The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street

The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street has one of the longest radio program names in radio history. So for the purposes of this article let's use the acronym CMSLBS. It aired for over a decade and spawned at least half a dozen commercial recordings. [LINK]  As the quote in the book Once More... from the Beginning by Oscar G. Zimmerman said "The CMSLBS had dedicated their lives to the preservation of the music of  The Three Bs,' not Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, but Barrelhouse, Boogie-Woogie and the Blues."

Harrisburg Evening News Aug 11, 1937

Interestingly that quote has been 'borrowed' from CMSLBS repeatedly since 1940. It was paraphrased in the promotions for two 1943 films: Best Foot Forward and Thousands Cheer. It was used on printed ads for the radio show Jam With Sam on WGN in 1951, and used as an album title [LINK] by Sam Price And His Kaycee Stompers in 1955. Multiple entertainment writers have borrowed it as well, including myself, James Wertheim at Sound & Fury magazine in 1965, by Playbill writer Steven Suskin in 2003 and more recently by Brent Phillips in his biography of Charles Walters in 2014. It's amazing how a phrase like that can travel through 75 years of media without accreditation. It's almost like the blues idiom itself.

CMSLBS began in 1936 as a 15-minute program called Bughouse Rhythm broadcast out of San Francisco by NBC. It originally aired on Friday's at 5:00 PM on  NBC Red then in October, moved to Monday nights at 7:15 PM on NBC Blue. The show was created by Ward Byron. The show satirized classical music with it's studio orchestra performing swing versions of well-known classical compositions. The live music was sometimes followed by short lectures or music history discussions led by announcer "Professor" Archie Presby and his assistant Martha Murgatroyd, played by comedian Natalie Park. Her role was to yawn and pretend to be young and bored. Jack Meakin handled the music arrangements. Bughouse Rhythm debuted September 4th, 1936 and the last show was April 26th 1937. Only a few recordings exist. Ward Byron followed up that creation with the Fitch Bandwagon show which ran from 1937 - 1948.

Just a few years later Ward Byron managed to reboot the program. This time the show was 30 minutes long and had more of a musical variety radio format. It debuted where Bughouse Rhythm had ended —NBC Blue. He brought back Jack Meakin and built a bigger better orchestra. The "society" was a rotating group of about 14 musicians. When Jack Meakin left Paul Lavalle took over. At different times band members included: Zero Mostel, Charles Marlowe, Gene Hamilton, and Albert Ammons, Fletch Philburn, Harry Patent, Nat Levine, and Frank Signorelli to name a few. Guests included Louis Armstrong, Art Tatem, Leadbelly, Lionel Hampton, Sidney Bechet, Bobby Hackett, Jelly Roll Morton, Jack Teagarden, Earl Hines, W.C. Handy, Harry James, and many more. But it was probably Paul Lavalle who brought in Dinah Shore. She was with them from the start in 1940. He had worked with her in 1939 on The Dinah Shore Show. Lena Horne later replaced Shore as a vocalist, but Horne only lasted 6 months. Then Linda Keene took that mic in 1941. (Some sourced incorrectly list Betty Keene)

But by 1940 announcer Archie Presby had moved to Los Angeles to work at Radio City studios in Hollywood. (He also announced at KFI. Archie was the chief West Coast announcer for NBC until he retired in 1972.) So CMSLBS got Milton Cross. Cross played the straight man through all this shtick. Cross was also announcing for the Metropolitan Opera so listeners would be very familiar with his solemn and dignified delivery. The Metropolitan Opera was the very type of program that CMSLBS had intended to mock. As a result, the new format had a somewhat drier flavor of satire. The humor reminds me of early Prairie Home Companion episodes. More here.

CMSLBS debuted on on February 11, 1940 in a crappy late Sunday slot: 4:30 PM EST. It was Milton Cross who opened the program by saying "Welcome to the no doubt world-famous Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street, and another concert dedicated to The Three Bs— Barrelhouse, Boogie-Woogie and the Blues." Then he'd introduce the host Dr. Gino Hamilton. By September it had built up it's listenership and moved to Monday nights at 9:00 PM EST. More here.

Then it got moved back to Sundays at 9:15 PM. It's not as bad as the original slot but not a weeknight either. But it was better to have Woodbury Soap as a sponsor than to be a sustaining program. The band stopped calling itself the NBC Dixieland Octet, and started calling itself the Woodbury Soap Symphony Orchestra. Comically this name is recorded as the bands proper name in the book The Complete Discography of Louis Armstrong by Jos Willems with no irony. Archie Presby would have loved it. CMSLBS did one more season in 1943-1944 and then the  show was off air for 6 years. Ward Byron produced the Philip Morris Follies in 1946, and the Chesterfield Supper Club but it's unclear why the show didn't return next season, or what force of nature led to a 2nd reboot in 1950.

When the show came back in 1950 on Saturday nights at 10:30 PM Paul Lavalle didn't return. Henry Levine took over his music duties, renaming the band again as the Henry Levine Octet. They added British character actor, Arthur Treacher, appearing as guest commentator. The only original cast members to return was Gene Hamilton. Even Milton Cross abandoned them. The season fished out with NBC staff announcers Fred Collins, (formerly WOWO) and Wayne Howell finished out the season. Orson Bean was final host of the series in 1952, for it's last 13 week season. Bean was later placed on the Hollywood blacklist for attending Communist Party meetings. Unlike some others, he ratted out his girlfriend and his career made a full recovery.

The Slumber Hour

I had read of the NBC Slumber Hour broadcasts. It sometimes comes up in allegorical histories of easy listening and beautiful music. The program mixed chamber music with soft smooth vocals. It's announcer was the legendary Milton Cross. But most histories indicate that the program aired nightly from 1927 to 1932. I had always believed that to be the case until I read an irate complaint letter from J. William Traum of Brooklyn , NY.  This was published in An April 1931 issue of the New York Sun.

"What has radio broadcasting come to when a station's officials obstinately refuse to rectify an unjustified and outrageous move In spite of enormous protests? The National Broadcasting Company will not restore the full Slumber Hour on the grounds that it has not received enough letters. How false that is may be determined by the fact that the newspapers themselves are full of invective letters. Haven't the listeners, who are the life's blood of broadcasting. Nothing to say even though they have the right behind them? Will the readers of your paper continue to write in and convince the N.B.C. that they will not stand for this disregard of their rights. The situation is becoming far more serious than just the Slumber Hour situation alone. It is becoming a question of good music against bad and the obligations of a station to its listeners."

But Mr. Traum was not alone. The easy listening of the 1970s had it's fans but so did it's 1920s equivalent. Other issues of that paper and others were briefly littered with complaint letters— some fiery, some groveling. But it was the Sun who focused on the story more than others. It might have been an editorial decision or something spurred on by their readers... but it happened. They wanted their smooth sleepy program back.Philip G. Shermerhorn also wrote into the New York Sun newspaper.

"You have published numerous righteous protests against at least the third effort upon the part of the National Broadcasting Company to wrest from the public their beloved Slumber Hour. I think the first encroachment was when they sought to change its character and make it less attractive by interpolating a female who attempted to say something poetic and merely aroused wrath. The second attack was when the Slumber Hour was scheduled to begin at midnight instead of 11 PM, and the third and most recent move to curtail that program from one hour to thirty minutes is being tried out now. We, of our household, desire to take this opportunity of thanking The Sun for giving space and publicity to such protests, and trust you will continue to exert your influence in the public's behalf." 

It's also worth noting that the program is believed to be one of two that announcer Milton Cross may have read poetry on. The other was The Silver Flute, a fifteen-minute program billed as "tales of a wandering gypsy."  No recordings exist of either show. Early on the Slumber Hour was sponsored by Kellogs. It's house band was the Ludwig Laurier Orchestra. A January 1931 comment in the Country Air column in Wallace's Farmer hinted at the problem. The writer indicated that the NBC affiliates that carried the program did so irregularly joining the program late and/or leaving early. WREN came in from 10:15 to 10:30, then back from 10:45 to 11:00 PM. KDKA, KWK, KSTP, KFAB, and KOA were all named for only running parts of the program, treating it in other words.. like filler. It did not bode well.


In early 1931 NBC cut the program back from 1 hour from 30 minutes. By 1932 they canceled the program entirely.  In the years later other programs pilfered the brand name. WIBA ran a program in 1937 named the Slumber Hour with no connection to the original. Other late night soft music programs slowly gave rise to the abomination we now call Beautiful Music.

A Milton Cross Christmas

I discovered Milton Cross via RCA 45-5106-B. It's a 78 with two tracks. The B side is an orchestral rendition of "Jingle Bells Fantasy" by the Victor Salon Orchestra. The A side is a reading of "The Night Before Christmas" by Milton Cross. It's read over a smooth string piece similar to the B side. Lee posted the B side last year. It's expired but it's such a worthy Blog.
I Found a single reference to it in the book 45 RPM: The History, Heroes & villains of a Pop Music Revolution. The book refers to the release as a 45 and to Milton Cross as a source of the music. These may be both incorrect. My copy is clearly a shellac 78, but still sports all the packaging described. It may have been later released as a yellow vinyl 45. But the reference is still informative.

"One of the first 45 records with a full color, four picture sleeve was a recitation of "The Night Before Christmas" (47-0141) by Clement C. Moore, with Music by Milton Cross and the Victor Salon Orchestra. The record had not only a sleeve with an aerial shot of Santa Claus and his flying reindeer but also a fold over flap with another full-color illustration of angelic, caroling children. It was issued as part of RCA Victor's Youth series in 1949."

So the real question was "Who is Milton Cross?" It turns out that he was the announcer for the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts on WABC-AM for 43 years. That's from their first program in 1931 until his death in 1975. He was also host of a classical program called "The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street."

He was first hired by Tommy Cowan at WJZ-AM in 1921 while it was still based in Newark. It relocated to Manhattan as part of the NBC Blue Network. He did several children's programs including "coast to Coast on a bus", "Presenting A&G Pipsies" and "Children's Hour." With all that in context it begins to make sense that he be tapped to narrate that old Christmas recitation. RCA also had him read Little red Riding Hood and others. he also did some lesser known narrations of "the Great Foodini" for Caravan records. More here.

Late in his career he did a sunday night swing show and even hosted the Quiz program "Information please." George Ansbro wrote an autobiography in 1986 that tells as much about Milton as himself. It was reprinted with an introduction by Leonard Maltin in 1999. More here.