WHAZ in 1973. Salem bought WEVD in 1979 then WPOW in 1984 finally unifying the license. They were the last remaining AM dayshare agreement operating in New York City.

Gene graduated from the Ohio State University in 1934, and made a bee-line for radioland. He learned his chops on WEVD. In that time it was owned by the Jewish Daily Forward,a newspaper that still exists but now owns zero radio stations. That was by no means the entirely of his career. He also did man-on-the-street" interviews for them in 1939. Still on WEVD in 1940, Gene King also announced for the "It Happened To Me" a daytime drama.

Then he went on to WOR-AM in 1940 under the Mutual Network where he came in as a DJ and left as the manager of program operations until 1947.  He left that gig to move to Boston to be the Program Director at WCOP-AM in Boston. In 1951 he left that post to become the director of radio in Europe for the Economic Co-operation Administration (ECA). The ECA was a United States government agency set up in 1948 to administer the Marshall Plan. It was based in Paris. Prior to that he'd had some nebulous involvement with the French Broadcasting System (FBS) which operated on shortwave internationally. He became the program manager of Voice Of America, out of New York in 1954.

His trail peters out after that. From about 1965 to 1963 it seems he was the WCBS Radio program director, then was elected to the advisory council of the VOA English-teaching radio programs. Then  he pops up again in 1971 joining the Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB) as program director,  working out of Washington D.C. He held that post into 1974, then after that there's just nothing. A 1983 copy of the Broadcasting Cable Yearbook had him still there as the VP of broadcasting. He had to be in his late 60s by then.

***You can read Part 2 HERE***