Zeke Clements was not a dwarf

Marlon "Zeke" Clements was not a dwarf. He just played one on the big screen. In 1937 Clements yodeled the part of Bashful, in Walt Disney's 1937 version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. To be clear, Scotty Mattraw was the speaking voice of bashful, but when Disney needed Bashful to yodel they used Zeke. Apparently even in the 1930s they couldn't find a single voice-over man to handle both the voice over and the yodeling parts. He wasn't always a dwarf however, he also appeared as a singing cowboy in several B-Westerns.

Over his career he performed as both under his stage name Zeke, the Alabama Cowboy and the Dixie Yodeler. Clements was born in Warrior, Alabama in 1911. His music career began in 1928 when he joined the touring show of Otto Gray and his Oklahoma Cowboys touring show. The band was formerly known as McGinty's Oklahoma Cowboy Band. McGinty had been a real-deal cowboy and a Rough Rider under Roosvelt. Graywas more of a band manager which is probably how they ended up on the National Barn Dance at WLS-AM in Chicago. they had been playing on KFRU-AM in Bristow, OK, and KFJF-AM in Kansas City. The barn Dance had only started in 1924, so in these early regional years of radio they were genuine celebrities. Gray actually made the cover of Billboard.

In 1933, he joined  singer Texas Ruby as member of the Bronco Busters. The book The Cowboy in Country Music by Don Cusic claims that in 1934 Zeke was the first Opry act to wear cowboy clothing. It's unclear if this was his first appearance on the Opry, or just his first appearance with the Bronco Busters... or just the first clad in chaps and boots. I find that "first" claim dubious. However, this was before the era of singing cowboy movies. Gene Autry's first cowboy movie began a year later, in 1935. Though Autry and Clements had both been on the National barn Dance by 1929, it's clear that Autry popularized the clothing fad. You can't see the outfits on the radio.

After the Opry, Clements also spent time on WHO-AM in Des Moints and WHAS-AM in Louisville.  The book The Encyclopedia of Country Music claims that it was while playing on the Hollywood Barn Dance on KNX-AM, that Zeke answered the Disney ad for a yodeler. But the Hollywood Barn Dance supposedly only ran from 1943 to 1948. This is long after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released. Only one of these things can be true. By all reports Ruby  was supposed to audition for a role as well but was too drunk. In 1939, Zeke broke it off with Ruby and went back to the Opry. He continued to be a successful songwriter for the rest of his life writing hits for both Eddy Arnold and Red Foley. He died in Nashville in 1994.

The Voice Of Temperance

I first found an odd pamphlet named "Liquor Advertising On The radio. It was authored by the host of the obscure radio program "The Voice Of Temperance." I did a bit more research, and I found the testimony of its author, Rev. Sam Morris in his two appearances before congress. Morris testified in 1948 and again in 1950 and said almost the exact same thing each time. At first I thought it was a reprint, but Sam Morris was just repeating himself almost verbatim. He was consistent, you can give him that. Prohibition had been repealed over a decade earlier, only running from 1920 to 1933. In that time it had led to rashes of alcohol poisoning from methanol, and the brutal rise of organized crime. Morris wanted to go back to those halcyon days and so once a week on XERA-AM he made his case. Let me post both quotes side-by-side...

In 1948:

"I am Sam Morris, of San Antonio, Tex.,  radio speaker for I be National Temperance and Prohibition Council, field speaker for the Temperance League of America and associate editor of the National Voice, America's oldest prohibition newspaper. For the past 12 years I have conducted the Voice of Temperance broadcast, a nation-wide radio program urging total abstinence for the individual, and prohibition for the nation..."

...and in 1950:

"I am Sam Morris of San Antonio, Tex. I am field speaker for the Temperance League of America; I am associate editor of the National Voice, America's oldest prohibition newspaper. For the past 15 years I have conducted the Voice of Temperance broadcast with radio listeners in all parts of the nation... "

This was a part of his testimony on the subject of alcohol advertisements on the radio.Interestingly, there are some contemporary federal laws that do limit the presence of certain types of ads in certain circumstances. For example, the tobacco industry is forbidden to advertise on TV at all. But alcohol is allowed... technically. But there are limits: they can only be placed in media where 70% of the audience is over 21. The content also cant be targeted at the young, no cartoons characters etc. It also cannot advertise it's effects and cannot encourage irresponsible drinking. The limitations are such that you'd think there was very little alcohol advertising at all. Well the CDC would be happy to show you where they still do. In Q3 of 2006 VMS found 67,404 alcohol advertisements  in a sample of the top 104 markets, though they were very regional. More here. The Broadcast Law Blog covered the topic in great detail in 2007 here.

Sam Morris managed to get his puritanical message out on a number of border blasters back in the 1940s: XEPN-AM, XENT-AM, XEAW-AM, XERA-AM, XELO-AM, and XEG-AM. he also bought time on WHO-AM in Des Moines, KWBU-AM in Corpus Christi, KWKH-AM in Shreveport and WHAS-AM in Louisville. He also manged to get some syndicated time in 1944 on CBS and on NBC in 1947. A 1946 radio listener survey by Benson & Benson in Princeton, NJ, as the 15th most popular radio program in Louisville. It sounds good, but his damning proof is that the "beer broadcasts" have lower ratings than his own.  This is sort of like bragging that your program is more popular than the other program's advertisements.

In 1946, CBS actually produced and aired a 13-episide series called "Alcohol and You"  that was about alcoholism, and social problems.  In a didactic fit Morris wrote a letter to CBS complaining that the free evening airtime that networks gave to that series was too late in the day and had low listener ship. Ed Murrow even responded to his crazy letters politely. Morris sort of reminds me of Rick Santorum: just a looney puritanical zealot.

But even a puritanical zealot has his day. Following his appearance on NBC in January on '47 the trade magazine Beverage retailer Weekly called Morris "the most dangerous enemy the liquor industry has ever known."  It's a bit dramatic, but Morris was certainly troublesome. By the mid 1940s Morris was finding that certain broadcasters wouldn't even sell him air time because he was intent on chasing off their liquor advertisers. So in 1948 Morris published a pamphlet that listed off his works, and also named names as to who did and did not run what he calls  wine beer and liquor broadcasts. He names specifically: WEEI, WCBS, KMOX, WTOP, WCCO, KNX, WJR, WBT, WHAS, WLAC, KLRA, KTRH, WWL, WDOD, WKRC, WBBM, KRLD, KOMA, WNOX, KIRO, KWFT, KSL, KFAB, and KMBC... notably singling out all the big market powerhouses of the CBS network. He then drops some of these calls over maps of "dry" and "wet" counties. His logic is that a town voting out the sale of booze has also somehow by connection voted out advertisements for it ... as if somehow the radio waves could steer around temperance households...

I scanned his whole pamphlet, it's well worth the read and the fine details about radio airtime make it a fine piece of research material.

You can download all 56 pages 

HERE

The Midnight Frolic

In the late 1920s, the Commercial Appeal newspaper ran WMC-AM. The Midnight Frolic was a late night jazz program on WMC in Memphis that was an all-request show that supposedly was broadcast from the actual roof of the Commercial appeal building.

790 WMC-AM first began broadcasting on January 19, 1923. A review of a Bessie Smith program there dates the program to at least that year. It clearly describes the program as starting at 11:00 PM and airing from the rooftop of the Commercial Appeal Building. My latest confirmed reference to it's Midnight Folic is in 1925 but it probably dates to earlier. The Book Jack Teagarden: the Story of a Jazz Maverick refers to the show:

"The Peacocks broadcast frequently on The Midnight Frolic Show over WMC The Commercial Appeal radio station. The following item from The Appeal  gives an indication of how dependent these bands were on listener requests.  'Tonight they will start their programme with a medley air.  the entire list of numbers has not yet been selected... it is hoped that there will be enough requests made to carry on through the hour..."

The band (The Youngberg-Marin Peacocks) played a couple numbers they planned on then apparently requests carried them through the rest of the live program. The Peacocks had 10 members and were able to play 25 different instruments among them... just not simultaneously. Bessie smith cplayed with a orchestra as well but the number of musicians is less than certain.

If you start to read about this, you'll find there was an unrelated program of the same name on KMCS-AM in Inglewood, CA, and one on WDAF-AM, and another on KFI-AM in Los Angeles.WHO-AM had a Barn Dance Frolic back in 1932. 1160 WJJD-AM in Chicago had both a Breakfast Frolic and a Suppertime Frolic program.  But there's a reason for all that. During that ugly separate-but-equal era many shows were divided by race into two very separate evening programs. Today that's an indication that the earlier program is the family-friendly program. The notion came from cabaret and it's at least a hundred years old, and the trail of etymology loses me there.

But it stands to reason this is something that radio inherited from vaudeville. Commercial radio was born in the 1920s and it took it's ideas for entertainment directly from the stage. In Birmingham There was a theater called "The Frolic Theater" where Bessie Smith also performed. In New York City the New Amsterdam theatre was called The Frolic as well.  I'll quote from Virtual 42nd street.

"When it was built, the New Amsterdam was the largest theatre in New York, and could seat 1800 people.  It opened in November of 1903... In 1914, the rooftop theatre was renamed Danse de Follies and  Ziegfeld added a dance floor on the rooftop.  Later, in 1923, the rooftop would be renamed again, to the Frolic Theatre."

Notice that program is also broadcast from the roof of the building.  Each of these programs at WMC, KFI, WDAF, KMCS and others probably has a connection to local theaters, and local theatre troops.