Transcription Mystery Disc #90

If this persons handwriting was more clear, tracking this one down would have been easier. It's very frustrating to find a disc that actually is labeled but that the label is nearly indecipherable. Only the date is clear 9-24-40, almost exactly 70 years ago. The rest is harder to read than doctors handwriting. Other than that it's relatively common in composition. It spins at 78 rpm with an outer edge start. The A and B sides appear to have been recorded on different dates with unrelated content.

I can infer some things from context.  It came from a stack of other Perma Disks from that era, many with similar handwriting, a few that are certainly the same.  I think under "speed" it says Moon River. Several other discs were labeled "Moon River."  My first thought was that some person had been bootlegging various versions of the song Moon River.  This was wrong. The song Moon River wasn't written until 1961.  (It's by  by Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini)  It turned out to be a very obscure radio program.

Moon River was a  late-night radio program on 700 WLW-AM in Cincinnati. Moon River ran until the WLW sign off at night.  It had what would now be considered an odd mixture of soft, "dreamy" organ music and romantic poetry.  It was sponsored by Southern Cross Spring Mattress Company.  It's run was surprisingly long, it began in 1930 and continued into 1972. Actually station management tried to cancel the dinosaur in 1953 but it's loyal listenership rebelled and the show was reinstated. In 1995, WMKV on 89.3 revived it for a four-year encore with it's original narrator Bill Myers. You can download some programs at Archive.org HERE.

This disc has about 2 minutes of music and poetry from the original Moon River somewhere in it's second decade of broadcasting. But Moon River is still alive. In December of 2007 Ward Glen, a later Moon River announcer started a late night poetry and organ music program on Sonoma California radio station 91.3 KSVY with organist Everett Lehman. More here.

PHL to CVG

I drove from the American Rust belt deep into the Midwest this week and have returned with tales to tell...I caught WPIT-AM 730 out of Arnold City who then at 2:3-0 on a Sunday afternoon runs Solvenian, German, Slovakian, and Ukranian music. It bore a strange resemblance to 1940s big band. It was a welcome and weird variant. I passed under Pittsburgh on Route 74 West, catching 770 WKFB-AM briefly then switching over to the more powerful 1340 WYJK-AM (simulcast of WYJK 100.5) . It lasted well across the Ohio border, but has nowhere near as good a play list. Classic Hits is really the wussy cousin of the real oldies station. A little sample of the WKFB playlist:
Pay Bo Diddley -David Lindey
Big Bossman - Jimmy Reed
Mohair Sam - Charlie Rich
Honey Hush - John turner

Out near Athens I caught 91.3 WOUB who was playlist a little something by Ruth Brown. Around Columbus I headed slightly south and caught 820 WOSU in the middle of a Bluegrass program.

Then I hit my first stop, Cincinnati, a fine fine city for radio. As an early American boom town, it was also one of the first major cities in the interior of the United States. It was named for the Society of the Cincinnati by an early governor who was a member. That social club was named for Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus which really just referred to his curly hair. -Altogether inauspicious.

It's the home of heritage station WLW-AM, which first graced the airwaves in March of 1922. But more interestingly it was also the home of 89.3 WMKV. It's one of a handful of FM day shares. But also the only station in America run by a senior center. They were playing something By the Sammy Kaye Orchestra.

I've written about them before. It was late and I was road weary and their play list was very welcome. The amateur DJs were amateurish in a totally different way than college kids. They had no egos, took short mike breaks and weren't distracted. Big improvement.

The Way Radio was meant to be

WMKV 89.3 Reading, Ohio is situated just North of the Cincinnati border. At a mere 410 watts and a HAAT of 72 meters their contour is small and strongly effected by topography. It would not be a station of note except that They are the first FM educational public radio station in America to be licensed to a retirement community.

WMKV operates from the campus of Maple Knoll Village, one of the nation's top-rated retirement communities. Their program focuses on big band music and talk programs focused on retirees and older adults. their studio boasts a 12,000 song library focused largely on pre-1940s material. They even have their own 15-piece WMKV band. Their staff includes a number of "retired" DJs including Bill Myers from local AM powerhouse WLW-AM
They went on air in 1995, and began winning national and international awards for programming shortly thereafter. As recently as 2004 they were profiled in a front-page Los Angeles Times piece. They were also written up in RW online recently.

Interestingly enough about two-thirds of their listeners are online. In a situation where a radio station covers a small area it's impressive enough that they have about 30,000 listeners. It's even more impressive that they double that over on webcast. It's a lesson that can be taught to those small and often over looked college stations, that proper focus, and organization can do amazing things for any radio station, anywhere. http://www.wmkvfm.org/