WEEI at Fenway Park

Suffice it to say... WEEI-AM has a special relationship with Fenway Park, much in the way that the City of Boston has a special relationship with Fenway Park. WEEI goes way back in Boston. They signed on as WEEIin 1924 under the ownership of Edison Electric. The 850 Mhz frequency was actually WHDH until 1994 WEEI sat on 50 Mhz. American Radio Systems purchased the WEEI "intellectual property" but not their license. So they just moved the branding and programming to 850.

They became a talk station in the 1960s far ahead of other AM talkers. They claim to have been New England's first talk radio station. The station began carrying the Celtics in 1987 then were bought by Boston Celtics Communications in 1990, and when the CBS Radio Network's shifted its Boston affiliation to WRKO, they switched to ABC. Then they began adding to their sports line up. WEEI became the flagship station of the Boston Bruins that same year. By late 1991 they became an all-sports station.

After 91 years it seems almost natural for their call letters to be two stories tall over a Red Sox game.

Florrie Bishop Bowering's Mixing Bowl

Florrie Bishop Bowering was a radio personality and self-described dietitian at the University of Connecticut. She was also a radio personality on WTIC-AM way back in 1932.  In May of that year she actually published her first cook book. She was born in 1894 which would have made her about 38 at the time of the program. The show continued until at least 1934. It appears in a Travelers Insurance trade rag radio schedule corroborating the dates. Travelers insurance owned the station in that era.

"Under the supervision of Florrie Bishop Bowering, known among housekeepers throughout New England as the author of numerous cook books and domestic science lecturer, station WTIC conducts a modern radio cooking school, "The Mixing Bowl." ...Miss Bowering broadcasts an informative talk on domestic science. Adjacent to the studios is a modern experimental kitchen, in which every recipe and suggestion offered by the mistress of "The Mixing Bowl" is put through a test."

Her program aired three times a week on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at 3:30 PM and Saturday mornings at 10:00 AM. The program is described by some sources as a "radio cooking school."  She lived on 160 Metcalf Road in Tolland, CT near the University though no broadcasts are known to have come from that location.

Her program aired immediately after Bradley Kinkaid, a syndicated NBC program and  was followed by the "Swift Program" which was syndicated from WEEI-AM.  However, listings from 1931 listed Swift as an NBC program. She died  in 1968. More here.

The Novelty Boys

Jimmie Pierson and Richard "Dick" Klasi were the Novelty Boys,leaders of a touring and yodeling old time country music troupe. I say troupe because their group grew to include a number of other members including Cora Deane, Cleora Cooper, Johnny Buffington and others. Dick and Jimmie were farms boys that first met in 1931 working at the Henry Field Company.

Henry Field was a seed company, they still exist today. Like many small businesses of the era, they sponsored tom on their local radio station. In this case that was 780 WJAG-AM in Norfolk, NE.  WJAG was owned by the Norfolk Daily News, so you can imagine there was some reciprocity there. While the station's main studio was at the Hotel Norfolk, the Henry Field Company programs aired daily from a studio built at one of their branch stores.It is there that Jimmie and Dick debuted on air. They later played KSOO-AM for Henry Field as well. First they played as the Nebraskan Trio, then as The Oklahoma Wranglers which they used for about 3 years. 

They went on to play at KFNF-AM near Shenandoah, IA and on KOIL-AM in Omaha, NE.
In was there that they picked up the name "The Novelty Boys."  There they were sponsored by the Aksarben Horse Show and were also able to play WAAW-AM and WOW-AM. In 1934 they played on KMOX-AM.  They also played for a time on WNAX-AM in Yankton, SD. In 1937 Jimmie Pierson's little brother, Melvin "Willie" Pierson, joined the group. He stayed on for a New England tour that included WABI-AM in Bangor.

In WWII Jimmie went into the service, and his brother Willie filled in for him. the group returned to St. Louis and appeared on several stations, then stayed on at KMA-AM in Shenandoah. When Jimmie returned they tried to reunite, but illness struck and many members struck off. Jimmie and Willie played as part of a trio with Willies wife Lois on WIBW-TV, but the good times were over. Willie has a second career as a DJ on KRFM, a radioman at last.

Gretchen McMullen's Radio Cooking School

Gretchen McMullen's Radio Cooking School on 590 WEEI-AM from Boston and was designed to supplement lessons broadcasted from January to July, 1928.  The book was compiled to promotes the "Housekeeper's Chat" radio show on WEEI.

It was one of the earliest cooking/housekeeping programs , but it turned out to be long-lived. The show was not only still running 14 years later, just not on WEEI.  By then also syndicated on all 12 Yankee Network stations: WNAC-AM, WICC-AM, WEAN-AM, WLLH-AM, WRDO-AM, WTAG-AM, WSAR-AM, WCSH-AM, WLBZ-AM, WTIC-AM, WNBH-AM, and WFEA-AM. That's  according to the December 10th 1938 issue of Radio Guide.  But it's congruous with WNAC being a part in the Yankee Network after 1930. More here.

Alexander Russo refers to her in his book Points on the Dial: Golden Age Radio Beyond the Networks. Apparently John Shepard III had a hand in co-branding “The Gretchen McMullen Household Hour.” More here. The book is worth reading on it's own merits.

In 1941 she appears in the Radio yearbook on the staff of WBZA, and in 1942 she's noted in a 1942 issue of Broadcasting as taking a job at WBZ as a part of the new England Regional Network. The article also describes her as a food expert with 15 years broadcasting experience.  That matches nicely with a start date +/- 1 year from the publication of the that cook book. But where she went after 1943, I have no idea...

The Very Naughty Bob Crane

** Updated in 2025

Before we talk about radio I want to acknowledge that Bob Crane was not a entirely a good person. Some people might say he was naughty, others might be more specific and say deviant or perhaps even a peccant serial philanderer. Today he's called a sex addict. We are not going to get into what he did, or was accused of doing. It'd get this little blog a Google ban. But the fact is, he was a seriously dirty dude. But we're going to focus on radio.

He was born Robert Edward Crane in 1928. He started out as an announcer on 1480 WLEA-AM. It was his first radio gig, but it was in Hornell, New York over 230 air miles form his new wife Ann Terzian, in Stamford, CT. Bob toughed it out, at 1480 WLEA living at the YMCA until he could score a better gig at 1120 WBIS-AM (now WPRX-AM) in Bristol, Connecticut. He bailed on then quickly for a better gig as the morning man at 600 WLIZX-AM in Bridgeport. He stayed there over six years. In 1951, WLIZ purchased WICC and Bob's program moved to the new stick. But he left for a gig Boston, MA at WEEI-AM. He left in 1956 only at the beckoning of the CBS radio network.

CBS gave him the morning show at 1070 KNX-AM in Hollywood. Soon it was the number one rated morning show in Los Angeles. He was known locally as "the king of the airwaves" If you've ever heard an air check, he' was really good on air. [LINK] His guests included Marilyn Monroe, Marvin Gaye, Bob Hope, Jayne Mansfield, and Frank Sinatra. But while number one in his slot, he still was really number two overall behind Dick Whittinghill at 710 KMPC-AM. The two arch rivals were actually friendly and Crane filled in for Dick for a few weeks two decades later in July of 1972. It's interesting that Whittinghill's 1976 autobiography Did You Whittinghill This Morning? makes no reference to Crane at all. (That's probably because of his ...extra circulars.) More here.

It was only in 1965 that be was offered the starring role in "Hogan's Heroes" and became a television star.  In 1974, after years of TV he actually snubbed an offer for a new radio gig. He even had his own eponymous show for 14 whole episodes in 1975. After that his status as a regular at strip joints and discos got him blackballed from Disney, and probably other quarters. The poor performance of the movie Superdad in 1973 kept him out of yet more lead rolls. 

He spent the rest of his career doing dinner theater and making guest appearances. He filed a few TV pilots that went nowhere. In 1976, he made a guest appearance on WICC for their 50th anniversary. He was down but not out. But in 1978 he was found bludgeoned to death in an Arizona hotel room; he was fifty years old. His friend John Henry Carpenter was tried for the murder but was acquitted.

The Coca-Cola Top-Notchers

The golden age of radio also had a golden age of advertising. Most ads were live, most were part of program sponsorship and many were downright artful. Popular products funded and branded variety shows, barbershop quartets, and childrens shows. This was a first for coke, but not a first for radio. More here.

Coca-Cola made their entry into Network Radio programming in 1930. The Coca-Cola Top Notchers was a weekly variety show. It ran live for 30 minutes Wednesday nights. This was carried by the NBC Red Network at 10:30pm.

Popular New York Herald Tribune sportswriter and commentator Grantland Rice hosted the program. The top Notchers were a studio Orchestra that played big band standards. They are unrelated to the "Top-Notchers" that Edison recorded oin cylinsder 51234 to the best of my information. Great Podcast here.


Rice interviewd sports greats on the program, even Ty Cob made an appearance. Even then, Rice was a famous sportscaster. His fame grew to legend in his own lifetime. By 1954, College football's National Champion would be awarded a trophy that carried his name; the Grantland Rice Trophy.

But the program only lasted four months. Two recordings survive today: their 1st and 2nd episodes from March 19th & 25th of 1930. We know where at least the second program comes from as it contains a station ID break, for WEEI in Boston complete with an old version of the NBC chimes.