DJ Lucky Lang

Above is a scan of the cover of the Lucky Lang Original Song Folio. My copy is in poor, maybe even vile condition. It's been stored in a moist place, it's biodegrading at the spine and bears strange brown and purple stains related to the moisture. It could be mold, possibly Stachybotrys leprosus. The staples are even rusted and have further stained the pages. It's a tad gross really. But the hand notations on the cover make up for all that. I had to soak it in bleach to proceed.

This copy is  Book #1, and I've seen that there actually is a Book #2. Interestingly it's cover is identical except for the "No. 2" text. Both editions list the following radio stations: WLS, WSBA, WSAL, WDBJ, WAPO, WSB, WJAX, WNAX, WGST, and WAGA. My copy continues with hand notations: WORK, WHBB(?) WHHB, and WLBR. I was able to corroborate the WLBR reference from January copies of the Harrisburg Evening News, and the Lebanon Daily News.

He appears to remain in the music biz through about 1959 and then he disappeared. In this songbook is a very short biography. I'll paraphrase: Lucky was born in Georgia on January 27th 1913. He's 5 foot 9 inches tall, and has brown hair and brown eyes. He didn't finish medical school but did take music lessons from Bob Burns in his home town.  The first radio station he played on was 740 WSB-AM in his home town where he teamed up with Chuck Swain.

So we can infer from this that Lucky is from Atlanta, or at least near Atlanta. Chuck Swain is much better known Lucky. Swain also played on WLS with Langdon L. Howe on the Smile-A-While program, and the National Barn Dance as the Blue Grass Boys. In the folio Lucky refers to it as the Blue Ridge Boys. One may be wrong, or perhaps both are right. But it's clear that Langdon L. Howe is Lucky Lang.  After they parted ways, Swain later played on WZIP in Covington, KY back in 1948.  He was a member of the Fiesta gang which also included Shorty Hobbs.  An October 1943 Billboard article notes that Swain had come to WLS from WLAV in Grand Rapids, MI, and Lang had come from WAPO in Chattanooga, TN.

Also notable about the song book; Lucky isn't listed as the author on all the lyrics. Some are unattributed, but the last few are by Mary Jean Shurtz. She was a well-known another country song-writer, and poet, but more importantly one of the earliest journalists in country music. So in addition to writing songs for performers such as Webb Pierce, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas, and Hank Snow. In 1948 she signed an exclusive deal with Hill & Range Songs Inc. You may not know the name but they also controlled much of Elvis Presley's early recorded material. She has a short bio at Hillbilly-music.com HERE.

Excluding their mutual levels of concurrent fame, the only connection I've found between them is radio station WORK-AM. WORK is a very annoying station to research as it's one of those rare call signs which is a common word. 1000 WORK-AM signed on in York, PA on March 17, 1932. After NARBA in 1941 they moved to 1350.  Shorty Fincher and His Prairie Pals of WORK-AM played Shurtz's songs and even published her poems in their song books. When Lucky Lang's folio was printed he was playing with the 101 Ranch Boys who were also based in York PA and reputedly played at WORK-AM twice daily in 1947.  But their publicity photos usually bear the  900 WSBA-AM calls around the mic.  But WSBA didn't sign on until 1942.  It appears they played both stations at different times in the 1940s. (WORK changed calls to WOYK around 1983).  It's also possible that WORK is a red herring, and  Lucky thought it was just good business sense to score points with columnist Mary Jean Shurtz.

But back to 1946 and my folio: There is a notation on an interior page from 1946 that Lucky was playing in December with "Coco." The August 3rd, 1946 issue of Billboard does reference Coco...

"...Golden Valley Boys featuring Ray Myers, the armless wonder boy, headlined show at Mount Gretna (Pa.) Park, together with Mickie McKay, Pop Melchor and Marie, and The Blue Ridge Boys and Coco."

The Lebanon Daily News on August 30th also mentions Coco with the Blue Ridge Boys. Lucky Lang is on that same bill, so it's possible Lucky ran off into the sunset with Coco, whomever or whatever it was. But as far as the rest of Lucky's career, I see he played the West Coast Shows carnival in 1955 and again in 1959, then he disappears.
As for the folio, I've uploaded all 25 pages HERE

Hank Keene and His Radio Gang

On the second page of this book of sheet music his group is called "Hank Keene and His Radio Gang" but in other text it's called "Hank Keene and His Connecticut Hill Billies." The somewhat pejorative term "hillbilly" is usually associated with the American South. So it's unusual to see it in commercial print next to the word "Connecticut."

Keene was no Yankee, he wasn't even from New England. He was in Lake Charles, LA. His father Abner Keene (aka Henry Newcomb) was in show biz and relocated often. Hank attended primary school in New York, Illinois, Florida and Kentucky. He graduated from the University of Kentucky High School and then Tufts College in Boston. Thus a native southerner was imported into the deepest darkest Yankee hinterlands.

Keene formed his band, the Connecticut Hill Billies in 1930. His parents by then had bought an already famous home in Southern Coventry in Connecticut The Nathan Howard House. After he graduated from Tufts he got his own radio program on WTIC. His Hillbillies cut their first sides for Brunswick in February of 1931. They cut another 15 sides for Bluebell and Banner before the end of 1935.

The book Pickin' on Peachtree by Wayne W. Daniel has Hank Keene on WSB-AM in Atlanta in April of 1931. It's probably true. The book Yankee Twang by Clifford Murphy puts Keene on radio stations in new York, Cleveland, Wheeling, and Louisville. I've confirmed WHAS and no others except strangely 1400 WRDO-AM in Maine circa 1936. But by 1933 Hank was firing up his own traveling tent show. 

His tent show rolled around the country for at least 10 years selling his books of sheet music everywhere they went. His earliest was printed in 1932!  By 1946 he was host of a "coast-to-coast program" sponsored by Velvet Tobacco. Billboard noted that he  was part of the SESAC Transcribed Library Service, recording programs to be shipped off to 200 radio stations for syndication. that was October. His father Abner died the following year and Keene vanished from the trade magazines.

Long Live Ludlow Porch

I first heard of Ludlow Porch through the writings of Lewis Grizzard.Unlike many other characters, Ludlow turned out to be actually real, and actually stepbrother to Lewis Grizzard. He was born Bobby C. Hanson in Atlanta back in 1934. Like Grizzard he was also an author. He wrote Fat White Guys Cookbook, There's Nothing Neat About Seeing Your Feet and Honest, officer, the midget was on fire when I got here. However, unlike Grizzard he is not known for writing, he's known as a broadcaster.

Ludlow Porch was civil. He was no fire brand conservative southerner. His shows were feel-good, family-safe and  funny. I know that in media being quotable and polemic will get a lot of attention. But Ludlow built his fan base the old-fashioned way, slowly with honey not vinegar. He has more in common with Paul Harvey than Rush Limbaugh. In a 2005 interview he said:

"We don't do any of the angry white-guy stuff like you hear on other stations, No abortion, no politics, no gun control. We're just trying to prove that the good old art of two-way conversation is still alive and well on the radio." 

Ludlow came to radio late in life. He was 37 when he first found himself speaking with a Sports Illustrated writer in 1971. Grizzard at written a few ad hoc pieces for the mag and had recommended Ludlow as a trivia genius. Ludlow, who had been working as a insurance salesman at the time, lived up to his billing. the result was an article about his genius for random and useless trivia.

The article was published in 1972, and as a result, 750 WSB-AM invited him down to the station. In his own words he came for a week, then never left. It wasn't entirely accurate. Ludlow did guest on WSB-AM first, but it was 680 WRNG-AM who hired him. WRNG was the first all-news station in Atlanta. On both stations he rattled on about random trivia and announced fake news. He denied the existence of the state of Montana consistently. He stayed at WRNG-AM into the eighties and became station manager in 1980. In 1982 the station dropped their live programming to broadcast a feed from CNN Headline News.

Ludlow crossed the street to WSB-AM where he was a regular for over a decade. In 1993 he left and started Funseekers, his own radio network. It peaked at about 40 stations in eight states mostly in the Southeast. His show ran from 9:00 AM  to 12:00 noon. It began as a partnership with WSB-AM, but he bought out their share 1994 and went solo. In 1995 he offered to wash station managers cars if they'd syndicate his program. He kept at it and was inducted into the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame in 2007.  he died just last February at the age of 76.

Yodelin' Slim Clark

Modern music critics forget that there was country music in the North as well as the south. Yodelin' Slim Clark was from Massachusetts originally. The tradition continues in Canada whereas New England has largely moved on. Clark himself retired in the 1970s and began painting. Strangely beyond his discography and his career painting landscapes much of his biography is convoluted.

His career began in 1936 at the age of 19. On air he used the name "Wyoming Buck" thought he had never even been to Wyoming himself. Some sources state he went pro in 1931 but that seems absurd since he would have been 0nly 14. Regardless the "Wyoming Buck" name didn't' stick. The station manager dubbed him "Yodeling Slim Clark," a nick name he kept for the rest of his career.

In 1938 he got a weekly spot on a show at WKNE with announcer, Ozzie Wade. Numerous sources put him on the radio program "RFD Dinner Bell" out of Bangor but this does not jive. RDF Dinner Bell was at WSB in Atlanta about 1000 miles away. RFD stands for Radio Farmers Democracy. The acronym was a play on the Postal Service's Rural Free Delivery service which began in 1896 for farming families in rural areas. By 1905 the Post Office was serving 32,000 RFD routes. It was discontinued in 1915 in favor of parcel post. More here.

It was a program of agriculture and country music which would have aired him. Starting in 1926, it ran three times a week at noon sponsored by Sears & Roebuck. Sears stopped working with WSB in 1928 and the show was discontinued. Clark did not appear on a show of the same name for 10 more years. However, WLS ran their own version of the show, so it's entirely possible that 910 WABI-AM in Bangor did as well. More here.

He had several bands over the years. With the Red River Rangers he played often at 1240 WHAI-AM in Greenfield, MA. His later bands The Trailriders and The Trailsmen were nearly as successful. In 1952 he started in television at WABI-TV.

In 1946 he signed a record deal with Continental Records in New York City. He stayed with them until 1957. He wasn't on to record another 50 albums before he began his second career as a painter.

Fiddlin' John Carson

Today country music is the most common radio format in America. About 2,200 stations of the approximately 14,000 broadcasters are country-formatted stations. That's almost 16%. But long ago, there was a strong resistance among programmers to county music. For regular readers and radiophiles that's all review.On March 6th 1922 750 WSB-AM went on air in Atlanta. It was the first big station in the American south. 880 WSM-AM would not sign-on in Nashville until 1925. Both would become country-music taste-makers, but WSB was first hands down. WSB also can lay claim to creating the first comuntry-music superstar- Fiddlin' John Carson.

Cartson was a local boy, born in 1868, in Blue Ridge, Georgia. Within a few weeks of WSB first going live, Carson was performing there. Carson played on several programs, even with groups of musicians playing non-country music. It is rumored that radioman Lambdin Kay was the one that gave him airtime and paid Carson in whiskey. By June 14th 1923 he had a hot selling 78 rpm platter on Okeh records. The A side was "The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane" and the B side was "The Old Hen Cackled and the Rooster's Going to Crow."

There was disconnect between what the affluent programmers wanted to play, and what the rural listeners wanted to hear. The instant popularity of Carson directed the future path of many programming decisions. At the urging of A&R man Polk C. Brockman, Okeh records initially pressed 500 copies. They had to rush back to re-press. Eventually it sold over half a million copies. He recorded another 150 sides fo Okeh and Bluebird. This was some of the first commercial country music ever. In that moment country music as we think of it began to grow as an off shoot of the indigenous hillbilly music. His recording career, which yielded some 165 recorded songs, lasted into the 1930s. Carson spent the last years of his life as an elevator operator in Atlanta. He was inducted into the Georgia music hall of fame in 1994.