Matinee with Bob and Ray

 

 

Somehow I missed the memo on Bob and Ray. They were on the air for 50 years and I completely missed the boat, discovering them only post-mortem, in the form of a beat up paperback with an introduction by Andy Rooney. Bob and Ray were Bob Elliott (1923–2016) and Ray Goulding (1922–1990). My own mother often said "Write if you get work!" as people left the house. It took me decades to realize she was quoting Bob & Ray.

Elliott and Goulding began as radio announcers. Elliott and Goulding were both on 850 WHDH-AM in Boston. Elliot was an announcer and Goulding a DJ with a morning show. (Some biographies switch the roles and describe Elliot as a DJ and Goulding as a newscaster.) The book Bob and Ray: Keener Than Most Persons by David Pollack gives another version where Elliot presented a demo for Back Bay Matinee he based on an AFRS program. The Music Director Ken Wilson put him on air every afternoon from 2:00 to 4:00. Then Wilson paired him with Goulding to improvise banter as a fill-in when Red Sox baseball broadcasts rained out. Elliott and Goulding (not yet known as Bob and Ray) would improvise and joke around with the studio musicians. It was a comedy recipe you see to this day on late night programs; from Johnny Carson through Jimmy Kimmel. The duo started writing skits to make it work.

Their shtick was a slight twist on the old vaudeville routine. It wasn't a matter of which one was the Straight man. They were both the straight man; something Elliott conceded to Mike Sacks, for the book Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations With Today’s Top Comedy Writers.  “We were both sort of straight men reacting against the other.” Every punchline is silly but completely deadpan, prefiguring Stephen Wright but without the irony. Their trademark sign-off was "This is Ray Goulding reminding you to write if you get work"; "Bob Elliott reminding you to hang by your thumbs." 

After a few months WHDH gave them a morning show simply called Bob & Ray in 1946.  The program started as a 15-minute slot and then expanded to half an hour. The show continued to expand. In the fall of 1947, the pair were given a daily half hour at 1:00 PM called Matinee with Bob and Ray. In 1949 WHDH increased power from 5,000 watts to 50,000 watts and wildly expanded it's coverage and the audience for the duo. After 5 years in Boston, they got a 13-week contract with NBC and started a one hour Saturday Night program in 1951. By 1952 they also had an early morning show on WNBC as well. More here.

In 1955 they signed a new contract with WBZ: Matinee with Bob and Ray but by April of  1956 they terminated their taped WBZ program because they were so busy with their network schedule. Alan Dary got the spot. Bob & ray continued to do daily shows for the Mutual network from 1955 to 1957, then CBS from 1959 to 1960, and on New York station WINS. In 1962 they moved to WHN to start an afternoon show and in 1973 WOR doing a 4-hour afternoon drive program.  In their final incarnation they started a program on NPR: The Bob & Ray Public Radio Show. That ran until 1987. They won three Peabody Awards for their radio work and were inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 1984 and the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1995.

Goulding died in 1990. Born in 1922 he was 68. Many assumed the 67 year old Elliot might retire but instead he became a cast member of Garrison Keillor’s American Radio Company of the Air,  which briefly replaced A Prairie Home Companion on NPR.  Then he started making appearances in movies, and commercials something deeply ironic for a man who had made so many fake advertisements. Ellior once said "By the time we discovered we were introverts, it was too late to do anything about it.”

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.

Bob & Ray

In their March 24th post, The Probe (an MP3 Blog) reminded me recently of the greatness of Bob & Ray. Thank you Phil Milstein.

Go there download the shows and then read this post. You're just not going to understand what I mean when I use the word "madcap" or "zany." They were an institution. They are probably the only comedy duo to work on every major radio network: ABC, CBS, NBC, and even NPR. They were unstoppable.

Bob Elliot & Ray Goulding met at 850 WHDH-AM in Boston. Bob was a DJ and Ray was a newscaster. Elliot actually arrived at the station first, during WWII, left when he was draftee and returned after his discharge. Bob returned as a morning man, and then Ray got hired as an afternoon guy. They hit it off and visited each others programs.

Soon WHDH picked up the Red Sox franchise. They started doing improv when the games rained out. They never stopped.
The banter was popular enough that they scored their own program in 1946 "Matinee with Bob & Ray." It was more of the improve they'd been honing. They created characters on the spot, hundreds of them. Some returned, many did not. Goulding voiced most of the female characters in a forced falsetto. Bob handled the dullards and they split the rest down the middle. Goulding even recorded a novelty song as a fictional female character for RCA/Victor. they even learned to start scripting and hired a few writers.

In 1951 NBC brought them to New York City to do a daily 15-minute TV program They did five-minute sketches on NBC's Monitor in 1956, their national breakthrough. Then in 1959 started doing a daily program for CBS. In 1962 they went back to radio to do afternoons on 1050 WHN-AM. Then even a brief swing on Broadway.

In 1982 they took on the last great network audience National Public radio. Their listeners are more educated, more savvy and accustomed to pristine production. The Bob & Ray Public Radio Show ran until 1987, tacking final years onto a 40-year career. Goulding died in 1990, and they were inducted into the Radio hall of Fame in 1995.