Angst and Cooking at WPAM-AM

This cookbook is titled, "WPAM's Book on Great Radio Cookery," and was compiled by the staff of  1450 WPAM-AM located in Pottsville, PA right in the coal country of Pennsylvania. It was a family affair then as now. Then it was run by John "Bud" Angst, later by Mickey Angst. This cook book is authored and edited by This one credited to Alice and Helen Angst. Alice was Bud's wife. I see a pattern here.

In the late 1960s and 1970s WPAM was owned by The Miners Broadcasting. They owned three stations including  WLSH-AM in Lansford and WMBA-AM in Ambridge. WPAM was a hyper local station airing what was then MOR and is now standards, artists like Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and the Ray Confif singers.

I also found another related cook book probably from a bit later in the 1970s.  This one also credited to  Alice Angst and Helen Angst. It also names Billie Schuetrumpf, Theresa Homick and Mary Jane Yeager.  But this one bears two sets of call signs: 1410 WPAM-AM and 1410 WLSH-AM. So I assume the other book precedes the acquisition of WLHS and this one precedes the purchase of WMBA. The trio were owned by Miners as early as 1964... so maybe not.

In in 1971 the Station Manager is listed as Roy Angst, undoubtedly yet another family member. In 1974 Bud is listed as the Station manager at WPPA-AM.  The Angst family seems to be building a coal country media empire. But in 1976 WPAM was was sold to Curran Communications.  Then in 1977, Miners Broadcasting Service Inc. sold WLHS to Pocono-Anthracite Communications passing the station to Mickey as GM, but Bud was involved in the station well into the 1980s. 

In about March of 1998, Curan Communications signed an LMA with Pottsville Broadcasting to handle WPAM. Mickey Angst stayed with WLSH and stayed with radio for 33 years... finally retiring in 2011.  Curran mismanaged WPAM and was fined by the FCC for failure to keep proper records in 2012. Then 1450 reportedly went silent for weeks in both 2011 and 2012.

Side note: the Schuylkill Legal Record indicates that Pennsylvania once sued Bud in 1961. It has something to do with a run for public office. I wish I knew the story there. More here.

The Nations Homemaker

Ida Cogswell Bailey Allen was once known (at least on the radio) as "The Nation's Homemaker." She  authored over 50 cookbooks the first of which was in 1916. Back in the 1920s she was a food editor at the New York American. (It was renamed the New York Journal-American in 1937) Four years later she broke into radio. She is one off the claimants to the first radio cooking show. In her 1952 book Ida Bailey Allen's Step-by-step Picture Cook Book she wrote:

"It was my privileged to inaugurate and maintain the first radio homemaking school which presented a radio kitchen with real cooking of foods, broadcast over a major network."

It's a short quote.. but she's claiming the title. By 1929 her program "National Radio Homemakers Club" was being heard over CBS. Members could get a membership card and could sign up for her newsletter. It wasn't just cooking tips. She had an orchestra, and surprisingly serious guests including at least one sitting senator Mr. Arthur Capper [R]. the program was broadcast from their New York studios and her program was sponsored by Pillsbury flour, and Royal gelatin.  Her daytime program started at 10:00 AM and was expanded to two hours in 1929. By 1930 it was airing 5 days a week. Topic included quilting, book repairing, Christmas cookies, washing woolens, fashion decorating, and a recipe for fried chicken and waffles.  You can read an issue of her news letter here.

Her program ended in 1932 when she made a very early jump to television on "Mrs. Allen and the Chef."The program does nto appear to have lasted. But Ms. Allen's career did. She was an editor of Good Housekeeping, and numerous other publications. In the 1930s she had a new role speaking about food conservation and rationing under Hoover. She spoke to citizens groups and with defense councils about waste and the use of then non-traditional foods like soybeans.  She was even writing for the Post-Star Newspaper as late as 1949. She died in 1973 at the age of 88.

WSBA Cookbook

I found this in a junk shop recently. The introduction reads "Welcome to a world of delicious eating, the 1984 WSBA/WARM 103 Cookbook! In the pages that follow, you will find recipes to please every Central Pennsylvania palate, as compiled by home economist Doris Thomas"  It's existence led me to believe that in the early 1980s there had been a cooking program on one or both of those stations. Actually I assumed that 103.3 WARM was still simulcasting 910 WSBA-AM at least most of the day in that era. I was wrong. I also haven't figured out who Doris Thomas was.

WSBA-AM has been on the air since 1942. During the 1960s and 1970s, WSBA was a big Top-40 format station in the Harrisburg and Lancaster markets. But as FM rose in prevalence they moved inexorably toward a talk format like many. In fact in 103.3 FM in York only signed on in 1983 and in early 1984 it was still WSBA-FM. But it's programming was already AC and different from WSBA-AM. They didn't get the WARM-FM call sign until 1988. "WARM 103" was the brand name. They borrowed the brand and callsign from another Susquehanna property WNNX in Atlanta. They kept that brand and that stale playlist until 2011 when they dropped the pre-1980s cuts and became "Wink 103." After their usual multi-week stretch of all-Christmas music that December they returned in January 2012 as "Warm 103" but with the same newish playlist. More here. There is no way this station was airing a cooking show.

But I found in the 1979 edition of The Working Press of the Nation, a single reference to a home-maker show. The program "Housewife Oriented" hosted by Rod Burnham was airing as late as 1979. Rod was the PD of WSBA following their move from Top-40 to AC. Burnham is reputed to have fired a lot of staff in his tenure prior to their flip to news/talk, it's hard to say if the station had a cooking program—even briefly. While I've confirmed that WSBA-AM did have home-maker programs in the 1940s and 1950s... I suspect the real answer here might be related to a home economics program on WSBA-TV.

Kitchen Klatter

Leanna Field Driftmier was the host of the daily half hour radio program Kitchen-Klatter. Her program  first aired in 1926 and ran into 1959 a total stretch of 33 years. The program is sometimes referred to as the longest-running homemaker show in US radio history. For the record I cannot corroborate that claim. Her 33 years-run is impressive, but I suspect the definition of "home-maker show" as opposed to
"cooking show" is key to the claim. More here.

Leanna's brother actually gets some credit for the start of her radio career. He was Henry Field who founded the radio station KFNF-AM in 1924. Leanna debuted there assisting her sister Helen on another home maker program "The Mother’s Hour" When Helen left the show in 1926 Leanna took over and renamed it Kitchen-Klatter. That monicker does have a bit more pizazz. More here.

Driftmier continued to host that program for over three decades virtually without interruption. When she injured her back in 1930, she hosted the show from her bedroom. After she recovered she was still wheelchair-bound, and she continued to host the program from that position from her own kitchen. I suspect that she is one of the earliest radio personalities to broadcast from a wheel chair, and almost certainly the only one with a cooking show. But "only cooking show host in a wheelchair" doesn't have the same ring to it.

In 1950 the program crossed the street to KMA-AM. She continued until 1959 when her daughter Lucile Driftmier Verness took over the program so she could retire from broadcasting. She continued to guest on the program intermittently until her death in 1976. The program lasted another 9 years.

The Neighbor Lady

Even among minor markets Yankton is diminutive. They air farm market reports. It's considered an unrated market area  among MSAs, but gets it's own book as a DMA in the bottom half of the list at #119. DMAs are generally kinder to the Midwest. The flat topography there milks extra miles out of each watt in ways that are impossible on the East coast. At 5,000 Watts, 570 WNAX-AM beamed the Neighbor Lady into homes from Sioux Falls to Sioux City. This is how the Neighbor Lady became an institution in Yankton, South Dakota for 66 years.

The 15 minute program broadcast weekday afternoons, first at 4:30 then 3:30. When she had her first child rather than let her quit she began broadcasting the program from her home. That continued until 1967.
Originally hired for ad work, she was later asked to do a recipe show. Needless to say it caught on. Wynn Speece began hosting the program back in 1939 (some sources say 1941). She was a fresh graduating of Drake University, located in nearby Des Moines. These days KDRA-LP operates from Drake, but they signed on only months after she retired from broadcasting. They did recognize her as a distinguished alumni in 2001. That same year she was commended on the floor of Congress.

Speece shared recipes, household tips and personal anecdotes. She did live cooking demonstrations, speaking appearances, county fairs, judged baking contests, and sometimes her daughter Gretchen came along. She plugged products too. Everybody needs a sponsor. Starting in 1941 she began publishing an annual Neighbor Lady book, mostly a collection of recipes and coupons.They even compiled a "best-of" edition in 1987. She won a Marconi award in 1992 for "small market personality of the year."  She looks elated in the pictures, but she'd already been doing the program for 5 decades. It was about time they noticed.

She retired in 2005 at the age of  90. She'd only been retired for 2 years.

Jessie Young's Radio Cake

KMA signed on in 1925, an pioneer station in radioland. Jessie Young started at KMA-AM in Shenandoah, Iowa in 1926. She had performed on the station in a choir on it's first broadcasting day on January 17th. Later she went on to singing duets with her husband Floyd on air.  Then she began writing advertising copy and working as an announcer. Then she got her own show. The "Stitch and Chat Club"was pure mid-western Americana. The show gained local popularity and was renamed renamed "A Visit with Jessie Young," after it's increasingly popular host. More here.

It was a homemaker show, not a cooking show. You have to remember that in some of these rural areas there was no electricity. So home making didn't include modern conveniences like electric stoves, irons or washing machines; and the microwave wasn't to debut at retail for another 2 decades. Jessie wasn't teaching about bisquick pancakes. He had to cover soap-making, lard-saving, meat smoking, canning, curing, salting, and the butchering of water fowl. KMA engineers wired her home so that on Saturdays the show could include her family and be broadcast from her kitchen. Her son Robert performed playing the Novacord and she and her husband Floyd sang harmony. Her mother Rosa Susanka appeared sometimes as well. Her other children Eileen, Ronnie and Richard often appeared as well. The book Neighboring on the Air by Evelyn Birkby covers her story in great detail.

In 1942 she relocated to Philadelphia with her family and did another show for 2 years. sick of damn Yankees they went back to the Midwest and resettled in Nebraska and broadcast from KFAB. She relocated to Colorado and then began taping her program and mailing them in to KFAB. In 1946 she launched a magazine based on her radio program which then was in it's 20th year. She retired from broadcastign in 1955, but continued to publish the magazine until 1980!  By then she had authored 20 books on the various home making arts including sewing and cooking.She died in 1987.

Stock Image Fail

This is a lesson on why it's sometimes worth paying a license fee for a stock image to have exclusivity. Below are Scans of promotional cook book covers for 1450 WPAM-AM, 1240 WTAX-AM, 1380 WPHM-AM, 1060 WHFB-AM, 1280 WNPT-AM, 1400 WELK-AM, 810 WEDO-AM and I have others I didn't bother to crop and post. If there are this many you know there are more out there too.

These stations are spread out all over too: Eklins, WV; Pottsville, PA; Mckeesport, PA; Springfield, IL, Port Huron, MI; Tuscaloosa, AL; Roanoke, VA; Sacramento, CA and the sad, cursed town of Benton Harbor, MI.  What happened here is that a company bulk mailed a large number of radio stations their catalog of promo items. Some large subset of them chose this customizable cook book. There are probably a couple pages in the front unique to each station, but the art and the rest is the same, with convenient a big white space to print on the Black & White station logo.

 

Edna's Kitchen on KCIM-AM

The curse of writing about the arcane is that some stories will be forever incomplete.This one starts at  a class-B AM station in small-town Carroll, Iowa.  It's about 100 miles North East of Omaha, NE. In other words nowhere. If you're in Carroll Iowa, don't take that personally, nowhere is usually very pretty because there are no people in it.  KCIM-AM signed on in 1950 under a CP owned by Carroll Broadcasting. It was the fourth addition to a small stable of stations including KCIM, KKRL and KIKD.  That 1950 date is important because it's the only one I have.

"During my many years at Women's Director of Radio Station KCIM, in Carroll, Iowa, I have been besieged by listeners and friends to compile my recipes in book form. For many years, I have collected recipes as a hobby, many of them being favorites from home and friends in Cedar Falls, other places where I have lived, and you, my listeners. Every recipe contained in this little book has been tried in my own kitchen, and many are used over and over. The brown of the cover and the yellow of the pages are indicative of the color scheme in my very own kitchen; the copperware on the bricks is also from my own apartment. I am especially indebted to the management of KCIM for permitting me to make this recipe book available to you...

All of that comes from a single cook book pictured above. The cook book has no date in it. All I know is that it must have been printed after 1950 because of the station sign on. The cookbook has the typical numbered sections: Breads, Doughnuts, Pancakes; Meats, Casseroles, Salads; Cakes, Candies, Cookies, Deserts, Frostings; Pies; and Favorites. The blub refers to a radio program which may or may not have been named "Edna's Kitchen."  Edna's surname is not listed nor are the dates the program ran.

But in he broadcasting yearbook KCIM lists an Edna G. Collins as women's director, from at least 1958 through 1960, and that must be her.
Interestingly There was also an Edna Dahl, who was wife to a grocer in Des Moines, IA. Her name still graces the Dahl's website as "Ednas Kitchen."  It just happens to be a different Edna in a different kitchen.  More information is welcome if anyone happens to have any.

The WMBI Home Hour

That is one very used cook book. I almost passed right over it then I noticed the radio tower in the image. It's anachronistic in the narrow field of radio show cook books. The call letters of 1110 WMBI-AM, the originating station appear nowhere on the outside. It was for the WMBI Home Hour, hosted by Frances Youngren.She was the director of women's programs at the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago. I note that in the image of her below the window behind her is fake. News clippings show the program aired at 11:00 AM.

Corroborating references to her, separate from the cook book, are scant. The 1951 Broadcasting yearbook lists her on the staff of WMBI as did issues though at least 1959. In 1957 Broadcasting Magazine wrote an article celebrating her 25 years in radio. That would put the start of her career around 1932. But the cook book was first printed in 1943. Clearly some of that first decade was something other than the cooking show.

The cookbook appears to have been published from 1943 to1947, and while the covers and  colors vary, it's contents were always the same. Volume 155  of Publishers Weekly briefly described the book "A unique cookbook of selected recipes of tempting dishes . . . and spiritual food, inspiring poetry, prose and scripture ... for the soul." Aside from trite biblical teaching, poetry, cleaning tips and recipes the book also includes some inspirational passages that were read on air during the program.

In 1953 she authored another cook book "Let's Have Fun Cooking" which was for children.Then around 1966 authored "Our Baby, God's Gift" which is probably the abomination that it sounds like. This copy is inscribed on the inside to May 12th 1946.

Celia Mayer and Aunt Sammy

I wrote a post about Aunt Sammy back in  June of 2007. Recently I struck it lucky and was contacted by Paul Freirich, the son of a woman that played the part of Aunt Sammy on WBZA in Boston (see above.) Paul told me what he knew about her and her time in radioland and then even a bit about his own radio career. Between the emails and the 45 minutes of tape I have enough material for a few posts. I'll start with Aunt Sammy tonight and then get to Paul career later on.

Just to review...Aunt Sammy herself was a character created by the U. S. Department of Agriculture Bureau of Home Economics. It debuted in 1926 and by the early 1930s was carried on about 200 radio stations. It was a 15-minute short about cooking, and home making. The show ran until 1946. Celia Mayer was Aunt Sammy in the 1930s. More here. I have found very little information about the women who played Aunt Sammy. But fortunately some people take an interest in their family history, and a few of those even feel like sharing... 

JF: When did your mother play "Aunt Sammy" on WBZA?
PF: She never gave me exact dates but let's use a little detective work. She's at a WBZA mic and WBZA went back to Springfield and Boston get the WBZ call sign in 1931 [March of 1931] so it was before that. She worked at the Statler hotel and WBZA moved there in late 1928 or early 29 so it was after that. [More Boston radio history here]

JF:How old would she have been then?
PF:In 1930 she would have been 23 years old.

JF:How did she score that gig?
PF:She was a secretary at WBZA. For some reason she stayed through her lunch hour one day to get some work finished. The noon program on WBZA was organ music from the Pump Room at the Hotel Statler. That same day the organ broke down and they had dead air. Gordon Swann, the station PD came running into the office with one of the USDA scripts and my mother was the only one there. Swann thrust the script into her hands and said, "You're on the air". Mom was smart enough to realize that many women get nervous in front of of a mic and their voices go way up in pitch so she deliberately lowered hers. It must have worked because she was on the air for six months until they sold that time to a different sponsor who put a different program into that time slot. [More WBZ/WBZA history here]

JF:Did she do any other work in radio before or after that?
PF:No.

JF:There were different Aunt Sammys in Different regions. Did she know any of the others?
PF:She never mentioned any so I don't think so.

JF:How long do you think she stayed there?
PF: She was there for six months on the air. I don't know how long after that she stayed working there. I can tell you for a fact that she married my father in 1934. But I heard she was not there much longer after she was off the air. But a funny thing, she showed me a fan letter "You gave me your recipe for pecan pie and it's wonderful, and I haven't never been able to make it before and yours came out beautifully." But she couldn't make pecan pie. [The USDA provided all the recipes]

Cooking School Of The Air

General Foods debuted their "Cooking School of the Air" in l932.  It was conceived of as a program for housewives and mothers.  For all intents and purposes it's host Frances Lee Barton wasn't just a Betty Crocker impersonator. There were at least three notable ladies with long running cooking programs in that era: Winifred S. Carter, Mary Ellis Ames, Frances Lee Barton, and Betty Crocker.

Many of their programs even had the similar names. Frances Lee Barton's 15-minute show aired at 11:15 AM from a studio called the General Foods Radio Kitchen which was purported to reside on Park Avenue, in New York City.  This daytime program was on the air from 1932-1935 on NBC's Red Network.  The program was short lived, in it's final year, it was retooled to run for 30 minutes and renamed "Kitchen Party." More here.

Barton wasn't picked out of the air. She was also the general foods mascot/model (if you will) for their print ads. That part of her career predated her brief tour in radio. She was authoring cookbooks (or at least putting her name to them) since at least 1928. One of her early print sponsors was Swans Down Cake Flour.  They re-appeared as a broadcast sponsor as did Calumet Baking Powder. And the end of her radio program didn't stop her. She was still printing cook books at least through 1940, and still affiliated with General Foods. More here.

Her image and or her signature would appear on these ads as a seal of approval. And it helped. Her program was on 35 NBC affiliates. And she also sold booklets directly over the radio program. there were over a hundred individual pamphlets and they fitted neatly into a companion binder.We don't really have programs like these any more and it's more because people don't cook, not because people don't listen to the radio. But maybe the foodie revival will inspire some ingenue blogger to cross over to radio and modernize the idea.

Hello Neighbor on KOA

For a series of years in the 1960s "Hello Neighbor" was carried on both radio station 850 KOA-AM and KOA-TV Channel 4.  Through it, KOA sponsored a community cookbook based on the call-in show. It ran 10:30 to noon Monday through Friday for most of it's existence. It had two hosts over those years. Host Merrie Lynn began in 1966 and was preceded by the original host Maxine Mulvey who did the program until 1962. Merrie stuck with the show for 10 years and ended up in the Colorado Broadcasting Hall of Fame. She also married a former governor of Colorado.She went on to have her own "Merrie Lynn Show" on KOA-TV. She is probably the same Merrie Lynn that was on 630 KHOW-AM prior to 1963 also in Denver.

 The cook books came out starting in 1960 and continued until about 1968. The one pictured above is from 1966.  The ones below from 1960, 1962, 1965 and 1967. The program began in about 1960, and was broadcast usually from the Elitch Gardens amusement park. It still exists but is somewhat modernized.  The show had guests including the unexpected like Charleton Heston. It wasn't exclusively about cooking, it was also about other household-related paraphernalia.

 The show ran until at least 1968 as there are no cook books that date after that. But other information puts the show as running until as late as 1974. Cooking shows are among the most poorly documented radio programs, so in these cases the most information we have is typically from the cook books they sponsored.

Mahalo Lucky Luck

Radio History is biased toward the mainland.  The residents of the contiguous 48-states do think of Alaska, Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawaii and the other territories and states as the back 40. We don't take a lot of notice of what's going on back there. But Honolulu is market #64, Puerto Rico is market #14! With their rapidly expanding population centers it is no longer acceptable to disregard these markets. A failure as a programmer to understand the radio history of these markets does them a disservice. An attempt by a radio group to serve San Juan like they serve Boston would result in utter failure.

This is no more obvious than in the story of Robert Melvin "Lucky" Luck. In 1967 Lucky Luck became the PD of brand new KCCN-AM.  It was one of the very first "ethnic" Hawaiian radio stations. Previous to this time, there was not enough commercial Hawaiian music with which to forge a playlist. Lucky used data from juke box operators Mid-Pacific Island and Aloha State to program his station. He was interested in building a library to support an entirely new and local format. Billboard wrote a blurb on it in 1968:

"KCCN works with a 60 tune playlist. principally LPs and the material encompasses songs of a Hawaiian nature by Percy Faith, Elvis Presley, Henry Mancini, George Greeley, Sammy Kaye, Frankie Carle.  these songs are called haole (Caucasian) hits. Luck admits there isn't enough strong authentic Hawaiian material to fill the stations program day."

He didn't start his career at KCCK-AM. Actually he didn't even start it in Hawaii.  He was born a few thousand miles away in Waco, Texas. His interest in what was then called Polynesia started while he was a Marine stationed in Samoa. While he was there he became fluent enough to serve as an interpreter during World War II. He went native as they say. He relocated permanently to Honolulu and went into radio. More here.

Before KCCK-AM he was on KPOA-AM, he started there in 1954. Paradise of the Pacific Magazine called him "the Jackie Gleason of Hawaii." He was well known for his "buffoonery", he did impersonations: Louis Armstrong, Clark Gable, Andy Devine and various regional Hawaiian accents. He was already Hawaii's highest paid entertainer. He later worked at  KGU-AM. He had a program from 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM called "Lucky's Luau."  The trade rag Media-scope described him as an "easy going conversationalist."

He also had a program on KHVH-TV, a Kaiser television station. By the 1970s his fame was great enough to warrant his own TV program “The Lucky Luck Show” on KONA-TV an NBC affiliate. By the late 1960s he was getting cameos in movies like Kona Coast. He developed a fixation on all things Hawaiian.He owned a tiki bar The Okole Maluna Lounge. He became a recording artist and recorded Hawaiian music.  He even published a Hawaiian cook book. I wish I knew more, but I can't even find an obituary.

Julie Chase Fuller WTAG

This all came about because of a cookbook. The title of the book is "WTAG's Gossip Bench Cookbook Swap Session Recipes" compiled by Julie Chase. It comes to us without a publishined date but is estimated to be late 1950s. It tells me she was a radio host in the on WTAG-AM and she seemed to have been something like a local Betty Crocker.
I was not even close. See above. In the 1960s she's Julie Chase Fuller. She got married and changed her name, using the then risque hyphen. She was a board member of A.W.R.T. American Women in Radio and TV. She was their president in 1966. We are lucky they were a progressive group. Their vice president, Tomi Jackson, was black and Jet magazine wrote a small blurb on it. If not for that, I'd have almost no collaborating evidence on any of this. AWRT still exists today. The history on their website is pitifully brief.

AWRT was formed in 1951 as successor to the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) women's division. NAB voted approval of the new organization, offering complete cooperation and assistance. The following year, more than 280 women gathered to celebrate and approve the structure of the AWRT.

Suddenly I see her as a feminist. AWRT was founded in 1951, making Julie a very early member of the organization. A 1963 Issue of the International Television Almanac list her as a Vice President, so clearly her tenure was at least 3 years and certainly more. This is verified by a matching listing in the Attorneys Trade Association Radio Annual of 1963. The VPs have regions. she has the "E Area" which can only be assumed to be East. That same year, Public Relations Journal notes that Julie authored a pamphlet called "Meet Mike" an instructional for young girls who wanted to become radio commentators. (I'd love to get a copy of that.)
Before all this, Julie was a radio show host. In the 1960s she did a local show in Worcester aimed at housewives and house-making. The show had a little meat on it though. Helen Nelson was a regular guest on WTAG mornings with Julie Chase Fuller, discussing books, authors and literature. Later on I find her listed as the director of women's programs and community services. She is expanding her role. Then there is a big gap. A meaningful gap. Broadcasting Magazine writes her up in 1967, then she's a VP at AWRT.

In 1970 Syracuse University Awards her the The George Arents Pioneer Medal. It is only awarded to Alumni, and is an award for excellence in their field of endeavor. So she is a graduate of Syracuse University and by 1970 was well known for her work. This cannot be for her work at WTAG. This must be related to her tenure at A.W.R.T. She was still with the group in 1971, as I confirm in the Martha Brooks Papers housed at the digital library of U. Maryland.

In 1978 she's off raising money to restore Mechanics Hall in Worcester, MA. She must have succeeded because today it continues to exist as the Julie Chase Fuller Endowment Fund for Mechanics Hall. After that I cant find anything. Just a passing note on her death in a book about the Organist Guild of Worcester around 1990.

*Julie's head shot is courtesy of the personal library of Aleta Meadowlark of Omnomicon fame.

The Smartest People in the World

He may have been an announcer on WMBD but be definitely was the host of “The Smartest People in the World” a morning segment that ran 1977 to 1981.

It's nice to find little radio artifacts. I know precious little about this show. 1470 WMBD-AM. itself has a history site here. But very little is written about Bill Rogers. In fact, in one section they call him a host and in another an announcer. Most of what I know of his and his program come from a cookbook. The Bill Rogers show ran from 10:00 am to noon Monday through Friday. It was an "adult music" program which in the late 70s probably means bland pop. The "smartest people in the world" were his callers. Bill took call-ins as was very common on WMBD. But his program was targeted at housewives so in that era the topics were directed to household tips, recopies, gardening, etc.

He worked at stations in Charleston, Taylorville, Galesburg and as far off as Hayward California. the book appears to have been printed in 1982 or so. About the time he moved from morning show host to program director. It was assembled by Wendy Schwenk, cover art by Mary Register. My copy mysteriously has a blank cover.. so Marys work is unknown. Bill is no longer with WMBD, he appears to have left for a position at 1390 WFIW-AM in Fairfield, Illinois.

Aunt Sammy's Radio Recipes

I like writing about radio cooking shows. There have been many, but they're almost all forgotten. There are no tapes, no books, no collectors, and no golden era. As soon as TV came along cooking shows moved right over because a cooking lesson made so much more sense in the visual format. They vanished. that makes it interesting.

There are a few radio cooking shows today, but I discover them most often by accident. This one is 80 years old. In 1931 the USDA and Aunt Sammy put together a recipe book to be sold through the U.S. Government printing office. Click the here and magically be taken to a .pdf on that AgNIC server at the Michigan State University library .

Aunt Sammy herself was a character created by the U. S. Department of Agriculture Bureau of Home Economics and the Radio Service to be the 'wife' of Uncle Sam. Many women across the country 'played' Aunt Sammy at local radio stations when the show aired. The first Aunt Sammy came to life with the first NBC radio broadcast of "Housekeeper's Chat" on October 4, 1926.

The focus of the program was the menus and recipes, but Aunt Sammy also talked about clothing, furniture, appliances, and household matters. She also commented on world affairs, reported the latest fads, and told jokes. Sammy became very popular in rural markets. By the end of the first year the program was carried by 43 radio stations. By 1932, 194 stations were broadcasting Aunt Sammy's show. Listeners frequently wrote their stations for copies of the recipes. The Bureau of Home Economics answered these requests with mimeographed copies. (This was pre-Xerox.)

In a report from W. M. Jardine, Secretary of Agriculture,on November 1, 1926 spoke proudly of their progress with Aunt Sammy. "Aunt Sammy," a new radio friend and neighbor for the 5,000,000 farm women of the Nation who have an opportunity to tune in, is heard from 40 stations. The service known as the "Housekeepers' Chat" is a 15-minute period devoted five days a week exclusively to up-to-date information on subjects of interest to women.

In 1927 the most popular recipes were assembled into a pamphlet. That's the pdf in the link by the way. What began as a pamphlet was revised three times before 1931. In 1932 it became the first cookbook published in braille. For a time it was as popular as the Joy of cooking.

During the Great Depression Aunt Sammy was phased out. The radio show became drier and more factual and was renamed "Homemaker Chats." The show was yanked in 1946. The USDA was still publishing the popular revised pamphlet in 1978.