Booger Brothers Broadcasting System

Almost everyone knows what a Les Paul guitar is, but history seem to be forgetting Les Paul the person. Firstly, his real name was Lester William Polsfuss, He never legally changed his name. Les Paul was a stage name he started using in the mid-1930s. It wasn't even his first stage name. Paul didn't start buildings guitars until the 1940s. Before his guitar era he was a radio performer, a recording engineer, a music director and for a time ...a pirate radio operator. Whole books have been written about the mans many storied accomplishments but I'd like to focus on radio and one pirate station in particular. More here. Paul was a genius engineer his ability to build a transmitter, or even an entire radio station is not in doubt —only the details around this particular tale.

The story is fabulous, who doesn't like a tale mixing wild house parties with pirate radio and hot jazz.  But it's main problem is that his biographies skip over it. The biographical reference is admittedly brief. It appears in his 1993 biography Les Paul: An American Original, by Mary Alice Shaughnessy. Les Paul was still alive when it was published, he died in 2009. That overlap also gives it more credence, but contemporary references were hard to find.

So let's start with his early radio experiences. He received some engineering training as early as 8 years old by an unnamed engineer from WTMJ. He became a musician as a teenager. He played with Rube Tronson's Texas Cowboys, and played with Sunny Joe Wolverton's Radio Band in St. Louis, MO, on KMOX. The book The Mighty 'MOX by Sally and Rob Rains identifies corroborates that early KMOX program. It is otherwise very obscure.

A young guitar player known as "Rhubarb Red" was part of The International Oil Burner Show between 4:30 and 7 AM from 1927 to 1930."

Les relocated with Joe Wolverton's band to Chicago and started playing on WBBM with them, and then solo as Rhubarb Red. He was performing as both a country artist and a jazz solist. As Red he started recording with Art Tatum which is when his career really took off. The book Famous Wisconsin Musicians by Susan Masino also has him performing at WISN in Milwaukee, WRJN in Racine, and both KBGA and KWTO in Springfield, IL and of course WJJD and WIND in Chicago. This is further referenced in the book Encyclopedia of American Radio 1920 - 1960 by Luther Sies

"Rhubarb Red. A CW tenor, guitarist and harmonica player, Rhubarb Red appeared daily at 6:30 A.M. and again at 9:00 AM. in an all request program WJJD, Chicago, IL; and WIND, Gary, IN, 1935-1937."

That same book has Les relocating to New York in 1937. The official Les Paul website puts it in 1938, but close enough. But 1938 is definitely when he began performing with Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians on NBC radio.  In 1941 He returns to Chicago and becomes the music director for radio stations WJJD and WIND. So from his career history we can say definitively that his pirate station existed for a period of time between 1938 and 1941.

Here we have the pirate station boxed in my context. As the legend goes... in Jackson Heights, NY, Les created his own local radio station and broadcast jam sessions. His makeshift studio full of professional musicians. The station operated at low wattage and was only receivable locally, but due to the proximity of LaGuardia airport that included aircraft. Yes, the claim is that the airplanes flying into LGA would get scrambled signals of jazz music mixing with coordinates from the tower. Purportedly he solved that engineering problem with a "wave trap."

How much of that is true? Well, Jackson Heights is a neighborhood in the northwestern part of the Queens in New York City. Les Paul and his wife Mary Ford had an apartment in 40-15 81 St. That address is only about 2 miles from LGA. Most sources describe that as a studio apartment. But Les Paul in an interview said "Getting union cards jumped our pay to $150 a week and allowed us to take furnished apartments at Electra Court." Advertisements for the units described it as "The House of to-morrow, ready to-day!" The developers ran ads for furnished apartments in Down Beat magazine, specifically advertising to musicians —just as Les described. So here was have a plausible reason he had such access to professional musicians; his building was full of them!

Different versions of the tale claim that he set up his studio in the building’s basement, near the furnace room. His friends came over and they played together. But his friends at the time are now enormously famous musicians: band members from the biggest big bands of the era. Not the band leaders but the working union card musicians from Benny Goodman's band, Glenn Miller’s band, Artie Shaw's band, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey's bands, Fred Waring’s band, Bob Crosby’s band and Lionel Hampton's band. It's almost too fantastical to be real. How many of them lived at Electra Court?

I did eventually find a contemporary reference in the July 1940 issue of Popular Mechanics. I think that's Ernie Newton on bass which might make that band some iteration of the Les Paul trio. Did the FCC pay him a visit? Did he really take the  mic and announce the station name as "Booger Brothers Broadcasting?"

The Popular Mechanics article is missing the "Booger Brothers" connection but everything else is there. The general location, the famous musicians, and the broadcasting equipment stretching from the apartment to the basement. A 1953 issue of the Atkinson's Evening Post claims that Les gave the station ID as "The Booger Brothers, The Pink and Yellow network, top of your dial."  But Les went on to say "It was a good station... but the law would have caught up with us if an accident hadn't beat it to the punch." What accident? The Booger Brothers came to an abrupt end in 1941. While jamming in his apartment basement in 1941, Paul was nearly electrocuted to death. [SOURCE]

Paul describes it himself in the book The Early Years of the Les Paul Legacy, 1915-1963 by Robb Lawrence. "I stuck my hand in the transmitter when I shouldn't have..." Bassist Ernie Newton knocked him free but he was seriously injured. After an ice bath they took Paul to the hospital. It took him two years to recuperate according to some sources. This is not entirely true but Booger Brothers was still off the air.

In 1941 or 1942 he moved to Chicago where he became the music director for radio stations WJJD and WIND. A promotional photo dated October of 1941 puts him in the Chicago CBS studio. Newspaper radio schedules still show his trio playing on local stations: they were as on air at KLZ and KVOR in May of 1942. A November schedule has him on WEOA, WCKY, WGAR, WHIO, and KMOX at different times. Some biographies have him moving to "Hollywood" in 1943. That's partly true. The only radio he did after that was for the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) because he got drafted. Though he did do some films. The Bing Crosby radio show that gets connected to this move was Kraft Music Hall and he didn't appear on that program until 1945. He got his own eponymous radio show in 1950. It was a 15-minute slot on NBC with his trio now composed of himself, Mary Ford, and rhythm player Eddie Stapleton. His career never stopped but I think that's the last major radio milestone on that long and storied career I mentioned.

Whistling J. Donald Wilson

Our story starts with two radio announcers born only a few years apart with similar names, both working as radio announcers on national networks. Donald Harlow "Don" Wilson and John Donald Wilson. With John and Don being relative homonyms, some confusion was inevitable. Multiple sources claims that in 1938, he had adopted the name "Norman Wilson, but later changed it back to J. Donald Wilson. This is correct and is  documented in the January 1, 1938 issue of Broadcasting Magazine [LINK] which states (on pg 50) in their Behind the Mike column the following:

"J. Donald Wilson, Hollywood announcer on the 'Charlie Chan' and 'Strange as It Seems' transcription serials produced by Raymond R. Morgan Co... has changed his name for professional purposes to Norman Wilson. To avoid confusion with Don Wilson, announcer of the NBC Jack Benny program, J. Donald Wilson, a year ago inverted his name, but it didn't sound right. He has now taken the new name."

The timing of this text is apropos, because on page 19 of the same issue it reports that the other Don Wilson repeated his 1936 victory and was chosen as the best announcer of 1937. (This happened almost annually thru about 1952) John clearly felt like his career was in the shadow of the other Don Wilson. But the newsy, present-tense delivery of the text makes a mess of the chronology. Is his real name Donald John Wilson or John Donald Wilson, which is the inverted form?  His headstone reads "John Donald Wilson" so I take that to be his real name. But that means that his resume may be divided over three pseudonyms.  

The choice of  the name "Norman Wilson" has no clear origin. It was the name of the short-lived bandleader of the Norman Wilson Orchestra on KRKD in Los Angeles. A decade later but there was also a Norman Wilson Co. record distribution company located at 2562 Holmes St. in Kansas City, MO. They operated from at least 1952 - 1960 moving London, Mercury and Hollywood records. They appear in both issues of Billboard and Cashbox in that era. Norman Wilson Distribution had moved to 1914 Washington Avenue in St. Louis. 

Our John Donald Wilson was born on June 5th, 1904 and was a radio and film writer, producer, and voice actor, born in Kansas City, MO. There lies the only connection to that record distribution company. But based on that I'm guessing there is at least a family connection there. It's too much of a coincidence.  But his fame centers mostly around his writing on The Whistler. The Whistler began as a radio mystery drama which debut on May 16th 1942 and ran until September 22nd 1955 on CBS. That's a 13-year run.  There were 692 episodes. This was followed by a series of 8 Columbia films, (below) and a short-lived syndicated TV version in 1954. That's a home run by any measure.

• The Whistler – 1944
• The Mark of the Whistler – 1944
• The Power of the Whistler – 1945
• Voice of the Whistler – 1945
• Mysterious Intruder – 1946
• The Secret of the Whistler – 1946
• The Thirteenth Hour – 1947
• The Return of the Whistler

As both a writer and producer on the radio series, you would hope J. Donald Wilson would have earned some decent royalties and licensing fees. Not that Wilson was the only writer on the series; George Allen was the main writer on most of the later episodes, taking over duties in 1944. Allen donated over 100 of those scripts to UC Santa Barbara [LINK] making for a nice research library. Allen actually made some pretty significant changes to the structure of the series, even changing The Whistler from a participant to an observer. Nonetheless, when the first film was in development, it's producer Rudolph Flothow hired J. Donald Wilson to draft that story. More here and here.

Despite writing and producing The Whistler, Wilson wasn't the announcer for The Whistler.  That duty went to Joe Kearns and Gale Gordon in the early episodes and later Bill Forman. Forman was an odd pick. His prior resume included no acting credits at all, and his big gigs were the Fitch Bandwagon and Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge. But Forman was a natural, and later even co-wrote scripts. More here.

But there was a fourth narrator, Everett Clarke. At the same time Signal Oil was sponsoring it's broadcasts on the West Coast (KNX, KQW etc.) from Feb. 1946 to Feb. 1947, a completely separate and local broadcast of The Whistler was airing Sunday nights at on WBBM in Chicago sponsored by Meisterbrau beer.  They used the same scripts and music as the Los Angeles-based production but broadcast it as a live performance, with an audience and of course, a completely different cast.  It even aired with the same opening narration:

"I am the Whistler, and I know many things, for I walk by night. I know many strange tales, many secrets hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows. I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak. And so I tell you the amazing story of..."

In addition to the radio series "The Whistler", J. Donald Wilson also wrote, produced, and/or directed The Adventures of Bill Lance, The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe, and Dark Venture. Wilson also did his own voice work in radio in the 1930s.  He voiced Mickey Mouse in select 1938 broadcasts of The Mickey Mouse Theater of the Air as well as other characters in Disney productions such as The Reluctant Dragon. He was the announcer on Strange As It Seems and Charlie Chan. After more than a decade of acting on radio, in march of 1945, he became production head of NBC Blue (aka ABC) and later was promoted to vice president. More here.

The Adventures of Bill Lance, private eye, aired in two non-consecutive runs. This detective series first aired on CBS was from April 1944 into September 1945. Wilson rebooted the series at ABC and it ran from June 1947 into January 1948, sponsored by planters peanuts. John McIntire portrayed Bill Lance in the first run, and Gerald Mohr took on the role in the second run.  Mohr  had been in the Mercury Theatre and was quite good. Wilson didn't write the scripts in that second run. A short news piece in The Winona Republican-Herald claimed that ABC hired writers specializing in criminology for the series.  Dick Joy announced both runs, with some fill in by Owen James. Adam Graham will tell you anything you want to know about it More here.

Nero Wolfe was different. That detective already existed, and Wilson just re-worked it for radio. By the time the Nero Wolfe series aired in 1950, author Rex Stout had already published 17 detective novels in the series. The radio series only ran into 1951 but the books kept coming for another 25 years.

The more famous, Donald "Don" Wilson was born on September 1st, 1900, was an American announcer and actor in radio and television. He was sometimes described as having a "Falstaffian" voice. This term is usually used to describe a fat jolly fellow who's a bit mad kind of like John Belushi. The reference is very old, it alludes to Shakespeare's character Sir John Falstaff in the play Henry IV from 1597. You can't be too debauched on the radio, so Wilson was just a bit cheeky. The reputation comes from his time as the rotund announcer and comic foil to the star of The Jack Benny Program. That reputation came from Jack Benny himself, who made Wilson the butt of numerous fat jokes. When they made the jump to television, Jack toned down the fat jokes a little.

His career has been written about much more extensively so I'll just hit the pre-Jack Benny highlights.Wilson began his radio career as a singer over Denver radio station KFEL-AM in 1923. By 1929, he was working at KFI-AM, and shortly afterwards for Don Lee at KHJ-AM, in Los Angeles. Though best known for his comedy work with Jack Benny, Wilson had a background as a sportscaster,  right before working with Benny he was actually the announcer on the George Gershwin series. Wilson first worked with Benny on his April 6, 1934 broadcast. The program ran for 30 years.

Don Wilson died April 25th, 1982 and J. Donald Wilson outlived him by 1 year and 9 months, dying on January 26th, 1984. 

Suppertime Frolic

In 1940 they advertised 1130 WJJD-AM as "The Largest Independent radio Station in the Nation."It was probably even true at 20,000 watts over Chicago. Some announcers left WLW for slots at WJJD. They claimed the radio station was founded by the Loyal Order of Moose.. that might have been true as well. They did a lot of public service programming which was important to their image.. Unsurprisingly their sports programming was wildly more popular. But what has proved the most enduring was the Suppertime Frolic.

Billboard dismissed the program as "...a popular program for rural consumption, patched up to sell a number of products, most of them patent medicines." Ouch. It had been founded by A&R man Ken Nelson later famously of Capitol records. Early on it was hosted by announcer and emcee Uncle Ervin Viktor, the program was panned by city press.
The program aired Monday through Saturday from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM.

In 1935 DJ Randy Blake (aka Harold Weinstein) joined the program as a sacred singer. He had previously been at WBBM and felt the pull of hillbilly music. By 1941 he was officially it's host. The program went on to have the Kasapar Sisters, Patsy Montana, Red Foley, Lonnie Glosson, the Cumberland Ridge Runners, Jimmy Dale, Les Paul (as Rhubarb Red), The Kentucky Mountaineers, Bob Atcher and Bonnie Blue Eyes and others as entertainers.  Randy didn't leave the program until 1957, when he moved to WLW. excepting a short stretch in 1948 when he served in WWII, he hosted the program for 22 years.

But after WWII most of the live talent was gone. Randy just play3ed Country Western Disc Jockey. So it was no surprise when Blake took the program with him to WLW and moved it's time slot to 8:00 PM to 9:30 PM, Tuesday through Sunday. The days changed, but the program got shorter. The name quickly changed to "The Randy Blake Show." I get the impression it didn't last long.

Halloween Martin

Halloween Martin was, by most definitions, the first female disk jockey, and quite almost certainly the first in the Chicago metro. She was a former newspaper reporter in the home economic department of the Chicago Herald Examiner Newspaper. She was hired by KYW-AM in 1929 and a year later they made her the host of the Musical Clock. This was a decade before the term disc jockey was coined in the 1940s. Her program was a morning show and she wasn't just an announcer... the format of the program made her one of the first modern DJs ever.  A 1929 issue of radio Digest wrote a little more about her background:

For two and a  half years her time was occupied answering the home decoration problems  that came to the Prudence Penny department, writing her columns and giving her daily Radio talk on interior  decoration. Lectures at cooking schools  and clubs added variety to the daily  grind.

Miss Halloween Martin, was just a 28 years old DePaul University grad with some news paper experience. She gave the time, temperature and weather every 5 minutes from 7:00 AM to 9:00 AM.   The program intermixed segments of music, news and chatter on a schedule like modern commercial radio. At the time tightly scheduled  programs based on an hour "clock" were not yet the norm. The show was certainly tailored after the Alarm Klok Klub on KJBS-AM. Most of these programs seems to descend from Rambling with Gambling"which was also called "The Musical Clock" on WOR-AM in NY. That program debuted in 1925.  In 1931 the Schenectady Gazette wrote the following regarding Miss Martin:

"Listeners-in arise, dress, boil their breakfast eggs and catch the 8:15 to the accompaniment of cheery though persistent time bulletin's sent out on KYW'S musical clock by Halloween Martin. Every five minutes from 7 to 9 O'clock each morning, announcement of the exact time punctuates the program of phonograph records. Miss Martin has been the "clock" for two years, graduating from a series of talks on home decorating. which developed from her writing of household helps for the Chicago Herald-Examiner..." 

It's a tad condescending but you can tell the writer is still equating her with an announcer. Other contemporary articles continually describe her as "cheery," and/or "charming." The program ended when KYW-AM moved to Philadelphia. It was relaunched on WBBM-AM in 1934 due to it's local popularity. There the program stayed for 10 years then moved to WCFL-AM for another two before ending it's run. Through most of those years the show`s theme was a piece called "ln a Clock Store."

Art Hellyer is Not Dead

Art Hellyer, said in a 1993 interview on 97.1 WNIB that he wasn't really a DJ he just "played music as a fill between commercials." Hellyer was a mainstay of Chicagoland radio starting back in the 1940s and lasting for five decades. His zany off-beat humor was part of what shaped our modern radio gestalt bridging the gap between guy s like J. Aku Head Pupule and the modern morning zoo. He was on air at WGN, WJOL, WLS, WMAQ, WJJD, WOPA, WIND, WAIT, WOWO, WCFL, WBBM and certainly others. His biography The Hellyer Say is not to be skipped. 

His first show was on WKNA in Charleston, WV in 1947 interviewing auto salesmen.  Despite behaving like Art Hellyer, he was not fired from that job. (In his book he actually devotes a whole chapter to what he was not fired for.) It was a theme in his career. His zany behavior got him ratings. WBBM famously fired him over a dress-code violation and then re-hired him. As he told the Chicago Tribune in 1996 more simply that he got fired "a lot."

"...I counted 14 times. It may have been more than that... I always said every one of my battles was over creative control. I wanted to be creative, and they wanted control."

It's hard to say which of his programs was the most important to his career as several of them held the number one slot in one decade or another. In the 1950s his program The Art Hellyer Show aka the Morning Madcap on 1000 WCFL-AM, again on 780 WBBM with his Supper Club shows in the '60s while also doing mornings at WAIT, Then again on WLS-FM in the '70s until they went progressive rock in 1969. He was number one again on 1160 WJJD-AM in the '80s. His time at WOPA straddles some of that doing WOPA Art Hellyer's Memory Lane in the mid sixties.

What probably got his career going the most was his time on on WCFL. There he was given carte blanche for the first time in his career and he more or less ran amok. He offended big sponsors, like Coca-Cola and General Motors but the listeners loved it.  In he did spend a few serious on air. He advocated for the seat belts in cars in the 1950s and in 1960 spent time explaining to listeners the importance of the then brand new Polio vaccine to quiet the anti-vaccination nuttters. In 2011 he made another come back of sorts and began Internet radio station Party 934. Not bad for a guy that one quipped that "...the average life of a disc jockey in Chicago is three years."

Nocturnal Nighthawks

The story starts with the Coon-Sanders Original Kansas City Nighthawks.  The orchestra began broadcasting in 1922 on WDAF-AM. At the time they were a share time on 730 AM with WHB-AM. They were broadcast live from the Muehlebach Hotel, which still exists today. More here. The group started in 1919, as the Coon-Sanders Novelty Orchestra.  There's nothing racial about the name, Mr. Coon is Carleton Coon and Sanders is pianist Joe Sanders. They took the name Nighthawks because their program aired late at night an approach they took around the country with them on tour in 1924. They first played in Chicago on KYW-AM. More here.

The group left Kansas City for the first time in 1924 for a three-month engagement in a roadhouse in Chicago. WBBM specialized in local, live programming, including a station promotion called the "Nutty Club." With over a million listeners in the US and Canada wiring, phoning or writing in for membership, it was clear that Program Director Charlie Garland, aka "Colonel Nut," and his crew had something good going.Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians, who were named as the official "Nutty Club" orchestra. I'll quote teh St. Petersburg times from 1927...

"...the Nutty Club of WBBM, the Stewart-Warner Air theater known from coast-to-coast for its "Cuckoo Signal" and the other is the orchestra that has made insomnia a famous indoor sport —Coon-Sanders Original Kansas City Nighthawks. Under an arrangement just completed this orchestra is to broadcast exclusively over WBBM by remote control from the Blackhawk Grill; Chicago. It will be heard during the three weekly sessions of the Nutty Club, which start at midnight Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday Nights."

They actually played quite regularly on WBBM and were syndicated coast to coast on CBS after 1928. A 1926 news article described them as playing nightly there at 8:00 PM and again from 11:00 PM to Midnight Tuesdays and Thursdays. the band recorded a large number of sides for Victor, and at lease a few furtively for Vocalion. In 1928 Henry Sellinger made them an offer to bring their late night shindig over to WGN-AM. For the next twenty years they performed at the the Blackhawk Restaurant live on that Chicago Tribune radio station. More here.

In 1932 Carelton Coon came down with a jaw infection and died. He was only 38 years old. Joe Sanders tried to keep the band together, but failed. He started his own group and stayed in music until his death in 1965. The band is celebrated annually at the The Coon Sanders Nighthawks Fans' Bash in in Huntington, WV. Why it's not held in Kansas City or Chicago... I have no idea.

Schmaltz In The Air

Art Kassel did not start out in radio, he just got there in a hurry. He began in Chicago playing in dixieland bands around 1923.  It was a struggle. Eventually he found his way into playing "sweet" ballroom dance music. It was pure schmaltz. There's no other word for it. It was not the music of a serious musician, as it tended to bore real jazz men. But it paid well.

He started his own ballroom dance band in 1926. His orchestra started playing the venetian room of the Southmoor Hotel in Chicago. That was significant. Ballrooms were a good gig, but hotels were a regular paycheck. In 1928 his band began playing at the Metropole Hotel.  (This venue was also the headquarters for Al Capone.) In 1929 he broke into radio. His own Castles in the Air program debuted live at Al Tearney's Grand Auto Inn.  It was at Grand Boulevard and 35th street on the South Side of Chicago.This was a live broadcast for WBBM. 

That attention got them a gig at a bigger venue before the end of 1929.  They were playing at the Terrace Casino room of the Morrison Hotel, still on WBBM. In 1930 they moved to the even bigger place, the Walnut Room at The Bismark Hotel. But I feel the need to remind you that the music was lame. In his book That Toddlin' Town: Chicago's White Dance Bands and Orchestras, Charles Sengstok described the situation thus:

"Since most dance bands sounded alike in those days the challenge for an orchestra broadcasting frequently from one dance venue or another was to develop a special sound that would quickly identify it to listeners.  bands introduced theme songs and tag lines The Musical Gems Of Ray Pearl" or "Art Kassel And His Kassels In The Air." But more than that, they hired arrangers to give their music a distinctive sound, which often resulted in music with more style than substance."

In 1933 they were playing twice a day on 670 WMAQ-AM; once at 7:15 and again after 12:30 PM. That show was carried on the NBC Red Network. In the 1940s they moved the show to The Aragon Ballroom and WGN-AM carried the program. Then on tour in 1940 they did a set of shows on WOR-AM. On December 22nd, 1944 they returned to the Bismark Hotel still live, but still with WGN-AM. But that was just home base, they toured every year not taking a break until 1952, that's 25 consecutive years. In that time it's also worth noting that one of his vocalists, Billy Leach had his own radio career that took off.  I'll have to write about him another day.

In 1951 Art moved to Encino California where he appeared for two years with a new orchestra on a local television program, The Gloria Hart Show. He never went back to radio. He died in 1965 of cancer.

Transcription Mystery Disc #77

I almost never shell out more than junk-shop prices for transcription recordings. But this one spoke to me. In transferring it I applied a slightly heavier filter than usual. This did produce faint artifacts, but the vocals are so amazing that I really wanted them to be clear enough to discern how fast they are actually singing.The Miccolis Sisters were two sisters from a set of 11 children. Mary and Ruth Miccolis were born in 1922 and 1924 respectively. They became country yodelers of some renown at least regionally in the midwest. They were not bumpkins, they were city girls born right in Melrose Park, a Chicago suburb.

In 1938 they won a local talent show called the Rubins Hour which led to an audition for KMOX. That played out well despite the fact that the older of the two was only 16. At KMOX, they began singing harmonies for Pappy Cheshire's group on he Barnyard Follies show and The Old Fashioned Barn Dance show. They also played on the Ozark varieties Program which was syndicated on CBS. The program was sponsored by Dick Slack's Furniture Co. In 1946 They got their own program sponsored by Grove Quinine tablets.

In 1947, Ambrose Haley invited the sisters to perform on his program at the St. Louis Star-Times owned KXOK. This programming was syndicated on the NBC Blue Network. Working with Haley paid off, when Haley got an offer of a job at WIBW in Topeka, All three of them moved to Topeka and joined the Ozark Ramblers playing the Kansas Roundup Program.When he left in 1949 for WREN they stayed on.

They recorded 8 sides for DeLuxe, and two for King. I've only ever seen one of them and none of them are still in print anywhere, anyhow. They also had a songbook with twenty some songs worth of sheet music. This transcription is from a live broadcast, and the Song is the CowBoy Yodel, a song not in the DeLuxe catalog meaning that until now, it's never really been heard by anyone. That's a damn shame.

**************** UPDATE****************

I managed to Contact Ruth Miccolis now married as Ruth Williams. She is still with us and still performing. I hope to collect her few sides and provide her with digitized versions of her catalog. Please contact me if you can be of assistance.

Breakfast with the Johnsons

Reality TV has been an exploding genre since that pasty and trite "Real World" sham graces the cablevision universe with it's debut on MTV in 1992. Twenty seasons later a hundred similarly conceived TV programs have come and gone, and nobody has yet to refer to where reality programming began.

Before reality television there was reality radio. Reality radio, began it's first contrived motions in 1952 on WBBM-AM. It was a half-hour radio show hosted by Cliff Johnson from the kitchen of his Oak Park home. It ran for 10 years.

The show was basically arranged around a breakfast table in the Johnson home. The characters be they real or otherwise were: breadwinner Mr. Johnson, homemaker /wife, Luella, and four daughters, ages 2 to 10: Linda, Pamela, and Vicki. The family pet was a parakeet named Olaf. It died and was mourned on-air. When Mrs. Johnson became pregnant with Cliff Jr. the cast expanded. Read more here.

Girls chatted about school and boys boys, were prominent characters. It mirrored real life in that era milkman and mail man included.

At 7:30 in the morning, Monday through Friday. The microphones were installed all over the Johnson home. Children would wandered in, and the milkman would come in. They talked about each other, Chicago, and the world. It was like Oak Park, IL had its own radio show.

Clifford Johnson was born on a dairy farm in Beresford, SD. He married Luella in 1938. they relocated to Lincoln and it was there that he got a job with the Central States Network. his good reputation there got him a gig at KOIL in Omaha. That high profile gig led him to WBBM in Chicago in 1941.

First he was was host of "Meet the Missus", then "Shopping with the Missus", and "Listen to Cliff". His eponymous show caught the notice of Philip K. Wrigley, who brought him on board at KNX. There he filled in for Jack Bailey during his show "Queen for a Day" and once for Art Linkletter and his segment "Kids Say the Darnedest Things." It was that show that supposedly inspired Cliff to dream up "Breakfast with the Johnsons."

After 10 great years at the breakfast table, Cliff moved on. He became host of "Sounds of Europe." He received the Dwight Eisenhower Award for his news work there. He was managing editor from 1964 to 1968 at 1390 WNUS-AM. Then at the age of 77 he went back to college earned a degree in theology and one on communications. he spent the remainder of his life volunteering and doing community work. In 1993 the Illinois state assembly honored him with a resolution deciding his life's accomplishments.