WAAT-AM in 1922

 

There are two gentlemen pictured here, C.J. Ingram and Frank Bremer and this is a Prohibition joke. It appears in a 1923 issue of Radio News. First— the gag: In 1919 the Eighteenth Amendment passed in 1919 and was ratified by 46 out of 48 states. The Volestead act was then ratified, and the commercial sale of alcohol was banned in the U.S. based on WWI-ear anti-German sentiments, and Christian radicalism. 

Private ownership and consumption of booze were not banned, but some states were more restrictive. Home wine-making became very popular, with some wineries even producing a grape jelly product called "Vine-Glo" and another which was basically a grape brick. [LINK] In these cases as was with a pile of raisins, amateurs could make their own wine. So C.J. and Frank here are soliciting recipes, and apparently following some home fermenting difficulties.

Frank V. Bremer was the founder of WAAT. He appears in the book Airwaves of New York which states that Frank started tinkering with wireless as early as 1910. That year he also organized the Jersey City Wireless Club. He was born in 1894, so he would have been all of 16 years old. But we do have documentation that goes back almost that far, so this is a completely reputable claim. More here.

But I find the written record to be somewhat convoluted. 2IA, first appears in a July 1913 issue of the Department of Commerce Radio Stations report [SOURCE]. But at that time, it was owned by Royce A. Winfred located at 1329 49th street, in Brooklyn, NY and operating at 500 watts. The July 1914 issue is the same. That 1913 issue is literally issue #1 so I don't think we have an authoritative source that goes back further. Some websites claim that in 1914 Frank received both amateur and commercial radio operator's licenses. I've not been able to confirm that, but it fits the time line. More here.

In the July 1915 issue both Bremer and Winfred appear, but Frank is operating 2ARN, a different amateur station. (Starting in 1920 the annual Commerce Department station lists were split into two publications, separating the the Amateur stations.)  In the June 1920 issue of Amateur Radio stations of the United States, 2ARN, is now operated by George A. Bennett, on 40 Argyle place, Arlington, NJ at 18 watts. This is the same in the June 1922 issue. In the June 1923 issue George has moved to Twilight Ave in Keansburg, NJ. Bremer's first appearance with 2IA is in the June 1923 issue. The 1923 the Citizens Call book puts 2IA at 3613 Boulevard in Jersey City, operated by F. V. Bremer, a matching entry.

The station we know as WAAT was originally known was 2IA. Different sources put it's start in 1922, or as late as 1926.  The argument is mostly based in semantics, it goes back much earlier. Airwaves uses the 1926 date for the start of WAAT, but in 1926 Frank was operating a radio shop at 210 Jackson Avenue under the call sign 2IA, his amateur station. The August 1926 Bulletin refers to this station as WKBD in a list of "additions" to the June 1925 list. By September he got the call sign changed to WAAT.

One note on 2IA, The Jersey Review paid to broadcast from Bremer's facilities as early as 1920. There have been claims that this paid program was meets the definition of the first commercial radio program ever. It's plausible. You can easily find references to Bremer's radio operations like the below 1921 issue of Radio News:

The Jersey Review is where we meet C.J. Ingram. The Jersey Review was in publication from 1920 to 1941 when it became the "Jersey Guide." Even the authoritative Directory of New Jersey Newspapers 1765 - 1970 only has question marks for the end of the Jersey Guide. [SOURCE] A 1922 issue of the Radio Dealer names Frank Bremer as the "Radio Editor" of the Jersey Guide.  Mr. C. J. Ingram, was managing editor of the Jersey Review. [SOURCE] Ingram was also the vice president of the Radio Broadcasting Society of America. Though in 1923 they're described as "...thirteen or more small broadcasters." Members included WHN and WAAT at the very least. [The treasurer was C.B. Cooper, executive secretary George Schobel,  and President was John E. O'Connor]

In his autobiography I Have a Lady in the Balcony, George Ansbro puts C.J. Ingram at the Jersey
Journal as the radio Editor around 1932. His column was called the "One Dialer" still hosting a 30 minute Sunday afternoon program on WAAT. In 1935, the book Before The Mike by Ted Husing confirms the same. The November 1933 issue of the Crosley Broadcaster records the name of the program as "Stardust" airing from 12:30 to 1:00 PM. He continued to write the column through at least 1936.

Bremer continued to operate WAAT-AM for decades. They opened a studio in Manhattan in 1927 at 34 W. 28th Street. The station moved to the Douglas Hotel on Hill Street in 1941. Then in 1947, they got into FM radio and 94.7 WAAT began broadcasting. Bremer continued to run the show until 1958 when eh sold the AM and Fm stocks to the National Telefilm Associates. The big mystery in all of this, is the line "GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN" below that comic that started all this. Both Bremer and Ingram were still very much alike, and even still on air in 1923. Prohibition lasted until 1933. I'm not sure what was gone by 1923. Maybe just 2IA being replaced by WAAT.

The Gene Kaye Show

 

Not Danny Kaye or Carol Kaye, Harold Kaye, Lenny Kaye, Nora Kaye, Sammy Kaye, Paul Kaye, not even Buddy Kaye. There are after all quite a few successful and at least semi-famous Kayes. (He's also no relation to the Jeff Kaye whose DJ'd at WHIM, WRIB, WKBM and WBZ.) But this is the first time I've written about Gene Kaye, and Gene Kaye isn't even actually a Kaye. He's a Kolber.

Back in 1998 Gene Kolber was the honoree in an event celebrating his 40-year career in radio around the Lehigh Valley. The Laneco Christmas Spectacular is no small show, it's hosted at the Stabler area which seats over 10,000. At the time Kaye was still doing a weekly oldies show at 99.9 WODE from 6:00 to 7:00 PM Sundays. I haven't been able to confirm but I think he's still alive today and 93 years old. That flyer above is from 1964, the top single on the flip side is "Surfin' Bird" by the Trashmen.

Even then Kaye claimed to be the first DJ who broke an Elvis record on the air. As the story goes, he snapped a 45 rpm single of "Don't Be Cruel" right in half live on his program at WIEL-AM in Elizabethtown, KY. His show "Tunes around Town" aired 6:00 to 11:00 PM and within minutes there was a feisty crowd outside. That would have been way back in 1956. According to Billboard it was the #2 single that year, right behind "Heartbreak Hotel" also by Mr. Presley. 

Let's take a short sidebar into the history of the Billboard Hot 100. Elvis’ “That’s All Right” came out in 1954, his first commercial single. But the Billboard Hot 100 did not exist until 1958.  Prior to that, they had only 4 charts, mostly similar to what Cashbox was publishing previously (below). It's also notable that in 1956 the Top 30 "best sellers" chart was expanded to a Top 50. Not that it affected Elvis that year; all his charting singles were in the top 15.

• Best Sellers in Stores (Top 50)
  
• Most Played by Jockeys
• Most Played in Jukeboxes
• The Top 100

This is relevant because the success of “That’s All Right” was incomparable to "Don't Be Cruel" and misunderstanding those charts might lead you to misunderstand the relevance. 1956 was a huge year for Elvis; he had 5 top 50 singles that year. Elvis's success changed pop music for decades. I'm not sure why Gene busted that platter, but in 1955 Elvis had zero singles on that top 50. 1956 was year of Elvis's first and second studio records; both eponymous. Before that were only singles, mostly regional. So if the incident was before mid-March I'll believe that Kaye just didn't' see the future of Elvis yet. If it was after... I'm not sure I believe it at all. But it does appear in the September 15th issue of Billboard under VOX JOX under the sub-heading "Presley Panic."  It reports fans demanded he apologize for the incident. His unnamed sponsor responded by buying a 15 minute segment to feature nothing but Elvis. For what it's worth, the book Elvis: A Radio History from 1945 to 1955 by Aaron Webster stops before this incident occurred.

from kimsloans.wordpress.com

Gene never really went national. But throughout his career he remained a locally popular figure.  In 1959, he tried to make The Devils career, hurriedly re-recording their single "The Devil Dance" when the Capitol Records plant was on strike.There's a great promo picture of him with Jan and Dean in 1960. I thought he was just at 790 WAEB-AM in this period but his headshot is in the September 4th issue of Billboard repping WAAT in Trenton NJ and naming the Four Freshman as his favorite vocal group. I did confirm that in the May 1961 issue of Cashbox (below) The December 1960 issue notes his hiring from WAEB and his original show the Notre Dame bandstand."

"Gene has given up his career as deejay Gene Kaye ( WAAT-Trenton, NJ) to join Richard Osias in the builder’s new music firms. Kobler, a lawyer, will act as administrative liaison man between the Osias parent organization and its recently formed artist management firm, Janel Enterprises. He will help guide the fortunes of Janel, two music publishing firms, Docir and Pao, and Perri Records."

His career largely peaked in the 1960s. In 1961 he appears in 16 Magazine with Annette Funicello. In 1963 Lesley Gore was appearing at his Sock Hops. Billboard published a picture of them together in the June 22nd issue that year. Galaxies IV played his Fairgrounds show in 1962. [Source] In 1964 he appeared in Cashbox to hand an award to Bobby Rydell for being very wholesome. That same year the Beach Boys appeared at his Dance Party event on the Allentown Fairgrounds. In 1965, Little Richard, The Chiffons, and the Sir Douglas Quintet performed at Gene Key's Summer Festival of the Stars. In 1966 he appeared with the Bobby Fuller Four on the Ed Hurst Aquarama TV program. One of his few TV appearances.

I think that's the same year that Jay and the Techniques won one of his talent contests which got them signed to Smash records. Which is probably the reason that in 1968 he got a quote about the band members' draft status into KRLA Beat magazine. He began to champion local band The Cyrkle in 1966 but that ended with Sheryl Records, Inc. v. The Cyrkle  in 1968 and Kolber Vs. Cyrkle in 1969. Remember Kolber was an attorney himself. But so was Marty Fried in The Cyrkle. In a sharp reversal of the normal outcome... The Cyrkle won (so much as that is possible) and were able to collect royalties. For his part, Gene never said much about it.

If all these dates are to be believed, Kaye started out at WIEL in 1956, then jumped to WHOL in 1958, then WEAB in 1959, and WAAT in 1960. He stayed there until at least 1961. It's unclear when he started at WAEB again but he had a show by 1964 which I can confirm via the Fabulous Forty flyer below.  That 1964 line up is a solid line up: Jay "Jumpin' Jay"Sands, Ernie Stiegler, Gene "Jivin' gene" Kaye, Joe "Tiger Joe" McLaine, Gary "Daddy G" Levine, Perry "Merry Perry" Allen. I may write up the whole list some day. I found a 1962 regional survey for WAEB on line and its line up varies a bit. McLaine is still there as is Stiegler and Sands but Keys isn't. The two other faces are Kerm Gregory, [link] and Don Bruce [link].

Anyway the two surveys narrows down the window for his return to WAEB to be in 1963 or 1964. In 1968 Gene Kaye was named the National sales director of the parent company Rust Communications. But by 1969 his record hops were passé, FM radio was on the rise and free FM was on the rise. He focused on marketing for a long time. In his own words "Mitch Epstein helped me immensely after I realized that radio was no longer for me."

But he returned to the airwaves in 1988 at WAEB and played 1950s and 1960s rock, a format already called "oldies." In 1999, Jeff Frank brought back a bunch of DJs for a "Legends Weekend" to be held at WODE then an Oldies station. The DJ lineup included: Gene Kaye, Jay Edwards, Johnny Michaels, “Frantic” Freddy Frederick (aka Freddy Milander), Mickey Haggerty, Super Lou, Jim Lloyd, Barry George, Jim Reed, Bob Pharo, Guy Randall Ackley,  Neil Stevens,  Guy Harpo, Bill Sheridan and Jeff Frank. Rod Wolfe posted the tapes on Youtube. [SOURCE]

Jose Fritz Collection

By 2000 Kaye had started booking reunion concerts: Freddie Cannon, The Tokens, Lou Christie, The Angels, The Crystal all the old groups, at least the ones that were alive. In 2002 The Morning Call newspaper announce Kaye was to return to WODE again with a regular program.

Some of the best collected information out there on Gene Kaye is to be found in the book Deadwax From the Vinyl House by Justin Cipollini. You can check it out here.  Gene Kaye died in 2008. He is survived by his daughter, Suzy Kolber, who is a sportscaster for ESPN.

RCA Victor's In The Groove

RCA Victor's "In The Groove" was in circulation beginning in March of 1946 and running into 1949. they operated under editor Frank O'Connell until 1948 then Charles Schafhauser. (Schafhauser had previously been a script writer at WPEN in Philadelphia.) In the Groove was a small 12-page, 9' x 6' magazine featuring their own artists promotional fluff. It also contained RCA-centric radio news for it's radio-centric readers. While this January 1949 issue has the total unknown Jane Pickens on the cover other issues bore the faces of  Wayne King, Perry Como, Louis Prima, Sammy Kaye, Charlie Spivak, Desi Arnaz,  and Erskine Hawkins.

This issue is notable for both containing a Leonard Feather feature on Dizzy Gillespie, a blurbs on  stations WKBW, WAAT, WJZ, and WBBC. But most importantly it announces "RECORD BAN OVER, " the end of the Petrillo recording ban. This was not the 1942 - 1944 strike but the later 1948 strike that was his personal downfall. Petrillo ended it in December of that year making 1949 a banner year for new recordings. Bebop had gone largely unrecorded because of the ban and Gillespie himself would have a banner year.

You Can Download it 

HERE

Bebop Hits The Radio

I like Jazz, but I have a particular soft spot for Bebop. As a genre, it was short-lived starting with Coleman Hawkins highlights in the early 1940s and petering out into novel but less atonal work by Sonny Stitt and his peers. Around 1948, at the relative peak of the genre it made the leap to radio— in all it's atonal improvisational glory.

In the book Why Jazz Happened  author Marc Myers quotes Walter Gil Fuller describing how not just jazz but Bebop specially made it into the popular culture.

"The first promoters to successfully present 'bop' were Monte Kay, who produced the nightly concerts here at the Royal Roost, and Symphony Sid, the WMCA all-night disc jockey. In 1945 they sponsored the concert debut of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie at Town Hall and since then have been active in presentation and promotion of be-bop in New York.  Several other disc jockeys have been instrumental in bringing the music to a wider audience: Fred Robbins and Bill Williams of WOV, Leonard Feather of WHN, Willie Bryant and Ray Carroll of WHOM, Jerry Roberts and Bill Cook of WAAT, Woody Woodard of WLIB, and Dan Burley and Fred Barr of WWRL..."

This is your short list of makers and shakers in jazz circa 1950. I've written about a few of them before, namely Symphony Sid, Willie Bryant and Ray Carroll, and Fred Robbins. Those are certainly the bigger of the few names on that short list. Leonard Feather is also famed but more for his jazz writing at this date.Those other names you don't recognizance are all still worth knowing. Bill Cook was actually mentioned in Philip Roth's book, American Pastoral.

"...Bill Cook, the smooth late-night Negro disc jockey of the Jersey station WAAT. Musical Caravan, Bill Cook's show, I ordinarily listened to in my darkened bedroom on Saturday nights. The opening theme was Ellington's "Caravan," very exotic, very sophisticated, Afro-Oriental rhythms, a belly-dancing beat..."

That's all true actually.  William B. Helmreich even re-quotes some of the same passage in his book, The Enduring Community: The Jews of Newark and MetroWest, making the connection between a major Jewish population center and black culture. Cook was actually popular enough he later had a program on WATV-TV called Stairway to Stardom. He started on WAAT-AM in 1947, in 1951 just 3 years later The New York age magazine was claiming that Cook had been the first black DJ in the New York metro. Around the same time in 1948 Jerry Roberts was doing a new midnight show at WAAT titled Top Flight Time. But they were both jazz men on the same station, Roberts often filled in for Cook when he was out. Though Cook was more popular, Roberts has been on WAAT since 1942 hosting his own program Swing Shift.

In 1948 Ebony magazine listed off what they claimed were the only 16 black DJs in America. (This website claims they missed one) On that list was Woody Woodard of WLIB-AM.  But Ebony also claimed in 1986 that Woodard was New York's only Black DJ in 1946!  That certainly predates Cook. In 1947 radio guides show him on a 7:00 AM news program on WLIB so I'll call it at least plausible. Above you can see a picture of two Girl Scouts present an award to Woody Woodard at WLIB in 1947.

Dan Burley wasn't just a DJ, he literally wrote the book on hipsterdom, the Original Handbook of Harlem Jive, published in 1944. He wrote for the Amsterdam News, New York Age, Jet Magazine, and Ebony. It was news when WWRL hired him to do a radio program, the Skiffle Club, in 1947. Then in 1948 he crossed the street to WLIB. But he was out of radio and back to writing by 1949. Also interesting to note he helped propel the Skiffle craze in the UK with his band "Dan Burley and his Skiffle Boys."

PD Fred Bar and SM Edith Dick ran WWRL, they wooed Hal Jackson to the station which is notable enough. But they also brought in Tommy Smalls aka Dr., Jive and many others. In 1946 after Fred returned from WWI and a 31 months at AFRS he started moving in some jazz programming. But he himself was never a jazz DJ.  Fred Barr hosted Gospel Time on WWRL from about 1958 through at least 1964. His connection to bebop was more like Monte Kay's. Without jazz men on both sides of the equation— both events and media, bebop wouldn't have prospered as it did.