The Midnight Jamboree WEVD (part 2)

Gene King, left. very camera shy.

In 2012 I wrote an article about the Midnight Jamboree which debuted on 1300 WEVD-AM in 1936. I did not expect I would need to write a Part 2 at the time. I used the sources I had available at the time and it felt fairly complete. A recent comment from a reader [HERE] pointed out that personal letters between Ev Suffens (stage name for Raymond Nelson) and writer Ayn Rand, describe Suffens as the host of Midnight Jamboree. The problem is that multiple sources also name Gene King as the host. Someone on the internet was wrong, and it might be me; so I revisited the subject.

Back in 2012 I rarely cited sources. It seemed unnecessary with informal writing like a blog.  It was my readers questions (and even researchers questions) which drove me to cite sources initially for my own use. I think my original source was the Arnold Passman book The DeeJays. [SOURCE] It does not specifically say that King is the host but Passman refers to the program as Gene King's; full apostrophe S. In 1942 the Ohio state University Monthly [SOURCE] specifically stated:

"...[King] started announcing for WEVD, became after a time, chief announcer and conducted the tremendously popular "Midnight Jamboree," New York's all-night recorded music program, to which an estimated 300,000 turned for nocturnal entertainment."

The Chief Announcer claim is corroborated in the 1939 Radio Annual. [SOURCE] The book Music in the Air also lists him as the host. "New York contemporaries of Symphony Sid included Gene King, whose Midnight Jamboree on WEVD (Eugene V. Debs) featured
current bands and vocalists..." [SOURCE]

Gene King, probably U. Ohio grad pic

The earliest I can place King by citation, at WEVD, was August of 1937. He's named, alongside Bill Resnick as station staff in an issue of Billboard. [SOURCE] This aligns pretty well with the date from that Ohio State publication stating that he was in Spain "..when the Franco revolt broke out..." that would be July 1936. That's a good source but I had more.  The UC Law Journal of Race and Economics [SOURCE] mentioned King at WEVD in a foot note referencing a New York Daily News article in November of 1939. Maybe the most important citation I found is Broadcasting Vol. 19, No. 8 of October 1940 [SOURCE] which specifically states:

"Gene King has resigned as conductor of the daily program Jamboree on WEVD, New York, from midnight to 4 a.m. to preside over a daily record series on WOR, Newark, entitled Danceland, which started Oct. 14, 3-3:30 p.m"

 

So it's clear that Gene King was the host of the Midnight Jamboree for a period of time, starting in 1936 and ending in 1940. But we also know the program ran into 1942, so clearly King was not the only host. Was he the first? 

The first Ayn Rand letter to Ev Suffens is dated April 6th. [SOURCE] Notably this is before King returned from Europe. Dismuke.org cites this as well. [SOURCE] But the answer is back in those Ayn Rand letters. In her June 10th letter [SOURCE] she complains about the new announcer of the Midnight Jamboree. She does not name him, but does criticize his playing of Jazz. (Gasp!)  So Ed Suffens was only the host prior to June of 1936. How much earlier did the program begin?

The Daily Worker reported the radio schedule of WEVD, WEAF, WOR, WABC, and WJZ daily from 1924 through 1936. So in reviewing those schedules, we can say with confidence that February 20th, 1936 was the first episode of the Midnight Jamboree. [SOURCE] Prior to that time, the midnight slot was held by a dance program, and usually preceded by an opera program. Ev Suffens was only host from February to June of 1936, a period of about 6 months. 

The DJ name Ev Suffens only appears rarely outside in the letter of Ayn Rand. The name appears in Variety in October of 1933 as the former director of the Provincetown Playhouse, then launching a drama and Opera studio. [SOURCE]. Then in the 1938 Radio Annual he's listed as the chief announcer at WEVD. [SOURCE] He seems to stop using the name after that. But a Raymond E. Nelson starts directing TV programs in the early 1940s and that may be him. That Ray Nelson later became the VP of the NTA film network. 

But who then was hosting the Midnight Jamboree after King left in 1940? There is a little disambiguation. There was a Gene King at KCTO in Columbia, LA in the late 1960s and another at WPCH in 1932. [SOURCE] Neither of these is our Gene King. King went on to WOR, and then WCOP as reported in Part 1. After King left the program, it's profile declined significantly. You might think it ended but for two references... 

One of the last references to the Midnight Jamboree was in a September 1942 issue of Broadcasting Magazine. [SOURCE] It does not name the host. It's also mentioned in Radio Daily. [SOURCE] They both probably got the same press release for Carl Post's piano gig on the show. But a 1941 issue of Billboard lists the host as David Niles.

 "Those stayer-uppers who tune into Station WEVD here for the nightly dance music kicks offered by the titularly swing-tinted Midnight Jamboree must think they have the wrong wave-length, unless they're used to the clever introduction given the show by its conductor, David Niles, who is also the station's chief announcer."

I had thought that was the end of it but a 1958 issue of Downbeat lists the show still on air. [SOURCE] The formerly 4-hour weeknight program had become just a 3-hour Sunday special. In1947, Ernest Tubb's Midnite Jamboree on WSM had overshadowed it, absconding with the name. David Niles obituary in the New York times [SOURCE] states that he started his career on WMCA in 1933 after a career in the stage and silent movies. He was the chief announcer at WEVD for 37 years. Sources confirm his presence at the station well into the 1960s. Billboard describes him as the News Director in 1966. [SOURCE]

You can hear Niles voice on a transcription disc from 1948. [LINK] Billboard confirms Niles was the Jamboree host, as early as 1940. [SOURCE]  Note that it's absent from this radio schedule [LINK] which otherwise places Niles on a talk program.  I suspect he took the Jamboree over from King directly. But there could have been a gap, and the earliest reference I can cite is this very critical July 1941 quote in Variety. [SOURCE]

"Manhattan has five stations on the air 'till 4 a.m., WHOM, WHN, WEVD, WNEW and WOR. After four o'clock just WNEW and WOR fight it out; WHN quits at three. But it plays the loudest records, positively. If a disk is just wild that's not enough for WHN, it's got to be frantic... Sunday nights David Niles (WEVD) has New York to himself from three to four. And what does he do with it? Nothing. Davey ought to change that maudlin paragraph Introducing his final 15-minutes in which he 'rests, relaxes, and reminisces.' Hear it twice and it starts to take on a comedy angle, But Davey must like it because he serves it regularly at 3:45."

It seem like Suffens started the Midnight Jamboree, and Gene King built it into a popular jazz-inflected program. Then Niles went back to a very mellow classical playlist. Rand would have been pleased but apparently popular listeners were not.

Gernsback Strike Again!

Hugo Gernsback is one of those names that pops up repeatedly in radio history. His late career success in science fiction overshadowed his snake oil interests in radio and his more bonafide accomplishments like WRNY and Radio News. He is for whom the Hugo awards are named. He foresaw video conferencing, social networking, electrical cars, radar, solar power, and microfilm. He didn't invent science fiction, he was science fiction. But let us discuss his more mortal accomplishments. He built one of the first New York radio stations.. then destroyed it with his own endless tinkering.

In 1925, Hugo founded radio station WRNY which broadcast from the 18th floor of The Roosevelt Hotel in New York City and was later involved in the first television broadcasts. Gernsback savvily used WRNY and his magazine Radio News to cross promote each other. Radio programs on WRNY often were used to discuss articles he had written or published, and some of the articles in Radio News covered the activities at WRNY.  The model was later emulated across the nation by daily newspapers that also owned local radio outlets.

At the time there were only about 500 radio stations in the whole of the USA. WRNY's license was so early, they were pre-FCC, and even pre-FRC.  His company, Experimenter Publishing applied for a license from the US Dept of Commerce to broadcast on 1160 kHz in New York City. But they didn't stay there. Before the station closed in 1934 they'd also have broadcast on 800 kHz, 920 kHz, 970 kHz, 1010 kHz, and 1070 kHz. But not all of those moves went so smoothly. In November of 1926, WRNY then operating on 800 kHz  moved from the Roosevelt Hotel to Coytesville, New Jersey. WHN, then operating on 830 kHz claimed that WRNY was causing them interference.There wasn't much they could do until the FRC was formed in 1927, whereupon WRNY was reallocated to share time on 920 kHz with WPCH.

By then Gernsback was getting bored with regular old radio. Just for giggles in 1927, Gernsback started the shortwave station 2XAL (later W2XAL) operating on 9700 kHz. Then he got the TV bug. In April 1928,he started a venture with Pilot Electric Manufacturing and began broadcasting television experiments on the AM band. His transmission on 1010 kHz yielded a silent black and white image on a screen 1.5 inches square. It had only 48 scan lines.  Impressively that tiny low resolution images could be transmitted in as little as 5 kHz of bandwidth. (For comparison remember that commercial television of the 1940s used 6 MHz of bandwidth.)

The FRC stepped in and stomped on his television dreams. Under the auspices of preventing interference the FRC limited television broadcast to shortwave stations above 1500 kHz. The experimental broadcasts would be limited to one hour per day and their bandwidth limited to  10 kHz. Oh and they couldn't air them during prime time 6:00 PM to 11:00 PM. The bandwidth limitation was critical. TV experiments were no longer possible on the AM band. In the Spring of 1929 a bankruptcy petition was filed against the Experimenter Publishing Company for debts of over half a million dollars. A trust was established and Hugo was kicked out.  His shortwave station W2XAL became property of a flight school and WRNY went to the Curtiss Aircraft Corp. WHN later bought it out and shut it down to end a pesky dayshare arrangement.