Hackberry Hotel

Hackberry Hotel was amazingly racist by modern standards. But in Dallas, TX in 1948 that's about as surprising as sunshine in the the daytime. The program was broadcast on 570 WFAA-AM and was 15 minutes long and at least in 1948, sponsored by the Armstrong Packing Co. The program continued until at least 1951. You can hear some episodes here.

The "two voice rural comedy" was set in a "mythical peaceful valley" according to it's promotional literature. Other characters appears only via the telephone who's ring opens every episode. In 1948 it was in it's 5th year. They advertised the program for syndication in Radio Daily, and it even ran during the Early Birds radio program according to some sources. The show announcer was John Allen, a WFAA regular. Ben was on the Early Birds program through 1956.  But that program had it's 25th anniversary in 1955, Ben was a late addition. In 1956 the roster also included Elmer Baughman and Alex Keese.

The two main characters on Hackberry Hotel were Mr. Hack Berry the hotel manager and Willie Botts, an African American hotel worker. If you didn't notice in the above image, the one black character is played by a white voice actor. In their promotional ads and post cards he wears black face.Yes, black face. It was the 1940s. 

Ben McClesky played Willie Botts a.k.a. "Little Willie."  He also appeared as the same character on The Saturday Night Shindig. He had created the role possibly as early as 1931 and was also a script writer on Saturday Night Shindig. [SOURCE] Mr. Hack Berry was played by the Managing Director of WFAA, Martin B. Campbell. He had been with the station since at least 1934. Before WFAA he was the publicity director at 1280 WRR-AM in 1938. 

George Gimarc & Johnny Rotten

Will you stop blogging about the Sex Pistols? Just one more. In the 1990s, John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten, hosted a radio segment called "Rotten Day." It was a syndicated daily distributed by Premier Radio Networks airing on more than 40 radio affiliates including WBCN, WREV, and XTRA in the U.S. It had a 2-minute 'This Day in Rock n Roll' sort of format. Except that it's focus was on punk rock, and it was designed to be a promotion for the book Punk Diary by George Gimarc. It was more or less plugola from the get-go.

The scripts were usually written by George Gimarc. The schtick was to note a music or cultural event on that calendar date and then Lydon would slag on it. You would that that would get old fast. It's amazing that it lasted from September of 1995 to February 1997. They show grew beyond the confines of Gimarc's book as did Lydon's radio aspirations. Lydon went on to record a weekly 4 hour program for eYada.com in 1999. But his most recent radio work that I know of was in 1999 to record promos for 91X. More here.

George Gimarc on the other hand is a radioman through and through.He began his radio career as a DJ at University of North Texas radio station KNTU in 1977. He moved on to intern at WRR-AM also in Dallas. At KNTU he started a very early alt-rock program called "The Rock & Roll Alternative." He took the show with him from there to a commercial station 97.9 KZEW-FM "the Zoo."  In 1982 he also became music director on its sister station KRQX-AM. The station continued on with the Zoo format until 1987. He was hired by KDGE in 1989 and he re-launched his alternative program.  Somewhere in there he also took his program to KNON, the home to all the weirdness in Texas allowed to stray outside of Austin city limits.

Gimarc's books, all four of them, are about music, three of the four mention Lydon by name and or the Sex Pistols or Public Image Ltd. But I suspect it was Premier Networks that connected Johnny Rotten and Gimarc. As canonical as his archive is, I doubt he had his home phone number. But the result was that Johnny Rotten got to harass celebrities at the Grammy awards one year, and then fade back into the B-list, possibly the C-list. Gimarc continues to work in radio. At Comcast now, he's developed a couple truly terrible radio formats that even Comcast tries to ignore.